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To add to this Trump's official campaign Twitter had it's account locked this morning and a video Trump uploaded was promptly deleted. This is new information f

To add to this Trump's official campaign Twitter had it's account locked this morning and a video Trump uploaded was promptly deleted. This is new information from today. The thread yesterday was about the initial wave of censorship. I posted about the new actions this morning but it got flagged as a dupe of yesterday's discussion. It was not a duplicate, Twitter has taken new action and decided to go further this morning than they did yesterday.

wesleywt 6y ago
Do you think its correct to delibrately spread a false story about Hunter Biden? Is this type removing false information censorship?
- uncoder0 6y ago
  Is the story demonstrably false? I don't know if that is the case. It's certainly a smear story. In the past they've fact-checked Tweets from the President and his party but, I've not yet seen them straight up delete them and lock their accounts until now.
  - tt433 6y ago
    I mean knowing what we know about Rudy and his technology abilities, it's not that difficult for me to dismiss anything he or related cronies suggest out of hand.
    - uncoder0 6y ago
      I agree, Rudy Giuliani has spread quite a bit of disinfo over the past 4 years. The claim here that is supposedly supported by a receipt is that Hunter left the computer at a repair shop and never paid the bill. In adherence with the store contract they took ownership of the laptop after some time. When they looked at the hard drive they thought they saw illegal activity and turned it into the FBI after making a clone of the drives which is what Rudy claims he has.
      - isleyaardvark 6y ago
        If Rudy was not behind the last October surprise he was at least in the loop — he openly boasted about having advance knowledge of the Comey letter.
    - jungletime 6y ago
      Did Rudy fake the Hunter Biden with a crack pipe photos too? Its ridiculous since they impeached Trump over asking Ukraine to investigate this corruption. When it was probably true all along.
      - conception 6y ago
        No, they impeached Trump for withholding aid illegally if they didn’t help him by investigating if there might be something there to aid Trumps campaign.
  - bananabreakfast 6y ago
    Yes. Yes it is. This is blatant disinformation meant to destabilize the election and disenfranchise voters with blatant lies. This action is exactly the kind of thing everyone blamed social media for not taking last time and they're finally doing the right thing. This is exactly what they tried to do in the 2016 election by getting Comey to announce a new investigation that, surprise, turned up absolutely nothing. There is no substance to these allegations. At all. Before you get up in arms about a slippery slope about arbiters of truth keep in mind that these sources have burned any credibility they have. Their ideas do not have a right to a fair trail in the public discourse because they are all acting in bad faith.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      Well Twitter just poured jet fuel on the fire now that they locked the account deleted the tweet and now it’s back on Twitter.
      - refurb 6y ago
        That’s the amazing thing. The NYPost article was making the rounds Wednesday night and it was mostly crickets. Twitter bans any posts about it and now it’s taking off like a firestorm.
    - zalkota 6y ago
      No, it’s not fake. You can’t provide proof that it’s fake. You’re going off a political agenda. There’s a picture of hunter smoking a crack pipe!
      - uncoder0 6y ago
        To preface my comment, I think using Hunter's drug problem for political gain is tasteless. Despite that I find it abhorrent that Twitter is not allowing users to post the photo instead it is instantly causing accounts to get locked. https://twitter.com/search?q=hunter%20locked%20pipe&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=hunter%20locked%20pipe&src=type...
      - 6y ago
  - bduerst 6y ago
    It's not demonstrably proven, despite being easy to do so. NY Post doxxed their own source when put under scrutiny, who went on to do an interview yesterday. What John Paul Mac Isaac is saying isn't adding up. https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > It's not demonstrably proven, despite being easy to do so. In that case, all articles that include "sources say" etc should be banned from Twitter, shouldn't they?
      - bduerst 6y ago
        News orgs do that to protect the anonymity of sources. In this case, NY Post threw their source to the wolves when they couldn't verify any of the information, so this story is not congruent with "sources say".
    - save_ferris 6y ago
      > Throughout the interview, Mac Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation that contacted him. At one point, Mac Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop. At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device’s existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for “help accessing his drive.” He can’t get something as simple as who initiated contact over the device straight? If I was a small fish about to source a story of this size, I’d have every single detail rehearsed and committed to memory. This guy doesn’t come across as legit at all.
  - ses1984 6y ago
    Is it possible to demonstrably prove false a made up falsehood? What if I accuse someone of something, and then post that I accused them. The accusation maybe bogus but the post is technically not false.
    - Fellshard 6y ago
      That is the type of laundering language Twitter itself uses regularly in its 'Trending' tab editorializing: 'People angry at X', 'X accused', etc. Pre-framing a topic is malpractice.
    - stvswn 6y ago
      This is often the nature of stories in the public interest. No one ever proved a single portion of Christine DeBlasey Ford's accusations against Brett Kavanaugh but the fact that she was making the accusations were newsworthy enough. In this case, the following are true: (1) Hunter Biden was a highly paid board member of Burisma while his father handled Ukraine policy for the U.S. (2) A computer repair store owner claims to have his data and to have given it to Rudy Giuliani (3) There was a Grand Jury summons to seize the computer as evidence in an unknown investigation. This is far more than is usually needed to cover a story.
      - CyberDildonics 6y ago
        I think it was more about the fact that she was making credible accusations.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - _a40s 6y ago
    It seems that the Biden campaign isn't denying that the emails are authentic. That would be strong evidence that they are, assuming this hasn't changed in the last 24 hours: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1316461339842289664 https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1316461339842289664 For what it's worth, NY Post (sorry for the link) is reporting that the Biden campaign isn't denying most of their claims: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/notice-biden-campaign-not-denying-posts-scoop-facts-on-hunter-bidens-sleaze/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/notice-biden-campaign-not-deny.... To be clear, this is a separate question from how the emails were obtained. That story is beyond weird and surely bogus. To be fair, it also seems to me an indication that Biden is more honest than Trump. Trump would just say the emails were fake whether they were or not.
    - edaemon 6y ago
      The absence of a denial does not at all constitute "strong evidence" of anything.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
        So by default assume anything that goes against your worldview as false and censor it.
        albedoa 6y ago
        How did you get here from the comment you are replying to.
        cscurmudgeon 6y ago
        How did you get that I got it from that?
      - _a40s 6y ago
        Of course you're right in a logical or philosophical sense, but in a political sense it certainly does. If the emails were fake, it would be politically insane not to say so. The Biden campaign can easily find this out from Hunter, so the fact that they haven't said it means either that (1) the emails are authentic (though they may still have been altered), or (2) something else is going on that we don't know about and is unusual.
  - DevKoala 6y ago
    How is the story demonstrably false? We have yet to see any counter evidence.
    - TwoBit 6y ago
      Have you read the story about this laptop? While I agree it's not possible from here to prove it's false, it's borderline lunacy and is clearly a fraudulently created attempt to firebomb Biden's campaign at the last minute just like what worked with Hillary last time. The Republicans wouldn't care nearly as much about this story that the FBI itself dropped if they weren't so panicked about losing the election and reaching for yet another vote manipulation tactic.
      - DevKoala 6y ago
        The FBI has the hard drive and they have not denied any of the allegations. Biden’s lawyers haven’t denied the allegations. Biden’s campaign has not denied the authenticity of the emails. Your argument is “I don’t believe it, so it must be false”
- xlm1717 6y ago
  I think it's not correct. I also think it wasn't correct to deliberately spread a false story about President Trump disrespecting marines, but social media sites didn't take the same precautions with that story.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    The story was independently verified by pretty much all media sources when followed up by their own journalists
    - anoonmoose 6y ago
      Indeed. If the NYP allows other organizations to review and fact check the primary documents themselves, I'll start to think there's something to this. Otherwise, all I see is that known Trump associates provided info of unknown providence and accuracy to a former Fox News employee now working as a journalist at a Murdoch owned known unreliable news source.
    - uerobert 6y ago
      That “independently verified” part was that they talked with the same source and were told the same thing.
- rayiner 6y ago
  I think the NY Post is probably getting played. But the media has gotten behind plenty of stories about Trump that turned out to be false: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/horowitz-report-steele-dossier-collusion-news-media-924944 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/h.... This sloppiness is a general symptom of the need for media organizations to beat the Twitter cycle. The question is whether this standard of reliability is one that they can actually apply evenly. This is a far higher standard that what was pitched. This content moderation was pitched as being limited to Russian bots and “vaccines cause cancer” and the like. Moderating articles from a publicly listed brick and mortar news organization, even if it’s a tabloid, based on the perceived credibility of the underlying facts, is a whole new level. It’s dramatically raising the bar. And maybe that’s where the bar should be, but I absolutely do not believe that Facebook and Twitter have the resources or integrity to apply that high standard fairly.
  - tt433 6y ago
    I think they have the resources but that the corporate model may prevent the resources from being properly distributed (eaten up by executives before getting where they are needed, for example, and who's to say the executives are operating in good faith...)
- goodluckchuck 6y ago
  The posts should be allowed particularly if they're false. If people are allowed to say true things, then that's not particularly valuable information. However, the content's of someone's lies usually says more than the truth (which can often be obtained elsewhere).
  - lanstin 6y ago
    Why should Twitter be forced to take actions based on your preferences? Make a distributed messaging/publication system and use your power to say what ever you like. Twitter has a lot of power and they are free to use it. The internet wasn’t designed with a winner take all philosophy and the technical infrastructure still supports end user as publisher model.
    - mshumi 6y ago
      So they should be free to be regulated as a publisher despite claiming they are a platform
      - lanstin 6y ago
        Are you saying publishers can’t arbitrarily decide what to publish or not? I think you will find that publishers have a lot more say so over their content than e.g. phone companies.
        ggreer 6y ago
        Publishers can be as arbitrary as they want, but they are held liable for what they publish. Section 230 gives civil immunity to "information service providers". If someone libels you on Twitter, you can't sue Twitter. But if Twitter starts making editorial decisions as to what is fit to publish and what isn't, then they could lose their section 230 protections and open themselves to tons of lawsuits.
        messick 6y ago
- svrb 6y ago
  The Biden campaign explicitly did not dispute that the emails are real when asked (only that the meeting mentioned in the emails took place, which is... an odd distinction). Twitter does not claim that the emails aren't real. In short, the emails are real and everyone admits this... except the people who have fallen for social media giants' propaganda in this case. Twitter claims that the justification is that the emails are "hacked" and/or "leaked" (they're inconsistent), even though (1) this is patently false since they were found on a hard drive which became property of the repair shop; and (2) Twitter has no problem with, say, Trump's tax returns and other "hacked"/"leaked" materials.
- jungletime 6y ago
  Just curious, what do you make of the Biden photos with a crack pipe found on the laptop too. Are those fake? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8842709/Joe-Bidens-son-crack-pipe-new-low-dirtiest-election-writes-TOM-LEONARD.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8842709/Joe-Bidens-...
  - tw04 6y ago
    Do you have any proof they came from the laptop and not a hacked icloud account or insert many other possible sources? Pretty obvious the guy who claimed to have obtained the laptop is fabricating the whole story: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...
    - jungletime 6y ago
      For all I know the laptop could have been teleported by aliens into Rudy's greasy ass. Still would be irrelevant on the merit of any of the facts.
      - anoonmoose 6y ago
        Hunter smoking crack is 1) not news and 2) not relevant to the current election. If that was all that was released, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. Everything else in the release is 1) far more damaging than the above and 2) far harder to verify as accurate with what we've been given thus far.
        colordrops 6y ago
        So we censor everything that is not news and not relevant to the current election? What are you trying to say?
        anoonmoose 6y ago
        I'm trying to say that right now, as far as I'm concerned, there are only a few confirmed facts. One of those facts is that there are newly released pictures of Hunter smoking crack, which isn't particularly interesting. All the other stuff about emails, provenance of said emails, etc., has not been verified by anyone but the NYP, who, contrary to typical reporting practices, are not sharing their info so other venues can confirm the accuracy. So, as far as I am concerned, that is unverified and quite likely inaccurate info and Twitter and Facebook has no responsibility to disseminate unverified and quite likely inaccurate info.
- stvswn 6y ago
  The provenance of the documents is fishy. They could have easily been hacked. But, what portions of the actual story are false? The Biden campaign's refutation was not to say that the emails were doctored. They only said that they have checked the official schedule of Joe Biden from the day in question and there is no mention of a meeting with the Burisma executive (they don't say categorically that he did not meet with him, just that it is not present on the official schedule). Other then the meeting w/ Biden, I'm not sure there's a detail that has been specfically contested.
  - lanstin 6y ago
    Your priors are wrong - the evidence and the people presenting it have the burden of proof not the people saying this is more bullshit from a desperate group of people who have consistently lied for years.
    - stvswn 6y ago
      What burden of proof are you talking about? You're saying that a burden of proof needs to be met before what, exactly? I am not saying they have met a burden of proof, I'm saying that we don't censor news articles (even sensational or thinly sourced ones) because they haven't yet met a burden of proof.
      - lanstin 6y ago
        A group well known for lying is pushing a story with poor provenance and you are engaging it as if it has a decent probability of being true. That is a sign your prior belief of the lying people is off - with the more realistic prior belief that liars keep lying the question is why this made up story now? Or how did they execute this lie? And yes, the key to using the internet effectively is to filter things out that are garbage. I individually try not waste my time on bullshit, truth based organizations filter out a lot of crackpots: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20190201b/full/ https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2019020... and Twitter itself is free to try to do this filtering as well. I applaud them for trying to remove BS rather than trying to push addictive content but whatever. This very news site is interesting because they spend a lot of time trying to filter BS in favor of productive and informative conversations.
- calimac 6y ago
  The guy has a crack pipe in his mouth and emails pertaining to foreign influence peddling. Before some of your heads explode please replace the name hunter Biden in the m headline with someone like Jared Cushner? How partisan is the lease of logic?
- beervirus 6y ago
  >false Citation very much needed.
- DeonPenny 6y ago
  How can you say its false. The FBI took it seriously. If we said the same about wikileaks or trump taxes we'd all flip out. Twitter shouldn't be the people who get to say whats false or not.
  - TwoBit 6y ago
    and the FBI dropped it. This stunt is so obviously an attempt to manipulate the election at the last minute. Just like they did in 2016. That's really what the media companies are internally considering here: attempts at election fraud. I can imagine a dystopian future in which three weeks before every election there's an explosion of insane bombshell claims about the candidates, with ever increasing effort put into them and no time to refute them before the vote. A misinformation arms war will ensue.
    - DeonPenny 6y ago
      What you talking about thats been a thing since before the internet was a thing is called the October surpise. Its allowed. It's legal. Youre not allowed to suppress your political opponent in the last moment cause that could escalate to poisoning like in other countries or worse.
- 6nf 6y ago
  It’s not false though. Yes it’s censorship.
- joejoeshabadoo5 6y ago
  You sound like a huge faggot.

wesleywt 6y ago

Do you think its correct to delibrately spread a false story about Hunter Biden? Is this type removing false information censorship?

uncoder0 6y ago
Is the story demonstrably false? I don't know if that is the case. It's certainly a smear story. In the past they've fact-checked Tweets from the President and his party but, I've not yet seen them straight up delete them and lock their accounts until now.
- tt433 6y ago
  I mean knowing what we know about Rudy and his technology abilities, it's not that difficult for me to dismiss anything he or related cronies suggest out of hand.
  - uncoder0 6y ago
    I agree, Rudy Giuliani has spread quite a bit of disinfo over the past 4 years. The claim here that is supposedly supported by a receipt is that Hunter left the computer at a repair shop and never paid the bill. In adherence with the store contract they took ownership of the laptop after some time. When they looked at the hard drive they thought they saw illegal activity and turned it into the FBI after making a clone of the drives which is what Rudy claims he has.
    - isleyaardvark 6y ago
      If Rudy was not behind the last October surprise he was at least in the loop — he openly boasted about having advance knowledge of the Comey letter.
  - jungletime 6y ago
    Did Rudy fake the Hunter Biden with a crack pipe photos too? Its ridiculous since they impeached Trump over asking Ukraine to investigate this corruption. When it was probably true all along.
    - conception 6y ago
      No, they impeached Trump for withholding aid illegally if they didn’t help him by investigating if there might be something there to aid Trumps campaign.
- bananabreakfast 6y ago
  Yes. Yes it is. This is blatant disinformation meant to destabilize the election and disenfranchise voters with blatant lies. This action is exactly the kind of thing everyone blamed social media for not taking last time and they're finally doing the right thing. This is exactly what they tried to do in the 2016 election by getting Comey to announce a new investigation that, surprise, turned up absolutely nothing. There is no substance to these allegations. At all. Before you get up in arms about a slippery slope about arbiters of truth keep in mind that these sources have burned any credibility they have. Their ideas do not have a right to a fair trail in the public discourse because they are all acting in bad faith.
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    Well Twitter just poured jet fuel on the fire now that they locked the account deleted the tweet and now it’s back on Twitter.
    - refurb 6y ago
      That’s the amazing thing. The NYPost article was making the rounds Wednesday night and it was mostly crickets. Twitter bans any posts about it and now it’s taking off like a firestorm.
  - zalkota 6y ago
    No, it’s not fake. You can’t provide proof that it’s fake. You’re going off a political agenda. There’s a picture of hunter smoking a crack pipe!
    - uncoder0 6y ago
      To preface my comment, I think using Hunter's drug problem for political gain is tasteless. Despite that I find it abhorrent that Twitter is not allowing users to post the photo instead it is instantly causing accounts to get locked. https://twitter.com/search?q=hunter%20locked%20pipe&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=hunter%20locked%20pipe&src=type...
    - 6y ago
- bduerst 6y ago
  It's not demonstrably proven, despite being easy to do so. NY Post doxxed their own source when put under scrutiny, who went on to do an interview yesterday. What John Paul Mac Isaac is saying isn't adding up. https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > It's not demonstrably proven, despite being easy to do so. In that case, all articles that include "sources say" etc should be banned from Twitter, shouldn't they?
    - bduerst 6y ago
      News orgs do that to protect the anonymity of sources. In this case, NY Post threw their source to the wolves when they couldn't verify any of the information, so this story is not congruent with "sources say".
  - save_ferris 6y ago
    > Throughout the interview, Mac Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation that contacted him. At one point, Mac Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop. At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device’s existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for “help accessing his drive.” He can’t get something as simple as who initiated contact over the device straight? If I was a small fish about to source a story of this size, I’d have every single detail rehearsed and committed to memory. This guy doesn’t come across as legit at all.
- ses1984 6y ago
  Is it possible to demonstrably prove false a made up falsehood? What if I accuse someone of something, and then post that I accused them. The accusation maybe bogus but the post is technically not false.
  - Fellshard 6y ago
    That is the type of laundering language Twitter itself uses regularly in its 'Trending' tab editorializing: 'People angry at X', 'X accused', etc. Pre-framing a topic is malpractice.
  - stvswn 6y ago
    This is often the nature of stories in the public interest. No one ever proved a single portion of Christine DeBlasey Ford's accusations against Brett Kavanaugh but the fact that she was making the accusations were newsworthy enough. In this case, the following are true: (1) Hunter Biden was a highly paid board member of Burisma while his father handled Ukraine policy for the U.S. (2) A computer repair store owner claims to have his data and to have given it to Rudy Giuliani (3) There was a Grand Jury summons to seize the computer as evidence in an unknown investigation. This is far more than is usually needed to cover a story.
    - CyberDildonics 6y ago
      I think it was more about the fact that she was making credible accusations.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- _a40s 6y ago
  It seems that the Biden campaign isn't denying that the emails are authentic. That would be strong evidence that they are, assuming this hasn't changed in the last 24 hours: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1316461339842289664 https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1316461339842289664 For what it's worth, NY Post (sorry for the link) is reporting that the Biden campaign isn't denying most of their claims: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/notice-biden-campaign-not-denying-posts-scoop-facts-on-hunter-bidens-sleaze/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/notice-biden-campaign-not-deny.... To be clear, this is a separate question from how the emails were obtained. That story is beyond weird and surely bogus. To be fair, it also seems to me an indication that Biden is more honest than Trump. Trump would just say the emails were fake whether they were or not.
  - edaemon 6y ago
    The absence of a denial does not at all constitute "strong evidence" of anything.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
      So by default assume anything that goes against your worldview as false and censor it.
      - albedoa 6y ago
        How did you get here from the comment you are replying to.
        cscurmudgeon 6y ago
        How did you get that I got it from that?
    - _a40s 6y ago
      Of course you're right in a logical or philosophical sense, but in a political sense it certainly does. If the emails were fake, it would be politically insane not to say so. The Biden campaign can easily find this out from Hunter, so the fact that they haven't said it means either that (1) the emails are authentic (though they may still have been altered), or (2) something else is going on that we don't know about and is unusual.
- DevKoala 6y ago
  How is the story demonstrably false? We have yet to see any counter evidence.
  - TwoBit 6y ago
    Have you read the story about this laptop? While I agree it's not possible from here to prove it's false, it's borderline lunacy and is clearly a fraudulently created attempt to firebomb Biden's campaign at the last minute just like what worked with Hillary last time. The Republicans wouldn't care nearly as much about this story that the FBI itself dropped if they weren't so panicked about losing the election and reaching for yet another vote manipulation tactic.
    - DevKoala 6y ago
      The FBI has the hard drive and they have not denied any of the allegations. Biden’s lawyers haven’t denied the allegations. Biden’s campaign has not denied the authenticity of the emails. Your argument is “I don’t believe it, so it must be false”
xlm1717 6y ago
I think it's not correct. I also think it wasn't correct to deliberately spread a false story about President Trump disrespecting marines, but social media sites didn't take the same precautions with that story.
- Larrikin 6y ago
  The story was independently verified by pretty much all media sources when followed up by their own journalists
  - anoonmoose 6y ago
    Indeed. If the NYP allows other organizations to review and fact check the primary documents themselves, I'll start to think there's something to this. Otherwise, all I see is that known Trump associates provided info of unknown providence and accuracy to a former Fox News employee now working as a journalist at a Murdoch owned known unreliable news source.
  - uerobert 6y ago
    That “independently verified” part was that they talked with the same source and were told the same thing.
rayiner 6y ago
I think the NY Post is probably getting played. But the media has gotten behind plenty of stories about Trump that turned out to be false: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/horowitz-report-steele-dossier-collusion-news-media-924944 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/h.... This sloppiness is a general symptom of the need for media organizations to beat the Twitter cycle. The question is whether this standard of reliability is one that they can actually apply evenly. This is a far higher standard that what was pitched. This content moderation was pitched as being limited to Russian bots and “vaccines cause cancer” and the like. Moderating articles from a publicly listed brick and mortar news organization, even if it’s a tabloid, based on the perceived credibility of the underlying facts, is a whole new level. It’s dramatically raising the bar. And maybe that’s where the bar should be, but I absolutely do not believe that Facebook and Twitter have the resources or integrity to apply that high standard fairly.
- tt433 6y ago
  I think they have the resources but that the corporate model may prevent the resources from being properly distributed (eaten up by executives before getting where they are needed, for example, and who's to say the executives are operating in good faith...)
goodluckchuck 6y ago
The posts should be allowed particularly if they're false. If people are allowed to say true things, then that's not particularly valuable information. However, the content's of someone's lies usually says more than the truth (which can often be obtained elsewhere).
- lanstin 6y ago
  Why should Twitter be forced to take actions based on your preferences? Make a distributed messaging/publication system and use your power to say what ever you like. Twitter has a lot of power and they are free to use it. The internet wasn’t designed with a winner take all philosophy and the technical infrastructure still supports end user as publisher model.
  - mshumi 6y ago
    So they should be free to be regulated as a publisher despite claiming they are a platform
    - lanstin 6y ago
      Are you saying publishers can’t arbitrarily decide what to publish or not? I think you will find that publishers have a lot more say so over their content than e.g. phone companies.
      - ggreer 6y ago
        Publishers can be as arbitrary as they want, but they are held liable for what they publish. Section 230 gives civil immunity to "information service providers". If someone libels you on Twitter, you can't sue Twitter. But if Twitter starts making editorial decisions as to what is fit to publish and what isn't, then they could lose their section 230 protections and open themselves to tons of lawsuits.
        messick 6y ago
svrb 6y ago
The Biden campaign explicitly did not dispute that the emails are real when asked (only that the meeting mentioned in the emails took place, which is... an odd distinction). Twitter does not claim that the emails aren't real. In short, the emails are real and everyone admits this... except the people who have fallen for social media giants' propaganda in this case. Twitter claims that the justification is that the emails are "hacked" and/or "leaked" (they're inconsistent), even though (1) this is patently false since they were found on a hard drive which became property of the repair shop; and (2) Twitter has no problem with, say, Trump's tax returns and other "hacked"/"leaked" materials.
jungletime 6y ago
Just curious, what do you make of the Biden photos with a crack pipe found on the laptop too. Are those fake? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8842709/Joe-Bidens-son-crack-pipe-new-low-dirtiest-election-writes-TOM-LEONARD.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8842709/Joe-Bidens-...
- tw04 6y ago
  Do you have any proof they came from the laptop and not a hacked icloud account or insert many other possible sources? Pretty obvious the guy who claimed to have obtained the laptop is fabricating the whole story: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...
  - jungletime 6y ago
    For all I know the laptop could have been teleported by aliens into Rudy's greasy ass. Still would be irrelevant on the merit of any of the facts.
    - anoonmoose 6y ago
      Hunter smoking crack is 1) not news and 2) not relevant to the current election. If that was all that was released, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. Everything else in the release is 1) far more damaging than the above and 2) far harder to verify as accurate with what we've been given thus far.
      - colordrops 6y ago
        So we censor everything that is not news and not relevant to the current election? What are you trying to say?
        anoonmoose 6y ago
        I'm trying to say that right now, as far as I'm concerned, there are only a few confirmed facts. One of those facts is that there are newly released pictures of Hunter smoking crack, which isn't particularly interesting. All the other stuff about emails, provenance of said emails, etc., has not been verified by anyone but the NYP, who, contrary to typical reporting practices, are not sharing their info so other venues can confirm the accuracy. So, as far as I am concerned, that is unverified and quite likely inaccurate info and Twitter and Facebook has no responsibility to disseminate unverified and quite likely inaccurate info.
stvswn 6y ago
The provenance of the documents is fishy. They could have easily been hacked. But, what portions of the actual story are false? The Biden campaign's refutation was not to say that the emails were doctored. They only said that they have checked the official schedule of Joe Biden from the day in question and there is no mention of a meeting with the Burisma executive (they don't say categorically that he did not meet with him, just that it is not present on the official schedule). Other then the meeting w/ Biden, I'm not sure there's a detail that has been specfically contested.
- lanstin 6y ago
  Your priors are wrong - the evidence and the people presenting it have the burden of proof not the people saying this is more bullshit from a desperate group of people who have consistently lied for years.
  - stvswn 6y ago
    What burden of proof are you talking about? You're saying that a burden of proof needs to be met before what, exactly? I am not saying they have met a burden of proof, I'm saying that we don't censor news articles (even sensational or thinly sourced ones) because they haven't yet met a burden of proof.
    - lanstin 6y ago
      A group well known for lying is pushing a story with poor provenance and you are engaging it as if it has a decent probability of being true. That is a sign your prior belief of the lying people is off - with the more realistic prior belief that liars keep lying the question is why this made up story now? Or how did they execute this lie? And yes, the key to using the internet effectively is to filter things out that are garbage. I individually try not waste my time on bullshit, truth based organizations filter out a lot of crackpots: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20190201b/full/ https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2019020... and Twitter itself is free to try to do this filtering as well. I applaud them for trying to remove BS rather than trying to push addictive content but whatever. This very news site is interesting because they spend a lot of time trying to filter BS in favor of productive and informative conversations.
calimac 6y ago
The guy has a crack pipe in his mouth and emails pertaining to foreign influence peddling. Before some of your heads explode please replace the name hunter Biden in the m headline with someone like Jared Cushner? How partisan is the lease of logic?
beervirus 6y ago
>false Citation very much needed.
DeonPenny 6y ago
How can you say its false. The FBI took it seriously. If we said the same about wikileaks or trump taxes we'd all flip out. Twitter shouldn't be the people who get to say whats false or not.
- TwoBit 6y ago
  and the FBI dropped it. This stunt is so obviously an attempt to manipulate the election at the last minute. Just like they did in 2016. That's really what the media companies are internally considering here: attempts at election fraud. I can imagine a dystopian future in which three weeks before every election there's an explosion of insane bombshell claims about the candidates, with ever increasing effort put into them and no time to refute them before the vote. A misinformation arms war will ensue.
  - DeonPenny 6y ago
    What you talking about thats been a thing since before the internet was a thing is called the October surpise. Its allowed. It's legal. Youre not allowed to suppress your political opponent in the last moment cause that could escalate to poisoning like in other countries or worse.
6nf 6y ago
It’s not false though. Yes it’s censorship.
joejoeshabadoo5 6y ago
You sound like a huge faggot.