7 ms·

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 encrypte

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?

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?