8 ms·

Society is becoming a parody if itself. I understand that there are consequences of Mudge's information but, from a purely naive standpoint, having congress get

Society is becoming a parody if itself. I understand that there are consequences of Mudge's information but, from a purely naive standpoint, having congress get involved over bots on a social network where people share 280 character messages is fucking bizarre.

capableweb 4y ago
It's not about "bots on a social network", it's about misuse of peoples data in one of the worlds biggest social network. Just as I tuned in, Mudge was talking about how Twitter repeatedly mismanaged peoples emails, citing that if they didn't sell emails, their competitors would get an unfair advantage.
zhxshen 4y ago
Are you even watching this? They're talking about foreign agents running amok on the inside (even after Twitter being notified by the FBI), lack of logging, mishandling of email addresses, etc, etc. Bots or no bots, all of that stuff is kind of a big deal.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    It's really not hard to find evidence of twitter security fuck ups. Multiple Saudi nationals have given up dissident information to the saudi government because of their access to twitter's internal geolocation tools. One of them fled the country after twitter told him the FBI was investigating him. Twitter practically forced everyone to give them their phone number and then leaked the numbers. The list goes on.
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      Are you kidding me? The major credit bureaus have had just as many fuck ups. You don't see congress doing anything to fix it. There was a major utility shutdown due to security issues where they paid a ransom. Did you see Congress doing anything? This isn't exclusive to Twitter. Congress will use any situation to push their opportunistic rhetoric, and for them Twitter a social media company is more important to spread their propaganda than a credit bureau breach where everyone's personal data is compromised. What values does that show and teach, and why is that your talking point?
      - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        Who are you arguing for, and why?
        encryptluks2 4y ago
        I'm arguing for the people, who are you arguing for?
        aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        > and why Anyway. I feel I'm doing the same by promoting responsible disclosure of unethical treatment of people's data. Did you even look at the guy's frigging Wikipedia page yet?! I just feel like we're talking past each other. Reading through rest of thread...Is this a Musk-related thing for you?
        encryptluks2 4y ago
        > Did you even look at the guy's frigging Wikipedia page yet?! Of course, but a Wikipedia page is not immune from bias nor does it provide unfettered credibility. I recall the same tactics and approaches being utilized in users pushing an agenda for Wikileaks, suggesting that they were basically perfect and incapable of doing any wrong and that Assange could do no harm. I don't give anyone a God-like status. > Reading through rest of thread...Is this a Musk-related thing for you? No, this is a personal experience kind of thing. I see this type of situation quite often where a topic will get people are riled up based on their political and personal biases and skew their critical-thinking ability to actually analyze the situation. If congress was actually concerned about people's data, they would have actually put forth efforts to enact some reasonable legislation that didn't just apply to whatever platform they feel the most censored on.
  - zhxshen 4y ago
    Mudge isn't a politician, has an excellent reputation, and would probably be much happier if Twitter just had its shit together in the first place so he doesn't have to kick-off a whistlestop tour on the subpoena train. First stop: getting grilled for 2h40m by geriatric attorneys & faded beauty queens. In other words, I see no reason for him to lie about any of this.
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      - zhxshen 4y ago
        Comparing Mudge to a cop... Just Say No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko
        encryptluks2 4y ago
        Again, many similar people can build a positive public reputation but that doesn't mean they are immune from criticism or bad decision-making later in life. Epstein had a good reputation at one point. Larry Nasar had a good reputation at one point. Doesn't prevent people from doing bad things to further their own self-interests.
        aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        > Epstein had a good reputation at one point. With you? He never did with me.
        encryptluks2 4y ago
        By former Presidents, CEOs, Prince's, etc. Glad you never got too close to him as there is no telling what kind of situation you'd end up in.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Given Twitter's centrality in the flow of information, it would be unreasonable to not expect foreign agents (along with extremists of every flavor, financial fraud artists, and who knows what else) to try to get inside. The same is true of Facebook and Google.
  - zhxshen 4y ago
    Foreign agents run amok before an FBI warning: sure, shit happens. Foreign agents still running amok after an FBI warning: WTF?!
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      I'm not sure SoftBank/KSA is super concerned about "foreign agents" inside their company.
      - zhxshen 4y ago
        apparently so
ryzvonusef 4y ago
https://twitter.com/donie/status/1569695781631688704 https://twitter.com/donie/status/1569695781631688704 > "It's not far fetched to say an employee inside the company could take over the accounts of all the Senators in this room," @dotMudge with a warning here on Captiol Hill. #Twitter perhaps a valid reason?
- codyb 4y ago
  They probably have a way to take over accounts to check bug reports. We've had that at places I've worked. Where you'd be able to impersonate a user in order to see what was going on with their specific set of user data to corroborate their report and find a fix. The question is... are the permissions locked down, is access audited and immutable, etc I think.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yep, there's lots of software with "su for X" capabilities; it's much better than the normal method which is "ok tell me your password and I'll login as you and see what's up".
- AndrewStephens 4y ago
  Well Duh! Of course a twitter employee could take over any account. Hopefully they have some internal safeguards in place but there are probably hundreds of people there that could take over an account if they wanted to, just as the owners of news.ycombinator.com could take over any account here. You don't really own a Twitter (or Facebook, or ycombinator) account. Those services have an account on you. You update their account on you when you use their service to post (and they keep other information useful to their business on your account that you have no access to). This is just the way social media works.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    > Well Duh! Of course a twitter employee could take over any account. Most companies the size of Twitter would have a lot more controls than that on random employees' write access to production. If I want to assume a user's identity in my employer's production system I have to fill out a form justifying it, get my manager's approval for each account accessed, and my activity is subject to logging.
PKop 4y ago
If you pretend a platform for mass media, journalism, and public discourse that certainly affects domestic and international politics is trivial, sure. Just people huh? Not the Presidents, politicians, richest business men and high profile journalists right? To say nothing of all the other niche communities like finance and tech.
SanjayMehta 4y ago
Twitter is a propaganda network; whoever controls it, controls the narrative.
- nkozyra 4y ago
  How is that different than literally every other website or publication on earth?
  - illuminerdy 4y ago
    I think the scope and scale makes it different. Social media has become extremely important to the free and open exchange of ideas between people.
    - deltree7 4y ago
      Sinclair broadcasting has a far broader reach and actually influences ideologies that you can draw a direct correlation to ideology and Sinclair broadcast viewers. None of Twitter/FB/Youtube has that kind of correlation
    - nkozyra 4y ago
      > I think the scope and scale makes it different. Then what is the threshold wherein the natural inability to avoid bias becomes propaganda? Why is Twitter propaganda but not HN or my blog? When does it cross the line?
      - hackerlight 4y ago
        This is the binary bias[1]. You're trying to come up with hard distinctions and categories, when trying to do so is totally uninteresting and without any utility. I notice it's extremely common here on HN[2], perhaps because the job of an engineer involves working with categories, and something that's linguistically fuzzy is uncomfortable to them. I write more about this cognitive failing in the second half of my post here[3]. In short, there is no objective threshold wherein the natural inability to avoid bias becomes propaganda. And nor should we waste time on that point. Such a discussion is merely semantics around the definition of the word "propaganda". We should leave that to the people who compile dictionaries. Such clouded thinking has created a blind spot here in this very thread, e.g. that someone can say something so ridiculous as "How is that different than literally every other website or publication on earth?" and not get downvoted, as if the practical difference between a social media platform with access to hundreds of millions of eyeballs on the one hand, and a small blog on the other, is not self-evident. Such an obvious difference can only not be self-evident to someone who is incapable of understanding that things can vary by degree instead of by category. [1] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/binary-bias-distorts-how-we-integrate-information.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/binary-bi... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32708833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32708833 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674580
sc68cal 4y ago
This is all being done so that Elon Musk can back out of his contract to buy Twitter
- smt88 4y ago
  I hate Musk, but who cares what the motivation is? Shedding light on an (unfortunately very) influential company is good for the public. Musk shouldn't get out of his deal, but whatever he does to reveal malpractice at Twitter is good for all of us.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    Or any/all large corps that hold extortion-level userdata on everybody, statistically speaking.
marcinzm 4y ago
I'd hope congress pays some attention to anything which 80 million Americans use or interact with.
esperent 4y ago
> on a social network where people share 280 character messages is fucking bizarre. reply Perhaps a less dismissive characterization of Twitter would help make it less bizarre? It's a platform used by many leading public figures, including US presidents, to share information and the 280 character limit is a format that often leads to less filtered communication than you'd get in other mediums.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
I think you're missing the point entirely. The fact that the world has gone bonkers over this whole farce proves that Twitter is just as influential as the most jaded critic has suspected. And then you stop and realize that the user numbers on Twitter are DWARFED by Facebook (and Instagram and TikTok), and you realize just how screwed we really are. And all for the sake of making some people insanely rich, by flooding every aspect of our lives with advertising.
RunSet 4y ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/06/07/the-curious-case-of-rebekah-jones-suspension-from-twitter/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/06/07/the-cur...
thelock85 4y ago
> Society is becoming a parody of itself. We've accepted emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical (to some extent) abstractions of ourselves as our true selves. And exchanged social cues for algorithms to manipulate our behaviors. In the moments when you can break out of that abstraction the parody becomes so clear, and also terrifying. Like what are we actually building towards?
faeriechangling 4y ago
I’ve been hearing people downplay the seriousness of things on the internet my entire life and I’m mostly surprised at this point that people think that taking twitter seriously is such a ridiculous notion. If you instead say “international information system responsible for sending 500m messages daily including by senior govt/business officials has poor stewardship” I think it doesn’t seem so rediculous that senior government officials are so concerned. They all use Twitter, why wouldn’t they be concerned? You could easily cause militarily significant damage to a country with a good hack against twitter. There was a very politically significant insurrection organized on twitter, this system has already been used to direct an angry mob in the general direction of these high level government officials who proceeded to attempt to break down barricades and assault them.

capableweb 4y ago

It's not about "bots on a social network", it's about misuse of peoples data in one of the worlds biggest social network. Just as I tuned in, Mudge was talking about how Twitter repeatedly mismanaged peoples emails, citing that if they didn't sell emails, their competitors would get an unfair advantage.

zhxshen 4y ago

Are you even watching this? They're talking about foreign agents running amok on the inside (even after Twitter being notified by the FBI), lack of logging, mishandling of email addresses, etc, etc. Bots or no bots, all of that stuff is kind of a big deal.

encryptluks2 4y ago
[flagged]
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  It's really not hard to find evidence of twitter security fuck ups. Multiple Saudi nationals have given up dissident information to the saudi government because of their access to twitter's internal geolocation tools. One of them fled the country after twitter told him the FBI was investigating him. Twitter practically forced everyone to give them their phone number and then leaked the numbers. The list goes on.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Are you kidding me? The major credit bureaus have had just as many fuck ups. You don't see congress doing anything to fix it. There was a major utility shutdown due to security issues where they paid a ransom. Did you see Congress doing anything? This isn't exclusive to Twitter. Congress will use any situation to push their opportunistic rhetoric, and for them Twitter a social media company is more important to spread their propaganda than a credit bureau breach where everyone's personal data is compromised. What values does that show and teach, and why is that your talking point?
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      Who are you arguing for, and why?
      - encryptluks2 4y ago
        I'm arguing for the people, who are you arguing for?
        aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        > and why Anyway. I feel I'm doing the same by promoting responsible disclosure of unethical treatment of people's data. Did you even look at the guy's frigging Wikipedia page yet?! I just feel like we're talking past each other. Reading through rest of thread...Is this a Musk-related thing for you?
        encryptluks2 4y ago
        > Did you even look at the guy's frigging Wikipedia page yet?! Of course, but a Wikipedia page is not immune from bias nor does it provide unfettered credibility. I recall the same tactics and approaches being utilized in users pushing an agenda for Wikileaks, suggesting that they were basically perfect and incapable of doing any wrong and that Assange could do no harm. I don't give anyone a God-like status. > Reading through rest of thread...Is this a Musk-related thing for you? No, this is a personal experience kind of thing. I see this type of situation quite often where a topic will get people are riled up based on their political and personal biases and skew their critical-thinking ability to actually analyze the situation. If congress was actually concerned about people's data, they would have actually put forth efforts to enact some reasonable legislation that didn't just apply to whatever platform they feel the most censored on.
- zhxshen 4y ago
  Mudge isn't a politician, has an excellent reputation, and would probably be much happier if Twitter just had its shit together in the first place so he doesn't have to kick-off a whistlestop tour on the subpoena train. First stop: getting grilled for 2h40m by geriatric attorneys & faded beauty queens. In other words, I see no reason for him to lie about any of this.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    - zhxshen 4y ago
      Comparing Mudge to a cop... Just Say No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko
      - encryptluks2 4y ago
        Again, many similar people can build a positive public reputation but that doesn't mean they are immune from criticism or bad decision-making later in life. Epstein had a good reputation at one point. Larry Nasar had a good reputation at one point. Doesn't prevent people from doing bad things to further their own self-interests.
        aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        > Epstein had a good reputation at one point. With you? He never did with me.
        encryptluks2 4y ago
        By former Presidents, CEOs, Prince's, etc. Glad you never got too close to him as there is no telling what kind of situation you'd end up in.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Given Twitter's centrality in the flow of information, it would be unreasonable to not expect foreign agents (along with extremists of every flavor, financial fraud artists, and who knows what else) to try to get inside. The same is true of Facebook and Google.
- zhxshen 4y ago
  Foreign agents run amok before an FBI warning: sure, shit happens. Foreign agents still running amok after an FBI warning: WTF?!
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    I'm not sure SoftBank/KSA is super concerned about "foreign agents" inside their company.
    - zhxshen 4y ago
      apparently so

ryzvonusef 4y ago

https://twitter.com/donie/status/1569695781631688704 https://twitter.com/donie/status/1569695781631688704 > "It's not far fetched to say an employee inside the company could take over the accounts of all the Senators in this room," @dotMudge with a warning here on Captiol Hill. #Twitter perhaps a valid reason?

codyb 4y ago
They probably have a way to take over accounts to check bug reports. We've had that at places I've worked. Where you'd be able to impersonate a user in order to see what was going on with their specific set of user data to corroborate their report and find a fix. The question is... are the permissions locked down, is access audited and immutable, etc I think.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yep, there's lots of software with "su for X" capabilities; it's much better than the normal method which is "ok tell me your password and I'll login as you and see what's up".
AndrewStephens 4y ago
Well Duh! Of course a twitter employee could take over any account. Hopefully they have some internal safeguards in place but there are probably hundreds of people there that could take over an account if they wanted to, just as the owners of news.ycombinator.com could take over any account here. You don't really own a Twitter (or Facebook, or ycombinator) account. Those services have an account on you. You update their account on you when you use their service to post (and they keep other information useful to their business on your account that you have no access to). This is just the way social media works.
- michaelt 4y ago
  > Well Duh! Of course a twitter employee could take over any account. Most companies the size of Twitter would have a lot more controls than that on random employees' write access to production. If I want to assume a user's identity in my employer's production system I have to fill out a form justifying it, get my manager's approval for each account accessed, and my activity is subject to logging.

PKop 4y ago

If you pretend a platform for mass media, journalism, and public discourse that certainly affects domestic and international politics is trivial, sure. Just people huh? Not the Presidents, politicians, richest business men and high profile journalists right? To say nothing of all the other niche communities like finance and tech.

SanjayMehta 4y ago

Twitter is a propaganda network; whoever controls it, controls the narrative.

nkozyra 4y ago
How is that different than literally every other website or publication on earth?
- illuminerdy 4y ago
  I think the scope and scale makes it different. Social media has become extremely important to the free and open exchange of ideas between people.
  - deltree7 4y ago
    Sinclair broadcasting has a far broader reach and actually influences ideologies that you can draw a direct correlation to ideology and Sinclair broadcast viewers. None of Twitter/FB/Youtube has that kind of correlation
  - nkozyra 4y ago
    > I think the scope and scale makes it different. Then what is the threshold wherein the natural inability to avoid bias becomes propaganda? Why is Twitter propaganda but not HN or my blog? When does it cross the line?
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      This is the binary bias[1]. You're trying to come up with hard distinctions and categories, when trying to do so is totally uninteresting and without any utility. I notice it's extremely common here on HN[2], perhaps because the job of an engineer involves working with categories, and something that's linguistically fuzzy is uncomfortable to them. I write more about this cognitive failing in the second half of my post here[3]. In short, there is no objective threshold wherein the natural inability to avoid bias becomes propaganda. And nor should we waste time on that point. Such a discussion is merely semantics around the definition of the word "propaganda". We should leave that to the people who compile dictionaries. Such clouded thinking has created a blind spot here in this very thread, e.g. that someone can say something so ridiculous as "How is that different than literally every other website or publication on earth?" and not get downvoted, as if the practical difference between a social media platform with access to hundreds of millions of eyeballs on the one hand, and a small blog on the other, is not self-evident. Such an obvious difference can only not be self-evident to someone who is incapable of understanding that things can vary by degree instead of by category. [1] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/binary-bias-distorts-how-we-integrate-information.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/binary-bi... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32708833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32708833 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674580

sc68cal 4y ago

This is all being done so that Elon Musk can back out of his contract to buy Twitter

smt88 4y ago
I hate Musk, but who cares what the motivation is? Shedding light on an (unfortunately very) influential company is good for the public. Musk shouldn't get out of his deal, but whatever he does to reveal malpractice at Twitter is good for all of us.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Or any/all large corps that hold extortion-level userdata on everybody, statistically speaking.

marcinzm 4y ago

I'd hope congress pays some attention to anything which 80 million Americans use or interact with.

esperent 4y ago

> on a social network where people share 280 character messages is fucking bizarre. reply Perhaps a less dismissive characterization of Twitter would help make it less bizarre? It's a platform used by many leading public figures, including US presidents, to share information and the 280 character limit is a format that often leads to less filtered communication than you'd get in other mediums.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

I think you're missing the point entirely. The fact that the world has gone bonkers over this whole farce proves that Twitter is just as influential as the most jaded critic has suspected. And then you stop and realize that the user numbers on Twitter are DWARFED by Facebook (and Instagram and TikTok), and you realize just how screwed we really are. And all for the sake of making some people insanely rich, by flooding every aspect of our lives with advertising.

RunSet 4y ago

https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/06/07/the-curious-case-of-rebekah-jones-suspension-from-twitter/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/06/07/the-cur...

thelock85 4y ago

> Society is becoming a parody of itself. We've accepted emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical (to some extent) abstractions of ourselves as our true selves. And exchanged social cues for algorithms to manipulate our behaviors. In the moments when you can break out of that abstraction the parody becomes so clear, and also terrifying. Like what are we actually building towards?

faeriechangling 4y ago

I’ve been hearing people downplay the seriousness of things on the internet my entire life and I’m mostly surprised at this point that people think that taking twitter seriously is such a ridiculous notion. If you instead say “international information system responsible for sending 500m messages daily including by senior govt/business officials has poor stewardship” I think it doesn’t seem so rediculous that senior government officials are so concerned. They all use Twitter, why wouldn’t they be concerned? You could easily cause militarily significant damage to a country with a good hack against twitter. There was a very politically significant insurrection organized on twitter, this system has already been used to direct an angry mob in the general direction of these high level government officials who proceeded to attempt to break down barricades and assault them.