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I fear Taibbi is right, the suppression by Twitter, irrespective of the merits and veracity of NY Post's report, will now normalize all kinds of behavior by pla

I fear Taibbi is right, the suppression by Twitter, irrespective of the merits and veracity of NY Post's report, will now normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and small. Which will then incentivize governments to take on the platforms. This also raises issues of unequal treatment - say the NY Post report was factually wrong - why pick on the NY Post only? Why not the hundreds of other "news organizations" peddling unverified and factually incorrect reports on Twitter. I wish it did not come to this. I feel this action will uncork second order effects which we will come to rue for a long time. Edit: This story was flagged which is unbelievable.

eyeball 6y ago
It’s crazy that they’re even blocking links to the ny post article via direct message. What’s next? Email? Will we have to resort to signal and other encrypted direct messaging methods to have open discussion? Or run your own mail server end hope your recipient doesn’t use one that censors? Creepy stuff.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  This has been the reality for people on the political fringes for some time now. Unfortunately nobody's been paying attention to it due in large part to the commentariat/journalistic class's willingness to encourage and provide cover for this behavior as a matter of political expedience. Another example: Messenger's been blocking links to joebiden.info (this may have changed, it's been six months since I've checked)
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    I'm glad HN didn't block that link. I've learned a great deal that will affect my vote in the upcoming election.
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      Holy crap, those kids are so uncomfortable. The first girl, Senator Chris Coons’ daughter, is apparently on Hunter’s laptop.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      So will you vote for the guy with the worse record of sexually harassing women instead? Have you looked at all the corresponding inappropriate gifs of Trump? Remember the "grab her by the pussy" statement? The whole Stormy Daniels fiasco? Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. He's just not as bad as Trump. The fact that America is in that stupid position is its own fault.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        I haven't voted for either face of the status quo party, for president, in the last twenty years. This time around I'm going Green. I think Creepy Joe is kind of fun, but I have no doubt that the inexorable drumbeat for sanctions and wars will intensify when he is president. We still haven't left Syria, so whoever it is on the "democrat" side of the party who has such a hard-on for pipelines will get to kill more innocents there. Even better for them, Trump has destroyed the one decent diplomatic thing Obama did (Iran), so they won't have to pretend not to undermine the work of their "own side". (Keep in mind that Syria and Iran are allies, even though Republicans pretend to hate Iran while Democrats pretend to hate Syria.) I don't vote for lesser evils. Because of that I never have to regret how I voted.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - hackyhacky 6y ago
    Do you really think that it's out of "political expedience" that sites are blocking links to probable foreign disinformation? Or is it out of a moral interest in not being pawns of the bad actors who stand behind it? This kind of disinformation is dangerous, and we are vulnerable to it precisely because we value freedom of speech. That doesn't mean that we're morally obligated to value all speech equally. Obviously false and dangerous speech should be suppressed. Twitter (and other sites) is taking a moral stand, not an expedient stand.
    - crocodiletears 6y ago
      Journalists and commentators are the ones acting out of political expediency. The platforms themselves are a mixed bag, occasionaly banning content that represents legitimate disinformation, but often suppressing information that's contextually true, or conflicts with an existing broader social narrative which the moderator required to inspect the content has bought into. The human moderators are often inconsistent. The concept that any person or organization should be granted absolute authority to serve as the arbiter of whay constitutes dangerous or false speech, and the power to arbitrarily silence those who utter it offends me, and I consider it to be dangerous in and of itself. We'll not be able to agree on this. WRT the NYP piece, probably foreign sourced is about right. Even before the media picked up its Russia Trumpet, I remember reading a rumor towards the beginning of the Trump-Ukraine phone call debacle that a Chinese billionaire had slipped Juliani a hard drive containing information that might be incriminating to Biden's some. Irrespective of the source, the computer shop narrative reeks. But in spite of information's questionable provenance, it has been accompanied with compromising images of Hunter himself, and beyond stating that a meeting with Burisma execs wasn't on Biden's 'official' schedule, the biden campaign has yet (to my knowledge), to expressly deny the validity of the documents. If this is disinformation, the FBI, which has ostensibly been in possession of the documents for several months, has every incentive to comment on it, as does the CIA. Beyond ambiguous citations of 'anonymous officials', I've yet to read that they've communicated anything to this effect. The Director of National Intelligence has gone so far as to claim that this wasn't a Russian disinformation project. But he's a Trump apparatchik with no history in intelligence outside his appointment, so I generally ignore him. Probably foreign sourced? My gut says yes. Possibly disinformation? The juries still out. Possibly's a pretty low bar for stealing someone's voice. The tech companies took it upon themselves to censor this information. They've not claimed they were compelled or reccommended to by any official bodies any more than they were required to censor the name of the Urkaine whistleblower. But they chose to, of their own accord. If you want to be treated like a platform, you have to live with the fact that your platform's going to be used to further the aims of anyone who wannts to use it. Bar illegal content and behaviors (things disinformation is not), the most you should do is notify your users, sit back, and take it.
  - j8hn 6y ago
    Yikes, I never really paid attention to how creepy and inappropriate he was with little girls and young women.
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      Just remember: Just like with DT this is also pulled out of context. I don't like any of them and won't (and can't) vote for any of them so I have no dog in the fight. That website shouldn't have been blocked, whoever did it should probably been charged with election meddling but it doesn't change my view of Biden. As for the videos I think many of them shows him (clumsily) trying to comfort people. Again - I'm also the guy who points out that "fine people on both sides" as presented in mainstream media is a hoax. I don't like either if them but think we should be fair to both if them. If I lived in the US my lawn sign would be "Any Reasonable Person".
      - nradov 6y ago
        Election meddling in general isn't a crime. It's not something the government could charge the site owner for, unless they somehow violated campaign finance laws.
        skinkestek 6y ago
        > It's not something the government could charge the site owner for, I didn't mean the site owner did election meddling, rather than Facebook when thet selectively block sites like this.
        nradov 6y ago
        That is still not a crime.
        skinkestek 6y ago
        Ok then. You might very well be right. But what is the rule then? Manipulating social media in front of an election is only illegal if you are a foreigner?
darkerside 6y ago
I think you're right, but I don't think the previous status quo was tenable either, and maybe even more problematic. Disclaimer: these are opinions. We allow mainstream press, owned by allies of a politician, to make outlandish claims unverified in the weeks leading up to an election. This has always been "correctable" in the past, in a world where articles could be retracted or condemned, particularly by even more mainstream outlets (because there is a spectrum from tabloid journalism to "respectable"). With social media, the genie is out the bottle with that initial statement, and there's no way to set the record straight anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election. I realize that I used a ton of loaded terms here. That reflects a couple of opinions that I hold: that there is value in institutions, that truth is a social construct, that maintaining order in people's lives has intrinsic value. Folks are free to disagree, but please be clear about whether it's with the premise or the conclusion.
- mullr 6y ago
  It’s completely correctable. If fb/Twitter wanted to, they could track every person who saw a piece of “wrong” information, and plaster the retraction in front of their face.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    I'd argue that, if anything, that would make some people more certain that it was true
- disown 6y ago
  > With social media, the genie is out the bottle with that initial statement, and there's no way to set the record straight anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election. Isn't it actually easier to correct the record with social media since you can correct it immediately and reach the people immediately? Whereas with newspapers, you'd have to wait days/weeks and have to search the tiny section they reserve for corrections? It's what made newspapers such great tools of propaganda. You push misinformation, spread it and then "retract" quietly relatively unseen. Edit: > If the idea that a particular professor or candidate is sexually exploitative becomes viral, can you really undo the damage? My point is that it's easier to "unring the bell" via social media than via newspapers. We are discussing the "previous status quo" : A newspaper writes a lie. How do you "unring the bell"? You have to wait until the next time you publish - which varies depending on whether you are a daily, weekly, monthly. Whereas in the social media era, you can just post on facebook, twitter, etc your retraction. The retraction is immediate and can be as visible as you want it to be.
tracer4201 6y ago
The liberal wing was upset that state and non state actors influenced the 2016 election by manipulating social media. Now, Twitter is working to suppress some content that they believe is a repeat attempt — the October surprise if you will. I don’t have strong opinions on whether it’s right or wrong, but I don’t think this is a scandal. Twitter is a private company. You don’t have a constitutional right to write whatever you want on Twitter. If Americans believe otherwise, then they’d have to nationalize Twitter or at least pass legislation that mandates what content Twitter can or cannot moderate. I do find it surprising that social media companies are being held to a very different standard than “news”. In the US, we have specific news organizations that are unashamedly biased and blasting the airwaves with dangerous propaganda. I’m not trying to make a case of whataboutism, but it’s mind boggling that social media receives so much scrutiny when this other group of fairly openly nefarious actors get a free pass. As far as I can tell, this is because the media organizations have fairly established relationships with politicians from one party or the other, with political parties using them as propaganda loud speakers.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Should T Mobile or Verizon be able to censor your phone calls and text messages if they don't like the content? After all, they're private companies as well.
  - tracer4201 6y ago
    I would say yes. If they censor my calls, I would switch providers. But more importantly, if we as a country believe that’s wrong, we should pass legislation
    - Negitivefrags 6y ago
      There is legislation. It’s called common carrier. The argument is this existing legislation should be extended to social media as well.
      - 6y ago
adventured 6y ago
> Edit: This story was flagged which is unbelievable. You just wrote a comment about the big tech left being a happy joiner in conspiring to commit election fraud. Which part of it is not believable? We've got the US version of the CCP in big tech going to work overtime on press and speech control / suppression to intentionally try to throw an election in favor of their preferred candidate. Over the prior few years big tech more than hinted about what they were going to do. This could all be seen coming a zillion miles away. The long-term outcome of their extraordinarily dumb choice is obvious and it will have immense, horrible consequences politically (the Republicans will do a lot of damage going to war over this in response). There's a recent op-ed in the Washington Post saying that the Biden bought-and-paid-for scandal should be lied about and proclaimed to be a foreign intel operation regardless of whether it is or not. That side will do anything to get rid of Trump at this point. There is no length big tech won't go to, to assist and play their part. They're betting the downside risk is minimal and the upside is Biden wins and they'll face zero consequences (the FBI will immediately cease any interest in anything the Bidens have done, absolutely nothing will come of it, all evidence will be washed away forever - instead of eg the FBI following the money trail back to Joe Biden for his cut of the proceeds).
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
> will now normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and small Slippery slope is a falacy, just like "correlation proves causation", to pick one HN somehow likes. Was there any doubt of their technical ability to delete and otherwise change content on their network in every which way? No, of course not. Was there any doubt that it would be legal? None whatsoever... Nothing has changed, except one lie got a little less play than its equivalent four years ago. Because some institutions learn.
- reificator 6y ago
  > Slippery slope is a falacy, just like "correlation proves causation", to pick one HN somehow likes. I've seen too many "if this happens then that will be next" come true to write every use off just because your 9th grade teacher said it was fallacious. For instance the U.S. legal system leans very heavily on the concept of "precedent". Slippery slopes are baked into the system. I don't think you can just pull out the fallacy card every time it comes up and declare anyone who is predicting a chain of events to be arguing in bad faith.
  - TravHatesMe 6y ago
    I get tired of seeing these comments too. In the last few years it has become commonspeak to throw around these terms with no nuance. Strawmanning is a new favorite word for many. I sometimes shudder at the pretentiousness of it all (for some reason "false dichotomy" gets on my nerves, I feel like there are easier ways of saying that there are other possibilities).
  - darkerside 6y ago
    It's a logical fallacy, meaning the statements don't logically follow. That doesn't mean there isn't a heavy implication, which there often is.
  - shlant 6y ago
    don't worry! there's a fallacy for that too! https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy
kenjackson 6y ago
I think delaying the story until it could be somewhat verified is reasonable. I actually read it minutes after it was posted on the NY Post and my first thought was that it sounded like it shouldn’t have been published. I literally thought they’d retract it. I think the internet is breaking into various niche groups. I fully expect there soon to be completely partisan social networks. That’s probably the best way to deal with this.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  Well, ok, but can you find any other instance of a story that could have used some verification being suppressed by Twitter and Facebook at the same time?
  - jkhdigital 6y ago
    Ding ding ding and this is the tl;dr of Taibbi’s article
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    I can't, but I don't think its a bad idea. Given that, I guess you have to start at some point -- right? And last election social media was given all sorts of grief for the fake news... I can understand them wanting to be more careful this time. And of all news stories in recent years, this seems like a good one to begin with.
    - Meekro 6y ago
      > I guess you have to start at some point I notice they started with their political opponents.
      - kenjackson 6y ago
        Are they? Or do they just seem like the opponents to every political group? I'm sure liberals would say these media companies are also their opponents.
- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hackyhacky 6y ago
They're not suppressing the article because it's wrong, but because it's pretty obviously intentionally planted misinformation disguised as news. Twitter has a choice: either they can suppress it; or they can be pawns of whatever bad actors are creating this disinformation. It's a hard choice, and clearly it's a struggle that as a society we have to deal with. Right now, creating and distributing disinformation is easier than combating it, and I think it's unfair to call out Twitter for making a moral choice in the matter.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  You may be right in practice, but according to Twitter the claimed reason was hacking/doxing, not misinformation -- in fact, the opposite of misinformation!
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  “pretty obviously intentionally planted misinformation disguised as news” I am astonished at your blinding confidence in your ability to distinguish misinformation from news. You must be a Facebook content moderator ::snicker::
  - creato 6y ago
    I can't tell you for sure if this story is misinformation or not. That's part of the problem with misinformation. Well constructed misinformation is not easily proven false. What I can tell you is that it is absurd to believe it is true given what we know about the details surrounding the "discovery" of the information.
    - mshroyer 6y ago
      I'd be with you if the Biden campaign denied the material's legitimacy. So far, at least as far as I'm aware, they haven't.
- dionian 6y ago
  They never provided evidence for this. By their own standards they should censor their own actions. Also, why didn't they do this with the Pee Pee tape that the media wrote long thinkpieces about for YEARS? Trending on twitter, too, of course. There was never evidence of that either, yet they had no problems with it. Are they changing their standard now based on the fact that the media lied so much in the past? and if so, why are the main perpetrators not being targeted?
TwoBit 6y ago
Fox News has been suppressing the truth for 20 years now and where are the complaints about that?
- rayiner 6y ago
  What Fox News was since Ailes took over, CNN and MSNBC have become. That's something to be really worried about. For a long time, I read the NYT and watched CNN. I never felt the need to check in and see what Fox was saying until the last 2-3 years. Now I do, because I don't trust that I'm getting the whole story.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    Don't worry. When it comes to (especially) foreign policy, none of the media have been doing anything but state propaganda since the Remember the Maine incident. If you think blue TV is lying and check red TV you're missing the case where both blue and red agree it's good to lie to people. These cases where they agree revolve around suppressing opposition to corporate rule and around the nature of military alliances and misadventures.
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      I don't think rayiner says he's only watching fox now, rather he's checking that as well. Here's my take: When you look from different angles it gets harder to hide things. Fox News wants to hide some things, CNN wants to hide others. Looking at it from both angles you get to see some of the stuff each tries to hide and maybe you can make a reasonable guess on what both tries to hide.
      - tehjoker 6y ago
        Ah... I was assuming he was watching both. The problem is sometimes all the TV channels agree! You have to look for (usually written) news that is willing to criticize the state, corporations, and the war machine to get that angle.
  - 6y ago
didibus 6y ago
Pretty sure twitter said they blocked it because the information came from a hack, not because they claimed any veracity for it being fake or not.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  Can you point me to a claim from the Bidens or law enforcement that the information was hacked? What are your thoughts on the Trump tax records which were criminally released to the NYT not being censored?
  - didibus 6y ago
    > Can you point me to a claim from the Bidens or law enforcement that the information was hacked? I'm not aware of any claim from them. I thought the claim of the hack comes from the NY Post article itself where they said the shop owner made a copy of the hard drive. > What are your thoughts on the Trump tax records which were criminally released to the NYT not being censored? You're using the word "criminally released" but that is an unproven fact, the times claims that "all of the information The Times obtained was provided by sources with legal access to it". Now I wonder how that can be as well, but at least that's the statement. So at least from the perspective of being a small time employee of Twitter that has to work on moderation, I can see them looking at both article and thinking the first one talks about a hard drive being copied by a shop owner and leaked. While the other is nebulous on the origin but claims it was legally obtained. This is obviously all speculation. But that be my thoughts, that I can see how the policy might have applied to one and not the other. I also have to think that it coming from the NY Post must have contributed. I don't assume Twitter reviews every tweet manually, and I can see how NY Post is more likely to get flagged than NY Times.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      >I'm not aware of any claim from them. I thought the claim of the hack comes from the NY Post article itself where they said the shop owner made a copy of the hard drive. The NY Post article claims the laptop was abandoned at the repair shop (never picked up) and that according to the law in that state became the legal property of the shop owner. >all of the information The Times obtained was provided by sources with legal access to it Notice that The Times does not say the source was legally authorized to release it. I didn't say it was criminally accessed, but that it was criminally released. For example, if an IRS employee or an employee at Trump's accountant released it without permission, those would be crimes. >So at least from the perspective of being a small time employee of Twitter that has to work on moderation I can accept that for the low level employee at the time of moderation. But once it got so high up that @Jack commented on it, and now over a week later the NY Post's account is still banned, it doesn't float.
perryizgr8 6y ago
> why pick on the NY Post only? Keep in mind that the 3 year long series of false and inflammatory stories alleging Russian collusion were allowed. Finally it turned out to be a hoax. FB and Twitter felt no obligation to censor that. This is plain abuse of monopoly position by FB and Twitter, conscious attempt to keep voters ignorant, to push a certain political candidate.
cm2187 6y ago
In fact new form of political advertising: suppress messages between users that mention stories you don't want to bubble up.
- 1234letshaveatw 6y ago
  I love it! It's like adsense, the parties can bid to determine whether or not a story should be promoted or suppressed And you thought casino keywords brought in revenue...

eyeball 6y ago

It’s crazy that they’re even blocking links to the ny post article via direct message. What’s next? Email? Will we have to resort to signal and other encrypted direct messaging methods to have open discussion? Or run your own mail server end hope your recipient doesn’t use one that censors? Creepy stuff.

crocodiletears 6y ago
This has been the reality for people on the political fringes for some time now. Unfortunately nobody's been paying attention to it due in large part to the commentariat/journalistic class's willingness to encourage and provide cover for this behavior as a matter of political expedience. Another example: Messenger's been blocking links to joebiden.info (this may have changed, it's been six months since I've checked)
- jessaustin 6y ago
  I'm glad HN didn't block that link. I've learned a great deal that will affect my vote in the upcoming election.
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    Holy crap, those kids are so uncomfortable. The first girl, Senator Chris Coons’ daughter, is apparently on Hunter’s laptop.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    So will you vote for the guy with the worse record of sexually harassing women instead? Have you looked at all the corresponding inappropriate gifs of Trump? Remember the "grab her by the pussy" statement? The whole Stormy Daniels fiasco? Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. He's just not as bad as Trump. The fact that America is in that stupid position is its own fault.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      I haven't voted for either face of the status quo party, for president, in the last twenty years. This time around I'm going Green. I think Creepy Joe is kind of fun, but I have no doubt that the inexorable drumbeat for sanctions and wars will intensify when he is president. We still haven't left Syria, so whoever it is on the "democrat" side of the party who has such a hard-on for pipelines will get to kill more innocents there. Even better for them, Trump has destroyed the one decent diplomatic thing Obama did (Iran), so they won't have to pretend not to undermine the work of their "own side". (Keep in mind that Syria and Iran are allies, even though Republicans pretend to hate Iran while Democrats pretend to hate Syria.) I don't vote for lesser evils. Because of that I never have to regret how I voted.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- hackyhacky 6y ago
  Do you really think that it's out of "political expedience" that sites are blocking links to probable foreign disinformation? Or is it out of a moral interest in not being pawns of the bad actors who stand behind it? This kind of disinformation is dangerous, and we are vulnerable to it precisely because we value freedom of speech. That doesn't mean that we're morally obligated to value all speech equally. Obviously false and dangerous speech should be suppressed. Twitter (and other sites) is taking a moral stand, not an expedient stand.
  - crocodiletears 6y ago
    Journalists and commentators are the ones acting out of political expediency. The platforms themselves are a mixed bag, occasionaly banning content that represents legitimate disinformation, but often suppressing information that's contextually true, or conflicts with an existing broader social narrative which the moderator required to inspect the content has bought into. The human moderators are often inconsistent. The concept that any person or organization should be granted absolute authority to serve as the arbiter of whay constitutes dangerous or false speech, and the power to arbitrarily silence those who utter it offends me, and I consider it to be dangerous in and of itself. We'll not be able to agree on this. WRT the NYP piece, probably foreign sourced is about right. Even before the media picked up its Russia Trumpet, I remember reading a rumor towards the beginning of the Trump-Ukraine phone call debacle that a Chinese billionaire had slipped Juliani a hard drive containing information that might be incriminating to Biden's some. Irrespective of the source, the computer shop narrative reeks. But in spite of information's questionable provenance, it has been accompanied with compromising images of Hunter himself, and beyond stating that a meeting with Burisma execs wasn't on Biden's 'official' schedule, the biden campaign has yet (to my knowledge), to expressly deny the validity of the documents. If this is disinformation, the FBI, which has ostensibly been in possession of the documents for several months, has every incentive to comment on it, as does the CIA. Beyond ambiguous citations of 'anonymous officials', I've yet to read that they've communicated anything to this effect. The Director of National Intelligence has gone so far as to claim that this wasn't a Russian disinformation project. But he's a Trump apparatchik with no history in intelligence outside his appointment, so I generally ignore him. Probably foreign sourced? My gut says yes. Possibly disinformation? The juries still out. Possibly's a pretty low bar for stealing someone's voice. The tech companies took it upon themselves to censor this information. They've not claimed they were compelled or reccommended to by any official bodies any more than they were required to censor the name of the Urkaine whistleblower. But they chose to, of their own accord. If you want to be treated like a platform, you have to live with the fact that your platform's going to be used to further the aims of anyone who wannts to use it. Bar illegal content and behaviors (things disinformation is not), the most you should do is notify your users, sit back, and take it.
- j8hn 6y ago
  Yikes, I never really paid attention to how creepy and inappropriate he was with little girls and young women.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    Just remember: Just like with DT this is also pulled out of context. I don't like any of them and won't (and can't) vote for any of them so I have no dog in the fight. That website shouldn't have been blocked, whoever did it should probably been charged with election meddling but it doesn't change my view of Biden. As for the videos I think many of them shows him (clumsily) trying to comfort people. Again - I'm also the guy who points out that "fine people on both sides" as presented in mainstream media is a hoax. I don't like either if them but think we should be fair to both if them. If I lived in the US my lawn sign would be "Any Reasonable Person".
    - nradov 6y ago
      Election meddling in general isn't a crime. It's not something the government could charge the site owner for, unless they somehow violated campaign finance laws.
      - skinkestek 6y ago
        > It's not something the government could charge the site owner for, I didn't mean the site owner did election meddling, rather than Facebook when thet selectively block sites like this.
        nradov 6y ago
        That is still not a crime.
        skinkestek 6y ago
        Ok then. You might very well be right. But what is the rule then? Manipulating social media in front of an election is only illegal if you are a foreigner?

darkerside 6y ago

I think you're right, but I don't think the previous status quo was tenable either, and maybe even more problematic. Disclaimer: these are opinions. We allow mainstream press, owned by allies of a politician, to make outlandish claims unverified in the weeks leading up to an election. This has always been "correctable" in the past, in a world where articles could be retracted or condemned, particularly by even more mainstream outlets (because there is a spectrum from tabloid journalism to "respectable"). With social media, the genie is out the bottle with that initial statement, and there's no way to set the record straight anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election. I realize that I used a ton of loaded terms here. That reflects a couple of opinions that I hold: that there is value in institutions, that truth is a social construct, that maintaining order in people's lives has intrinsic value. Folks are free to disagree, but please be clear about whether it's with the premise or the conclusion.

mullr 6y ago
It’s completely correctable. If fb/Twitter wanted to, they could track every person who saw a piece of “wrong” information, and plaster the retraction in front of their face.
- darkerside 6y ago
  I'd argue that, if anything, that would make some people more certain that it was true
disown 6y ago
> With social media, the genie is out the bottle with that initial statement, and there's no way to set the record straight anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election. Isn't it actually easier to correct the record with social media since you can correct it immediately and reach the people immediately? Whereas with newspapers, you'd have to wait days/weeks and have to search the tiny section they reserve for corrections? It's what made newspapers such great tools of propaganda. You push misinformation, spread it and then "retract" quietly relatively unseen. Edit: > If the idea that a particular professor or candidate is sexually exploitative becomes viral, can you really undo the damage? My point is that it's easier to "unring the bell" via social media than via newspapers. We are discussing the "previous status quo" : A newspaper writes a lie. How do you "unring the bell"? You have to wait until the next time you publish - which varies depending on whether you are a daily, weekly, monthly. Whereas in the social media era, you can just post on facebook, twitter, etc your retraction. The retraction is immediate and can be as visible as you want it to be.

tracer4201 6y ago

The liberal wing was upset that state and non state actors influenced the 2016 election by manipulating social media. Now, Twitter is working to suppress some content that they believe is a repeat attempt — the October surprise if you will. I don’t have strong opinions on whether it’s right or wrong, but I don’t think this is a scandal. Twitter is a private company. You don’t have a constitutional right to write whatever you want on Twitter. If Americans believe otherwise, then they’d have to nationalize Twitter or at least pass legislation that mandates what content Twitter can or cannot moderate. I do find it surprising that social media companies are being held to a very different standard than “news”. In the US, we have specific news organizations that are unashamedly biased and blasting the airwaves with dangerous propaganda. I’m not trying to make a case of whataboutism, but it’s mind boggling that social media receives so much scrutiny when this other group of fairly openly nefarious actors get a free pass. As far as I can tell, this is because the media organizations have fairly established relationships with politicians from one party or the other, with political parties using them as propaganda loud speakers.

missedthecue 6y ago
Should T Mobile or Verizon be able to censor your phone calls and text messages if they don't like the content? After all, they're private companies as well.
- tracer4201 6y ago
  I would say yes. If they censor my calls, I would switch providers. But more importantly, if we as a country believe that’s wrong, we should pass legislation
  - Negitivefrags 6y ago
    There is legislation. It’s called common carrier. The argument is this existing legislation should be extended to social media as well.
    - 6y ago

adventured 6y ago

> Edit: This story was flagged which is unbelievable. You just wrote a comment about the big tech left being a happy joiner in conspiring to commit election fraud. Which part of it is not believable? We've got the US version of the CCP in big tech going to work overtime on press and speech control / suppression to intentionally try to throw an election in favor of their preferred candidate. Over the prior few years big tech more than hinted about what they were going to do. This could all be seen coming a zillion miles away. The long-term outcome of their extraordinarily dumb choice is obvious and it will have immense, horrible consequences politically (the Republicans will do a lot of damage going to war over this in response). There's a recent op-ed in the Washington Post saying that the Biden bought-and-paid-for scandal should be lied about and proclaimed to be a foreign intel operation regardless of whether it is or not. That side will do anything to get rid of Trump at this point. There is no length big tech won't go to, to assist and play their part. They're betting the downside risk is minimal and the upside is Biden wins and they'll face zero consequences (the FBI will immediately cease any interest in anything the Bidens have done, absolutely nothing will come of it, all evidence will be washed away forever - instead of eg the FBI following the money trail back to Joe Biden for his cut of the proceeds).

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

> will now normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and small Slippery slope is a falacy, just like "correlation proves causation", to pick one HN somehow likes. Was there any doubt of their technical ability to delete and otherwise change content on their network in every which way? No, of course not. Was there any doubt that it would be legal? None whatsoever... Nothing has changed, except one lie got a little less play than its equivalent four years ago. Because some institutions learn.

reificator 6y ago
> Slippery slope is a falacy, just like "correlation proves causation", to pick one HN somehow likes. I've seen too many "if this happens then that will be next" come true to write every use off just because your 9th grade teacher said it was fallacious. For instance the U.S. legal system leans very heavily on the concept of "precedent". Slippery slopes are baked into the system. I don't think you can just pull out the fallacy card every time it comes up and declare anyone who is predicting a chain of events to be arguing in bad faith.
- TravHatesMe 6y ago
  I get tired of seeing these comments too. In the last few years it has become commonspeak to throw around these terms with no nuance. Strawmanning is a new favorite word for many. I sometimes shudder at the pretentiousness of it all (for some reason "false dichotomy" gets on my nerves, I feel like there are easier ways of saying that there are other possibilities).
- darkerside 6y ago
  It's a logical fallacy, meaning the statements don't logically follow. That doesn't mean there isn't a heavy implication, which there often is.
- shlant 6y ago
  don't worry! there's a fallacy for that too! https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy

kenjackson 6y ago

I think delaying the story until it could be somewhat verified is reasonable. I actually read it minutes after it was posted on the NY Post and my first thought was that it sounded like it shouldn’t have been published. I literally thought they’d retract it. I think the internet is breaking into various niche groups. I fully expect there soon to be completely partisan social networks. That’s probably the best way to deal with this.

commandlinefan 6y ago
Well, ok, but can you find any other instance of a story that could have used some verification being suppressed by Twitter and Facebook at the same time?
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  Ding ding ding and this is the tl;dr of Taibbi’s article
- kenjackson 6y ago
  I can't, but I don't think its a bad idea. Given that, I guess you have to start at some point -- right? And last election social media was given all sorts of grief for the fake news... I can understand them wanting to be more careful this time. And of all news stories in recent years, this seems like a good one to begin with.
  - Meekro 6y ago
    > I guess you have to start at some point I notice they started with their political opponents.
    - kenjackson 6y ago
      Are they? Or do they just seem like the opponents to every political group? I'm sure liberals would say these media companies are also their opponents.
6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hackyhacky 6y ago

They're not suppressing the article because it's wrong, but because it's pretty obviously intentionally planted misinformation disguised as news. Twitter has a choice: either they can suppress it; or they can be pawns of whatever bad actors are creating this disinformation. It's a hard choice, and clearly it's a struggle that as a society we have to deal with. Right now, creating and distributing disinformation is easier than combating it, and I think it's unfair to call out Twitter for making a moral choice in the matter.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
You may be right in practice, but according to Twitter the claimed reason was hacking/doxing, not misinformation -- in fact, the opposite of misinformation!
jkhdigital 6y ago
“pretty obviously intentionally planted misinformation disguised as news” I am astonished at your blinding confidence in your ability to distinguish misinformation from news. You must be a Facebook content moderator ::snicker::
- creato 6y ago
  I can't tell you for sure if this story is misinformation or not. That's part of the problem with misinformation. Well constructed misinformation is not easily proven false. What I can tell you is that it is absurd to believe it is true given what we know about the details surrounding the "discovery" of the information.
  - mshroyer 6y ago
    I'd be with you if the Biden campaign denied the material's legitimacy. So far, at least as far as I'm aware, they haven't.
dionian 6y ago
They never provided evidence for this. By their own standards they should censor their own actions. Also, why didn't they do this with the Pee Pee tape that the media wrote long thinkpieces about for YEARS? Trending on twitter, too, of course. There was never evidence of that either, yet they had no problems with it. Are they changing their standard now based on the fact that the media lied so much in the past? and if so, why are the main perpetrators not being targeted?

TwoBit 6y ago

Fox News has been suppressing the truth for 20 years now and where are the complaints about that?

rayiner 6y ago
What Fox News was since Ailes took over, CNN and MSNBC have become. That's something to be really worried about. For a long time, I read the NYT and watched CNN. I never felt the need to check in and see what Fox was saying until the last 2-3 years. Now I do, because I don't trust that I'm getting the whole story.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  Don't worry. When it comes to (especially) foreign policy, none of the media have been doing anything but state propaganda since the Remember the Maine incident. If you think blue TV is lying and check red TV you're missing the case where both blue and red agree it's good to lie to people. These cases where they agree revolve around suppressing opposition to corporate rule and around the nature of military alliances and misadventures.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    I don't think rayiner says he's only watching fox now, rather he's checking that as well. Here's my take: When you look from different angles it gets harder to hide things. Fox News wants to hide some things, CNN wants to hide others. Looking at it from both angles you get to see some of the stuff each tries to hide and maybe you can make a reasonable guess on what both tries to hide.
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      Ah... I was assuming he was watching both. The problem is sometimes all the TV channels agree! You have to look for (usually written) news that is willing to criticize the state, corporations, and the war machine to get that angle.
- 6y ago

didibus 6y ago

Pretty sure twitter said they blocked it because the information came from a hack, not because they claimed any veracity for it being fake or not.

Consultant32452 6y ago
Can you point me to a claim from the Bidens or law enforcement that the information was hacked? What are your thoughts on the Trump tax records which were criminally released to the NYT not being censored?
- didibus 6y ago
  > Can you point me to a claim from the Bidens or law enforcement that the information was hacked? I'm not aware of any claim from them. I thought the claim of the hack comes from the NY Post article itself where they said the shop owner made a copy of the hard drive. > What are your thoughts on the Trump tax records which were criminally released to the NYT not being censored? You're using the word "criminally released" but that is an unproven fact, the times claims that "all of the information The Times obtained was provided by sources with legal access to it". Now I wonder how that can be as well, but at least that's the statement. So at least from the perspective of being a small time employee of Twitter that has to work on moderation, I can see them looking at both article and thinking the first one talks about a hard drive being copied by a shop owner and leaked. While the other is nebulous on the origin but claims it was legally obtained. This is obviously all speculation. But that be my thoughts, that I can see how the policy might have applied to one and not the other. I also have to think that it coming from the NY Post must have contributed. I don't assume Twitter reviews every tweet manually, and I can see how NY Post is more likely to get flagged than NY Times.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    >I'm not aware of any claim from them. I thought the claim of the hack comes from the NY Post article itself where they said the shop owner made a copy of the hard drive. The NY Post article claims the laptop was abandoned at the repair shop (never picked up) and that according to the law in that state became the legal property of the shop owner. >all of the information The Times obtained was provided by sources with legal access to it Notice that The Times does not say the source was legally authorized to release it. I didn't say it was criminally accessed, but that it was criminally released. For example, if an IRS employee or an employee at Trump's accountant released it without permission, those would be crimes. >So at least from the perspective of being a small time employee of Twitter that has to work on moderation I can accept that for the low level employee at the time of moderation. But once it got so high up that @Jack commented on it, and now over a week later the NY Post's account is still banned, it doesn't float.

perryizgr8 6y ago

> why pick on the NY Post only? Keep in mind that the 3 year long series of false and inflammatory stories alleging Russian collusion were allowed. Finally it turned out to be a hoax. FB and Twitter felt no obligation to censor that. This is plain abuse of monopoly position by FB and Twitter, conscious attempt to keep voters ignorant, to push a certain political candidate.

cm2187 6y ago

In fact new form of political advertising: suppress messages between users that mention stories you don't want to bubble up.

1234letshaveatw 6y ago
I love it! It's like adsense, the parties can bid to determine whether or not a story should be promoted or suppressed And you thought casino keywords brought in revenue...