11 ms·

The point isn’t that Twitter felt compelled. Isn’t the point that Twitter happily complied, and even made up reasons to censor the stuff they thought was the mo

by zaroth 4y ago

The point isn’t that Twitter felt compelled. Isn’t the point that Twitter happily complied, and even made up reasons to censor the stuff they thought was the most damaging “in order to prevent another 2016”.

cormacrelf 4y ago
The point is that if you don’t like that, take it up with twitter. Framing it as government forcibly censoring twitter is just straight up untrue. Insofar as the Biden campaign is concerned, it is impossible to violate 1A when you are not imbued with government power. There is no such thing as a private citizen compelling Twitter to take something down, the only possible thing you can be doing is requesting. Both campaigns did this so feel free to draw your own conclusions as to whether the Trump campaign did something wrong, but I will point you to the word “campaign” and note that a campaign is also a private party, so pretty unlikely.
- hgfdhgdfhgdf 4y ago
  The point is that social media with vast influence is taking cues from one political party.
  - cormacrelf 4y ago
    Mate, one of the alleged bits of "censorship" was a request to take down... literally nude photos of Biden's son posted from a Chinese-language account. Anyone can ask for that to be taken down and Twitter will say yes. It's not improper to say yes just because the person asking happens to be running for President. Twitter is not under an obligation to distribute non-consensual nude photos just because the person involved is a celebrity. Imagine if that were the rule.
    - cozos 4y ago
      And you're just going to ignore the censored NYT article due to "hacked content""?
      - Sightline 4y ago
        Yes because it's clearly a campaign to make shit up since the Republicans didn't want to lose. Have you not heard Steve Bannon talk about it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Js2Qk7hpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Js2Qk7hpg
  - misnome 4y ago
    *both political parties
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      * the two big (to fail) political parties
  - _kbh_ 4y ago
    Did you miss the part where they literally actioned requests from both parties?.
- zaroth 4y ago
  I would never frame this as Twitter being forced to do anything. I don’t think this is a 1A issue. But I think several things are surprising here. First, how deeply rooted democratic operatives within Twitter took totally unprecedented action to censor a potentially highly damaging story. Second, that Twitter publicly lied about their justification for doing so, which itself probably broke laws (at the very least a serious FTC enforcement action). Companies cannot lie that something was done because of a TOS violation. Consumers have a fair and reasonable expectation here that was violated when the company made up reasons for censoring the story - even in DMs! Third, the chaotic response within Twitter and its internal paralysis in recognizing and “unfucking” the hijacking of their toolset for overly political and nefarious purpose. Fourth, and this one really just irks me because it was gaslighting on a national scale, that so many channels and people picked up and ran with the “disinformation” and the particularly ridiculous “Russian disinformation” angle in an attempt to discredit the reporting. Twitter censoring the Hunter story was basically an insider breech of corporate policy. Insider communications seem to indicate that people that could have stopped this were either stunned into submission or asleep at the wheel.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Hey, "democratic operatives" embedded somewhere is conspiratorial. The parsimonious explanation, which is where most people align, is that the content violated the terms of service as determined by Twitter. That's the conclusion supported by the new evidence as well. Good luck out there.
    - knewter 4y ago
      We're skipping the whole "avoid another 2016" part of it?
    - oceanplexian 4y ago
      It’s not like they were CIA operatives. When people say that, they mean it’s a revolving door. The NYT has repeatedly printed stories about how Google employees who volunteered w/ the DNC were a big part of the reason President Obama was elected. A huge number of people working in the Democrat party are from SV tech circles. At the last company I worked in San Francisco, the company was matching employees who donated to political causes that overwhelmingly favored one political party. Everyone should support political movements they believe in, but at a certain point when only one point of view is that deeply ingrained in your corporate culture it affects your ability to be impartial. If you look at Twitter it’s pretty obvious that their actions reflected the culture and they kept pushing the boundaries until they eventually crossed a red line.
wesleywt 4y ago
I doubt naked pictures of a candidate son is as damaging as the leader of the FBI saying they investigating a candidate before her election.
- gregw2 4y ago
  To be fair, I think giving 10 to the “big man”, a unverifiable email but which was vouched to by another recipient of the email (do they have a copy with a DKIM signature? I never saw that asked/answered), was the more relevant claim than the son with nudity. If you mean that some(all?) the particular tweets mentioned as censored by Tabibbi were about frontal nudity and thus reasonably censored I am not arguing.
  - sjwalter 4y ago
    There was not a second of doubt that the emails were legitimate. Here's proof: the Biden campaign and Hunter himself never denied they were real. As well, while nobody in the mainstream bothered calling any of the people in the emails, Taibbi DID. They were obviously real the moment there was no denial. Because if they were just fabricated, denial would be the first public response.
tootie 4y ago
I mean, so what? They can do what they want. We already knew what they did. The leaked communication conforms pretty well to their public explanation. You just don't like it. Go try Truth Social then.
s3p 4y ago
Ok, and?

by zaroth 4y ago

cormacrelf 4y ago

The point is that if you don’t like that, take it up with twitter. Framing it as government forcibly censoring twitter is just straight up untrue. Insofar as the Biden campaign is concerned, it is impossible to violate 1A when you are not imbued with government power. There is no such thing as a private citizen compelling Twitter to take something down, the only possible thing you can be doing is requesting. Both campaigns did this so feel free to draw your own conclusions as to whether the Trump campaign did something wrong, but I will point you to the word “campaign” and note that a campaign is also a private party, so pretty unlikely.

hgfdhgdfhgdf 4y ago
The point is that social media with vast influence is taking cues from one political party.
- cormacrelf 4y ago
  Mate, one of the alleged bits of "censorship" was a request to take down... literally nude photos of Biden's son posted from a Chinese-language account. Anyone can ask for that to be taken down and Twitter will say yes. It's not improper to say yes just because the person asking happens to be running for President. Twitter is not under an obligation to distribute non-consensual nude photos just because the person involved is a celebrity. Imagine if that were the rule.
  - cozos 4y ago
    And you're just going to ignore the censored NYT article due to "hacked content""?
    - Sightline 4y ago
      Yes because it's clearly a campaign to make shit up since the Republicans didn't want to lose. Have you not heard Steve Bannon talk about it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Js2Qk7hpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Js2Qk7hpg
- misnome 4y ago
  *both political parties
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    * the two big (to fail) political parties
- _kbh_ 4y ago
  Did you miss the part where they literally actioned requests from both parties?.
zaroth 4y ago
I would never frame this as Twitter being forced to do anything. I don’t think this is a 1A issue. But I think several things are surprising here. First, how deeply rooted democratic operatives within Twitter took totally unprecedented action to censor a potentially highly damaging story. Second, that Twitter publicly lied about their justification for doing so, which itself probably broke laws (at the very least a serious FTC enforcement action). Companies cannot lie that something was done because of a TOS violation. Consumers have a fair and reasonable expectation here that was violated when the company made up reasons for censoring the story - even in DMs! Third, the chaotic response within Twitter and its internal paralysis in recognizing and “unfucking” the hijacking of their toolset for overly political and nefarious purpose. Fourth, and this one really just irks me because it was gaslighting on a national scale, that so many channels and people picked up and ran with the “disinformation” and the particularly ridiculous “Russian disinformation” angle in an attempt to discredit the reporting. Twitter censoring the Hunter story was basically an insider breech of corporate policy. Insider communications seem to indicate that people that could have stopped this were either stunned into submission or asleep at the wheel.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Hey, "democratic operatives" embedded somewhere is conspiratorial. The parsimonious explanation, which is where most people align, is that the content violated the terms of service as determined by Twitter. That's the conclusion supported by the new evidence as well. Good luck out there.
  - knewter 4y ago
    We're skipping the whole "avoid another 2016" part of it?
  - oceanplexian 4y ago
    It’s not like they were CIA operatives. When people say that, they mean it’s a revolving door. The NYT has repeatedly printed stories about how Google employees who volunteered w/ the DNC were a big part of the reason President Obama was elected. A huge number of people working in the Democrat party are from SV tech circles. At the last company I worked in San Francisco, the company was matching employees who donated to political causes that overwhelmingly favored one political party. Everyone should support political movements they believe in, but at a certain point when only one point of view is that deeply ingrained in your corporate culture it affects your ability to be impartial. If you look at Twitter it’s pretty obvious that their actions reflected the culture and they kept pushing the boundaries until they eventually crossed a red line.

wesleywt 4y ago

I doubt naked pictures of a candidate son is as damaging as the leader of the FBI saying they investigating a candidate before her election.

gregw2 4y ago
To be fair, I think giving 10 to the “big man”, a unverifiable email but which was vouched to by another recipient of the email (do they have a copy with a DKIM signature? I never saw that asked/answered), was the more relevant claim than the son with nudity. If you mean that some(all?) the particular tweets mentioned as censored by Tabibbi were about frontal nudity and thus reasonably censored I am not arguing.
- sjwalter 4y ago
  There was not a second of doubt that the emails were legitimate. Here's proof: the Biden campaign and Hunter himself never denied they were real. As well, while nobody in the mainstream bothered calling any of the people in the emails, Taibbi DID. They were obviously real the moment there was no denial. Because if they were just fabricated, denial would be the first public response.

tootie 4y ago

I mean, so what? They can do what they want. We already knew what they did. The leaked communication conforms pretty well to their public explanation. You just don't like it. Go try Truth Social then.

s3p 4y ago

Ok, and?