5 ms·

Can you elaborate on what you think the censorship problem is?

blfr 4y ago
Killing good (funny) accounts from various anons and even small celebrities, like Nick Mullen. It stifles discussion (people are worried about getting locked/limited/banned) and makes for a much less interesting scroll.
- jungturk 4y ago
  So the censorship problem is that the twitter feed became less interesting for you as a user? That sounds more like just bad product choices (assuming it drives users away) rather than any sort of issue of rights.
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
Censoring important news stories during an election and then a year later just being like, oops, ya that was real.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  This supposed “important news” is an invented (probably Russian) propaganda story that couldn’t be confirmed by any of the news outlets who investigated it and was hyped up by armies of Russian bots and Russian-funded media trolls, immediately before a presidential election. [According to proponents of this story, the chain of custody of this laptop goes: Hunter Biden → Repair Shop (owned by a legally blind GOP partisan hazy about the details) → ??? → Rudy Giuliani → Steve Bannon → NY Post → Matt Gaetz. Seriously?] A year and a half later, the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine provides solid evidence that we should be thankful for social media companies’ rare responsible anti-propaganda effort here. Instead of dissolving NATO and dropping Russian sanctions as the previous president repeatedly suggested, the US instead provided significant diplomatic, military, intelligence, and economic support, and now Ukrainians have a good chance of holding their country. Once again, remember that impeachment #1 was about a ham-handed explicit attempt by the US president to extort president Zelenskyy of Ukraine, denying US military aid unless he would fabricate dirt on the president’s political opponent and (falsely) exonerate Russia. For that effort, the president’s entire party (with only a few notable exceptions) gave him a pat on the back.
  - thepasswordis 4y ago
    That “invented Russian propaganda” was confirmed by the New York Times.
    - jacobolus 4y ago
      No, what was confirmed was that some of the emails placed onto the laptop were real emails. (Those emails are not in and of themselves any evidence of wrongdoing, FWIW.) Nobody can demonstrate where or how those emails were obtained, or who put them on the laptop. The repair shop owner has repeatedly claimed that much of the current content of the hard drive was not there when he originally examined it. The whole thing has been treated in such a slipshod and ridiculous manner by a whole clown car of incompetent partisan activists that it is now impossible to validate anything about whose laptop this was or what it had on it originally. Meanwhile Jared Kushner was literally just handed $2 billion by the Saudi government to run an “investment fund”, right out in the open. None of the people worried about this laptop/email story have said a peep.
  - hersko 4y ago
    From the New York Times[1]: "People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation." [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-tax-bill-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - invalidOrTaken 4y ago
    I think you've missed some developments, or perhaps I'm misinterpreting you? https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/hunter-bidens-infamous-laptop-confirmed-in-new-york-times-report/ https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/hunter-bidens-infamous-laptop-...
- Fervicus 4y ago
  This has been the modus operandi of MSM and social media for the past few years for all sorts of topics. It's sad to see people still speak in favor of such censorship.
throwaway_1928 4y ago
Feel free to disagree, but I believe there is a large segment of the population, especially conservatives, who feel sidelined or silenced by Twitter. Case in point: Musk recently polled his followers: "Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?" and 70% of respondents said "No" [1]. Also, many conservatives believe that banning Trump while allowing the representatives of various autocracies globally is hypocritical. Of course, you can argue that Twitter is a private company and can do whatever they please. You can also argue that Trump and his followers are a danger to society, or Elon and his followers are biased. I'm just communicating a perspective I believe exists broadly. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344
- bradchris 4y ago
  I mean, the poll is biased in that most people who saw it are followers of Elon Musk already (and the split is probably 60-70% people who like him, the rest being journalists, people curious to see what he has to say, and yes, people who disagree with him). It’s not an objective measure or poll, much in the same way that Trump (or any politician) blasting out “opinion polls” to their donors is not representative of the general US population, so much as the contingent that voted/donated to them.
  - g42gregory 4y ago
    He has 82 million followers. That’s a lot of people to be completely biased. Granted, it’s not half a billion for completely unbiased sample, but still, that’s a lot.
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      It seems fairly obvious that most people who follow him do that because they like what he has to say. Even if he had 500 million followers it still wouldn't be an unbiased sample.
    - k8si 4y ago
andrew_ 4y ago
I've never seen this question asked in good faith on HN. It's inevitable that the answers and replies to answers descend into infantile spitting matches, with waring parties attempting to take superior moral high ground. If you've not already read the litany of articles out there covering both the approval and disapproval of Twitter's method of content moderation, and how it applies its methods over the last 5 years, then now is the time to head to your favorite search engine.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

blfr 4y ago

Killing good (funny) accounts from various anons and even small celebrities, like Nick Mullen. It stifles discussion (people are worried about getting locked/limited/banned) and makes for a much less interesting scroll.

jungturk 4y ago
So the censorship problem is that the twitter feed became less interesting for you as a user? That sounds more like just bad product choices (assuming it drives users away) rather than any sort of issue of rights.

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

Censoring important news stories during an election and then a year later just being like, oops, ya that was real.

jacobolus 4y ago
This supposed “important news” is an invented (probably Russian) propaganda story that couldn’t be confirmed by any of the news outlets who investigated it and was hyped up by armies of Russian bots and Russian-funded media trolls, immediately before a presidential election. [According to proponents of this story, the chain of custody of this laptop goes: Hunter Biden → Repair Shop (owned by a legally blind GOP partisan hazy about the details) → ??? → Rudy Giuliani → Steve Bannon → NY Post → Matt Gaetz. Seriously?] A year and a half later, the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine provides solid evidence that we should be thankful for social media companies’ rare responsible anti-propaganda effort here. Instead of dissolving NATO and dropping Russian sanctions as the previous president repeatedly suggested, the US instead provided significant diplomatic, military, intelligence, and economic support, and now Ukrainians have a good chance of holding their country. Once again, remember that impeachment #1 was about a ham-handed explicit attempt by the US president to extort president Zelenskyy of Ukraine, denying US military aid unless he would fabricate dirt on the president’s political opponent and (falsely) exonerate Russia. For that effort, the president’s entire party (with only a few notable exceptions) gave him a pat on the back.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  That “invented Russian propaganda” was confirmed by the New York Times.
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    No, what was confirmed was that some of the emails placed onto the laptop were real emails. (Those emails are not in and of themselves any evidence of wrongdoing, FWIW.) Nobody can demonstrate where or how those emails were obtained, or who put them on the laptop. The repair shop owner has repeatedly claimed that much of the current content of the hard drive was not there when he originally examined it. The whole thing has been treated in such a slipshod and ridiculous manner by a whole clown car of incompetent partisan activists that it is now impossible to validate anything about whose laptop this was or what it had on it originally. Meanwhile Jared Kushner was literally just handed $2 billion by the Saudi government to run an “investment fund”, right out in the open. None of the people worried about this laptop/email story have said a peep.
- hersko 4y ago
  From the New York Times[1]: "People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation." [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-tax-bill-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- invalidOrTaken 4y ago
  I think you've missed some developments, or perhaps I'm misinterpreting you? https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/hunter-bidens-infamous-laptop-confirmed-in-new-york-times-report/ https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/hunter-bidens-infamous-laptop-...
Fervicus 4y ago
This has been the modus operandi of MSM and social media for the past few years for all sorts of topics. It's sad to see people still speak in favor of such censorship.

throwaway_1928 4y ago

Feel free to disagree, but I believe there is a large segment of the population, especially conservatives, who feel sidelined or silenced by Twitter. Case in point: Musk recently polled his followers: "Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?" and 70% of respondents said "No" [1]. Also, many conservatives believe that banning Trump while allowing the representatives of various autocracies globally is hypocritical. Of course, you can argue that Twitter is a private company and can do whatever they please. You can also argue that Trump and his followers are a danger to society, or Elon and his followers are biased. I'm just communicating a perspective I believe exists broadly. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344

bradchris 4y ago
I mean, the poll is biased in that most people who saw it are followers of Elon Musk already (and the split is probably 60-70% people who like him, the rest being journalists, people curious to see what he has to say, and yes, people who disagree with him). It’s not an objective measure or poll, much in the same way that Trump (or any politician) blasting out “opinion polls” to their donors is not representative of the general US population, so much as the contingent that voted/donated to them.
- g42gregory 4y ago
  He has 82 million followers. That’s a lot of people to be completely biased. Granted, it’s not half a billion for completely unbiased sample, but still, that’s a lot.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    It seems fairly obvious that most people who follow him do that because they like what he has to say. Even if he had 500 million followers it still wouldn't be an unbiased sample.
  - k8si 4y ago

andrew_ 4y ago

I've never seen this question asked in good faith on HN. It's inevitable that the answers and replies to answers descend into infantile spitting matches, with waring parties attempting to take superior moral high ground. If you've not already read the litany of articles out there covering both the approval and disapproval of Twitter's method of content moderation, and how it applies its methods over the last 5 years, then now is the time to head to your favorite search engine.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]