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These policies were always a pretext. The two major social networks blocking the same story at the same time citing different policies that are obviously incons

by cm2187 4y ago

These policies were always a pretext. The two major social networks blocking the same story at the same time citing different policies that are obviously inconsistently applied (did Twitter block the story about Trump's leaked tax returns? Did facebook block Biden when he claimed that covid would be gone once everyone was vaccinated?). These emails show twitter executives puzzled by the application of those policies. I agree, nothing we didn't know. Like I suspect the further findings alluded to at the end of the thread. But it's kind of like the Snowden revelations. Anyone a bit tech savvy strongly suspected what the NSA was up to, and would have been surprised of the contrary. But it's interesting nevertheless to see the proof. And to see how political viewpoints are censored at the request of politicians.

nathias 4y ago
the life of a politically inconvenient story: 1. it's conspiracy theory 2. it was obvious to everyone 3. forgotten
- Ygg2 4y ago
  I had this happen on Reddit personally. Shared my Covid experience. Got accused of spreading misinformation. Makes me wonder, if conspiracy theorists might have a point.
  - dial9-1 4y ago
    I've consistently been called a conspiracy theorist since the whole covid story started. I got insider info and knew exactly how the timeline'd play out for years to come. at this point a "conspiracy" is just a "spoiler alert"
    - Ygg2 4y ago
      I've no such insight. I just said that: A) Got vaccine and got infected right after second dose (1 week) B) Noted some unvaccinated friends had no symptoms, so it's not like Covid vaccine has a provable lessen the symptoms effect. At this point Deus Ex was a credible prophetic game, where a "vaccine" that doesn't cure but postpones symptoms is seen as a miracle cure, which is eerily similar to "we'll need to be vaccinated every few months" that was present in media at some point. That's pretty much every pharma's wet dream. Edit: As someone outside of USA, I find it remarkable how people seem to associate vaccine skepticism, despite pharma in US having strong motivation to push novel drugs that don't solve the issue, just treat the symptoms.
      - viraptor 4y ago
        > so it's not like Covid vaccine has a provable lessen the symptoms effect. That's not the result that can be inferred from seeing unvaccinated people having no symptoms. In other words, people having no symptoms without vaccine or even having side effects from the vaccine itself does not disprove the statistic of vaccinated people having lesser symptoms on average.
        Ygg2 4y ago
        Ok, but how do you differentiate asymptomatic carriers from vaccine effectiveness? And afaik the mRNA vaccines were fast tracked, leaving room for possible errors.
        viraptor 4y ago
        When testing and during early phases of deployment you'd track a sample of different cohorts more closely. Either explicitly by retesting a selected group, or analysing data from groups sampled anyway (many emergency doctors got a weekly test). So as Usual in studies - through data collection, statistics, and correcting for bias in cohorts. > afaik the mRNA vaccines were fast tracked, leaving room for possible errors There's already lots of information about the details of what the fast tracking meant. I would recommend reading some to understand it better than your summary.
        Ygg2 4y ago
        > There's already lots of information about the details of what the fast tracking meant. I just read this: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-pfizer-vaccine-transmission-idUSL1N31F20E https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-pfizer-vaccine-tra... > The same presentation slide describes “Other benefits likely uncertain at approval and only clearer after the vaccine is used” to include the vaccine’s “long term protection,” “prevention of infection (asymptomatic cases),” and “prevention of virus transmission in the community - needs specific studies post-approval necessary to show.” This implies they only checked it reduces symptoms in affected. Transmission prevention and long term immunity would be tested at later point. So what was then the point of getting everyone vaccinated? Weren't vaccines supposed to contain its spread? When I got vaccinated for various diseases, it gave long term immunity, not 4 doses over months to lessen the symptoms.
  - headsoup 4y ago
    Maybe the point is people continue to be labelled 'conspiracy theorists' regardless of being actually, factually proven correct. Makes the arguing so much easier when you can just keep dismissing the 'other' rather than say sorry.
    - tekknik 4y ago
      So many words are devalued these days, like facist, racist, Nazi, and extremist.
      - berenza 4y ago
        devalued in the sense that it's easy to trip over some low bar for the new definition and be assigned that label. not devalued all that much in the sense of the negative effect that label has on the labelled person's argument or reputation. which is, of course, very convenient for people who want to throw those words around online.
        tekknik 4y ago
        exactly
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    It can be impossible to tell conspiracies apart from many people independently wanting the same things.
- jongjong 4y ago
  So true but I don't think the gaslighting aspect will be forgotten so easily. First, we were gaslit about our understanding of the facts, then we were gaslit about having being gaslit. Many public figures have lost all credibility.
  - nathias 4y ago
    remember the Panama papers?
    - jongjong 4y ago
      Of course.
      - nathias 4y ago
        yes, but the media cycle doesn't, that's what I mean with forgotten (and this too shall pass)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jliptzin 4y ago
  I don't understand why this is a story to begin with. Twitter is a private company that does what it wants. It can boot or block whoever or whatever story they want to for whatever reason. Obviously if the people running the site lean towards one political direction, that's going to affect their moderation policies. Why don't we analyze Fox News's decision to run or not run certain stories. People's first mistake is getting their news from Twitter, or Fox News for that matter. This is not a free speech issue. If you are interested in the Hunter Biden story there are about 300 other sources you could find information about it within about 1/2 a second, it was one of the most widely reported stories in 2020 if I remember correctly. I guess the story is that the people that ran Twitter were left leaning? Which we already knew going into it?
  - tekknik 4y ago
    > It can boot or block whoever or whatever story they want to for whatever reason. We discussed this years ago when it first started. When you’re the defacto town square then no, you shouldn’t be able to kick people out for whatever reason. > Why don't we analyze Fox News's decision to run or not run certain stories. How do you justify the left ignoring stories in their media? For instance the story about Chase Staub. > People's first mistake is getting their news from Twitter, or Fox News for that matter. There’s always an assumption it’s Fox. Try WSJ. > This is not a free speech issue. Very much disagree. Ask yourself why you’re so upset at this information. Or if you’re not upset, ask why there is so much anxiety around this story. Clearly some the left are concerned about what this will result in. > I guess the story is that the people that ran Twitter were left leaning? Which we already knew going into it? Yes and that’s a problem when they use their political viewpoints to control the conversation.
    - jliptzin 4y ago
      I’m not upset, I’m just amused. It’s always amazing to me when “free market” conservatives complain about private companies making private decisions that they don’t like. I go on Twitter maybe 5 minutes a month. There are dozens of other “town squares” and if you think twitter is the only one you’re on there way too much. Has anyone been arrested or imprisoned for running the Hunter Biden laptop story? Has any government authority threatened anyone with arrest for running the Hunter Biden story? No? Then not a free speech issue. Twitter is not a government agency. Don’t like their moderation practices? Start your own twitter which is exactly what Trump did and is the correct response. He can then push or censor whatever stories he wants and people decide whether or not they want to traffic on that site. That is the beauty of the free market we play in. If Fox wants to be the propaganda arm of the Republican Party while masquerading as news, good for them. If Elon wants to unban everyone on Twitter and let everything go unfettered with no moderation, good for him. There are lots of other choices out there. None of this is new or interesting. This seems like more of a school cafeteria food fight than any kind of “free speech” issue.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  It's amazing how easy it is for the media to make something a conspiracy theory, no matter how important or factual. Just dont talk about it. Effortless.
noduerme 4y ago
what's super fun now is watching one mod try to run twitter without any written policies whatsoever.
- brtkdotse 4y ago
  Imagine paying 44 billion buckaroos to become a mod.
  - wyclif 4y ago
    Pretty bad take. He paid 44 million to own the town square.
    - krapp 4y ago
      Let's be real - He paid 44 billion to own the libs.
      - e-clinton 4y ago
        Then quickly realized the libs were paying twitter’s bills. While this story is good for engagement on Twitter, it’s not exactly pushing advertisers to run back to Twitter. I doubt Twitter is worth even $4B now
        tekknik 4y ago
        So, to recap, the left tried to create a left only town square, and now someone comes in and makes it neutral again, and we’re angry enough to hope this guy wasted $44bil?
        krapp 4y ago
        No. To recap, Twitter was never actually a left only town square, that was always a right-wing conspiracy theory. Elon Musk didn't make it neutral, nor did he intend to, rather he seems to want to turn Twitter into a right-wing platform. We don't have to hope he wasted $44 billion, he definitely, objectively has done so. And we're not angry, we're mocking him and his sycophantic cohort. I hope that clears things up.
chrisbaker98 4y ago
> citing different policies that are obviously inconsistently applied Here's a better example: the Canadian trucker protests. GiveSendGo was hacked, and the names of people who had donated to the protests were made public - and Twitter had no problem with those "hacked materials" being shared on its platform. I'd think that if there was ever a reason to block the publication of hacked materials, it would be to prevent private individuals from being doxxed, not to protect the political interests of the worlds' most powerful people. (People, please don't reply to tell me why you didn't like the Canadian truckers' political views, it's not relevant.)
- Dudelander 4y ago
  While I agree that Twitter should have taken down the tweets about non-public figures, they're not against the rules: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-information https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info... Names are explicitly listed as exceptions to the ban in sharing personal information.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    This is about a ban on sharing illegally obtained (hacked) information, not sharing personal details.
    - Dudelander 4y ago
      That's not against the TOS. Snowden tweets about PRISM all the time on Twitter.
      - nonethewiser 4y ago
        Its against the same hacked materials policy
        noxer 4y ago
        There was no hacking material and no evidence that it could be based on such material. You repeat what they intentionally used as "reason" fully aware that it isn't. Heck even if the new articles about the topic would have used hacked material as source it dint not include that material itself and thus wound not fall under that policy anyway. Not even articles about a confirmed hacks fall under this policy even if the hack is confirmed with the hacked material itself. This is and was a excuse from the very start.
paganel 4y ago
> I agree, nothing we didn't know Some of us did know, that's true, but we were labeled as conspiracy theorists and the like. And when the truth came out in the open those calling us conspiracy theorists of course that embraced the "that has always been a known fact! What are you on about?". Rinse and repeat.
- causi 4y ago
  See I don't even know what the truth of the matter is because all the moderate voices on the subject were silenced so the only ones who persevered in their effort to be heard were the fringe lunatics.
  - 2devnull 4y ago
    Correct. These revelations (for some) are a win for moderates. Jack Dorsey and Rho Khanna. That’s who benefitted the most. Amazingly the democrats are upset about this. It tells me what I need to know about those people.
Dudelander 4y ago
None of that stuff is against the rules. New York Times articles and overly optimistic predictions do not constitute private information or misinformation. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they violate the TOS. Also, nothing that Snowden released was publicly available, but Biden's staffers were using tools that were available to the general public in the way they were intended. They're completely unrelated.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Since Guccifer 2.0 I've come to be at least a little suspicious of any leaks that seem one-sided. The timing too only heightens my radar (so to speak).
rib3ye 4y ago
Isn’t the revelatory part that both parties had bat phones to the moderation teams, and that the team working with the Trump admin was intentionally sandbagging violations by “The Left”?
PaulHoule 4y ago
The whole point of the NSA is that it does the things that Snowden revealed. They were tremendously annoyed by it not because he revealed they were doing it in the abstract but because he revealed details that got people to change their practices, forced the NSA to change their practice, and reduced their effectiveness. Some of those changes should have happened anyway. Snowden's revelations pushed people to use https ubiquitously. It doesn't just protect against NSA spying but other countries do stuff like that too as well as non state actors. (There was that time I switched on wireshark on WiFi for 5 minutes and was like damn... I've got a lot of email passwords.) Like it or not, driving from DC to the airport in Baltimore you drive past the puzzle palace at Fort Mead and it's got a huge parking lot and one of the worst traffic jams in America when the quitting bell rings at the end of the work day. If they weren't spying on people but instead spending the money on ski chalets or beautifying the inner city or something, that would be a real scandal.

by cm2187 4y ago

nathias 4y ago

the life of a politically inconvenient story: 1. it's conspiracy theory 2. it was obvious to everyone 3. forgotten

Ygg2 4y ago
I had this happen on Reddit personally. Shared my Covid experience. Got accused of spreading misinformation. Makes me wonder, if conspiracy theorists might have a point.
- dial9-1 4y ago
  I've consistently been called a conspiracy theorist since the whole covid story started. I got insider info and knew exactly how the timeline'd play out for years to come. at this point a "conspiracy" is just a "spoiler alert"
  - Ygg2 4y ago
    I've no such insight. I just said that: A) Got vaccine and got infected right after second dose (1 week) B) Noted some unvaccinated friends had no symptoms, so it's not like Covid vaccine has a provable lessen the symptoms effect. At this point Deus Ex was a credible prophetic game, where a "vaccine" that doesn't cure but postpones symptoms is seen as a miracle cure, which is eerily similar to "we'll need to be vaccinated every few months" that was present in media at some point. That's pretty much every pharma's wet dream. Edit: As someone outside of USA, I find it remarkable how people seem to associate vaccine skepticism, despite pharma in US having strong motivation to push novel drugs that don't solve the issue, just treat the symptoms.
    - viraptor 4y ago
      > so it's not like Covid vaccine has a provable lessen the symptoms effect. That's not the result that can be inferred from seeing unvaccinated people having no symptoms. In other words, people having no symptoms without vaccine or even having side effects from the vaccine itself does not disprove the statistic of vaccinated people having lesser symptoms on average.
      - Ygg2 4y ago
        Ok, but how do you differentiate asymptomatic carriers from vaccine effectiveness? And afaik the mRNA vaccines were fast tracked, leaving room for possible errors.
        viraptor 4y ago
        When testing and during early phases of deployment you'd track a sample of different cohorts more closely. Either explicitly by retesting a selected group, or analysing data from groups sampled anyway (many emergency doctors got a weekly test). So as Usual in studies - through data collection, statistics, and correcting for bias in cohorts. > afaik the mRNA vaccines were fast tracked, leaving room for possible errors There's already lots of information about the details of what the fast tracking meant. I would recommend reading some to understand it better than your summary.
        Ygg2 4y ago
        > There's already lots of information about the details of what the fast tracking meant. I just read this: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-pfizer-vaccine-transmission-idUSL1N31F20E https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-pfizer-vaccine-tra... > The same presentation slide describes “Other benefits likely uncertain at approval and only clearer after the vaccine is used” to include the vaccine’s “long term protection,” “prevention of infection (asymptomatic cases),” and “prevention of virus transmission in the community - needs specific studies post-approval necessary to show.” This implies they only checked it reduces symptoms in affected. Transmission prevention and long term immunity would be tested at later point. So what was then the point of getting everyone vaccinated? Weren't vaccines supposed to contain its spread? When I got vaccinated for various diseases, it gave long term immunity, not 4 doses over months to lessen the symptoms.
- headsoup 4y ago
  Maybe the point is people continue to be labelled 'conspiracy theorists' regardless of being actually, factually proven correct. Makes the arguing so much easier when you can just keep dismissing the 'other' rather than say sorry.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    So many words are devalued these days, like facist, racist, Nazi, and extremist.
    - berenza 4y ago
      devalued in the sense that it's easy to trip over some low bar for the new definition and be assigned that label. not devalued all that much in the sense of the negative effect that label has on the labelled person's argument or reputation. which is, of course, very convenient for people who want to throw those words around online.
      - tekknik 4y ago
        exactly
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  It can be impossible to tell conspiracies apart from many people independently wanting the same things.
jongjong 4y ago
So true but I don't think the gaslighting aspect will be forgotten so easily. First, we were gaslit about our understanding of the facts, then we were gaslit about having being gaslit. Many public figures have lost all credibility.
- nathias 4y ago
  remember the Panama papers?
  - jongjong 4y ago
    Of course.
    - nathias 4y ago
      yes, but the media cycle doesn't, that's what I mean with forgotten (and this too shall pass)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jliptzin 4y ago
I don't understand why this is a story to begin with. Twitter is a private company that does what it wants. It can boot or block whoever or whatever story they want to for whatever reason. Obviously if the people running the site lean towards one political direction, that's going to affect their moderation policies. Why don't we analyze Fox News's decision to run or not run certain stories. People's first mistake is getting their news from Twitter, or Fox News for that matter. This is not a free speech issue. If you are interested in the Hunter Biden story there are about 300 other sources you could find information about it within about 1/2 a second, it was one of the most widely reported stories in 2020 if I remember correctly. I guess the story is that the people that ran Twitter were left leaning? Which we already knew going into it?
- tekknik 4y ago
  > It can boot or block whoever or whatever story they want to for whatever reason. We discussed this years ago when it first started. When you’re the defacto town square then no, you shouldn’t be able to kick people out for whatever reason. > Why don't we analyze Fox News's decision to run or not run certain stories. How do you justify the left ignoring stories in their media? For instance the story about Chase Staub. > People's first mistake is getting their news from Twitter, or Fox News for that matter. There’s always an assumption it’s Fox. Try WSJ. > This is not a free speech issue. Very much disagree. Ask yourself why you’re so upset at this information. Or if you’re not upset, ask why there is so much anxiety around this story. Clearly some the left are concerned about what this will result in. > I guess the story is that the people that ran Twitter were left leaning? Which we already knew going into it? Yes and that’s a problem when they use their political viewpoints to control the conversation.
  - jliptzin 4y ago
    I’m not upset, I’m just amused. It’s always amazing to me when “free market” conservatives complain about private companies making private decisions that they don’t like. I go on Twitter maybe 5 minutes a month. There are dozens of other “town squares” and if you think twitter is the only one you’re on there way too much. Has anyone been arrested or imprisoned for running the Hunter Biden laptop story? Has any government authority threatened anyone with arrest for running the Hunter Biden story? No? Then not a free speech issue. Twitter is not a government agency. Don’t like their moderation practices? Start your own twitter which is exactly what Trump did and is the correct response. He can then push or censor whatever stories he wants and people decide whether or not they want to traffic on that site. That is the beauty of the free market we play in. If Fox wants to be the propaganda arm of the Republican Party while masquerading as news, good for them. If Elon wants to unban everyone on Twitter and let everything go unfettered with no moderation, good for him. There are lots of other choices out there. None of this is new or interesting. This seems like more of a school cafeteria food fight than any kind of “free speech” issue.
lazyeye 4y ago
It's amazing how easy it is for the media to make something a conspiracy theory, no matter how important or factual. Just dont talk about it. Effortless.

noduerme 4y ago

what's super fun now is watching one mod try to run twitter without any written policies whatsoever.

brtkdotse 4y ago
Imagine paying 44 billion buckaroos to become a mod.
- wyclif 4y ago
  Pretty bad take. He paid 44 million to own the town square.
  - krapp 4y ago
    Let's be real - He paid 44 billion to own the libs.
    - e-clinton 4y ago
      Then quickly realized the libs were paying twitter’s bills. While this story is good for engagement on Twitter, it’s not exactly pushing advertisers to run back to Twitter. I doubt Twitter is worth even $4B now
      - tekknik 4y ago
        So, to recap, the left tried to create a left only town square, and now someone comes in and makes it neutral again, and we’re angry enough to hope this guy wasted $44bil?
        krapp 4y ago
        No. To recap, Twitter was never actually a left only town square, that was always a right-wing conspiracy theory. Elon Musk didn't make it neutral, nor did he intend to, rather he seems to want to turn Twitter into a right-wing platform. We don't have to hope he wasted $44 billion, he definitely, objectively has done so. And we're not angry, we're mocking him and his sycophantic cohort. I hope that clears things up.

chrisbaker98 4y ago

> citing different policies that are obviously inconsistently applied Here's a better example: the Canadian trucker protests. GiveSendGo was hacked, and the names of people who had donated to the protests were made public - and Twitter had no problem with those "hacked materials" being shared on its platform. I'd think that if there was ever a reason to block the publication of hacked materials, it would be to prevent private individuals from being doxxed, not to protect the political interests of the worlds' most powerful people. (People, please don't reply to tell me why you didn't like the Canadian truckers' political views, it's not relevant.)

Dudelander 4y ago
While I agree that Twitter should have taken down the tweets about non-public figures, they're not against the rules: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-information https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info... Names are explicitly listed as exceptions to the ban in sharing personal information.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  This is about a ban on sharing illegally obtained (hacked) information, not sharing personal details.
  - Dudelander 4y ago
    That's not against the TOS. Snowden tweets about PRISM all the time on Twitter.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      Its against the same hacked materials policy
      - noxer 4y ago
        There was no hacking material and no evidence that it could be based on such material. You repeat what they intentionally used as "reason" fully aware that it isn't. Heck even if the new articles about the topic would have used hacked material as source it dint not include that material itself and thus wound not fall under that policy anyway. Not even articles about a confirmed hacks fall under this policy even if the hack is confirmed with the hacked material itself. This is and was a excuse from the very start.

paganel 4y ago

> I agree, nothing we didn't know Some of us did know, that's true, but we were labeled as conspiracy theorists and the like. And when the truth came out in the open those calling us conspiracy theorists of course that embraced the "that has always been a known fact! What are you on about?". Rinse and repeat.

causi 4y ago
See I don't even know what the truth of the matter is because all the moderate voices on the subject were silenced so the only ones who persevered in their effort to be heard were the fringe lunatics.
- 2devnull 4y ago
  Correct. These revelations (for some) are a win for moderates. Jack Dorsey and Rho Khanna. That’s who benefitted the most. Amazingly the democrats are upset about this. It tells me what I need to know about those people.

Dudelander 4y ago

None of that stuff is against the rules. New York Times articles and overly optimistic predictions do not constitute private information or misinformation. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they violate the TOS. Also, nothing that Snowden released was publicly available, but Biden's staffers were using tools that were available to the general public in the way they were intended. They're completely unrelated.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Since Guccifer 2.0 I've come to be at least a little suspicious of any leaks that seem one-sided. The timing too only heightens my radar (so to speak).

rib3ye 4y ago

Isn’t the revelatory part that both parties had bat phones to the moderation teams, and that the team working with the Trump admin was intentionally sandbagging violations by “The Left”?

PaulHoule 4y ago

The whole point of the NSA is that it does the things that Snowden revealed. They were tremendously annoyed by it not because he revealed they were doing it in the abstract but because he revealed details that got people to change their practices, forced the NSA to change their practice, and reduced their effectiveness. Some of those changes should have happened anyway. Snowden's revelations pushed people to use https ubiquitously. It doesn't just protect against NSA spying but other countries do stuff like that too as well as non state actors. (There was that time I switched on wireshark on WiFi for 5 minutes and was like damn... I've got a lot of email passwords.) Like it or not, driving from DC to the airport in Baltimore you drive past the puzzle palace at Fort Mead and it's got a huge parking lot and one of the worst traffic jams in America when the quitting bell rings at the end of the work day. If they weren't spying on people but instead spending the money on ski chalets or beautifying the inner city or something, that would be a real scandal.