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A lot of the tweets that are quoted in the article have been removed. For example, Twitter employee Cristina Angeli is mentioned in the story for having tweeted

• UpToTheSky 4y ago
  Does Twitter have any way to prevent/punish using screenshots instead of the Twitter embed thing when you put Tweets on your website? Twitter can probably not use copyright to fight this, a Tweet probably does not fall under copyright because it is too short, right?
  • buggeryorkshire 4y ago
    I'm sure the BBC did exactly that for ages, iirc because somebody who got their tweet embedded by them changed their display name to "big dogs cock" or something.
    • oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
      That sounds like a flaw in the embedding technology — surely the display name should be whatever it was when the tweet was created?
      • r00fus 4y ago
        How do think embeds actually work? There is not snapshotting of data - it's simply a URL that renders at request - an HTML iframe.
        • darrenf 4y ago
          Sure, but there's no reason Twitter/whoever couldn't decide to offer a parameter like `at=<timestamp>` - which is really not that different to, say, a link to a file on github at a particular commit.
          • r00fus 4y ago
            Sure. I don't think Twitter has such an "look up as of effective date" enterprise feature though. Have you been able to access that data that way either through the UI or API?
            • darrenf 4y ago
              No, I don't use the API (or twitter at all, for that matter). I was just reacting to your statement: > There is not snapshotting of data - it's simply a URL that renders at request - an HTML iframe. "Simply a URL", the resource to which it refers being rendered in an iframe, could easily be a snapshot - as it is on other sites. Hence to me this read like a non sequitur.
            • oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
              I didn't mean to suggest that it would necessarily be possible today - I doubt twitter keeps a full history of username changes, for example, and they'd probably need to introduce more restrictions around changing them if they were to do so. That can all be part of the 'flaws' in the embedding technology I referred to.
  • FartyMcFarter 4y ago
    Would the copyright even belong to Twitter, as opposed to the author of the tweet?
  • staticman2 4y ago
    Short works can fall into copyright in the U.S. Heck, even taking a photo of the Mona Lisa is subject to copyright in the U.S under the theory there is creativity in the composition of the photo.
• q1w2 4y ago
  > Smart journalists are going to stop relying on Twitter's API now. This seems unlikely. Journalists are pragmatists and won't abandon Twitter unless there is an alternative.
  • grumple 4y ago
    The alternative is screenshots or direct quoting, both of which are actually easier than using the api.
    • nicce 4y ago
      But they have zero proof about being real. Using the API was proof. I can make any tweet from any user, take screenshot and you can’t prove it was not real.
      • pygy_ 4y ago
        News site could fetch the tweet markup using the API at publication time, save it locally, and publish a static version along with the article.
        • plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
          Thats a lot of effort going into something that 99% of the people couldn't care less.
          • afterburner 4y ago
            Exactly, so using a screenshot is in fact a good solution
            • oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
              Apart from the inefficiency and inaccessibility.
          • 4y ago
• Waterluvian 4y ago
  It's the same thing you see with millions of people, especially in some political demographics: Freedom for me, not for thee.
• yanderekko 4y ago
  >Smart journalists are going to stop relying on Twitter's API now. I somehow have a feeling that this is not the first time in history that an embedded Tweet in a news story has been removed, either by Twitter or the author.
  • cronix 4y ago
    Smart journalists screen capture the tweet and post it as a photo.
    • oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
      Sure, but a screenshot of a tweet is trivial to fake.
  • MisterBastahrd 4y ago
    People who post to drama sites routinely take screenshots of tweets and posts from other sites because it's an easy way to have permanence even in the face of hostile moderation. This will just extend to normal journalists now.
    • JasonFruit 4y ago
      At risk of finding out, what is a "drama site"? Do people actually have websites devoted to… drama?
      • SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
        Right now there are 1200 comments here. The drama you are looking for may be closer than you expect.
      • MisterBastahrd 4y ago
        What do you think TMZ is? There are tons of subreddits that are devoted to catching some person or another with questionable tastes or interests in saying something they shouldn't. In these instances, rather than linking to the post (which may result in a moderator taking it down or the poster realizing how badly they're being dragged), they instead take a screenshot since it's a bulletproof way to retain the content.
• m-p-3 4y ago
  I will send a request to archive a copy of a tweet in the Wayback Machine just in case, especially if the tweet is critical of Twitter from now on.
  • ggreer 4y ago
    Wayback Machine will remove archived tweets. For example, Taylor Lorenz’s tweets were erased after she requested it.[1] Other archives get removed if the people running the Internet Archive dislike the content. Similar to how Paypal isn’t a bank and eBay isn’t an auction site, The Internet Archive isn’t an archive. 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz https://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/https://twitter....
    • staticman2 4y ago
      Tweets are subject to copyright so I doubt the Wayback machine has any legal leg to stand on for continuing to host someone's tweets after a takedown request. When copyright expires in 125 years or whatever if the archive still exists they can publish them again.
  • ignoramous 4y ago
    archive.is works nicely too. Esp, since it strips any archived page of javascript and ads.
• nonethewiser 4y ago
  This is literally no different than before.
• nostromo 4y ago
  > "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) Freedom of speech is not the first amendment and vice versa. Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces, public and private, while the First Amendment only applies in America and to the government. People think they sound smart when they say freedom of speech only applies to government censorship, but they actually sound ignorant of the concept's millennia-long history pre-dating the discovery of America entirely.
  • webinvest 4y ago
    First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.“
    • chrisseaton 4y ago
      That's 'First Amendment Freedom of Speech', not 'freedom of speech'. When people say 'freedom of speech should be protected', they're being more broad than 'First Amendment Freedom of Speech should be protected'.
    • andrewaylett 4y ago
      Right. We're probably all aware of the text -- this is a US-centric site, after all. But I think you make the GP's point all the more necessary: The first amendment to the US constitution restrains one party from introducing rules abridging freedom of speech. There are plenty of other parties who may or may not seek to introduce and/or enforce rules allowing or prohibiting various forms of speech which are not the US government. My own government, for example. And Twitter. That an action doesn't breach the first amendment to the US constitution doesn't say all that much when it comes to whether it's consistent with the stated ideals of proponents of freedom of speech.
  • jimt1234 4y ago
    Conversely, people often reference "First Amendment" in situations that have nothing to do with government censorship.
• markus_zhang 4y ago
  IMHO freedom in US is usually in fact 1) free for people who have $$ or 2) poor people who advocates for 1) for whatever the reason. Basically freedom means less regulation from governments, which is only good for super riches and large enterprises. If you are not you should welcome more government regulation to counter the other elephant in the room. Two evils is always better than one.
  • dimitrios1 4y ago
    Freedom is for everyone given that you stay out of the limelight and don't have something someone else more rich and powerful wants to take.
  • johannes1234321 4y ago
    Yes, regulation is often pushed to protect the peasants from the aristocrats, to protect workers from the capitalists but by far not always: Regulation is also pushed to manifest the power of the powerful ... which means there are also freedoms for the weak to protect. It is a centuries long battle to find the balance in always changing times.
  • daniel-cussen 4y ago
  • unity1001 4y ago
    Amazing how the US is in knee-deep sh*t and Americans are still downwoting people when they say what you said...
• tshaddox 4y ago
  > This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) It’s not ironic or remotely unexpected if you’ve taken notice of any of his actual actions involving freedom of speech.
  • e40 4y ago
    Elon is the type of person where action and words tell a very different story. In that way, it's expected. It's still ironic as hell, given his words.
    • elmomle 4y ago
      I would say he (and other billionaires like Thiel) is immature in a very classical sense: he goes through the world like a child without appreciation for how difficult it was to create a society in which everybody could (say) engage in discourse safely; he sees some flaws in the system and thinks that because he is a special person and he saw what he thinks is a flaw he is entitled to pull it apart. But there is no methodical improvement being proposed. People like this are simply destroying the work of their forebears (of creating a stable pluralistic society) for personal benefit. It is not the behavior of responsible humans, much less leaders.
      • frumper 4y ago
        What does it mean to engage in discourse safely?
        • camjohnson26 4y ago
          You don’t get tortured for criticizing the current administration for one.
          • frumper 4y ago
            Is that something you see as a danger because of Elon taking over Twitter?
• camhart 4y ago
  I don't see any mention of that tweet?
• anonu 4y ago
  Usually your employer has confidentiality and non-disparage clauses in your employment contract and separation agreements. So "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." probably would be more like "This Tweet violated your contractual agreement to your employer".
  • delfinom 4y ago
    Non disparage clauses are usually non-enforceable in normal employment contracts once fired, hence why they have those separation agreements. But separation agreements need to be signed by both parties, they can't fire you and immediately say "btw no talking bad about us".
  • 93po 4y ago
    This is exactly right and it's ridiculous people don't see this. Free speech isn't equal to breaking confidentiality agreements on a platform owned and operated by the company you work for.
    • meheleventyone 4y ago
      Free speech and breaking confidentiality agreements are orthogonal to one another. The latter might result in legal action or firing but it has nothing to do with the right to publish.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • ytpete 4y ago
      But so does this mean on Twitter, leaks and whistleblowing about Twitter will be censored but leaks and whistleblowing about any other company will not? Because that sure doesn't sound like the neutral "free speech" moderation style Elon has been talking about so loudly nonstop for the past months.
• rkapsoro 4y ago
  AFAIK they haven't changed content management policy yet. This is application of the current rules/process.
  • chipotle_coyote 4y ago
    https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules If there’s a current publicly-stated Twitter rule that prohibits screenshots of an internal Slack channel full of blue heart emojis, I’m not aware of it; it’s not abusive, it’s not hateful conduct, it’s not illegal, and presuming there wasn’t personally identifying information in the screenshot, it’s not private information by Twitter’s own definition as linked above. If this was a screenshot from a Slack channel of any other tech company, do you really think Twitter would have quickly taken it down? I honestly don’t.
• commandlinefan 4y ago
  > "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment Freedom of speech is different than the first amendment. The first amendment prohibits the government from limiting freedom of speech, but the concept itself is more general than the law.
• ugh123 4y ago
  It may not be violating "twitter rules", but it's likely violating company policy not to expose internal dealings (even as trivial as screenshots of slack emojis).
  • pornel 4y ago
    So Twitter's corporate interests can trump the free speech ideology. What a surprise. Leaking a private slack can be political activism for worker's rights. I'm not saying these particular heart emojis are, but here Twitter is still in position of judging whether particular tweet was acceptable or not.
    • ugh123 4y ago
      > Leaking a private slack can be political activism for worker's rights. Unless she's acting as a "whistleblower", then that argument carries zero weight.
      • pornel 4y ago
        But who's judging whether she is or not? Twitter is, still. The whole point of free speech ideology is that corporations aren't supposed to be unaccountable judges and executioners, and this should stay up until she is actually convicted of breaking some law.
        • ugh123 4y ago
          Wait a minute, corporations can't police their own platform? Sure they can. "Freedom of speech" is a political freedom -> free from persecution from the government. If Twitter (or Elon as owner of his private company) wants to take down a post that exposes internal dealings then they're completely within their right to do that. But that doesn't relate at all to the other, more important conversation of Twitter limiting certain voices (Trump, et al). Stop mixing the two. I remember some years back when Microsoft fired an employee for taking pictures of some boxes of brand new Macintosh computers on their campus and publishing it on the internet as a way to lightly smear the company (for using non-MS products apparently). MS was fully within their right to do that and nobody screamed "freedom of speech" back then.
• dunkelheit 4y ago
  > This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" Another ironic thing is the number of people who lectured anyone disagreeing with twitter's content moderation decisions that twitter is a commercial enterprise that can do whatever it pleases (usually this means yielding to activist pressure) and who are now acting indignant when Musk acts like he owns the place (which he does).
  • DHPersonal 4y ago
    Is that fair? The criticism about these deleted posts seems to be pointing out the contradiction between the claim of widening the speech available and the way that it is being limited here, not that Twitter has no right to do it.
    • dunkelheit 4y ago
      > Is that fair? I don't know! Probably not. It is all a political struggle and Musk for sure pursues his own goals in it. But if all this results in a twitter that is more interesting, open and less prudish than before, I think it is worth it. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
      • alldayeveryday 4y ago
        Yeah, have you ever noticed that most people only complain about free speech when the voices they agree with our silenced, and never complain when voices they don't agree with our silenced?
  • mcguire 4y ago
    Consistency is not Musk's strong suit.
• yummies 4y ago
  I think there's a much simpler and less juicy angle here: someone posted a screenshot of an internal communication, and it got removed. It's not surprising or controversial that Twitter would try to contain a leak of its own internal comms (a screenshot of their slack). This isn't "Twitter took down a disparaging post about Twitter", it's that they tried to stop the sharing of internal data. That being said, I don't disagree with the sentiment here in the sibling comments, this just isn't the steelman you're looking for. Best of luck to all remaining and recently parted Twitter folk.
  • actually_a_dog 4y ago
    Oh, please. This "internal communication" was a bunch of blue hearts if the source is to be believed. What vital business information did that leak?
    • WalterBright 4y ago
      It's much easier to have a rule that says "no public posting of internal communications" than "make a judgement call about whether an internal communication is vital or not". And with an upheaval going on at Twitter at the moment, nobody has the time to do the latter.
      • mathattack 4y ago
        This! Sometimes it’s not bad behavior, it’s “we just don’t have time for this sh!t.” Their HR and PR people are busy enough today. This isn’t a broad defense of Musk or Twitter. Just a comment that there doesn’t have to be a conspiracy around any corner.
        • jrumbut 4y ago
          Whether it is malicious or lazy, it shows where "free speech" ranks among their values. You have time for the things you really care about.
      • meheleventyone 4y ago
• cragfar 4y ago
  Just looking at her account, her tweet about being fired/laid off is still there. I don't know what it originally was, but it seems like a picture was posted and depending on what it was might have been the issue. Like if it was a bunch of her coworkers in the office maybe that was against the rules for whatever reason.
• PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  Enforcers: "Those are the rules" Everyone: what about our freedom of speech? Enforcers: those are our rules New Boss: You're playing by my rules now Ex-enforcers: what bout our freedom of speech? New Boss: Welcome to your machine
  • kepler1 4y ago
    Where do our free speech rights say that you are entitled to publish an opinion / statement on a particular channel or someone's private media outlet? Somehow the notion of rights is being expanded as a catch-all of various hopes and desires, misunderstood or expected to put obligations on people or entities that those rights do not apply to. This makes rights soft and hard to disagree with, and actually less clear and less valuable. You have the right to say something. You can go say it at politicians making a speech, you can write a letter, publish an article in some newspaper that will publish it. Not the right to say it on Twitter. Or the New York Times, or whatever outlet. You don't have the right / specific private entities are not required to enable your opinion.
  • toofy 4y ago
    so the new boss doesn’t actually believe in the ideology he loudly preaches?
    • harlequinn77 4y ago
      And the censors don't like being censored. Everyone is a hypocrite
      • toofy 4y ago
        my suspicion is “the censors” are highlighting how elons actions are proving in real time that they’ve been correct all along: that the “free speech absolutist” position has always been detached from reality. he is, as we speak—and will continue to prove in the future—that “the censors” have been correct all along, social spaces of a certain number of people, if you don’t want the visitors to flee en masse, will need moderation to keep things from breaking down.
• reactspa 4y ago
  Twitter employee on October 21: "Slowly making the migration to Mastodon" Same Twitter employee today (November 4): furiously posting on Twitter about having gotten fired from Twitter. Karma? Ref: - https://twitter.com/ruchowdh/status/1583518479210393600 https://twitter.com/ruchowdh/status/1583518479210393600 - https://twitter.com/ruchowdh https://twitter.com/ruchowdh
  • googlryas 4y ago
    What's with the take off of "IYKYK"(in her bio)? Is it because people feel special advertising that they're part of some elite/secret ring of true knowledge sharers? Literally if the phrase was excluded, it's factualness would still be true. Basically, I find people who say "IYKYK" to commonly be completely insufferable performance artists.
    • reactspa 4y ago
      Can you imagine complaining about being fired from a company after publicly declaring that you were abandoning its product and that you preferred their competitor's product? IYKYK.
• VikingCoder 4y ago
  I want to buy a book that shows every single Tweet from Donald J. Trump, ever since he descended that elevator to announce his candidacy, through Biden's inauguration, and a little beyond... ...annotated with fact-checking, and historical context. Probably with a few lines from speeches thrown in as well. To really document the heck out of how insane those years were.
  • dylan604 4y ago
    >descended that elevator escalator My favorite was the Twitter account to see if it would get banned by only retweeting Trump's account(s). They wanted to show how the rules were applied differently between accounts.
    • VikingCoder 4y ago
      Oh yeah, that's what I meant, thanks. Obligatory Mitch Hedberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHopAo_Ohy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHopAo_Ohy0
    • VikingCoder 4y ago
      My favorite is when like PBS tweets out the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, and right-wing nutjobs accuse it of being un-American.
      • ipaddr 4y ago
        I had to look that up. Here is what happened, the documents gets split into 5000 tweets. Twitter will randomly include one tweet in a feed and someone will respond. For example one person said what npr is calling to overthrow the government because the specific text has a reference to that. Didn't see any unAmerican comments. Saw comments like tweeting 5000 tweets is a stupid thing to do. Not sure if nutjob should be used in 2022 to label someone you disagree with as having mental issues. Mental illness is a serious issue and using it a weapon is not something to be casually used
        • 4y ago
• dylan604 4y ago
  >Smart journalists are going to stop relying on Twitter's API now. Yay! Journalists that do nothing but build a story around Tweets is not journalism. That's BuzzFeed. The fact that legit news sources decided to follow BuzzFeed is just a very sad comment on the state of affairs we live in now.
  • Chyzwar 4y ago
    Actually, BuzzFeed aside garbage reporting have also decent investigations journalism as well https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations https://www.buzzfeed.com/investigations
    • dylan604 4y ago
      I know BuzzFeedNews is different than BuzzFeed. I know I used the formal capitalization of the specific site BuzzFeed, but it is a pretty good phrase if used as buzz feed. "Journalists" that try to make a story out of "what's the buzz" is more of the underlying point. That's just an aggregator. There's not complexity to the story that a journalist has pulled together. There's no getting a feel for the person being interviewed to feel if they might have more info to be pulled out to expand the story. Having said that, there is a time and a place to a feel for the buzz, and places like BuzzFeed are perfectly adequate at doing that. But to confuse a buzz feed as a piece of news/journalism is just insulting to journalism.
• NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
  >This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to), but it's also significant because - He hasn't made any major changes to algorithms / policies yet. They're tripping over their own pre-Musk rules.
  • jurassic 4y ago
    When you layoff 75%, that is a change of policy. Lots of people are needed to operate the system as it was.
• compiler-guy 4y ago
  Many of the child posts assume that Twitter deleted these tweets. That isn't clear to me. It's possible the original authors did (happy to see proof either way). When one is laid off, there are often clauses in the severance agreement that forbid disparaging the company or leaking secrets, or similar things. If I wanted that severance check and someone pointed out to me that the tweet may be in violation of the severance agreement, I would delete it too.
  • nr2x 4y ago
    100%.
• watwut 4y ago
  Musk is pro free speech, when it is speech he likes and finds funny. Not at all with speech he dislikes. It is stupid, but free speech became codeword for "my opponents should shut up while my friends can arbitrary harrass them". And that is me being euphemistic about it.
  • pojzon 4y ago
    Didnt you just explain how current social media work ? Who decides what is „news” and what is „fake-news” ? (Few PC ppl in big corpos?). Why sayin that „sure you can say what you want, but you have to defend your words” is so controversial ? Are ppl afraid of being proven wrong or look stupid ?
• Chinjut 4y ago
  I think that Christina Angeli tweet was voluntarily deleted, according to https://twitter.com/CA_CrissyAngel/status/1588347829751549952 https://twitter.com/CA_CrissyAngel/status/158834782975154995....
• karmasimida 4y ago
  Twitter employees created this censorship machine now descending upon themselves is hellishly funny.
• grammers 4y ago
  > "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." Censorship at its best. Not optimistic about Twitter and where it's heading to.
• kcplate 4y ago
  Do we know that the company did it? Or did the tweeter do it after it was suggested to them by someone knowledgeable that posting internal company communications might violate the NDAs and corporate policies on company owned communication platforms? And why are only some of the tweets being removed? Always a lot of assumptions in the comments of every Twitter story I have read over the last week or so… and so far most of the assumptions tend to be pretty wrong when the dust settles.
• fleddr 4y ago
  It's a truly strange conspiracy theory to extrapolate that Musk will simply delete Tweets he doesn't like. About a billion of those get posted each day. It's extremely unlikely he called for it on this one, sounds more like a HR policy. Smart journalists destroy their own relevancy? Barely anybody reads their articles, that's why they post and link to it from Twitter. And thereby grow a personal audience they can take to any other newspaper.
• smsm42 4y ago
  > consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" It is a bit frustrating how people refuse to understand the difference between "you can't speak this because we don't like what you said" and "you can't post internal company privileged information while being employee at the same company". Supporting freedom of speech doesn't mean Musk would endorse anybody doing anything, including divulging company's internal communications publicly (and without permission from people whose communications are getting revealed, probably). > then people had better take screenshots of the tweets they want to quote, just in case. That has long been the case, Twitter was removing and blocking messages (and people) for much less reasonable causes than leaking private communications of Twitter employees.