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The Twitter Files
- headsoup 4y agoI find it most amusing that it seems no one is actually even slightly interested in seeing the nude pics. Just avoiding political inconvenience. Poor Hunter, that's gotta hit the ego.
- unnamed76ri 4y agoJust a couple weeks ago I had a comment downvoted and flagged for saying what this confirms. The political bias in tech circles is unreal sometimes.
- encryptluks2 4y agoThe political bias from either party is unreal most of the times. It isn't exclusive to the left or right.
- taolegal 4y agoExcept every important cultural institution and practically every tech space is left-biased.
- lilactown 4y agoTwitter's now owned by Elon, who is making friends with right wing reactionaries in public. Fox News is the most watched news channel on the continent. All tech companies at the very least are pro-capitalist, it's often a choice of whether they're outwardly more pro-market or more technocratic, which has nothing to do with political lefts and rights.
- taolegal 4y ago> Fox News is the most watched news channel on the continent. They have high viewership in spite of the fact that liberals have complete dominance over so-called "official" news media & centers of cultural production, as well as universities. Conservatives don't control government or anything else in any meaningful sense. Just look at American govt over the course of the 20th & 21st century to see that progressives squarely won in terms of shaping the size, scope & spending of govt. > has nothing to do with political lefts and rights You're supposing a True Scotsman that "liberals" aren't true left or something, that's complete nonsense. You may as well be regretting that a horse isn't a unicorn. Tech companies are overwhelmingly biased towards liberals. Don't play dumb.
- ModernMech 4y ago> Conservatives don't control government or anything else in any meaningful sense. 6/3 conservative Supreme Court and the House. That’s half of the federal government.
- Vecr 4y agoMore like a just over a sixth, there's three branches, executive, legislature, and judicial. If you buy into the whole "media is the fourth branch" thing, I say that's actually a minority or a plurality.
- kevingadd 4y agoIf you think "complete functional control over the supreme court for likely decades" is insignificant enough to make conservatives count as a minority you need to pay more attention to the powers and impact of the supreme court. They can effectively overrule any legislation if they wish and have proven a desire to do so.
- Vecr 4y agoThey say they can do that (judicial review is kind of not in the constitution) but what California and New York are doing post New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen puts a bit of a question on that. Making much of New York City a "gun free zone" is not what "the right to keep and bear arms" sounds like to me.
- ModernMech 4y agoI’m counting executive branch, judicial branch, and congress as two because they each individually have their own mandated powers. The conservative Supreme Court just unilaterally gutted fundamental human rights for everyone in the country. That’s serious power that not even the President has. It’s a joke to pretend conservatives have no political power in the face of that. The third highest government official is the Speaker of the House, who will be a Republican in January, so it’s pretty hard to say Republicans have no power when they control the Speaker. It’s crazy how much power that is. But to call the media a branch of government and to assign “control” of media to Democrats is really a stretch. Pretty hard to make that case with Fox News around.
- hk__2 4y ago> Except every important cultural institution and practically every tech space is left-biased. This is because progressism is associated with the left. The tech space lives on the edge of innovation, so of course it leans toward progressism.
- encryptluks2 4y agoThis is what I find fascinating. A majority of these companies are staffed by the best in technology who are particularly intelligent and vote more progressive. Then comes along some dumb conservative complaining that a majority of people working there don't want to hear some dumb conspiracy.
- taolegal 4y ago> a majority of people so minorities should be abused?
- encryptluks2 4y agoI can't even begin to fathom how you are reaching that far. We are taking about skills here not race.
- taolegal 4y agoYou're saying that when people are outnumbered they should be at the mercy of the majority. Even worse that you're apparently ableist saying that it's better if it's on the basis of skill rather than race.
- encryptluks2 4y agoYou're saying that if people have no medical degree that they should be given jobs as surgeons because they are in a minority group of not having the skills necessary to perform surgeries? No where have you claimed or provided proof that conservatives are being discriminated against in hiring.
- boc 4y agoNobody on the left cares about protecting Hunter Biden. IF he broke any laws, then he should be in jail. AFAIK, there's no current legal case against him. What you're seeing here is the "left" learning to not take everything the right screams about at face value. They watched Hillary get dragged through the mud with Benghazi over absolutely nothing of substance, including months of Congressional hearings. Thus this new "Hunter Biden Laptop" story smells like the same exact ratfucking playbook. Complaining that Twitter didn't amplify an unproven story isn't bias. It's successful pattern recognition.
- M4v3R 4y ago> Complaining that Twitter didn't amplify an unproven story isn't bias. What do you mean by “didn’t amplify”? They actively suppressed/banned the story (based on a policy that didn’t even apply in this case) instead of “not amplifying it”, these are two totally separate things.
- chrisbaker98 4y agoWhat was actually on Hunter Biden's laptop? Can someone give me a link to a succinct, non-partisan list of facts?
- gilbetron 4y agoUnbiased, factual descriptions are really hard to come by. Here's an ok take on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/z3isaw/whats_up_with_hunters_biden_laptop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/z3isaw/whats_... You'll have to do your own digging around to build up your own opinion if you want more info. From my digging, it still seems like pretty much nothing we didn't already know.
- lazyeye 4y agoJoe Biden (AKA "The Big Guy") was taking a cut from Hunter Biden's ridiculous business dealings with foreign entities (otherwise known as "influence peddling"). With zero relevant business experience Hunter Biden was getting highly lucrative business deals with all kinds of shady people connected to foreign govts. Joe Biden denied any involvement with his son's business but there is evidence that he was involved from witnesses (including attending business meetings) and emails on the laptop to indicate he was involved but they were conscious of the need to publicly at least, keep his name out of it. It's the kind of thing for which, if it was Trump, we would have seen 24/7 media meltdown for years but because its a Biden well "media companies are privately owned and can do what they want".
- M4v3R 4y agoIt’s because you used a radioactive term “affect elections”. I’m not from USA but I noticed that nowadays even the slightest suggestion that X (whatever X might be) influenced the outcome of an election will get you downvoted/flagged into oblivion. That is, if you’re talking about the 2020 election, suggesting that anything was wrong with the 2016 ones is perfectly fine for some reason.
- Nimitz14 4y agoThere is absolutely nothing new here. Work on your reading comprehension.
- acdha 4y agoHere’s your comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33497772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33497772 Those are some very strong claims. What specifically in this thread supports them? For example, we know that Twitter received these requests from both campaigns, whereas deliberate collusion would only have been with one, and the most hyped up claims are a handful of tweets which contained non-consensual nudity, which doesn’t exactly seem like it would shift the election.
- tomrod 4y agoI'm surprised HN isn't flagging and downvoting the comments supporting the content, since it remains misinformation (if not downright disinformation). The comments discussing process (was this appropriate moderation?) are much more in line with my experience in the community.
- sn0w_crash 4y agoI am fully prepared for folks on the left to pretend this is a non-issue / not important. The probability that they consider this an abuse of power is zero.
- sanderjd 4y agoI would say I consider it both an abuse of power and not important. Musk is also abusing his power as dear leader of Twitter and I also consider that not important. All the drama about Twitter is a just a gossipy sideshow.
- mikkergp 4y agoAbuse of power by whom? Twitter or the Government?
- sn0w_crash 4y agoThe head of legal at of a publicly traded corporation acting without knowledge of the CEO to suppress a story about a presidential candidates son, while other internal executives argue in writing if they even have the legal/policy grounds to do so - Ive spent decades in corporations and I can think of few more obvious abuses of power. If you can see the scam, great. If you cannot then I cannot help you.
- mikkergp 4y agoI mean, this is an event that lasted a day, they admitted their own mistakes, and they clearly deliberated over it. Like I agree with you in principal and could agree if they tried to keep it going, but they even said they should probably stop suppressing it because it was against their policies. They in fact seemed to not want to use their power. So I guess, yeah, what do you propose gets done about it? What is the core principal here that should get applied equally across the political spectrum. If you misapply your moderation policies you should be hanged?
- imstate 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bakugo 4y ago
- 1270018080 4y agoThis conspiracy theory validates what you want to be true, is a better way to put it.
- bakugo 4y agoHow much more proof is needed before you stop calling it a conspiracy theory and start calling it a fact?
- 1270018080 4y agoA puff piece for a far-right billionaire on what is basically a Truth Social equivalent website means nothing to me. It doesn't register as proof. It's like what your parents share on facebook, or the schizophrenic guy on the subway yelling nonsense into the air. There's no point.
- bakugo 4y ago
- 1270018080 4y agoThey're all pretty normal words. You can disseminate the core message.
- ZGDUwpqEWpUZ 4y ago"Disseminate" is not the word you're looking for there.
- RavingGoat 4y ago
- tjstebbing 4y agoThis is certainly the kind of transparency twitter needs to regain it's appearance of neutrality. It's some well-played PR for the platform at least.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
- gfdgfdgdfggf 4y agoHow is it nothing? They locked out Kaleigh McEnany from her account for tweeting about the story.
- assttoasstmgr 4y agoBlocking DMs from sharing URLs to a mainstream news story is CCP-level censorship. I'd expect to read about this happening on WeChat, not here. Yet here we are.
- hk__2 4y ago> Blocking DMs from sharing URLs to a mainstream news story is CCP-level censorship. I'd expect to read about this happening on WeChat, not here. Yet here we are. Twitter admitted it was a wrong decision and reverted it. So it’s more "here we were" than "here we are".
- DevKoala 4y agoTwitter definitely stopped feeling impartial in its treatment of information around 2012 or so. I guess it wasn't a conspiracy theory after all.
- xqcgrek2 4y agoIt was a conspiracy theory. And the theory has been shown to be true. The conspiracy was real.
- mikkergp 4y agoWhat’s the theory?
- gfdgfdgdfg 4y agoTwitter suppressed information that portrayed Democrats negatively.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sva_ 4y agoIt seems like something like this will never hit the HN frontpage. I ponder if its really just due to the upvote/downvote + flag ratio. Edit: It seems to have been unflagged manually.
- codefreeordie 4y agoNo, this will almost certainly not hit the frontpage. The dupe detector has already started removing all the threads, even though on other topics it only engages after a topic actually gets picked up. Every effort will be taken to suppress this story, just like the story it's talking about. (And remember that dang has before admitted to manually editing scores and reordering the front page to suit his preferences for what the community talk about) None of the threads are even in the top 500 posts, despite the score being much higher than plenty of other posts which have made it. (Most of the things on the 15th page are like 5 points in 12 hours) edit: Here is a recent comment from dang himself where he talks about a moderator altering the score of a post downward because it wasn't the kind of content that they wanted to be popular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698592 edit 2 since im not allowed to reply to you @dang: I posted the one because I was not being believed. Finding a bunch of them was too much work. You may not "make a secret" of it, but clearly lots of people don't know that the frontpage is actually what the moderators want folks to talk about, not what actually gets the upvotes. Oh, and reread your comment to me. Your comment uses exactly the style and tone for which you routinely chastise folks. You're doing a really good job, actually, of making my point for me.
- cwkoss 4y agoidk, maybe the dupe detector is removing threads because there are multiple people posting it.
- codefreeordie 4y agoNormally, the dupe detector only detects dupes that have actually been "seen" edit: here's dang himself on how the dupe detector ignores things that haven't had their chance in the sun yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33824482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33824482
- Dig1t 4y agoI'm a moderate, not a Democrat and not a Republican. I think people on the left have a blind spot here, that the more suppression they use, the more division they create, and the more moderates and people on the right grow to resent them. I would have identified as a Democrat on pretty much every issue, but this authoritarian suppression of speech and ideas has just pushed me away from that side completely. At this point both sides suck and I want nothing to do with either.
- whateveracct 4y agoIf this issue is the sticking point given the other differences in platform (many that involve fundamental rights and freedoms), then it sounds like Republicans have managed to find a good new wedge issue (you not voting is a known part of their playbook).
- folkrav 4y agoThe whole idea that there are "sides" to be had is IMHO extremely sad in the first place. This whole bipartisan system bullshit is causing so much damage, and its been going on since at least the 70s.
- andrew_ 4y ago“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” -John Adams in letter to Johnathan Jackson, 1780.
- pulvinar 4y agoThat's an odd take on US history-- it certainly wasn't all roses before the 70s, what with political sides getting people blacklisted, killed, or even starting a civil war.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Dig1t 4y agoWhy is this flagged now?
- codefreeordie 4y agobecause on HN, you are required to be a democrat and support all democrat causes.
- sn0w_crash 4y agoDang will personally unflag stuff like this. One can hope.
- nells 4y ago
- dang 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33839161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33839161
- skilled 4y ago
- themodelplumber 4y agoInteresting to highlight that there was actually some structured internal back & forth about content moderation which was amenable to improvement. This was then completely replaced by the "Musk Himself" Content Moderation Engine. https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1598830730963845123 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15988307309638451...
- xqcgrek2 4y agoYour link does not support your assertions
- cwkoss 4y agoSome people are probably going to call for legislation to address this twitter thread. What kinds of laws or regulations do you think could solve this?
- michaelgrosner2 4y agoNone, because the government shouldn’t be interfering in speech.
- Dig1t 4y agoThe whole point of this is that government is already interfering in speech. This one specifically is pretty strong IMO (Biden team telling Twitter to manipulate speech): https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 Yes yes, someone has already said something about one of them being a dick pic, remove that one, whatever. But do you think they are ALL dick picks? This email is one out of many.
- michaelgrosner2 4y ago> This one specifically is pretty strong IMO That was from October 2020. Biden was not in government then.
- dbsights 4y agoConspiring to suppress true information to influence an election seems worse.
- code_witch_sam 4y agowhat if you use the report button to do the same, and succeed? have you influenced the election? perhaps marginally. your tweets do the same.
- ThatPlayer 4y ago
- sidibe 4y agoSo the journalist gets access to the emails in return for promising to dribble the story on Twitter over 30 minutes? Would be a much better experience if he wrote an article or at least tweeted faster, but not as much refreshing I guess.
- cwkoss 4y agoI'll bet you 1000 dogecoin, Elon is sitting at a computer refreshing a page of twitter metrics, giggling like a schoolboy
- ilyt 4y agoAnd probably will go "see that's why I randomly fired a bunch of people, coz they did this stuff"
- xtalx 4y agoHe’s writing an article. “ Dear TK Readers: Very shortly, I’m going to begin posting a long thread of information on Twitter, at my account, @mtaibbi. This material is likely to get a lot of attention. I will absolutely understand if subscribers are angry that it is not appearing here on Substack first. I’d be angry, too. The last 96 hours have been among the most chaotic of my life, involving multiple trips back and forth across the country, with a debate in Canada in between. There’s a long story I hope to be able to tell soon, but can’t, not quite yet anyway. What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions. Those of you who’ve been here for years know how seriously I take my obligation to this site’s subscribers. On this one occasion, I’m going to have to simply ask you to trust me. As it happens, there may be a few more big surprises coming, and those will be here on Substack. And there will be room here to to discuss this, too, in time. In any case, thanks for your support and your patience, and please hold me to a promise to make all this up to you, and then some.”
- lapcat 4y ago> What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions. In other words, Musk made him do it.
- slickdork 4y agoAnyone have the 'long form' of this to read? Twitter is such a terrible way to read long content. Aside: I really enjoyed Taibbi's few books, but haven't respected his online opinions since around 2016. I'm not surprised Elon chose Taibbi to 'break this story' considering what 'side' Taibbi's been on -- he's had a pretty clear bias, but I'm willing to check out more of his reporting here in long form.
- anigbrowl 4y agoJust wait until he's done and then tweet '@threadreaderapp unroll' (or look for replies to people who already placed the request. You'll get a link toa. single-page version.
- oska 4y agoI'm pretty sure that he'll write this up as a proper article too. Edit : just listened to the podcast episode he linked at the end of the tweet thread and it appears from what he's saying there that he might only write about it on twitter. (Perhaps for legal indemnity reasons?)
- pimlottc 4y agoUntil your post, I had no idea he wasn’t finished. What a way to read a complex story :P
- Kreutzer 4y ago
- jacooper 4y agoI don't follow or give attention to American politics, I don't live in America, and probably never will. But the Left bias in Social media is extremely concerning, its so apparent from the type of people who work in tech, especially in Silicon valley, that they have a Leftist bias, whether the Left or the Right are correct doesn’t matter. The issue is Social media in our time is it’s where a lot of people form opinions, follow news coverage, and basically inform themselves about the world. Instead of it just being a impartial medium, it actively controls and narrates the conversation. before Social media (IMO) no conversational medium strived to control and influence the conversation itself. the coffee shop didn’t really pay attention to what you said(with exceptions of course) they just cared that you ordered something. In a family gathering the medium itself doesn’t influence the conversation, your family members do. And when People go to complain about this, Left-leaning tech workers will just say “don’t be mean”, or don’t break the rules, I doubt their reaction would be the same if Social media was more right leaning, heck Left-leaning journalists are already trying to dismiss the story as nothing important, while it’s the first known proof of political leaning affecting moderation by going beyond the rules. the Hunter Biden laptop story should’ve been much bigger, and downplaying the affect social media censorship had on it, is just lying. Its a problem and I don’t know the solution either, is it creating a new type of classification that forces Social networks to act as an impartial communication medium? Is it creating a public social media for each country?, almost nobody knows, but acknowledging the problem is a first step. (Please don’t go into a flame war about American politics, this is a conversations about Social media political leanings, not American politics)
- whateveracct 4y agoWhy should it have been a bigger story exactly? My understanding is there wasn't any wrongdoing found (not to mention the chain of custody was a mess).
- jacooper 4y agoI didn't read the whole thing, but from the reactions of politicians in the Twitter files and some news writers, it looks like it was something worth paying attention to, surely more than the every day doom and gloom headlines. (As I said I am not an avid american politics follower, I would remove the "should've been a bigger story" line if that's an issue)
- phphphphp 4y agohttps://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598843310042279936 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598843310042279936 Jack was, quite famously, half-assing his leadership of Twitter for years. There was no secret, it was constantly discussed here on HN: how Jack’s inability to lead can be described as an “amazing subplot” rather than an embarrassing stain on Jack is beyond me — I guess because Elon loves Jack, this has to be framed positively?
- mikkergp 4y agoThis part is weird, and it seems like there was an agreement between Musk and Matt not to smear Jack in this process. But if you really think there’s massive corruption at Twitter I don’t know how you think Jack should be absolved.
- lapcat 4y ago> it seems like there was an agreement between Musk and Matt not to smear Jack in this process Jack is still a part-owner of Twitter. https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-saves-elon-musk-1billion-rolling-over-twitter-shares-2022-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-saves-elon-musk-...
- fullshark 4y agoThat part just shows that even explosive news like this is really just PR work. Pretty much every major news story can be reduced to “who is willing to finally talk about X and what do they want to convey?”
- lapcat 4y agoAgreed. It was obvious that Jack had been checked out of Twitter for a long time and focused almost entirely on Square/Block.
- mzs 4y agoAnd then Taibbi deleted his next tweet where he himself emailed Jack tens days after the NYP story about it which contradicts a lot of what Taibbi is saying.
- whateveracct 4y agoHN is a weird place. Feels like the loudest political voices are alt-right-adjacent nowadays. Just yesterday I had to wade through Q-level talk about Balenciaga being the true villain in society (one user literally said the Latin translation of Balenciaga had occult meanings). It's just so surprising to see Tucker Carlson's outrage machine consistently make rounds in HM comments. I guess he recovered from that Jon Stewart skewering just fine amongst the HN crowd?
- nathanaldensr 4y agoI think you're confusing Hacker News for 4chan.
- whateveracct 4y agoI wish that were the case. But I had multiple users shilling "pedophile elite" conspiracy theory at me yesterday.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoIf multiple users were telling you the same kinds of things on a platform that you typically expect to be reasonable, is it possible that your expectations of the platform were correct after all and they were being more reasonable than you give them credit for? Sometimes coherent theories can seem bizarre or nonsensical if you're not familiar with their core premises
- magicalist 4y ago> you typically expect to be reasonable They never said that, but I have to say there's been absolute garbage takes on HN as long as I've been here. Comes with the territory, GP was just lamenting the particular genre of garbage takes they've seen lately. > Sometimes coherent theories can seem bizarre Yes, yes, bozo the clown and all that.
- popcalc 4y ago
- warning26 4y agoIt's kind of interesting in the sense that reading internal emails is always kind of interesting...but otherwise, nothing here seems particularly shocking or groundbreaking. The only real revelation here seems to be that there existed some internal debate whether or not blocking the story was a good idea, which seems...kind of obvious? I'd be more surprised if there wasn't internal debate.
- ffggffggj 4y agoIt was all over the news, seems pretty astounding to reveal the CEO at the time had no idea any of this was happening!
- barbazoo 4y agoNot sure who the person is that posted this, is this legit? The format on most of those "emails" is just completely off and the grammar/spelling check underlining suggests that this is being viewed in an editor.
- andrewguenther 4y agoIt's real. Or at least Elon says it is. He's been talking about this for days and retweeted the thread.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- starkd 4y agoThe story is in how anxious they were to fit it into a hacked material case. Because there was no other existing mechanism in which to do it. (They claimed it in the emails Taibbi referenced.) They admit it was not tenable, because first amendment issues were specifically raised by Rep. Mo Khanna.
- MacsHeadroom 4y agoIt wasn't tenable because the hacked materials policy is for doxing not journalism. Many of the biggest stories broken by NYT and WaPo over the decades have come from hacked/leaked materials. The policy was never meant to prevent these kinds of stories.
- sergiotapia 4y ago@dang please unflag this. This is very important.
- dekhn 4y agoIt's still kind of odd to think that you can be an in-favor executive at a company, then somebody else can buy your company, fire you, and go back and read all your work emails (many of which would be extremely sensitive) and share it with journalists who then screenshot it and share it with the world on the same platform that employed you! This was always a possibility (and a probability- my friend was a lawyer who went through senior employee emails at whatever company to find incriminating evidence to fire them... 20 years ago). But it's just odd to see somebody do it in realtime, blatantly, while also claiming they are doing some incredible product work. Maybe twitter's policies were bad, and applied inconsistently. But there is no clear evidence that they explicitly favored one party, and to be honest- I don't really care if they do. If Elon thinks this is some sort of big shock that will cause people to get excited.... I can't really see why.
- ransom1538 4y agoUse privnote it takes 4 seconds.
- mikkergp 4y ago> . If Elon thinks this is some sort of big shock that will cause people to get excited.... I can't really see why. I don’t think he does, I think he can literally see engagement falling in the days after a stunt and he’s trying to keep it up. Matt seemed to imply there would be another thread following this one so buckle up
- nkozyra 4y agoThis does seem to be the play. There is a story here! Politicians having direct access to social networks to suppress narratives they don't like is interesting. But 1) I don't think it's surprising and 2) it appears it was not politically motivated at least in a bipartisan sense. A story but one delivered with the kind of panache to drive traffic.
- starkd 4y agoThat's flat out false. He clearly claimed in the thread there was clear evidenceof political motivation. For one, he cited the political donations are heavily slanted. Secondly, he mentioned the mass confusion that reigned as they tried to fit it into the hacked material case, even though it was clearly was not. It was a NY Post story about a lost/abandoned laptop. Read the thread. A lone company acting on its own to suppress a story may not be surprising to you, but collaboration between government and a corporation to suppress speech definitely should be. It's where fascism begins.
- kvee 4y agoStarting from this URL instead allows you to see the full thread: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598825121992638465 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598825121992638465
- fzeroracer 4y agoOkay, since this is going to get unflagged I guess let me make this as clear as possible. See this tweet [0]? These are example tweets that people are complaining was unfairly censored by the government (despite him later saying there's zero evidence of this [1]). Now those tweets are still visible. You can go to archive.org and see them right now. What are these 'censored' tweets? They're photos of Hunter Biden's cock, naked or otherwise nonsensical stuff. This is literally one of the major points of this entire 'twitter files' stuff. This is what people are complaining is being suppressed. I don't believe a picture of his dick is a matter of public affairs. Moreover, it doesn't belong on Twitter for a whole host of reasons entirely irrelevant to the story Taibbi is trying to push. Literally nothing else came out of the Hunter Biden laptop shit because there's nothing there beyond tabloid level nonsense. If this is somehow breaking news on HN then what has this site become? [0] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064?s=20&t=JD1xaetyXDL9f2XHUGU2RQ https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064?s=20&... [1] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598833927405215744?s=20&t=nha5elEVhwn-SefyrejYgw https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598833927405215744?s=20&...
- TillE 4y agoIncredibly embarrassing that anyone thinks this crap is important. Hunter Biden is not an elected official! Who gives a shit. If this were about like, Anthony Weiner, maybe it would have the potential to be an interesting story, but this isn't even close.
- partiallypro 4y agoPoliticians should never be able to directly influence the moderation of social media items they find politically unfavorable; I don't care which party does it. I can understand something that involves direct threats/calls to violence, but that's about it. Anyone that has used Twitter for some time knows the moderation was often not all that even, not just by pure political means but also threats of violence etc were always treated differently depending on who they were aimed at.
- starkd 4y agoExactly. The fact so many don't understand this is discouraging. Just because you support a particular candidate shouldn't mean it is ok, because it could very easily go against you on another occasion. There needs to be a uniform standard and accountability for this.
- code_witch_sam 4y agowhat does a particular politician have to do with this? the "leak" literally said both the trump white house and the biden campaign lobbied to have posts removed i think it's kind of funny that the government is lobbying corporation now, rather than the other way around.
- runsWphotons 4y ago"lobbied". this is mob stuff!
- arminiusreturns 4y agoIt's as if everyone parroting this line stopped reading at the "However": "10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However: 11. This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https://t.co/sa1uVRNhuH https://t.co/sa1uVRNhuH 12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives."
- andreyk 4y agoIt does not seem like this really exposed any new information - Twitter publicly justified its actions as being about its hacked data policy back when this all happened (https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-materials-policy-to-justify-censorship-of-ny-post-hunter-biden-article/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-mat...). All this shows is some internal disagreement as to whether that was the right call. By the way, Facebook also suppressed the news story citing its misinformation policy (https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/15/look-behind-ny-post-headline-about-joe-biden-and-u/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/15/look-behind-n...). It was already widely criticized at the time(https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/twitter-files-blocked-ny-post-hunter-biden-censor-1235448481/?sub_action=logged_in https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/twitter-files-blocked-...): " Twitter subsequently reversed the decision, saying that it had updated its hacked-materials policy and would not retroactively apply it to the New York Post. Other news outlets, including the New York Times, have since reported that the laptop did in fact belong to Hunter Biden and the documents on it were authentic. Predictably, Twitter’s blocking of the Post became a rallying point for Republican politicians accusing the social network of censoring conservative viewpoints. " So... doesn't seem like a big deal, this is just confirming what was already known?
- andrew_ 4y agoT̵w̵i̵t̵t̵e̵r̵ ̵p̵u̵b̵l̵i̵c̵l̵y̵ ̵j̵u̵s̵t̵i̵f̵i̵e̵d̵ Twitter publicly attempted to justify I think at this point we can agree that a public agreement on whether or not they were actually justified is impossible to obtain. Viewing the discussions around their internal justifications is interesting at the very least.
- tootie 4y agoAlso irrelevant. They don't need anyone's approval to do anything. If they satisfied their shareholders they upheld their duty.
- jeffreyrogers 4y agoThe part where they removed tweets because they were asked to or banned accounts because they were asked to is a pretty big deal. And even though everyone knew they did that it wasn't in writing. It's kind of like the Snowden leaks, everyone who thought about the issues involved had a basic idea of what was going on but until it was out in the open people could just deny it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- savryn 4y agoputting prose to the social dread of the past few years, where everyones been shown a liar and you're not allowed to care about it... this bit from the latest Cormac McCarthy seems fitting: "The horrors of the past lose their edge and in the doing they blind us to a world careening toward a darkness beyond the bitterest speculation. It’s sure to be interesting. When the onset of universal night is finally acknowledged as irreversible even the coldest cynic will be astonished at the celerity with which every rule and stricture shoring up this creaking edifice is abandoned and every aberrancy embraced. It should be quite a spectacle. However brief."
- sgammon 4y agoenormous nothing burger
- Dig1t 4y agoMuch better way to read the full thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1598822959866683394 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1598822959866683394
- Dem_Boys 4y agoMost concerning thing here is that this proves political parties (including the white house[0]) have a direct line to Twitter[1] to get stuff they dislike removed. One would have to assume that there was also a direct line to other social medial platforms. It's so wild to have the slimy-ness of our American political system be revealed in yet another way. So in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online?!?! Since this is true, then where else are political parties trying to get unflattering speech suppressed that we don't even know of yet? [0] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598828932395978752 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598828932395978752 [1] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064
- goodluckchuck 4y agoThis impacts the perennial argument that these companies are private organizations and the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to them. As it turns out, their censorship regimes are government sponsored censorship.
- newZWhoDis 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- saboot 4y agoYeah, no. The jan 6 people are in jail for a lot more than just protesting.
- RavingGoat 4y agoYou have no credibility if you think that they were just "protesting" on Jan 6th.
- cronix 4y agoI kind of believed Jen Psaki when she admitted the Biden administration was flagging posts over a year ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqEvQKO5_gM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqEvQKO5_gM
- connectsnk 4y agoEdit: Removed. It was incorrect so I deleted
- spiderice 4y agoThat isn't what the thread says at all. Those are the percentages of donations going to each party from Twitter employees.
- connectsnk 4y agoYou are right. I misunderstood
- AustinDev 4y agoSo, the ratio was at best 30:1 and eventually 300:1? Damn the Democrats really seem to love authoritarianism. Not that the Republicans don't exercise authoritarianism it's just on other topics like women's reproductive rights. So much for 'Democracy'
- AustinDev 4y agoTurns out the person I replied to was looking at donations not takedown requests. So I rescind the above judgement.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hintymad 4y agoAn honest question: what if conservatives are in power? Can they or should they suppress truths like the left did? Wouldn't it "destroy democracy" as the left loved to say? I thought a fair political system protects all political parties. Or the left believe that they will always be in power?
- ryanbrunner 4y agoDuring the period we're discussing the president was a Republican.
- encryptluks2 4y agoThat is what I find so funny, left and right the right-wing can't even manage to get the most basic facts right. They surely are more disingenuous than any other party. Gaslight Obstruct and Project.
- mjmsmith 4y ago
- lapcat 4y agoThe worst part of this censorship was the pure stupidity of trying to censor links to a website that was always available independently of Twitter and Facebook. If someone wanted to read the story, they could always go to the original source, the NY Post. It's just impossible to keep it a secret, and that's why the censorship attempt was an utter failure, predictably so. Failure was inevitable in this case. Twitter could delete tweets and DMs, but they couldn't erase the NY Post. It was hubris that made Twitter and Facebook think they controlled access to the whole world (wide web), but they didn't. The story itself, though, was a nothingburger IMO. Which is why the censorship of the story became the story. I hear a lot of people complain about the censorship of the story, which may be a legit complaint, but I haven't heard a good argument of why Hunter Biden should have been a crucial factor in deciding how to vote in 2020, when there were a ton of other vastly more important issues.
- mikkergp 4y agoBut your point is the point as to why it’s not hubris! they weren’t trying to censor anything, they were just trying to follow their own moderation policies. This I think is why the censorship story is such a non issue, because Twitter is not an exclusive source of this information.
- lapcat 4y ago> they weren’t trying to censor anything, they were just trying to follow their own moderation policies. Well, it seems more like they were trying to apply their moderation policies to another website, which isn't the same as applying their moderation policies to their own website. Anyway, moderation is censorship. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying that's what it is.
- jpgvm 4y agoDid they? Where did they try to get NY Post to take the original article down?
- 4y ago
- oneseven 4y agoSo is this Taibbi carrying water for Musk? That's disappointing.
- bvhvhfcgxfdf 4y ago
- smitty1e 4y ago>>>Ace: your take is the blame is being placed on Twitter and not the police state apparatus? > Yes, the FBI is being excused, and it's being claimed that there was just a breakdown at Twitter, rather than deliberate suppression. https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=402164 https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=402164 Tyrants outsource the speech suppression to private industry so they can turn the screws while doing victory laps about supporting the First Amendment. What a mess.
- textbookrental 4y agoDoes twitter have a current transparency policy that would provide any reasonable evidence that this type of behavior has stopped?
- sroussey 4y agoStopped??? My god, the whole point is that now you need to be a friend of Elon to get stuff you don’t like removed.
- mksreddy 4y agoSo we are surprised that political parties had direct lines with twitter? Are we also surprised that Elon gets invited to Apple HQ when he throws tantrums at Apple app review process? Try doing that as a small developer. Color me surprised.
- dazc 4y agoWhere did Elon deny this?
- mberning 4y agoAnother “conspiracy theory” turns out to be a fact.
- mdasen 4y agohttps://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-twitter-files-1234640842/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-mus... It seems like this is basically coming from Elon Musk through someone he chose. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter Is Elon Musk now "sources at Twitter"? There might be some interesting bits in here, but I think it's important to note that this is Musk pushing his agenda. Is this just propaganda? It's being presented as a revelation by an outside reporter who got access to previously secret Twitter Files from "sources". Instead, is it just Musk's agenda being told by another person? Imagine if Zuckerberg hired a PR firm to put out revelations that showed him in a positive light. We'd mock it mercilessly. This seems like basically the same thing, but he grabbed a Substack writer looking who will get paid through subscribers and notoriety rather than by Musk. "I won't pay you, but I'll send everyone to your tweets, Substack, and book where you can make millions," just sounds like hiring a PR firm with extra steps.
- remarkEon 4y agoNot every story is about Elon Musk's ego. This story is about political operatives influencing what social media companies allow on their platform.
- Aeolun 4y agoSounds more like political operatives helping police the platform because it’s in their best interest. You’d have to be hopelessly naive to think that twitter wasn’t already ridiculously left leaning without getting messages from political operatives. The change of owner simply inverted that?
- remarkEon 4y ago"[H]elping" is certainly a gerund to use here. I'm not sure what is meant by the "change of owner" comment, since I think everyone knew that Twitter was left leaning since forever.
- voldacar 4y agoDo we get to read the actual files? Or do we only get them mediated to us by Matt Taibbi's summary + some redacted screenshots?
- stefan_ 4y agoOh, it's even better than that. Taibbi shows you emails of some DNC person reporting tweets, but neglects to show you the actual tweets in question: Chinese Spam Bots and revenge porn. Truly the smoking gun. The irony is the misdirection worked, people in this thread are frothing at their mouths unable to tell who even was in government in 2020.
- voldacar 4y agoNah you are definitely trying to minimize this. At this point it is clear that you have political parties (let's be honest, it's really just one political party, coincidentally the one that receives >99% of twitter's political donations) colluding in secret with high level people in twitter (whose political affiliations, curiously enough, are quite different from a random population sample) to censor a news story that could have a big effect on a national election. I don't have any particularly strong feelings about Matt Taibbi, I just want to read through these files myself and form my own opinions instead of having reality mediated to me by an Approved Professional
- hk__2 4y ago> At this point it is clear that There’s nothing in that thread that shows this. We only see a moderation team discussing about a report from someone in the Biden team about some dick picks posted on Twitter.
- tayo42 4y agohow do you find what the removed tweets are?
- arthens 4y ago
- kazinator 4y ago> Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time. This is grandiose sounding rubbish. The moment when I experienced real-time global conversation was when I compiled an IRC client on a Unix box in maybe 1992 or 1993, joined some channel, and it turned out the person chatting with me there was in Australia. In between that and Twitter (as well as before), there were instant messengers and public chatrooms and what have you. Services like AOL and CompuServe.
- degobah 4y agoFor political reasons he needs it to be more than a very popular private service. He needs it to be an essential public utility.
- mrcwinn 4y agoIt's pretty odd that the Verge and Platformer have had wall to wall coverage of every moment of Twitter the past few weeks, including live-tweeting content sourced from (perhaps appropriately) disgruntled ex-employees. And yet here, silence so far. It goes to show what we already knew. Every media outlet (or blogger, or influencer) has an audience, caters to that audience, grows that audience, monetizes that audience. Sometimes it's hard to tell if The Verge employs high-minded journalists, or just wants to hock a Z Fold 4 referral link in time for Christmas. Perhaps subscriptions will save us all, but then if your audience is more Twitter employees than Twitter owners, you'll certainly tend to bias your coverage accordingly. It seems business model is not the solution alone. I think all we can hope for is diversity and choice. I just hope quality can work its way through the algorithm. [Edit: The Verge did just post their first article on this just now, calling it "a flop."]
- imnotjames 4y agoYou mean this? https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/2/23490863/elon-musk-twitter-expose-hunter-biden-flop-doxxed-multiple-people https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/2/23490863/elon-musk-twitte...
- alsodumb 4y agoWhy does Verge try so hard to show that Elon did something bad? A congressman has to change his email address? Seriously? And these are journalists making these titles? A quick Google search reveals that his Gmail address is everywhere. In fact, he tweeted his personal Gmail address a while ago: https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/802758241570541568?s=20&t=NqtoDDoNt9j5cf-B0lDHlQ https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/802758241570541568?s=20&...
- erlich 4y agoThe obvious answer is revenue. Most of tech is left. The more outrage the more clicks. I don't think people realize how desperate these news orgs are.
- AlbertCory 4y agoThe three phases of denial: 1) It's not true 2) It's true, but it's not important 3) It's true and it's important, but we already knew it
- zephrx1111 4y agoSo far this is the only comment makes sense.
- AlbertCory 4y agoThank you, sir. Many of the anti-Musk comments are either (2) or (3).
- ergocoder 4y ago4) it's true, it's important, we didn't know it, but trump does it too
- wnevets 4y agoI am really confused by which twitter related stories are allowed on the front page of hacker news, can dang or someone else explain the rules?
- williamcotton 4y agoIsn’t this was freedom looks like? We’ve got a hot mess of officials and other influential people trying to sway public opinion on a private platform that’s management is a hot mess of individual assumptions, bias and buck passing. Comparatively the CCP is a well-oiled machine when it comes to censorship.
- colordrops 4y agoIf you have low expectations then yeah I guess.
- williamcotton 4y agoWait until you hear about lobbying! You’ll stop getting out of bed. Or you could invest in a civics education and ask these questions in a formal setting and have you concerns addressed.
- jessaustin 4y agoI bet you're a big fan of voting, too!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- arthurofbabylon 4y agoI’m surprised by the outrage here. The proliferation of information is always subject to tampering - from news outlets picking headlines to social feeds oriented around engagement. Literally 100% of the flow of information is being shaped by interested parties, from the beginning to the end. (If you had told me that powerful people/organizations could not get tweets removed, I would have been surprised; based on my experience functioning on 21st century tech platforms there is almost always a way to engineer content.) In this particular case, the information revealed in the “get-your-popcorn” tweet storm was generally already public. So I’m surprised by all the outrage and excitement. Call me dismissive, but I think this mob mindset around “free speech” and its “anti-far-left” hysteria is not in touch with reality. It complains and whines a lot, constantly outraged, and never clear on its actual ideological position. A healthier starting point is a philosophical and systems examination of transparency, censorship, and how information proliferates, followed by systems and mechanisms that facilitate a favorable outcome. Anecdotal, sensational stories (like this Twitter Hunter Biden laptop cover-up) are exactly that: misleading anecdotes. They aren’t useful, and being caught up in them is not healthy.
- code_witch_sam 4y agoto many, the information isn't as important as the narrative
- M4v3R 4y ago> Literally 100% of the flow of information is being shaped by interested parties Honest question: would you be similarly dismissive if it turned out that it’s secretly mostly the right who “shapes the flow of information” in order to influence public’s opinion and has already used that power during the past election cycles? Remember - we’re not talking about some minor news outlet here. We are talking about social media platforms that are so pervasive basically every single person knows about them and is in one way or another exposed to the information that’s presented on them. To have the power to shape the flow of information on these kind of platforms is to have power to shape whole societies.
- malikNF 4y ago
- class4behavior 4y agoReminds me of Veritas meeting and secretly filming their private conversations with some Twitter employees, then packaging the rants and boasting as conspiracies from Democrats.
- etchalon 4y agoThe most interesting thing to me, reading the story, and the materials provided, is that you do not see a nefarious, explicitly partisan, ruthless campaign to censor information with the specific and stated goal of influencing an election. This is what we are constantly told MUST be happening behind the scenes. Instead, what you see is a lot of people, acting in good faith, trying to make decisions and appease a lot divergent concerns in the middle of a developing story. With a lot of internal disagreement and debate. I know Tailbi has said there are "bigger revelations to come", but so far, this is utterly banal internal policy coordination and decision making.
- robomartin 4y ago
- nathanaldensr 4y agoThe best post in this thread by far--amidst a sea of /r/politics-level text.
- qup 4y agoI noticed this story wasn't on the front page of /r/politics. The word "twitter" isn't on the front page either.
- degobah 4y agoWhat did we learn today about Democrats and Twitter?
- karp773 4y agoI am pro-free speech and hope that Congress will investigate this. Having said this, I must say that by associating himself with people like Taibbi, Musk has lost any credibility for me.
- xwowsersx 4y agoWithout really knowing you and without knowing what issue you have with Taibbi such that Musk's association with him makes him lose any credibility for you, what value we do we gain from this? Not trying to be rude, I genuinely just don't get what we're supposed to get from this. Is it supposed to be obvious to "anyone with the right opinions" why Taibbi is problematic? It's not obvious to me...Taibbi seems like a fine journalist to me...
- karp773 4y agoJust sharing my opinion. As I said above, I am pro-free speech, that inludes free speech for myself. I do not know why you have a problem with this.
- xwowsersx 4y agoOh I don't have a problem with you sharing your opinion. I'm just sharing mine. My point is that your comment might be more illuminating if you explained the reason why he loses credibility by associating with Taibbi. Without offering some kind of explanation, it's hard to see how your comment really offers anything of value. I'm genuinely not trying to be rude and I'm not suggesting you aren't free to share whatever you'd like to.
- rhaksw 4y agoJosh Hawley has been reporting or investigating Facebook's communications with government. I wonder if that would make him or that developing story more or less credible for you.
- lazyeye 4y agoShooting the messenger is a debating strategy as old as time itself.
- parrellel 4y agoWell, that was a giant pile of sensationalized nothing. Again. I suppose the bigger point to note is, along with all the other right wing internet celebrities Elon's been talking to we get to see Taibbi's silliness boosted. Next up Greenwald explaining how Russians are truly quite nice.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- i0null 4y agoAm very much surprised to see the backlash against this story, especially given some of the thoughtful comments in an earlier thread "distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value" [0]. The government has as much right to report ToS violations as any other user. Having VIP lanes isn't a great look but it isn't surprising. The government are in a position were they can force legal changes if it feels corporations are abusing their power. Moderation is important but of course that has to be balanced against the risks of censorship. Of course neither are desirable but we are essentially talking about the reporting of individual tweets, not requests for systemic changes to the platform. If this story pointed to something more serious like requests to access to the moderation platform or keyword manipulation, of course this would be breaching an entirely different red line. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33823725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33823725
- rhaksw 4y agoGovernment "reports" about speech on social media are dubious when they choose who heads the FTC. It's a fine line that might be worth a court case or two depending on details. Public shock about government involvement in speech is par for the course, in the US anyway.
- AmericanOP 4y agoWhat a coup for Matt Taibbi.. not so much the content, but the branding! The Twitter Files- I’m in immediately. Can’t wait for the movie. And the sequel, The Taibbi Files, where we see how Elon bought a company to send cherry-picked internal emails to throw muck at prior leadership.
- MBCook 4y agoThere is another way to look at this. So Elon posted today he would drop important inside info about the Hunter Biden story the right wing loves so much. And they seemed thrilled and are now debating the “new” info. That’s an interesting turn from yesterday when that same group was pissed at him for going back on his free speech/no censorship claims when he kicked Kanye off. How surprisingly lucky for him he did something that made him popular again just 24 hours after his new fans had turned on him. And there was tons of new important info in the thread too. It wasn’t just stuff from months ago repackaged. (Narrator: it largely was) This seems like nothing more than a big redirection to get people to move on from the last story.
- rhaksw 4y ago> This seems like nothing more than a big redirection to get people to move on from the last story. I find government comms with social media to be interesting. Do you not? I'm not sure if there's a bombshell there or not. I believe all public servants since Nixon understand about their actions being reviewable. Not that they shouldn't be able to have private conversations, of course. That's a whole 'nother issue.
- MBCook 4y agoIt could be. Here it seems they alerted Twitter to a few tweets containing nudes of someone posted without their consent. That was against the TOS and likely against the law in the 48 (?) states with anti-revenge porn laws. They didn’t try to stifle debate. They didn’t try to hide news articles. There has been tons of Hunter Biden tweets they did nothing about. This doesn’t seem like anything shady at all. So I’m not worried. Show me political game playing, I’ll be on your side.
- sanderjd 4y agoWhat "government comms" were exposed here, specifically? The specific claims seem to be about comms with private, albeit political, entities.
- rhaksw 4y ago
- markus_zhang 4y agoNothing too surprising. We all know this. Politics 101 thing.
- oska 4y agoGlenn Greenwald's 1 hour show on The Twitter Files : https://rumble.com/v1yjc4a-secret-twitter-files-on-censorship-of-hunter-biden-story.html https://rumble.com/v1yjc4a-secret-twitter-files-on-censorshi... (Show starts at 19:55; lots of weird noise before then)
- gottebp 4y agoWhen all elections are split 50%/50%, even the slightest bias in censorship could swing it to one side or the other.
- toofy 4y agodo we think politicians don’t have direct lines to oil companies? do we think politicians don’t have direct lines to religious leaders? do we think high profile government officials aren’t in contact with industry leaders in all different kinds of industries? do we think these things aren’t abused constantly in both directions? kanye, who is running for president in 2024 — just in the past week has posted swastikas, done multiple interviews attacking jewish people, and praised hitler — he was posting direct text messages between him and elon (the owner of twitter) just yesterday. this is nothing new. this isn’t even shocking. this is entirely business as usual in the US. we need a separation of money and politics just like we have a separation of church and state and _both_ of them need to be enforced with bare sharp teeth.
- churnedgodotdev 4y agoElon 1st Amendment comment: Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598853708443357185 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598853708443357185
- rhaksw 4y agoIANAL but neither is Elon. His "free speech is not free reach" comment is nonsensical, for example, because limiting reach doesn't align with free speech principles. This could be another uninformed or poorly worded claim. > acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is One way of interpreting that might be that Elon thinks former Twitter execs were guilty of collusion. Yet, unless there is some really nefarious smoking gun where both parties were grinning about screwing over the public, I believe the most likely guilty party, if such events are found to have occurred, would be the government, not former Twitter employees. I'm not sure if that's what Elon meant to imply though.
- justsomeadvice0 4y agotl;dr: 1. important entities like American government administrators and political candidates can report Twitter ToS violation for review via a dedicated line with a fast expected turnaround 2. the Biden laptop story was treated as misinformation for 24 hours before being corrected The 11th tweet supposes to "release the kraken" here: > This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. TBH I would be happy to see an argument for this. As always I am left disappointed. The thread continues on to contradict this point by showing a number of Republicans complaining via exactly such contacts. In 24 hours the situation is corrected. In any case if you know how campaigns work, #1 is not shocking at all - I'd assume at a minimum the safety teams for each candidate have and use direct lines to Twitter's moderators. No evidence is shown that submitting things for review equates to an expectation on either side of an order being carried out (by the non-governing Biden team, nonetheless). Finally I don't think this is the best evidence of an imbalance - the situation was corrected and reversed... This does seem to be peak American politics "leap to any conclusions your reality supports". We cannot make arguments in good faith any more, because we do not agree on or even look at the facts on their merits, but rather just assume the "other side" is an idiot. So, big letdown. I'll wait for thread #2, maybe we will see more tangible evidence.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rpmisms 4y ago> TBH I would be happy to see an argument for this. As always I am left disappointed. It is (was) reality. Have you met average big-tech non-coder?
- justsomeadvice0 4y agoHere are the parts of the statement I am disappointed with, to clarify, emphasis mine: > *This system wasn't balanced.* It was based on contacts. ... there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. I can certainly agree with the fact that 90+% of Big Tech employees vote Democrat (I'm not sure what "non-coder" has to do with it). 100% true. I have worked at large corporations for a long time, so I know a second fact: corporate employees do not make any controversial decisions you will hear about as an outsider. At best we get to present feedback to our boss. Here we see an employee making such a decision by themself; now let's make an assumption and say this was done to promote their leftist agenda. Within 24 hours, the decision is overridden and it is made clear who the real agenda-setters are at most Big Tech. I'll give you a hint: it's not the employees, and it was only 2% Jack.
- hidelooktropic 4y agoHow do we know these are real?
- irishloop 4y agoAm I the only one who thinks its pretty fucked up of the business owner to be like, "oh, Hunter Biden left his laptop here? Might as well... give it to the New York Post" Like wtf?
- tomrod 4y agoYep. Reads like a planted and/or made up thang. Telle est la politique en Amérique
- ModernMech 4y agoIt’s worse than that, he gave it to Rudy Giuliani.
- djanogo 4y agoThere is another bigger side story on how Twitter used software created to block child pornography[1] to block NY Post URLs. [1]https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598831435288563712 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598831435288563712
- antidaily 4y agoLook at us discussing this washed up trash heap of a social media platform!
- paul7986 4y agoNothing of real interest outside of bias possibly driving some decisions (why was she locked out for thirty minutes and who did that)?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- amatecha 4y agoSeriously. Can people just make a blog post? Second long-ass Twitter thread today. > Don’t miss what’s happening > People on Twitter are the first to know. > [Log in] > [Sign up] Great way to share long essays /s
- zadler 4y agoI think bytesize chunks has better absorption for twitter’s audience.
- xdennis 4y agoYou may want to use the "Nitter Redirect" add-on. It redirects Twitter to Nitter which is a lot more readable. E.g.: https://nitter.net/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394 https://nitter.net/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394
- 9991 4y agoPlease stop publishing as tweets.
- senectus1 4y agoNow its been published... I feel evel less like giving a shit about twitter. its a dud platform. tbh, ALL of the Social Media platforms are dud to me.
- LarsDu88 4y ago
- trentgreene 4y agoCould someone explain to me how twitter has any legal obligation to provide a platform supporting all types of 1A protected content? Doesn’t that violate the owner of twitters 1A rights? If I owned a message board, and started deleting users post at random, or because of personal taste, would that be a 1A violation? I may or may not be an asshole, but it’s my message board. There are other parallels I can draw, but these are honest questions.
- hidelooktropic 4y agoThe 1A states that congress should pass no law prohibiting the freedom of speech. That's really all the 1A is. Not much room for interpretation. So yes. Your example easily doesn't violate the 1A.
- M4v3R 4y agoHonest answer (IANAL): it doesn’t have legal obligation to support all kinds of free speech. But in my opinion that’s because the governments fail to recognize these huge, influential social platforms for what they really are - utilities. They become pervasive and essential in lives of most people in the developed countries. And as such there should exist some checks and balances to make sure these platforms are not used to skew the opinion of the general public one way or another. Powerful people on both sides of political spectrum should not have direct lines to moderation teams “suggesting” what should be removed or suppressed, nor the moderators should act on their own accord when the speech in question isn’t explicitly violating any laws or site policies. I know this might sound pretty idealistic but for anyone who thinks otherwise please entertain the possibility that such control could one day turn against you, your political candidate or your personal beliefs and suddenly it will be you who finds themselves in the crosshairs of censorship when there’s a story you believe should be brought up. It’s an ugly timeline that I don’t want to live in.
- trentgreene 4y agoYeah so this is an interesting point, the non-utility thst may secretly be a utility. See also net neutrality and censorship claims there. You could make a similar argument for news, another non-utility. They seem to have a model where outlets have a distinct pov that guides a variety of informal and formal censorship. Right wing doesn’t write stuff that looks bad for them, left wing too, local news follow local interests, etc.
- perihelions 4y agoLegal question: in tweet #28, Twitter's new leadership gives up a "[privileged]" email between Twitter and Twitter legal counsel. How much of Twitter's legal comms lose privilege, should there be litigation?
- nodesocket 4y agoHow come I can't find this story on the front page of: - CNN - CNBC - New York Times - LA Times However, stories about how people are "fleeing" Twitter, Twitter is losing more advertising revenue, and Kanye are readily on the front pages?
- akomtu 4y agoCNN and CNBC are like Fanta and Coca-Cola: same junk, same owners, different labels.
- rvz 4y agoGood question. The mainstream media are more interested in spreading outrage or their own narrative that reinforces their confirmation bias to grift their readers for ad clicks and affiliate links than to uncover the truth. As soon as one narrative is being constantly peddled by multiple sources, it makes it highly suspicious and likely that something else is going on that is not being reported. Most of these ‘news sources’ don’t even question or correct each other and just parrot and relay their own articles as the truth.
- etchalon 4y agoBecause there's nothing new to the story yet, beyond a Twitter thread, some speculative accusations unsupported by the evidence posted, and some massive misunderstandings of the first amendment, and who was in power when. "Moderators at Twitter made a rash call, chaos ensued, and reversed course" was already wildly known.
- forgingahead 4y agoIt's fascinating to me that so many (even a majority) of the direct comment replies to this post are a version of "this is nothing bad" or "nothing new to see here" or just arguing semantics about who was "running the govt" at the time (and so again, "nothing to see here"). This really comes across as party partisans, or party stooges, just flooding the conversation trying to massage the consensus. To people who are die-hard members of this political tribe, it's apparently impossible for them to see how vastly illiberal this situation was to regular people, and how uncomfortable it makes true political independents (never mind people on the opposite political tribe, where all it does is to further inflame their belief of being targeted unfairly all the time).
- marsven_422 4y ago
- _8j50 4y agoWhy is this propaganda bullshit on the front page. I gotta ask about moderation on HN here. This is literally moderation, "the twitter files" my ass. They pretext political contributions and falsley connect legitimate moderation to that. Of course they should have blocked that story and still should. Oh, but get this, it's their platform they get to do what they want. They are not an impartial government agency. In this case there is no evidence of political bias, they saw danger and erred on the side of caution. What I'm dumbfounded by is why there are so many upvotes and comments of all places on HN.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago>Oh, but get this, it's their platform they get to do what they want. now it's Musk's platform and he gets to do whatever he wants you're cool with that, right?
- noncoml 4y ago> you're cool with that, right? Yes. Just as I don’t watch Fox News, I don’t read Twitter now And it’s not because they are just biased. It’s because instead of the essence, and discussing using logical arguments, they care more about “owning the libs”. Plenty of left wing media do this too, not as successfully, and I tend to avoid those as well. What I’m not cool with are people that idolize corrupted, divisive, self centered, entitled folks like Musk. But I guess HN has many wanna-be-Musks.
- pavlov 4y agoOf course. I’ve never heard anyone say otherwise. It’s his to do as he pleases (without breaking laws). In Twitter’s previous incarnation as a NASDAQ-listed company, Republicans were asking for more government control over it and other social media. Now that it’s a private company, that seems to have stopped.
- ImaCake 4y agoNot really. One thing Mastodon allows is for us to have 1000s of admins with the power of Musk instead of one. You might think this is just as bad, but at least it provides people with choice.
- mikaeluman 4y agoIt is to Elon's credit that this comes to light. My trust in twitter was gone back in 2018. The covid situation and the election certainly did not help. Here we get to see the unhealthy intermingling of political agents with a supposed social media platform. The end result of that has been detrimental to users, free speech and public debate. I always thought Elon was "too much", but his handling of Twitter is absolutely perfect.
- throwaway5959 4y agoSo now that Twitter is run by right wing guys you can trust it again. Hilarious the hypocrisy.
- alfiedotwtf 4y agoPeople are surprised that the White House has a line to Twitter, yet nobody bats an eyelid when you had the former president have a daily call-in with Fox and Friends to set the talking points of the day and to "correct" any "fake news" live on air.
- kumarvvr 4y agoHow can the politics of US have only two parties, is beyond comprehension for me? Every aspect of US political life is cleanly split into two halves. Such a mess and totally un-representative of people that vote the govt. to power. Sure, some may argue that more parties means more chaos, but better there be a 100 small chaotic situations tempered by mutual interest and compromise, rather than two very dangerous chaotic situations with each having enough weight to cause long term damage.
- walkhour 4y agoWhat they argue is that more parties doesn't end up making as much of a difference, and in the end parties just fall in two blocks. Just because there are more parties magic won't just happen, voters will be better represented, people will be less divided. Countries with dozens of parties in parliament have gone to civil war.
- foreverobama 4y agoSo basically nothing new. Elon just trying to distract after the Ye thing. People just need to move on. Twitter is such a waste of your time.
- throwaway5959 4y agoTrump had top secret documents but Hunter Biden, a guy not even now or ever in government, is somehow getting more attention. Incredible.
- LightG 4y agoWithin the first few tweets are the gymnastics to expose twitter while defending Dorsey. I stopped reading after that. There may or may not be some important stuff here, but I'm not going to read it through that lens.
- Keyframe 4y agoI don't buy Jack Dorsey's innocence here. Something's off about that subplot.
- dorkwood 4y agoIt's strange that it was mentioned multiple times, "Jack Dorsey knew nothing about this", without any supporting evidence. Every other claim seemed to have an associated screenshot to back it up. Why not that one?
- Keyframe 4y agoYeah, not even a "husband finds out last" narrative in full.
- paganel 4y ago> 8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” [1] A rules-based world. A gigantic joke, more likely, hopefully people have started to realise what it's all about, slowly but surely. [1] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064
- impossiblefork 4y agoIt'll be interesting to see whether they publish anything about the removal of links to Craig Murray's blog during the Assange extradition hearings in the UK. Murray has claimed[1] that traffic from Twitter and Facebook to his blog had dropped to 1.5%, and that posts including links to it could be seen as having been posted by the poster, but could be verified to be invisible to others. [1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-16/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-...
- andy_ppp 4y agoIf you’re on the right this is proof that Twitter is out of control and stole the election from Trump. If you’re on the left these are boring internal emails discussing what to do about hacked laptop information released at an optimal moment to smear a presidential candidate because of things done by his son. I’m more inclined to believe number 2 but then I would be wouldn’t I. I don’t really think there’s something weird going on here but I’m guessing the same stuff will happen the other way at the next election now Twitter is controlled by someone in a right wing filter bubble.
- tomrod 4y ago> If you’re on the left these are boring internal emails discussing what to do about hacked laptop information released at an optimal moment to smear a presidential candidate because of things done by his son. This is the default position. Your classifier would be better suited as "if you're susceptible to right-wing propaganda and disinformation" versus not.
- lazyeye 4y agoWhat nonsense. Being concerned with Twitter's behaviour is neither "right-wing propaganda or disinformation". Your comment might be considered disinformation though.
- tomrod 4y agoNah, it's pretty clear the laptop is a weak sauce nothingburger argument that the GOP propaganda machine has projected themselves into. Imma stay out of that nonsense and note that internal Twitter disinformation moderation policy has no impact on my life and on the lives of everyone on this thread, unless the individuals are specifically employed by disinformation campaigners. Keep calm and carry on.
- lazyeye 4y ago"it's pretty clear the laptop is a weak sauce nothingburger argument" only if you need it to be. I think for a lot of other people, the son of a president peddling influence to foreign powers (including the CCP) and the president denied being involved but evidence (emails on laptop and witness statements) saying otherwise. Then on top of this you have the current govt working in collusion with big tech to censor this story. And just prior to an election where the impact could be significant. All of these things would be considered the opposite of a "weak sauce nothingburger".
- nirvgorilla 4y agoYeah, so? It's THEIR website. It doesn't have to be fair. Why are all these brand new people to the internet trying to tell websites they have to allow things that they don't want? As much as I hate censorship, the fact is it's THEIR website and they can do whatever they want with it. I don't have to go there. I can make my own website if I don't like a particular site. As a user of the internet since 1995, I don't find anything in these "twitter files" interesting. Now Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden's books on NSA surveillance on the internet? I find those much more interesting and much more serious than this swill.
- goodluckchuck 4y agoBut it’s not “their” site, because the censorship decisions were being made by the government and Twitter was acting on behalf of these congressmen, etc. Thus Twitter’s actions were subject to the 1st Amendment. Congress cannot launder their illegal activities through an intermediary. The intermediary becomes a government actor.
- nirvgorilla 4y agoIt really doesn't matter. As much as I don't like it, someone can still use things like rot13 to get their messages out on twitter to others. You could also link a youtube video that has material that "biden's team" doesn't want on twitter. If I came to your house and before I got there, the president called you and told you NOT to let me in, you may or may not do it. It's up to you. It's still YOUR HOUSE and you have the ultimate choice. That's all a website is.
- luckylion 4y agoI suppose the question is the relationship and history between the parties. If there's an implicit "or else" in the president's demand, things look differently, don't they? With that kind of power delta, there's always an implied "or else", I believe.
- kevincox 4y agoJust because politicians asked them too and they decided it was in their best interest to comply doesn't make it much if any less their site. Untill actual laws are passed they can choose to comply or not as they see fit.
- Febra33 4y agoSo this is nothing new but just a confirmation of what has already been known now? Twitter even admitted they f-ed up back then and tried to fix things. This looks like someone is just trying to milk this story dry at this point for some extra clicks.
- fredgrott 4y agoWhat will be interesting is despite all the noise, no path forward as: 1. Section 230 becoming overruled and obsolete as both GOP and DEMs want to eliminate it and yet despite debates over years no plans for a smooth transition. Picture it say section 230 is outlawed in 2024. That would mean despite the noise here on this forum about non-factual things one would even have to do content moderation on the HN News forum. Or in short words we get more of the same under section 230 going away despite the noisy claim that we get less as then it would be legal open season for every forum and social platform. Also interesting about sex trafficking, i.e. the last paragraph about not being liable for state laws on sex trafficking, oh nice. References https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.govinfo.gov/link/uscode/47/230 https://www.govinfo.gov/link/uscode/47/230
- sheeshkebab 4y agoFree speech my ass - more like neo nazies and trolls posting whatever conspiracy shit they can find. I deleted this app.
- galfarragem 4y agoElon made one mistake: he openly declared support for the Republican party. Now "good people" want to cancel him. It's sad. It's my first remark on this subject. I'm not even a Republican nor have a Twitter account - but I'm really considering creating one now. I know that I will be downvoted but I don't care. It just got impossible to ignore: Sam Bankman-Fried has better press than him.
- somehnacct3757 4y agoNo he's made a few mistakes. Yes the political tribalism you describe is in play. But also there's the brutal layoffs, ridiculous work demands, withheld severance, and botched feature rollouts. All have had negative impact on Musk's personal brand. Viewpoints regarding worker (mis)treatment depend on people's beliefs about classism, which doesn't map cleanly onto political tribalism. The botched features get flak because many people are just like Elon and (wrongly) think they could run Twitter better than everyone else.
- martimarkov 4y agoI find it really surprising and sad that even on HN ppl are just as dumb and biased when it comes to their political views. You are NOT this or that party. Sometimes your side or your heroes or whatever you want to called them fuck up - they are humans. If you don’t hold them to account on this - what’s the point… Just looking at the comments - it’s pretty obvious that ppl didn’t bother to read the entire thing, talk out of their ass based on what they’ve heard at some point in the past and don’t want to actually debate. They want to just echo their voice, stay in the amplification room and bicker and argue. Like what’s the point of even sharing this data if we are not gonna go through it?!? What’s the point of not saying okay let’s see what’s actually here? We are supposed to be engineers and ppl of science- we should accept that if new data is presented it’s our soft obligation to examine it and change our theories and hypothesis to comply with or reconcile the newly observed data. To me the lesson is that most likely I do the same so I need to pay more attention internally when it comes to something I care about. If ppl are offended by my comment - don’t be that wasn’t my intention. I just hold everyone on HN to a much higher standard than the general public.
- siilats 4y agoDo Khanna is the only one going for First amendment
- Transisto 4y ago
- nickthegreek 4y agoEvidence please. I’ll wait.
- throwaway743 4y agoConsider myself a progressive, and find it hilarious how both sides are taking a team sports approach. What was/may still be happening is unacceptable regardless of who did it. Quit cheerleading
- arcturus17 4y agoI'm no Musk apologist; I find him quite an unsavory character, in fact. I also think some - if not many - of his initiatives thus far have been wrong. But I do have a sense that he'll turn things around. He's breaking things at breakneck speed (the blue check fiasco happened in what, 2 weeks after coming in?), but also correcting course just as fast, and many of his detractors are not giving him credit for that. I think in a year or two Twitter might end up a better-governed org and a better product, unless a newcomer splits the market - I am 100% convinced Mastodon ain't it, but maybe Dorsey's new idea... Anyone else share this sentiment?
- tanepiper 4y agoPeak America: Still talking about a laptop no one else in the world cares about, meanwhile the world has worse problems going on.
- smoyer 4y ago"4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time." How can you trust anything else in the thread if the author really believes this? IRC was more than 20 years old when Twitter was founded!
- hk__2 4y ago> How can you trust anything else in the thread if the author really believes this? IRC was more than 20 years old when Twitter was founded! IRC is mean to chat within communities; It’s just forums over chat. It’s not the same thing as instant mass communication.
- thelock85 4y agoSo interesting to see if this will affect politics since midterms have passed. At least at the moment I don’t think free speech (esp via Twitter) is a priority over guns, crime, economy and reproductive rights for the average voter, or that any candidates want to seriously hold that mantle. I wonder if and how that will change going into the next election cycle.
- hairofadog 4y agoI expect the new Republican Congress will drag this out Benghazi-like for as long as they hold the majority, and it will become tiresome to all except congressional grandstanders and my late father who will somehow find a way to forward me emails about it from wherever his happy place is beyond the grave.
- Akronymus 4y agoSo, like the jan 6 trials? Where some people are STILL waiting for theirs.
- tibbydudeza 4y agoSo it is a big do nothing like everything Elon has claimed his entire life. What did you expect from a serial liar and bs artist.
- duckqlz 4y agoThis entire series of posts are a well crafted attempt to inflame the reader and divide the comments section. As this is a personal opinion of a very complex issue I think hn is a bad place for this type of post (see ensuing comments). We can all do our part to try and remain academic when responding to other comments we don't agree with.
- Yuyudo_Comiketo 4y agoThis is how you promote a technocrat to be later put in the role of the head of one world government: You censor, mute, cancel all dissent for years. You turn homes to prisons and enforce inhumane conditions for people to just be able to "get back to normalcy". You turn voluntary to compulsory. You deprive people of individuality by defacing them with masks. You school their obedience with barefaced surveillance. You edit the hell out of living language with bullshit like replacing "he/she" with "they", infesting it with newspeak, you make up 100500 new gender identifications that all camouflage the same psychic disorder, you deluge all the key platforms with hordes of shills, trendsetters and discourse steersmen. You start senseless wars with the only goal of reducing as many human beings to dust as possible. You implant terms like "tin-foil hat" and "conspiracy theorist" as a prefabricated gag, you discredit by associating all independent thinking with lunacies like Flat Earth. All in all, you do your best to make this society a hell to live in for everyone having the guts to tell a spade a spade, or at least to recognize the underlying roots of one's cognitive dissonance. You boil it until it all but blows up. Then you start moving the queen, that is, the so-called "self-made man" who invented PayPal (not), personally developed the blueprints of Falcons and Teslas (not) and has now been saving the world (not) from the oppression of all things mentioned above by jail-breaking Twitter from the tentacles of censorship, thus winning himself an army of supporters, especially among young, idealistic and geeky. Then you probably make him a key figure in exposing the medical fascism of Corona Era and stopping all the bloodshed stirred up by the "incompetent national governments" of the world. Then, one day, "ladies and gentlemen (sic!), meet the first President of the World!" Screenshot this comment when it's almost faded to ivory, with all the cavils replied, to prove that the gist of it wasn't that obvious for everyone back in the day - or maybe that I was wrong, hopefully.
- fingal 4y agoThat sounds unlikely.
- Yuyudo_Comiketo 4y ago> Then you probably make him a key figure in exposing the medical fascism of Corona Era https://twitter.com/JamesfWells/status/1600526813045800960 https://twitter.com/JamesfWells/status/1600526813045800960
- qwertyuiop_ 4y agomore to review from the Biden Team sums up the story
- ModernMech 4y agoActually this does: > there’s no evidence - that I’ve seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story. Really curious why those who are using this story as evidence of government overreach fail to acknowledge this line.
- djkivi 4y agoYou can see that the media doesn't think this is that important since it is not a story on the New York Times or Guardian websites.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Abimelex 4y agoAny TLDR; here? What's the big fuzz about it? Was just skim reading it and the point seems to be that content moderation at twitter used to be done by individuals which might be influenced by a political opinion. Is there anything more to it?
- anon291 4y agoI don't understand why the discussion is centered around porn when the NY post article had no pornography and yet Twitter banned it even in private dms, a punishment previously only reserved for child porn.. Is the hunter Biden story on the same level as child porn? Is that the moral equivalence you want to draw?
- grappler 4y agoThe takeaway for me is that anyone who doesn't like large centralized social networks having and using this kind of influence over the dissemination of information, whether because you didn't like twitter's earlier management or because you don't like its new management by Elon, or some other reason, should be cheering the recent growth in the fediverse of decentralized social networking sites. https://the-federation.info/ https://the-federation.info/
- desuforever 4y agobased on the comments here civil war 2.0 is going to lit af frfr; its going to be bussin
- papito 4y agoSo, a social media company removed a dick pick? This is the news? Okay, ELON, "handle" it for us would you now? Let's see which advertiser would love their ad appear right below Hunter Biden's hog. This is unreal stupidity. This is what Elon Musk's time is consumed by? Investigating routine moderation at Twitter and discovering the "secret" 30% Apple App Store tax. Dear Lord.
- throwawayacc3 4y agoAnd the truth comes out. Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of censorship, is a child groomer: https://mobile.twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1601778632552484865 https://mobile.twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1601778632552...
- MrRiddle 4y ago
- tdhz77 4y agoReally don’t understand conservative narrative. Nothing was blocked or censored. It was easily findable on google and was discussed on twitter. The link to the NY post was removed because of a policy about hacking. Was anybody prevented from knowing about this story? No. Anybody prevented from talking about it? No. This is such nonsense.
- ModernMech 4y agoHalf of politics is about creating narratives and driving media stories. The Hunter Biden Laptop story was an attempt by Republicans to manufacture an “October surprise” - a surprising revelation that occurs just weeks before the election which might cause the public to reorient their choice for. This particular “Surprise” was actually just a rehash of a conspiracy theory that Republicans were trying to manufacture evidence for. Trump was impeached the first time for extorting a bribe from Ukraine’s Zelenskyy which would allege wrongdoing by Biden. What he had hoped for was an official announcement of an investigation into Biden from Zelenskyy. But Trump failed to actually corrupt Zelenskyy, so he had nothing to go on come election time. Cue the October Surprise. This laptop magically appears which appears contain evidence to support the conspiracy theory about Biden. It’s a GOP miracle! But the laptop’s provenance is shady as fuck and the contents still can’t be fully authenticated. So no one really trusts this thing except the most hardcore conservatives. Everyone else can see right through this thing for what it was. This includes Twitter and the media, many in the media, who had been used by Conservatives in 2016 to distribute hacked materials from the DNC, and didn’t want to be used again in a similar way, so they didn’t play along like clueless idiots this time. Conservatives were pissed off royally, and decided then to go on a holy war against Twitter, which had been brewing for a while as violent and hateful conservative voices were being pushed off the platform. But the laptop issue was the final straw it seems. Maybe Trump’s ban was the final final straw. These events happened in quick succession so it’s hard to tell. That brings us to today. Since the laptop itself is a political dud that no one except GOP faithful trusts, Conservatives have decided to reframe the narrative as one of Democrats and Biden having untoward control over social media with the ability to oppress free speech through Twitter, which is not true. So now we see more manufactured outrage. It turns out that despite what Conservatives say, Democrats don’t actually control Twitter. Quite the opposite is true now actually. But even with a conservative like Musk owning all of the evidence, he can’t prove anything close to the allegation that Democrats suppressed free speech on Twitter, so they pushed out these “Twitter Files” filled with cherry picked quotes and misleading statistics. Obviously this will help Musk to make further inroads with Conservatives since it’s clear he’s given up all pretext of being a neutral steward of Twitter who protects free speech. This whole thing is a very twisted, so if you take it at face value, you’re really just buying into the narrative being sold by Conservatives. It doesn’t matter that nothing was actually blocked or censored or suppressed. The fact is the laptop is the GOP’s only strategy for winning in 2024, so whatever it is they need. their voters to be very very mad over it.
- jessaustin 4y agoMediaite has a solid takedown of the formulaic campaign to mildly criticize TFA. [0] It's interesting how much of the formula has reappeared in this comment thread! Some HN commentators appear to be doing, on an amateur basis, what lots of other people get paid to do... [0] https://www.mediaite.com/online/the-twenty-seven-most-embarrassing-reactions-to-taibbi-thread-about-twitter-censoring-hunter-biden-tweets/ https://www.mediaite.com/online/the-twenty-seven-most-embarr...