7 ms·

Facebook and Twitter Cross a Line in Censorship

99 points by prostoalex 6y ago

node-bayarea 6y ago
They crossed a long time ago! They should have worked like phone lines, just a medium
- deeg 6y ago
  I don't think it would work that well. Phone conversations are private and so there won't be much pressure to crack down on hateful or false conversations. Social media is very public. I'd say it's closer to radio than telephone.
  - pesq 6y ago
    Radio carriers are liable for their content so in this situation same difference.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Social media is very public. This is part of the "mistake" of the social media companies. Rather than emphasizing cohesive friend groups, they (particularly Facebook) defaulted everything to be as widely visible as possible.
  - laurent92 6y ago
    Should radio be state-controlled? For me, democracy has 4 pillars that must be independent, and currently are not is most countries: executive, legislative, judicial and media. The 4th one is controversial but nonetheless necessary for the country to be a democracy. Democracy without equal speech time for all parties isn’t a democracy – it is like Singapore, a single-party democracy. Finally, we must have a population who is educated enough to read ambiant news and distinguish false from truth. If you say that is impossible, you advocate for the people’s decision being taken by a central organization, aka not people’s decision. Educating people enough is entirely possible; For example people are routinely exposed to scam and a rule of life is never to fall down into scam. Only a few % of pop fall for it and it is fine. Democracy is based on the same people. You precisely shouldn’t prevent people from being exposed to fake news, otherwise they become ultra gullible (which may be what you want, in the end...). All in all, what leftists call fake news or debunked news are often... falsely debunked, by journalists who try to present alternative facts, which the people are getting tired of. It’s ok, we understand they don’t want to lose grip of the leadership.
    - deeg 6y ago
      I don't have a good answer. My original comment was just to point out that I don't believe social media can be treated like the telephone. From a legal/political standpoint SM is on new ground: a privately owned (i.e. non government) platform but with massive reach. Free speech laws are aimed at the government so should they be applied to private companies? I can understand both sides and I don't think there's an obvious solution.
    - nopzor 6y ago
      singapore is not a single party democracy. you could have made that argument 20 years ago, but it just isn’t true today.
- ssss11 6y ago
  Ueah this should have been the way it went, for facebook at least, but of course they _want_ to be a media company... they think they can take down traditional media and have got themselves into all sorts of problems!
- kurthr 6y ago
  Then there would be less engagement and less profit... what are you a communist? I'm kidding, but ad supported commercial promotion (broadcast) of speech (for additional profit/engagement) is pretty far from what I think the framers of the constitution meant as Free Speech (of the individual)... but then the Supreme Court has decided that money is speech (and corporations are people) so it doesn't matter what I think.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > They crossed a long time ago! They should have worked like phone lines, just a medium Yes, they should have just been private point-to-point communication mechanisms. Unfortunately, they decided to be broadcasters instead.
anm89 6y ago
The idea that Facebook and Twitter have to censor content sometimes, but then need to be some protector of free speech in others, and apply this across the board in some magically apolitical way is ridiculous. Censoring speech in inherently political Surprise surprise, the political party who gets to censor more content in their favor supports it and the political party who gets more of their content censored takes the free speech angle. If you can't see that it's a political game you aren't looking very hard.
- ChrisClark 6y ago
  I don't even think you could call censoring lies actually censorship. Not in the moral sense of how we are opposed to 'censorship'.
nilkn 6y ago
This Biden story was unlikely to cost him the election. But censoring it is going to be prime fuel for the right leading into the election and is a much bigger story than what was censored. This was a stupendously naive move.
- silexia 6y ago
  Spin is trying to show the blocking of the fake news article as something Biden was a part of. Obviously, Biden himself had no say or knowledge of the ridiculous article being blocked. Also, this articles headline is inaccurate. Facebook and Twitter are private organizations and have a right to not allow certain things without it being censorship. Restaurants can keep out people known to defecate on the floors, Twitter and Facebook can stop By post garbage. Censorship by nature is something a government does, not a private entity. Wikipedia doesn't censor articles, it just edits stuff.
  - nilkn 6y ago
    I didn’t say Biden himself ordered the censorship, and I don’t think anybody at all is making that claim that I’ve seen. Wikipedia directly and immediately contradicts you: “Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.”
  - mistermann 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC. The values of the Roman Republic included freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Concepts of freedom of speech can be found in early human rights documents. England's Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament which is still in effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion, or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century The 5th century is the time period from 401 to 500 Anno Domini (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia. ---- Considering how often this specific foundational topic (and many others like it) comes up on HN, and the amount of disharmony it creates within the community, it would be an improvement if we had some sort of a FAQ that is appended to the HN Guidelines, and an additional related guideline: "Please exert some reasonable effort to not say things that are objectively not true." Yes, there would be a period of adjustment, Rome wasn't built in a day, but holy smokes how antagonistic do things have to get around here before we do something? And if we don't, how far away is it that HN starts to get in on the censorship game?
kobayashi 6y ago
I strongly disagree. This thread breaks down the ridiculous nature of the claim and makes clear why the spread of (likely purposeful) misinformation in the lead up to one of the most impactful elections in US history. https://twitter.com/dantoujours/status/1316844679783223297?s= https://twitter.com/dantoujours/status/1316844679783223297?s...
- walrus01 6y ago
  Absolutely preposterous. But then again, given the number of people who have whole heartedly adopted the "qanon" conspiracy theory, some significant portion of people will probably believe it (exactly as it's been spoon fed to Giuliani) without reservations.
- 2bitencryption 6y ago
  Not saying it's not accurate, but if you want to debunk a news publication, I think a more reliable source is needed than some guy on Twitter... "The claims in that news publication were totally fake and deserve to be censored -- here, check out this Twitter user who has the real truth!" In other words, when debunking an article as true/false, I think extra rigor needs to be put into the debunking -- you can't debunk an unreliable source with yet another unreliable source... (unless this guy is like a NYT editor and I just don't realize it)
  - iaw 6y ago
    The twitter user is making a rational argument about the claims in the tabloid article. The twitter users claims are demonstrably true. There is no trust involved in understanding the twitter users thesis. There are oodles of trust involved when you trust a tabloid.
    - mistermann 6y ago
      I am deeply distrustful of the media, but if the claims in this Twitter thread are actually true, then this story sounds like a total farce. But if you're going to frame someone, why would you do it in such a batshit insane way? Bizarre. If these claims are true, surely some journalist would have noticed the same things? Maybe they have and I completely missed the story? Edit: after reading the post article, there are quite a number of things that aren't so easily explained away by the oddities pointed out in that Twitter thread. If our self-proclaimed trustworthy legal and journalism institutions were less theatrics-based, the actual truth of these allegations could be uncovered without too much effort. But perhaps there's no budget remaining (in any governmental agency, or any journalism outlet) after the multi-year investigation into the alleged Trump/Russia collusion. Whatever the reason, I suspect that for some unknown reason, this issue will be added to the ever growing pile of "things that we know(!) are fake news, even though we don't actually know because we did not investigate them". EDIT: Interesting (but not surprising) that this article is [flagged], further demonstrating the wide variety of ways in which the distribution of certain categories of ideas can be controlled, even without a central coordination authority. Ideas do very much seem to behave like living organisms, with human minds as their unwitting hosts. “People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.” ― Carl Jung Mind Control: How Parasites Manipulate Cognitive Functions in Their Insect Hosts https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00572/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0057... Neuro-parasitology is an emerging branch of science that deals with parasites that can control the nervous system of the host. It offers the possibility of discovering how one species (the parasite) modifies a particular neural network, and thus particular behaviors, of another species (the host). Such parasite–host interactions, developed over millions of years of evolution, provide unique tools by which one can determine how neuromodulation up-or-down regulates specific behaviors. In some of the most fascinating manipulations, the parasite taps into the host brain neuronal circuities to manipulate hosts cognitive functions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/10/30/are-ideas-viruses-of-the-mind/46be1345-4067-4f90-a3ae-bd5dd811fc02/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/10/30/a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics EDIT: The Twitter thread: "So just so I follow this story: Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, decides to fly 3000 miles across country, to drop off 3 MacBook Pros at a repair shop run by a blind guy who charges the insanely low price of $85 (because there aren't repair shops in LA). He drops them off, signs a contract for repair and then disappears." Sounds fishy. Let's check Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden Born Robert Hunter Biden February 4, 1970 (age 50) Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. "Curiously" not mentioned in the Twitter thread (even though it was extremely specific about pointing out the distance between the shop and Hunter's hometown): Wilmington, Delaware
walrus01 6y ago
The first amendment right to free speech doesn't compel any company (whether publicly traded stock or privately owned) to give you a free publishing platform.
- anm89 6y ago
  Not true. Telephone utilities are generally publicly traded but it would be a free speech issue if they were to censor on their platforms.
- anthuswilliams 6y ago
  Did you even read the article? It clearly notes that the First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies. The article is about censorship, not about the First Amendment.
- rbecker 6y ago
  The article doesn't claim that what Facebook and Twitter did was illegal. You're conflating whether they had the legal right to censor, with if they should have used it.
pfraze 6y ago
The platforms screwed up by never generalizing. If they wanted to be neutral parties, they needed to aggressively API-ify each part of the social media stack and effectively become the AWS for social applications. This would have meant delegating UI, algorithms, moderation, fact-checking, authority, etc to the market and simply providing the primitives for executing on those elements. As it stands, they live in a half-way point between general platforms and media companies, as they have retained control over key parts of the media-distribution pipeline.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  The reason they're not doing that, of course, is that that's exactly where the money is not.
tyrust 6y ago
Link to the HN thread when this story first broke: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379 I don't think that this article really contributes much more to the conversation. I expect discussion here to be just a rehash of the above.
Jerry2 6y ago
No matter who wins in November, both the FB and Twitter will face massive regulatory scrutiny and they won't come out the same from that process. As a side note, I became aware of Glenn Greenwald after the Snowden affair and I have been following his writings ever since. He is one of the sharpest minds in journalism today and is also one of the most objective journalists I've come across. In the past 4 years journalism has become extremely polarized and it's next to impossible for many of them to remain objective. As soon as one declares their opinion on something, they're skewered by the side opposing the issue. Somehow, Glenn has managed to remain largely objective.
- messick 6y ago
  His whole schtick is “it was all a Russian hoax!” with Trump. He is the opposite of objective. And wrong.
wyxuan 6y ago
I don't think that this article is very honest in the other lurking factor: Russian hackers. The NYT reported that US intelligence officials picked up on conversations that there was to be an October surprise [0] that was designed to throw a monkey wrench in the US election. It would be straight up dangerous to society if the false narrative created by a Russian disinfo was allowed to spread, and in that sense, the containment makes more sense. You might not have to agree with it completely, but you can't say that this is merely big tech partisanship. Glenn Greenwald doesn't even bother to mention this probability and simply paints it as big tech simply favoring one side, when there is clearly more to the issue. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-ukraine-facebook-twitter.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-...
- vinhboy 6y ago
  I started following Glenn Greenwald since he first became popular with Snowden. 80% of his FB is defending Republicans against Russia related allegations. I no longer trust him, and by association, The Intercept. Of all the government corruption that happened in the last four years, the only time he really speak up is when it's against Democrats. I am not saying his writing is bad, or that he doesn't make some valid points, but I question his motives.
geofft 6y ago
> State censorship is not the only kind of censorship. Private-sector repression of speech and thought, particularly in the internet era, can be as dangerous and consequential. Imagine, for instance, if these two Silicon Valley giants united with Google to declare: henceforth we will ban all content that is critical of President Trump and/or the Republican Party, but will actively promote criticisms of Joe Biden and the Democrats. > Would anyone encounter difficultly understanding why such a decree would constitute dangerous corporate censorship? Would Democrats respond to such a policy by simply shrugging it off on the radical libertarian ground that private corporations have the right to do whatever they want? To ask that question is to answer it. I would! I don't know why The Intercept thinks Democrats are undoubtedly hypocrites. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are more than welcome, as private corporations, to legally make that decision. If they want to do it, I will not try to use the government to compel them to do otherwise. However, if they do it, they will lose a sizable fraction of their user base and their employees, all of whom are also welcome, as private individuals, to legally make that decision. I certainly will not try to use the government to compel the employees to stay. The market will respond. Is there a reason that The Intercept thinks that heavy-handed government regulation is required to solve something the market can quite clearly solve? (I do think that breaking up these companies on monopoly grounds is perfectly reasonable, and that is the market-believing, American solution to this problem - not regulating the incumbents and keeping them incumbent. They do talk about this, and I agree with that portion of the article. And then they go off into repeating the Republican talking points about finding things in Section 230 that are literally not there in Section 230.)
- iaw 6y ago
  There is some level of irony that Republicans, who are notoriously anti-regulation, want more regulation when an unregulated industry negatively impacts them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kryogen1c 6y ago
>The company added that their policy “prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization” because, they said, they “don’t want to incentivize hacking by allowing Twitter to be used as distribution for possibly illegally obtained materials.” >But that standard, if taken seriously and applied consistently, would result in the banning from the platform of huge amounts of the most important and consequential journalism. i think this is the easiest way to attack the most recognizable problem, however i dont think its the root problem. there is simply no such thing as capital T Truth. Period, full stop. the idea that we can moderate or fact check our way into more meaning is just nonsense. vaccines cause autism (extremely rarely). government conspiracies happen. unexplainable things happen. science and scientists are wrong, a lot. to say the emobidment of our human knowledge at this point will not appreciably change and that anything else needs to be moderated away is so utterly, mind bogglingly arrogant and ignorant it beggars belief. the who and cdc have both flip flopped stances on the coronavirus, and doctors who were correct in the minority were censored. the key to eliminating misinformation is discussion and debate, not censorship.
- wang_li 6y ago
  > “prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization” If this is their policy, they're going to have to get rid of a very large number of reaction gifs. The first instance of any particular one might be able to make a fair use argument, but every reuse is straight up copyright violation, which is very specifically use without authorization. Additionally, I wonder if security researchers are going to be able to tweet about the vulnerabilities they discover. Most software has EULAs that specifically exclude reverse engineering. For example, Apple's iOS 12 EULA says: >You may not, and you agree not to or enable others to, copy (except as expressly permitted by this License), decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, decrypt, modify, or create derivative works of the iOS Software or any services provided by the iOS Software or any part thereof (except as and only to the extent any foregoing restriction is prohibited by applicable law or by licensing terms governing use of open-source components that may be included with the iOS Software).
- happytoexplain 6y ago
wang_li 6y ago
The courts have ruled that @RealDonaldTrump's twitter feed constitutes official government communication. How does that square with Twitter having the right to restrict, block, limit distribution, or attach addendums to tweets? Given that the situation with Twitter a mess right now, the only responsible thing that should be done right away is for the President to issue an executive order barring the use of Twitter for any official purpose. Remove all tweets and close all accounts. A third party should not be intermediating between the government and the public. If microblogging is a value, then he should also issue an EO which directs the appropriate federal agencies to establish standards defining protocols, create baseline implementations, and regulations around use, free speech, and the like.
cosmiccatnap 6y ago
The irony of course is that you are arguing this on an article that is flagged

99 points by prostoalex 6y ago

node-bayarea 6y ago

They crossed a long time ago! They should have worked like phone lines, just a medium

deeg 6y ago
I don't think it would work that well. Phone conversations are private and so there won't be much pressure to crack down on hateful or false conversations. Social media is very public. I'd say it's closer to radio than telephone.
- pesq 6y ago
  Radio carriers are liable for their content so in this situation same difference.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Social media is very public. This is part of the "mistake" of the social media companies. Rather than emphasizing cohesive friend groups, they (particularly Facebook) defaulted everything to be as widely visible as possible.
- laurent92 6y ago
  Should radio be state-controlled? For me, democracy has 4 pillars that must be independent, and currently are not is most countries: executive, legislative, judicial and media. The 4th one is controversial but nonetheless necessary for the country to be a democracy. Democracy without equal speech time for all parties isn’t a democracy – it is like Singapore, a single-party democracy. Finally, we must have a population who is educated enough to read ambiant news and distinguish false from truth. If you say that is impossible, you advocate for the people’s decision being taken by a central organization, aka not people’s decision. Educating people enough is entirely possible; For example people are routinely exposed to scam and a rule of life is never to fall down into scam. Only a few % of pop fall for it and it is fine. Democracy is based on the same people. You precisely shouldn’t prevent people from being exposed to fake news, otherwise they become ultra gullible (which may be what you want, in the end...). All in all, what leftists call fake news or debunked news are often... falsely debunked, by journalists who try to present alternative facts, which the people are getting tired of. It’s ok, we understand they don’t want to lose grip of the leadership.
  - deeg 6y ago
    I don't have a good answer. My original comment was just to point out that I don't believe social media can be treated like the telephone. From a legal/political standpoint SM is on new ground: a privately owned (i.e. non government) platform but with massive reach. Free speech laws are aimed at the government so should they be applied to private companies? I can understand both sides and I don't think there's an obvious solution.
  - nopzor 6y ago
    singapore is not a single party democracy. you could have made that argument 20 years ago, but it just isn’t true today.
ssss11 6y ago
Ueah this should have been the way it went, for facebook at least, but of course they _want_ to be a media company... they think they can take down traditional media and have got themselves into all sorts of problems!
kurthr 6y ago
Then there would be less engagement and less profit... what are you a communist? I'm kidding, but ad supported commercial promotion (broadcast) of speech (for additional profit/engagement) is pretty far from what I think the framers of the constitution meant as Free Speech (of the individual)... but then the Supreme Court has decided that money is speech (and corporations are people) so it doesn't matter what I think.
ardy42 6y ago
> They crossed a long time ago! They should have worked like phone lines, just a medium Yes, they should have just been private point-to-point communication mechanisms. Unfortunately, they decided to be broadcasters instead.

anm89 6y ago

The idea that Facebook and Twitter have to censor content sometimes, but then need to be some protector of free speech in others, and apply this across the board in some magically apolitical way is ridiculous. Censoring speech in inherently political Surprise surprise, the political party who gets to censor more content in their favor supports it and the political party who gets more of their content censored takes the free speech angle. If you can't see that it's a political game you aren't looking very hard.

ChrisClark 6y ago
I don't even think you could call censoring lies actually censorship. Not in the moral sense of how we are opposed to 'censorship'.

nilkn 6y ago

This Biden story was unlikely to cost him the election. But censoring it is going to be prime fuel for the right leading into the election and is a much bigger story than what was censored. This was a stupendously naive move.

silexia 6y ago
Spin is trying to show the blocking of the fake news article as something Biden was a part of. Obviously, Biden himself had no say or knowledge of the ridiculous article being blocked. Also, this articles headline is inaccurate. Facebook and Twitter are private organizations and have a right to not allow certain things without it being censorship. Restaurants can keep out people known to defecate on the floors, Twitter and Facebook can stop By post garbage. Censorship by nature is something a government does, not a private entity. Wikipedia doesn't censor articles, it just edits stuff.
- nilkn 6y ago
  I didn’t say Biden himself ordered the censorship, and I don’t think anybody at all is making that claim that I’ve seen. Wikipedia directly and immediately contradicts you: “Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.”
- mistermann 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC. The values of the Roman Republic included freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Concepts of freedom of speech can be found in early human rights documents. England's Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament which is still in effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion, or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century The 5th century is the time period from 401 to 500 Anno Domini (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia. ---- Considering how often this specific foundational topic (and many others like it) comes up on HN, and the amount of disharmony it creates within the community, it would be an improvement if we had some sort of a FAQ that is appended to the HN Guidelines, and an additional related guideline: "Please exert some reasonable effort to not say things that are objectively not true." Yes, there would be a period of adjustment, Rome wasn't built in a day, but holy smokes how antagonistic do things have to get around here before we do something? And if we don't, how far away is it that HN starts to get in on the censorship game?

kobayashi 6y ago

I strongly disagree. This thread breaks down the ridiculous nature of the claim and makes clear why the spread of (likely purposeful) misinformation in the lead up to one of the most impactful elections in US history. https://twitter.com/dantoujours/status/1316844679783223297?s= https://twitter.com/dantoujours/status/1316844679783223297?s...

walrus01 6y ago
Absolutely preposterous. But then again, given the number of people who have whole heartedly adopted the "qanon" conspiracy theory, some significant portion of people will probably believe it (exactly as it's been spoon fed to Giuliani) without reservations.
2bitencryption 6y ago
Not saying it's not accurate, but if you want to debunk a news publication, I think a more reliable source is needed than some guy on Twitter... "The claims in that news publication were totally fake and deserve to be censored -- here, check out this Twitter user who has the real truth!" In other words, when debunking an article as true/false, I think extra rigor needs to be put into the debunking -- you can't debunk an unreliable source with yet another unreliable source... (unless this guy is like a NYT editor and I just don't realize it)
- iaw 6y ago
  The twitter user is making a rational argument about the claims in the tabloid article. The twitter users claims are demonstrably true. There is no trust involved in understanding the twitter users thesis. There are oodles of trust involved when you trust a tabloid.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    I am deeply distrustful of the media, but if the claims in this Twitter thread are actually true, then this story sounds like a total farce. But if you're going to frame someone, why would you do it in such a batshit insane way? Bizarre. If these claims are true, surely some journalist would have noticed the same things? Maybe they have and I completely missed the story? Edit: after reading the post article, there are quite a number of things that aren't so easily explained away by the oddities pointed out in that Twitter thread. If our self-proclaimed trustworthy legal and journalism institutions were less theatrics-based, the actual truth of these allegations could be uncovered without too much effort. But perhaps there's no budget remaining (in any governmental agency, or any journalism outlet) after the multi-year investigation into the alleged Trump/Russia collusion. Whatever the reason, I suspect that for some unknown reason, this issue will be added to the ever growing pile of "things that we know(!) are fake news, even though we don't actually know because we did not investigate them". EDIT: Interesting (but not surprising) that this article is [flagged], further demonstrating the wide variety of ways in which the distribution of certain categories of ideas can be controlled, even without a central coordination authority. Ideas do very much seem to behave like living organisms, with human minds as their unwitting hosts. “People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.” ― Carl Jung Mind Control: How Parasites Manipulate Cognitive Functions in Their Insect Hosts https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00572/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0057... Neuro-parasitology is an emerging branch of science that deals with parasites that can control the nervous system of the host. It offers the possibility of discovering how one species (the parasite) modifies a particular neural network, and thus particular behaviors, of another species (the host). Such parasite–host interactions, developed over millions of years of evolution, provide unique tools by which one can determine how neuromodulation up-or-down regulates specific behaviors. In some of the most fascinating manipulations, the parasite taps into the host brain neuronal circuities to manipulate hosts cognitive functions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/10/30/are-ideas-viruses-of-the-mind/46be1345-4067-4f90-a3ae-bd5dd811fc02/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/10/30/a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics EDIT: The Twitter thread: "So just so I follow this story: Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, decides to fly 3000 miles across country, to drop off 3 MacBook Pros at a repair shop run by a blind guy who charges the insanely low price of $85 (because there aren't repair shops in LA). He drops them off, signs a contract for repair and then disappears." Sounds fishy. Let's check Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden Born Robert Hunter Biden February 4, 1970 (age 50) Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. "Curiously" not mentioned in the Twitter thread (even though it was extremely specific about pointing out the distance between the shop and Hunter's hometown): Wilmington, Delaware

walrus01 6y ago

The first amendment right to free speech doesn't compel any company (whether publicly traded stock or privately owned) to give you a free publishing platform.

anm89 6y ago
Not true. Telephone utilities are generally publicly traded but it would be a free speech issue if they were to censor on their platforms.
anthuswilliams 6y ago
Did you even read the article? It clearly notes that the First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies. The article is about censorship, not about the First Amendment.
rbecker 6y ago
The article doesn't claim that what Facebook and Twitter did was illegal. You're conflating whether they had the legal right to censor, with if they should have used it.

pfraze 6y ago

The platforms screwed up by never generalizing. If they wanted to be neutral parties, they needed to aggressively API-ify each part of the social media stack and effectively become the AWS for social applications. This would have meant delegating UI, algorithms, moderation, fact-checking, authority, etc to the market and simply providing the primitives for executing on those elements. As it stands, they live in a half-way point between general platforms and media companies, as they have retained control over key parts of the media-distribution pipeline.

solarkraft 6y ago
The reason they're not doing that, of course, is that that's exactly where the money is not.

tyrust 6y ago

Link to the HN thread when this story first broke: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379 I don't think that this article really contributes much more to the conversation. I expect discussion here to be just a rehash of the above.

Jerry2 6y ago

No matter who wins in November, both the FB and Twitter will face massive regulatory scrutiny and they won't come out the same from that process. As a side note, I became aware of Glenn Greenwald after the Snowden affair and I have been following his writings ever since. He is one of the sharpest minds in journalism today and is also one of the most objective journalists I've come across. In the past 4 years journalism has become extremely polarized and it's next to impossible for many of them to remain objective. As soon as one declares their opinion on something, they're skewered by the side opposing the issue. Somehow, Glenn has managed to remain largely objective.

messick 6y ago
His whole schtick is “it was all a Russian hoax!” with Trump. He is the opposite of objective. And wrong.

wyxuan 6y ago

I don't think that this article is very honest in the other lurking factor: Russian hackers. The NYT reported that US intelligence officials picked up on conversations that there was to be an October surprise [0] that was designed to throw a monkey wrench in the US election. It would be straight up dangerous to society if the false narrative created by a Russian disinfo was allowed to spread, and in that sense, the containment makes more sense. You might not have to agree with it completely, but you can't say that this is merely big tech partisanship. Glenn Greenwald doesn't even bother to mention this probability and simply paints it as big tech simply favoring one side, when there is clearly more to the issue. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-ukraine-facebook-twitter.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

vinhboy 6y ago
I started following Glenn Greenwald since he first became popular with Snowden. 80% of his FB is defending Republicans against Russia related allegations. I no longer trust him, and by association, The Intercept. Of all the government corruption that happened in the last four years, the only time he really speak up is when it's against Democrats. I am not saying his writing is bad, or that he doesn't make some valid points, but I question his motives.

geofft 6y ago

> State censorship is not the only kind of censorship. Private-sector repression of speech and thought, particularly in the internet era, can be as dangerous and consequential. Imagine, for instance, if these two Silicon Valley giants united with Google to declare: henceforth we will ban all content that is critical of President Trump and/or the Republican Party, but will actively promote criticisms of Joe Biden and the Democrats. > Would anyone encounter difficultly understanding why such a decree would constitute dangerous corporate censorship? Would Democrats respond to such a policy by simply shrugging it off on the radical libertarian ground that private corporations have the right to do whatever they want? To ask that question is to answer it. I would! I don't know why The Intercept thinks Democrats are undoubtedly hypocrites. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are more than welcome, as private corporations, to legally make that decision. If they want to do it, I will not try to use the government to compel them to do otherwise. However, if they do it, they will lose a sizable fraction of their user base and their employees, all of whom are also welcome, as private individuals, to legally make that decision. I certainly will not try to use the government to compel the employees to stay. The market will respond. Is there a reason that The Intercept thinks that heavy-handed government regulation is required to solve something the market can quite clearly solve? (I do think that breaking up these companies on monopoly grounds is perfectly reasonable, and that is the market-believing, American solution to this problem - not regulating the incumbents and keeping them incumbent. They do talk about this, and I agree with that portion of the article. And then they go off into repeating the Republican talking points about finding things in Section 230 that are literally not there in Section 230.)

iaw 6y ago
There is some level of irony that Republicans, who are notoriously anti-regulation, want more regulation when an unregulated industry negatively impacts them.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kryogen1c 6y ago

>The company added that their policy “prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization” because, they said, they “don’t want to incentivize hacking by allowing Twitter to be used as distribution for possibly illegally obtained materials.” >But that standard, if taken seriously and applied consistently, would result in the banning from the platform of huge amounts of the most important and consequential journalism. i think this is the easiest way to attack the most recognizable problem, however i dont think its the root problem. there is simply no such thing as capital T Truth. Period, full stop. the idea that we can moderate or fact check our way into more meaning is just nonsense. vaccines cause autism (extremely rarely). government conspiracies happen. unexplainable things happen. science and scientists are wrong, a lot. to say the emobidment of our human knowledge at this point will not appreciably change and that anything else needs to be moderated away is so utterly, mind bogglingly arrogant and ignorant it beggars belief. the who and cdc have both flip flopped stances on the coronavirus, and doctors who were correct in the minority were censored. the key to eliminating misinformation is discussion and debate, not censorship.

wang_li 6y ago
> “prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization” If this is their policy, they're going to have to get rid of a very large number of reaction gifs. The first instance of any particular one might be able to make a fair use argument, but every reuse is straight up copyright violation, which is very specifically use without authorization. Additionally, I wonder if security researchers are going to be able to tweet about the vulnerabilities they discover. Most software has EULAs that specifically exclude reverse engineering. For example, Apple's iOS 12 EULA says: >You may not, and you agree not to or enable others to, copy (except as expressly permitted by this License), decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, decrypt, modify, or create derivative works of the iOS Software or any services provided by the iOS Software or any part thereof (except as and only to the extent any foregoing restriction is prohibited by applicable law or by licensing terms governing use of open-source components that may be included with the iOS Software).
happytoexplain 6y ago

wang_li 6y ago

The courts have ruled that @RealDonaldTrump's twitter feed constitutes official government communication. How does that square with Twitter having the right to restrict, block, limit distribution, or attach addendums to tweets? Given that the situation with Twitter a mess right now, the only responsible thing that should be done right away is for the President to issue an executive order barring the use of Twitter for any official purpose. Remove all tweets and close all accounts. A third party should not be intermediating between the government and the public. If microblogging is a value, then he should also issue an EO which directs the appropriate federal agencies to establish standards defining protocols, create baseline implementations, and regulations around use, free speech, and the like.

cosmiccatnap 6y ago

The irony of course is that you are arguing this on an article that is flagged