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Did you read your own source? The Biden team never asked Twitter staff to “handle” anything. They forwarded tweets that [violated twitter’s ToS][1], a Twitter
by romellem 4y ago
Did you read your own source?
The Biden team never asked Twitter staff to “handle” anything. They forwarded tweets that [violated twitter’s ToS][1], a Twitter staff member forwarded them for review, and at that point the reviewer said they “handled these.”
That’s what content moderation is supposed to do!
[1]: https://twitter.com/parkebench/status/1598841731763810304 https://twitter.com/parkebench/status/1598841731763810304
- newZWhoDis 4y ago
- mmastrac 4y agoIf they refused to handle Tony's problem, what happened? If twitter refused to handle the problem, what happens? The analogy falls flat.
- newZWhoDis 4y ago> If twitter refused to handle the problem, what happens? 230
- labster 4y agoIf only America had a constitutional system that could protect the little guys like Twitter from the mean ol’ government.
- newZWhoDis 4y agoWith today’s revelations, Twitter was acting as the government, under the direction of government employees, fulfilling traditionally government-roles, often for particular political wings of said government
- comte7092 4y agoEmployees of what government?
- encryptluks2 4y agoThe Trump Whitehouse.
- labster 4y agoIt’s a little generous to call the Trump White House a government. Maybe a syndicate.
- pr337h4m 4y agohttps://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/jawboning-against-speech https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/jawboning-against-speec...
- zaroth 4y agoIn fact in both cases they were happy to comply. No coercion was necessary, making Twitter into an overtly political apparatus in this case.
- eggnet 4y agoWho is Tony in this analogy? Trump was president at the time, and had threatened Zelensky to improve his election chances. Twitter was supposed to fear Biden?
- Georgelemental 4y agoBiden was expected to win the election, and therefore to become President, at that point.
- eggnet 4y agoFavored to win and assume power in 3 months, yes. Trump was president at the time. Current, guaranteed threat, with a track record of doing exactly that. Biden has a long public history, without abuse of power. It's not comparable.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoLuckily, Americans' Constitutional rights are not so easily dismissed by such charitable explanations. Thank God.
- dd36 4y agoA political campaign isn’t an order from the government. Until recently, intentionally misunderstanding the situation was an ineffective court strategy.
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago"Will no one rid me of these meddlesome Tweets?"
- kumarvvr 4y agoI just want to ask you. If you came face to face with a tweet that affects you and is in violation of twitters policies, would you not point them out?
- pastacacioepepe 4y agoIt didn't violate any ToS though.
- bhaak 4y agoIt did. Involuntary pornography.
- acdha 4y agoHis nudes definitely did: > Sharing explicit sexual images or videos of someone online without their consent is a violation of their privacy and one of the most serious violations of the Twitter Rules. In addition to posing serious safety and security risks, it may also result in physical, emotional, and financial hardship for the person whose media is shared. The hacked content in general is covered by this. Given the contents, it doesn’t appear that the news exemption covers most of the material: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materials https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materi...
- olalonde 4y agoIf I were to report something on Twitter, I would click the "Report" button in the UI and I doubt that Twitter employees would internally refer to my reports as "More to review from the olalonde team.". It appears that those reports were submitted outside of the standard reporting process that regular users utilize and were treated preferentially.
- 4y ago
- GauntletWizard 4y agoWill no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? I think it's a good thing that we're having a discussion on when the Whitehouse is applying pressure for tweets to be removed, and how nicely asking is or isn't pressure. I actually think that these actions were entirely legal. The Biden campaign and the Trump administration can and should be allowed to ask for posts to be reviewed. But I think we'd damn well take a close look at when and why they do choose to do so.
- stevebmark 4y agoThey did. The removed tweets were nude photos of Hunter Biden. But no one here bothered to verify that. This is all so stupid.
- monero-xmr 4y agoI find it extremely unlikely that nude photos / prostitutes / crack smoking of Trump’s kids would have been handled with such tact
- dekerta 4y agoIt's a bit different since Trump's kids were all political figures in his nepotistic administration
- aleister_777 4y ago
- paulv 4y agoIt isn't, though. His daughter worked for him in the White House. His sons stumped for him. Hunter Biden has done neither.
- KingLancelot 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mc32 4y ago
- comte7092 4y agoBiden wasn’t in the White House in 2020? Campaign staff reporting tweets that made him look bad seems… fairly pedestrian? There’s far more egregious examples of bad behavior out there than this.
- romellem 4y ago> I wonder if … they self-reported their own ToS violations. Sorry, what “own violations?” And the original sarcasm: you are upset that an employee is reporting violating content that concerns their employer? I didn’t realize that if you click the report button on the post, you must have 10 degrees of separation from it, otherwise it’s untoward. Are you aware of how almost all content moderation on the public-facing web works? And wait, “throughout the whole internet”? I missed the part when Twitter became the sole TLD and its vast expanse meant any violating content found must surely have been discovered by time-consuming and pain-staking methods. Or maybe a reverse image search and a few interns can find some violating content that hadn’t been flagged yet on one single website. Enough with the indignation and false accusations.
- beaned 4y agoThey had the former white house press secretary suspended for simply mentioning the hunter biden laptop, was that against the ToS?
- tomrod 4y agoIf the story was misinformation, why would the sharer's former or current job matter?
- knewter 4y agoThe suppression was the misinformation
- chrisbaker98 4y agoThe Hunter Biden story wasn't misinformation.
- Sightline 4y agoYes it was, do you not remember everyone being 100% certain it had CP?
- chrisbaker98 4y agoWhat? No, I don't remember that; this is the first time I've ever heard anyone say the laptop had CP on it. EDIT: In fact, let's not rely on our memories. Here's the original NY Post story, the one which you weren't allowed to share on Twitter: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden... This article doesn't make any kind of allegations about CP. Why are you making things up?
- Sightline 4y agohttps://www.newsweek.com/hunter-biden-laptop-qanon-conspiracy-theories-2020-election-1540173 https://www.newsweek.com/hunter-biden-laptop-qanon-conspirac... "The conservative radio host Wayne Root claimed without evidence in a tweet shared tens of thousands of times that Hunter Biden's laptop contains videos of him sexually abusing Chinese children." That's just one article, I remember seeing many YouTube comments and 4chan posts about it, which could suggest they were bots pushing a narrative.
- Taniwha 4y agoAnd besides at the time Trump was the government
- wyclif 4y agoTrump was not the government. He was only the chief executive. Ever heard of separation of powers? The Congress, the Senate?
- cozos 4y agoDid you? They also censored a NYT article
- paulgb 4y agoAre you talking about the New York Post article? I don’t see anything about a New York Times article in the thread.
- runsWphotons 4y agothroughout the replies here people are making this argument but it still seems insane to me. like if you got photographed with prostitutes and someone tweeted that out would you expect the DNC to lobby directly w Twitter to get those down or would you just report the tweets in the app
- ethanbond 4y agoYou’d use the best connections you have available which, if you’re a major corporate or political entity, are way better than the Report button. Obviously.
- vinay_ys 4y agoContent moderation can be made purely algorithmic and inaccessible to human intervention to avoid this concern completely.
- ethanbond 4y agoHow so? If you know how, you should definitely commercialize it! It’d be a huge cost savings for every social platform.
- shagie 4y agoI would bring up the post from a bit ago - Ex-Reddit CEO on Twitter moderation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33449791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33449791 Moderating content isn't the goal. Moderating behavior is.
- bithaze 4y agoHow do you design and maintain an algorithm without human intervention?
- micromacrofoot 4y agoI would email twitter and ask them to remove the photos in addition to reporting them, personally - might not work, but i’d try
- brchn 4y agoThe fact that they listen to the government requests is the scary part. They should just have a consistent content moderation policy and enforce it.
- anderber 4y agoShouldn't they listen to anyone who showcasing someone violating their TOS? Does it matter that it was a staffer in Washington?
- brchn 4y agoThey can just report the tweet like I or you could.
- ModernMech 4y agoHow many times do we see someone turning to HN as a side channel into big tech because the official channels aren’t as responsive? It’s normal and expected for people to use any methods available in their wider social network to achieve an objective. If there’s no law against it (as there isn’t here) then what’s the problem?
- UncleMeat 4y agoAnd like virtually every system on the planet, there are false negatives. So external groups might send over things and say "hey, I think you missed this."
- brchn 4y agoThat’s alright, but when the tweet doesn’t actually violate the ToS, it’s a true negative that requires no intervention by interested political parties.
- UncleMeat 4y agoSure. Are any of the linked cases tweets that didn't actually violate the ToS? Is there any evidence that twitter took down tweets without reviewing them further?