8 ms·

> About the only thing Twitter censored was threats of violence or rape, election misinformation, or extremely blatant racism. Twitter blocked the NYPost becau

> About the only thing Twitter censored was threats of violence or rape, election misinformation, or extremely blatant racism. Twitter blocked the NYPost because they didn't approve of their entirely factual journalism.

kbar13 6y ago
cannot tell if sarcasm because the NYPost is very much not entirely factual lol
- bobthechef 6y ago
  Ad hominem is in bad taste. And mind you, the same can be said of the major news outlets (NYTimes, etc).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- hcurtiss 6y ago
  There's been a lot of validation of the Biden laptop story, which was the impetus for Twitter shutting down NYPost.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    There most definitely has not. It remains entirely unsubstantiated, while several other claims in the post story are directly contradicted by ample public records.
    - patwolf 6y ago
      It's not accurate to say it was "entirely unsubstantiated". Other news sources besides the NY Post (most recently the Daily Mail) have claimed it was authentic, and Biden himself hasn't disputed its authenticity. Regardless of the laptop though, there's clearly a double standard in what Twitter will block with or without proof. The Russian bounty program that was widely reported by the Washington Post and others during the election cycle was unsubstantiated, but no effort was made to block it.
    - pwned1 6y ago
      Hunter Biden admitted it was his.
    - treesprite82 6y ago
      The DKIM signature of the "bombshell email" (Vadym Pozharskyi thanking Hunter for giving him the opportunity to meet and spend time with Joe Biden) is publicly available and can be verified. Other people involved in the emails have also corroborated their legitimacy. The laptop story seems like the most probable explanation of this leak, given the documents and FBI correspondence provided. Most attempts I've seen to debunk it seem dishonest or misleading, like "the PDFs' metadata showed they had been created in the fall of 2019, though the emails were supposedly from 2014 and 2015" as if anyone expected the PDF compilation of incriminating emails to be pre-made by Hunter. While the email is real and the laptop story seems the most probable explanation, the email doesn't necessarily imply corruption on Joe Biden's part or even that he discussed anything business-related with Pozharskyi.
    - stevenicr 6y ago
      April 2 (?) interview, (20/20?) - he says it could be his laptop, or it could be fake - he doesn't know - I thought that came out recently establishing that yeah it most likely is his laptop, he's pulling a 'I can't recall' - then feel sad for past drug addiction. ( https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=20%2F20+hunter+says+laptop+could+be+his&cat=web&pl=ext-ff&language=english&extVersion=1.3.0 https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=20%2F20+hunter+sa... ) So I would not say "entirely unsubstantiated" - In fact I would read between the lines and be real - he's certainly seen the articles quoting emails and pics and such - if this was a setup / fake plant - he could of said 'hey that could be my laptop, but I never emailed X and never had a pic of Y - so the thing is false flag - He did say deny the content and owned up to the possibility that it was his hardware - so.. If I'm wrong and don't know the whole context I am open to consider whole truth, admittedly have not watched the whole interview (yet, and don't want to, but will if people say this or that) At this point it certainly seems that twitter censored something as voting disinfomation or election manipulation - and that by censoring it twitter actually created disinformation / election manipulation. With this, being such an important thing - I am okay if corrected and find out my current understanding is wrong.
      - stevenicr 6y ago
        * "He did say deny the content" (typo) should be more clear. "He did not say, "I deny the content" - and owned up to the possibility that it was his hardware - so. and the issues about the story that were brought up, were indeed 'the content' of the emails and such.. which did not get much public discourse.
- zpeti 6y ago
  Please tick which of the following are "factual" sources: Fox, CNN, NYT, MSNBC, Reuters, AP, NPR Thanks.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    There's a spectrum, and all news outlets will have incorrect information published from time to time, be it bad sources or bad reporting. Humans are involved, after all. You'd also have to decide whether you include Fox/CNN/MSNBC's opinion segments in the evaluation, or just the news sections. (Fox and MSNBC are especially screwed in this evaluation if you include the opinion hours.) After that, decide if "technically true but highly misleading" counts as factual or not. The NY Post has a long history of being sensationalist and misleading - there's a reason it's considered a tabloid.
    - zpeti 6y ago
      So is the NY Post the only tabloid in the world? What about the Sun in the UK? Daily mirror? I think based on your requirements all those should be fact checked 100% of the time and blocked when incorrect information is posted right? Or should it only be when it damages the preferred political candidate?
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        I'm not aware of having expressed any "requirements" here. I simply find "the NY Post is a less credible organization than the AP" to be a very sustainable opinion.
- nostromo 6y ago
  They were blocked for posting a specific article about the Biden family. The article was factual and was of public interest. The fig leaf they used to justify it was that it exposed an email from a public official (a Ukrainian gas executive) and was "hacked/unauthorized" material. Of course, journalists use unauthorized information all the time (Snowden, Trump's tax returns, etc.) without getting banned from Twitter.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    Lets be real. The article was a smear campaign designed to put an incompetent traitor whose gross and continued incompetence had killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and whose continued leadership would have threatened the future of American democracy and many of our lives. At some point a pretense of neutrality and the lie that both sides of a story are equally credible can become too costly. Everyone in fact has a perspective and twitter isn't a 100% neutral platform. If you don't like it get your own.
    - downandout 6y ago
      The article was a smear campaign The article was the 100% fact based. The facts laid out in it just happened to not line up with Twitter's preferred election outcome, so they silenced it.
- ravenstine 6y ago
  How was Twitter supposed to know that unless they independently investigated the story at the same time as NYPost before NYPost broke it? This is the danger with censoring "fake news". Obviously there's a huge grey area, since I don't think many people would object to censoring falsehoods that are agreed upon to be harmful to the public, like claiming that 5G spreads COVID-19. But with something like the Hunter Biden story, who exactly are these companies like Twitter to almost immediately censor such stories, whether they seem specious or not? Do they hire people specifically for their background in journalistic ethics? Yes, they are private companies. We are also treating them as arbiters of truth and have handed a massive amount of power to them. They can absolutely censor what they want to censor, but that doesn't mean people are wrong for pointing out the bias and the danger present in exercising such strong armed control over what information people want access to. By the way, telling people they can't see something only makes them want to see it more. Can we hardly blame people for distrusting Twitter because, for some reason, Twitter had an interest in hiding a story of political interest counted to their own? If Twitter is only to sanction stories that they believe are true, then they are completely falling flat when it comes to the sheer amount of specious tripe that comes out of the mainstream media. I can't count on both hands the number of times I've read articles making claims based on a study, only to use Sci-hub to look up the actual study and find that it completely contradicts the claim some journalist was making.
- spoonjim 6y ago
  That wasn’t the basis on which Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden story. Overall I think Twitter’s heart was in the right place as they know that the average voter can’t be trusted with the future of the country, but I can see why people are upset.
  - hcurtiss 6y ago
    "Twitter’s heart was in the right place as they know that the average voter can’t be trusted with the future of the country" -- that's an extraordinary statement. Who do you believe should be trusted with the future of the country? Social media platforms?
    - spoonjim 6y ago
      People who aren’t morons
- roenxi 6y ago
  While I certainly believe there is an objective truth that can be divined by patient review of the facts, the Twitter, Inc. HQ is a long way down the list of places I would look for guidance. Twitter can certainly kick whoever they want off their platform for whatever reason. However they don't know anything more about breaking news than the rest of us. They cannot have banned a breaking story because it isn't true, the reason being that they couldn't know. If they banned a NYPost article based on the newspaper's reputation, that is a ban on a strictly political opinion.
luxuryballs 6y ago
They also, on Jan 6th, deleted Trump posts and video post telling people to not be violent and unlawful and disorderly, and saying anyone doing otherwise will be brought to swift justice, right before banning him, all so they could feed the narrative that Trump wanted people to invade the Capitol.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  That video included the statements "We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side." and "This was a fraudulent election..." They were removed for being a repeat violation of the conduct he'd already been warned to avoid.
  - bellyfullofbac 6y ago
    I share your view of the situation, but it is fucking frustrating that "the other side" including the person you replied to probably will keep seeing it the way he described, even after you writing this explanation...
    - luxuryballs 6y ago
      I’m the person, and I don’t see these things as one or the other. The election results questioning thing is a totally different topic but it doesn’t change the fact that people literally attempted to claim Trump wanted an insurrection and Twitter could have continued to flag things with their “election results” blurb rather than pulling the entire post. I think we all can see what the common denominator is here... why not allow both the condemning of violence and lawlessness as well as the ability to “trust but verify” on election results? Mitt Romney said “an audit won’t satisfy them only telling them the truth will” only nobody to this day even knows the truth yet, the best we can say is that we aren’t sure, and that leaves it open for either side to say they are sure about their angle.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago

kbar13 6y ago

cannot tell if sarcasm because the NYPost is very much not entirely factual lol

bobthechef 6y ago
Ad hominem is in bad taste. And mind you, the same can be said of the major news outlets (NYTimes, etc).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hcurtiss 6y ago
There's been a lot of validation of the Biden laptop story, which was the impetus for Twitter shutting down NYPost.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  There most definitely has not. It remains entirely unsubstantiated, while several other claims in the post story are directly contradicted by ample public records.
  - patwolf 6y ago
    It's not accurate to say it was "entirely unsubstantiated". Other news sources besides the NY Post (most recently the Daily Mail) have claimed it was authentic, and Biden himself hasn't disputed its authenticity. Regardless of the laptop though, there's clearly a double standard in what Twitter will block with or without proof. The Russian bounty program that was widely reported by the Washington Post and others during the election cycle was unsubstantiated, but no effort was made to block it.
  - pwned1 6y ago
    Hunter Biden admitted it was his.
  - treesprite82 6y ago
    The DKIM signature of the "bombshell email" (Vadym Pozharskyi thanking Hunter for giving him the opportunity to meet and spend time with Joe Biden) is publicly available and can be verified. Other people involved in the emails have also corroborated their legitimacy. The laptop story seems like the most probable explanation of this leak, given the documents and FBI correspondence provided. Most attempts I've seen to debunk it seem dishonest or misleading, like "the PDFs' metadata showed they had been created in the fall of 2019, though the emails were supposedly from 2014 and 2015" as if anyone expected the PDF compilation of incriminating emails to be pre-made by Hunter. While the email is real and the laptop story seems the most probable explanation, the email doesn't necessarily imply corruption on Joe Biden's part or even that he discussed anything business-related with Pozharskyi.
  - stevenicr 6y ago
    April 2 (?) interview, (20/20?) - he says it could be his laptop, or it could be fake - he doesn't know - I thought that came out recently establishing that yeah it most likely is his laptop, he's pulling a 'I can't recall' - then feel sad for past drug addiction. ( https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=20%2F20+hunter+says+laptop+could+be+his&cat=web&pl=ext-ff&language=english&extVersion=1.3.0 https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=20%2F20+hunter+sa... ) So I would not say "entirely unsubstantiated" - In fact I would read between the lines and be real - he's certainly seen the articles quoting emails and pics and such - if this was a setup / fake plant - he could of said 'hey that could be my laptop, but I never emailed X and never had a pic of Y - so the thing is false flag - He did say deny the content and owned up to the possibility that it was his hardware - so.. If I'm wrong and don't know the whole context I am open to consider whole truth, admittedly have not watched the whole interview (yet, and don't want to, but will if people say this or that) At this point it certainly seems that twitter censored something as voting disinfomation or election manipulation - and that by censoring it twitter actually created disinformation / election manipulation. With this, being such an important thing - I am okay if corrected and find out my current understanding is wrong.
    - stevenicr 6y ago
      * "He did say deny the content" (typo) should be more clear. "He did not say, "I deny the content" - and owned up to the possibility that it was his hardware - so. and the issues about the story that were brought up, were indeed 'the content' of the emails and such.. which did not get much public discourse.
zpeti 6y ago
Please tick which of the following are "factual" sources: Fox, CNN, NYT, MSNBC, Reuters, AP, NPR Thanks.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  There's a spectrum, and all news outlets will have incorrect information published from time to time, be it bad sources or bad reporting. Humans are involved, after all. You'd also have to decide whether you include Fox/CNN/MSNBC's opinion segments in the evaluation, or just the news sections. (Fox and MSNBC are especially screwed in this evaluation if you include the opinion hours.) After that, decide if "technically true but highly misleading" counts as factual or not. The NY Post has a long history of being sensationalist and misleading - there's a reason it's considered a tabloid.
  - zpeti 6y ago
    So is the NY Post the only tabloid in the world? What about the Sun in the UK? Daily mirror? I think based on your requirements all those should be fact checked 100% of the time and blocked when incorrect information is posted right? Or should it only be when it damages the preferred political candidate?
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      I'm not aware of having expressed any "requirements" here. I simply find "the NY Post is a less credible organization than the AP" to be a very sustainable opinion.
nostromo 6y ago
They were blocked for posting a specific article about the Biden family. The article was factual and was of public interest. The fig leaf they used to justify it was that it exposed an email from a public official (a Ukrainian gas executive) and was "hacked/unauthorized" material. Of course, journalists use unauthorized information all the time (Snowden, Trump's tax returns, etc.) without getting banned from Twitter.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Lets be real. The article was a smear campaign designed to put an incompetent traitor whose gross and continued incompetence had killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and whose continued leadership would have threatened the future of American democracy and many of our lives. At some point a pretense of neutrality and the lie that both sides of a story are equally credible can become too costly. Everyone in fact has a perspective and twitter isn't a 100% neutral platform. If you don't like it get your own.
  - downandout 6y ago
    The article was a smear campaign The article was the 100% fact based. The facts laid out in it just happened to not line up with Twitter's preferred election outcome, so they silenced it.
ravenstine 6y ago
How was Twitter supposed to know that unless they independently investigated the story at the same time as NYPost before NYPost broke it? This is the danger with censoring "fake news". Obviously there's a huge grey area, since I don't think many people would object to censoring falsehoods that are agreed upon to be harmful to the public, like claiming that 5G spreads COVID-19. But with something like the Hunter Biden story, who exactly are these companies like Twitter to almost immediately censor such stories, whether they seem specious or not? Do they hire people specifically for their background in journalistic ethics? Yes, they are private companies. We are also treating them as arbiters of truth and have handed a massive amount of power to them. They can absolutely censor what they want to censor, but that doesn't mean people are wrong for pointing out the bias and the danger present in exercising such strong armed control over what information people want access to. By the way, telling people they can't see something only makes them want to see it more. Can we hardly blame people for distrusting Twitter because, for some reason, Twitter had an interest in hiding a story of political interest counted to their own? If Twitter is only to sanction stories that they believe are true, then they are completely falling flat when it comes to the sheer amount of specious tripe that comes out of the mainstream media. I can't count on both hands the number of times I've read articles making claims based on a study, only to use Sci-hub to look up the actual study and find that it completely contradicts the claim some journalist was making.
spoonjim 6y ago
That wasn’t the basis on which Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden story. Overall I think Twitter’s heart was in the right place as they know that the average voter can’t be trusted with the future of the country, but I can see why people are upset.
- hcurtiss 6y ago
  "Twitter’s heart was in the right place as they know that the average voter can’t be trusted with the future of the country" -- that's an extraordinary statement. Who do you believe should be trusted with the future of the country? Social media platforms?
  - spoonjim 6y ago
    People who aren’t morons
roenxi 6y ago
While I certainly believe there is an objective truth that can be divined by patient review of the facts, the Twitter, Inc. HQ is a long way down the list of places I would look for guidance. Twitter can certainly kick whoever they want off their platform for whatever reason. However they don't know anything more about breaking news than the rest of us. They cannot have banned a breaking story because it isn't true, the reason being that they couldn't know. If they banned a NYPost article based on the newspaper's reputation, that is a ban on a strictly political opinion.

luxuryballs 6y ago

They also, on Jan 6th, deleted Trump posts and video post telling people to not be violent and unlawful and disorderly, and saying anyone doing otherwise will be brought to swift justice, right before banning him, all so they could feed the narrative that Trump wanted people to invade the Capitol.

ceejayoz 6y ago
That video included the statements "We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side." and "This was a fraudulent election..." They were removed for being a repeat violation of the conduct he'd already been warned to avoid.
- bellyfullofbac 6y ago
  I share your view of the situation, but it is fucking frustrating that "the other side" including the person you replied to probably will keep seeing it the way he described, even after you writing this explanation...
  - luxuryballs 6y ago
    I’m the person, and I don’t see these things as one or the other. The election results questioning thing is a totally different topic but it doesn’t change the fact that people literally attempted to claim Trump wanted an insurrection and Twitter could have continued to flag things with their “election results” blurb rather than pulling the entire post. I think we all can see what the common denominator is here... why not allow both the condemning of violence and lawlessness as well as the ability to “trust but verify” on election results? Mitt Romney said “an audit won’t satisfy them only telling them the truth will” only nobody to this day even knows the truth yet, the best we can say is that we aren’t sure, and that leaves it open for either side to say they are sure about their angle.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago