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The Twitter Files, Part Six
- pigtailgirl 4y ago-- would be interesting if HN publishes a law enforcement transparency report - @dang --
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- camjohnson26 4y agoThis is the height of hypocrisy. Everything the "twitter files" have disclosed so far is in line with what most people expected was happening, but Musk's censorship of the platform has been far more egregious than anything that came before. This isn't to defend the actions that Twitter took, which were arguably partisan in some cases, but it's difficult to make the case that Twitter wasn't making a best effort to curate a healthy platform. Musk by contrast has shown that he only cares about limiting speech that damages himself, and he will say or do anything to obscure that fact. He promised not to ban the elonjet account, and then reversed course: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/14/elons-promise-not-to-ban-account-tracking-his-jet-didnt-last-very-long-at-all-also-bans-guys-personal-account/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/14/elons-promise-not-to-ban... He falsely claimed that Twitter refused to take action on child exploitation: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1601302412056473600?s=20&t=4jIvJ2xuiNax6k-AJEUdKw https://twitter.com/jack/status/1601302412056473600?s=20&t=4... He has banned journalists who were critical to him in the past: https://mastodon.world/@kairyssdal/109524620754087441 https://mastodon.world/@kairyssdal/109524620754087441 He has banned Mastodon and Pixelfed's accounts, falsly labeling them as "malware." And most hypocritically, he claims the reason for all of this is because these people have shared "assassination coordinates" and "doxxed" him, even though first of all, the information is public: https://mastodon.social/@JxckS/109524630642043912 https://mastodon.social/@JxckS/109524630642043912 Second, most of the journalists never linked to his private information: https://famichiki.jp/@stopthatgirl7/109522071808584229 https://famichiki.jp/@stopthatgirl7/109522071808584229 There is evidence that his claimed stalker was far from an airport, and worst in my opinion, he has doxxed critics in the past in much more damaging ways: https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/37229846-montana-skeptic/5190656-farewell-for-now https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/37229846-montana-skeptic/... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk-tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon... https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitter-employee-flees-home-elon-musk-mob https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitter-employee-flees-home-el...
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoI'll try to find an article explaining the concept, but for right-wing authoritarians, the hypocrisy is the point. In group vs out group. https://level.medium.com/its-always-about-power-f9fca4321e0c https://level.medium.com/its-always-about-power-f9fca4321e0c
- Georgelemental 4y ago> the hypocrisy is the point. I am right wing, and I hear right-wing commentators say things like "for left-wing authoritarians, the hypocrisy is the point" all the time. Seriously, the article you linked sounds exactly like something I would read from "my" side, just with good guys and bad guys reversed.
- jacquesm 4y ago[flagged]
- Georgelemental 4y agoWhat? What have I done for the last several days? No clue what you are referring to-do you have the wrong guy, maybe?
- ShredKazoo 4y agoI'd consider myself a centrist democrat (registered Democrat, vote mostly for Democrats, had a wonderful childhood in a very multicultural region of California, spent several years living in Berkeley CA, my sister who I'm close to works for her local Democrat party) and I've been surprised by the strong element of left-wing extremism on HN. The culture of the site has changed quite a bit in the past few years. It used to be that there was room for more perspectives here. I feel that my interest in building a coherent political worldview puts me in a minority compared to HN users who just want to sling mud at people they see as their opponents.
- 4y ago
- rosmax_1337 4y agoI used to hear that it wasn't censorship when it was just a company censoring voices. That they didn't have any obligations to broadcast anyones speech. Well... that didn't age well.
- someNameIG 4y agoI used to hear talk of free speech absolutism, and not banning jet tracking accounts even though they were a safety risk.
- rosmax_1337 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- someNameIG 4y agoWhataboutism? You're original comment was Whataboutism.
- postalrat 4y agoWhataboutism only matters if you already made your decision.
- salawat 4y agoThey aren't a safety risk though.
- someNameIG 4y agoHe previously said the safety risk was ok as banning it would violate free speech. And Musk has been fine with accounts that use their freedom of speech even if they resulted is safety risks. For example @libsoftiktok is an account Musk unbanned, and has likes their tweets, who post misleading information resulting in direct threats against people and organisations (e.g. children's hospitals). For example they just recently tweeted a video* that was purposefully edited in a way to make it seem someone was pro-pedophilia, when they weren't. *https://twitter.com/RobertLouisr/status/1603422570665201664?s=20&t=H-Y9a-406Jz1zONpP3tNOA https://twitter.com/RobertLouisr/status/1603422570665201664?...
- mikece 4y agoAside from people in tech and the MAGA crowd, does anyone actually care about the "Twitter Files" stuff?
- clipsy 4y agoDo people in tech care?
- jrjrndndnd 4y agoThose who care about government stifling speech do care.
- jacquesm 4y agoThen you probably should re-read all of the text that led you to the conclusion that that was what was happening.
- simpleblend 4y agoPlease, enlighten me. How is this anything but the Government doing an end run around 1A?
- jacquesm 4y agoIt's a request, not an order, it's the FBI, not congress passing a law. I'm the former owner/operator of ww.com, in its day a pretty large video streaming community, think 'twitch' but many years earlier. We had fairly regular contact with the police to ensure that our members were operating within the law, and some of them repeatedly decided to test where the line was. As responsible operator of a large web property you are an extension of society and society has - fairly universally - come to the conclusion that having a police force is both useful and necessary. As a forum operator you can choose to go head-to-head with the authorities or you can choose to work with them, we - just like Twitter - chose to do the latter because we believed that this was in everybody's best interest. On occasion it wasn't the authorities initiating the request but us because we came upon acts and or proof of crimes to despicable to relate here and they were uniformly courteous and acted with surprising speed against the perpetrators. Law enforcement and corporations have regular contact, anybody that believes that this is not the case at the level of a Twitter or a Facebook is utterly naive.
- memish 4y ago"Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content." Is this a violation of the 1st Amendment or a way to skirt around it?
- nobody9999 4y ago>"Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content." >Is this a violation of the 1st Amendment or a way to skirt around it? Which specific security contractors? Which specific think tanks? The above assertion that you quoted makes several assertions, none of which (at least AFAICT) have any facts, data or evidence attached to them. Perhaps I'm missing something important? If so, what might that be? What's more,. I receive multiple contacts from DHS daily[0]. And I (as an individual with minimal resources and little ability to "fight" the government) have never felt pressured by the Federal government to do anything. I'd expect that corporations with multiple billions in revenue (like Twitter) and lawyers on staff would zealously protect their independence and reputation rather than being seen as shills for some shadowy "government conspiracy." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_and_Infrastructure_Security_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_and_Infrastructu...
- pcwalton 4y agoFor the most part, the US government is allowed to ask anyone to voluntarily remove anything (a few limits such as those set by the establishment clause notwithstanding). That's what happened here.
- simpleblend 4y agoIf you run a social media company and the government tells you, "Hey, we want these people banned", and you ban them, is the company "voluntarily" choosing to ban them? Or are they doing it under duress? Of course it's the latter. The US gov. has been threatening to take down social media companies for years. Do you think Twitter really wanted to upset them now?
- paulpauper 4y ago3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary. 4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. How is this constant? This is just 1 request every 7 days . I figured it would be more. Also, it's called the FBI. Their job is to investigate federal matters, which includes content on social social media. They do with with all major social networks. It's not just politics or the media, but things related to safety, terrorism, kidnaping, child exploitation, etc. It seems like these files are becoming more and more underwhelming.
- jrjrndndnd 4y agoThey were coordinating with Yoel Roth to police content. It's absurd that this news is being dismissed people don't like Twitter's new chief .
- Jarwain 4y agoSpecifically policing misinformation around elections?
- lp0_on_fire 4y agopolicing "misinformation" is not the role of the United States government.
- andremedeiros 4y agoNeither is spreading it, but here we are.
- hgdhgfdhgfdh 4y agoWhat part of the H. Biden laptop was "misinformation"?
- meepmorp 4y ago
- Imnimo 4y agoThis Twitter Files charade has long since crossed the line into being embarrassing for Taibbi. I'm surprised he's still digging.
- kodyo 4y agoSome people oppose fascism.
- kevinh 4y agoWho's the fascist in this situation?
- kodyo 4y agoThe corporation and the state partnering to censor speech.
- _kbh_ 4y agoSo the Trump administration then? because we haven't seen anything to indicate that the Biden administration has asked for things to be censored, only that the Trump administration made requests whilst he was still in power.
- kodyo 4y agoAre you under the impression that the FBI was acting on behalf of Trump during his presidency?
- Apocryphon 4y agoHe was the commander in chief. Who do you believe the FBI is acting on behalf of if not his handpicked successor to Comey?
- kodyo 4y ago
- progrus 4y ago
- progrus 4y agoAnd if you’re going to whipsaw back to “this was all normal and within Twitter’s rights as a private company”, just stop for a minute and look at yourselves.
- b0sk 4y agooh right.. The guy who famously published this https://theprint.in/opinion/majority-indians-have-natural-immunity-vaccinating-entire-population-can-cause-great-harm/582174/ https://theprint.in/opinion/majority-indians-have-natural-im... before Delta variant ripped through India and killed millions. SARS-Cov-2 is not novel anymore. Most of the population has immunity some form or other. The disease is almost an afterthought. That doesn't mean that this guy was correct all along, especially when the world was rushing to vaccinate.
- hobbitstan 4y agoThe FBI working with Twitter to censor the free speech of Americans is apparently not newsworthy enough for HN readers.
- xqcgrek2 4y agoPossibly. It's unclear how botted or Discorded this place has become. Some weird brigading makes me suspect it has quite a bit.
- Apocryphon 4y agoYou reckon it's the FBI?
- memish 4y ago
- Apocryphon 4y agoProbably because it's relatively small potatoes after the Snowden PRISM revelations. And that the new ownership of Twitter is illustrating that the platform is irrevocably compromised regardless of who was doing it. If it wasn't the feds, it'd be the legions of for-pay spambots that are always there.
- krkmrmfkrkfk 4y agoWhy on Earth is this topic flagged?
- kevinmrose 4y agoTwitter staff taking action against users at the direction of the FBI does seem like a topic worthy of discussion, though it seems like there are a lot of people here who would rather just pretend it never happened.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- quyleanh 4y ago@dang please unflag this thread. Thank you
- TrispusAttucks 4y agoWhy the hell is this flagged?
- leoh 4y agoLearned basically nothing here. So the FBI helped Twitter with content moderation? Who gives a crap.
- kodyo 4y agoThey were going after political speech while ignoring actual crimes.
- time_to_smile 4y agoI'm seriously out of the loop on this, what were the actual crimes?
- wesleywt 4y agoMore accurately. What was the political speech banned?
- kodyo 4y ago
- simpleblend 4y agoHow about prominent Stanford and Harvard doctors disagreeing with the Covid polices of the CDC?
- jacquesm 4y ago[flagged]
- simpleblend 4y agoHuh? Using the term whataboutism doesn't even make sense here. He asked me to list political speech that was censored, which I did. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard.
- lapcat 4y agoThis is actually an argument for why Twitter shouldn't exist. Twitter makes it super easy to do mass warrantless surveillance, because Twitter gathers millions of people together in the same searchable public space. It's a honeypot. What's dangerous about the "public square" concept is that Musk doesn't just want a public square — one public space among many, one among equals — he wants the public square, a monopoly on online conversation. "I think I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596751751532937217 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596751751532937217 We shouldn't have all of our conversations, political or otherwise, in one place. That's a giant mistake. We need decentralization for our own safety and freedom.
- jacquesm 4y agoThis goes for any large web property where people congregate to communicate. HN is no different in that respect.
- lapcat 4y ago> This goes for any large web property where people congregate to communicate. Yes, for example Facebook and TikTok. > HN is no different in that respect. Well, Twitter has over 200 million users. I believe that HN is much much smaller. HN also tends to be more anonymous.
- jacquesm 4y agoHN is a lot larger than you probably think and YC has an excellent legal department and even if I do not know for sure that there has been contact between LE and HN/YC about this forum given the fact that we are looking at a decade+ of operation and many millions of interactions, including threats of bodily harm and other nonsense I would expect the chances of there having been such interaction to be better than even.
- lapcat 4y ago> HN is a lot larger than you probably think I'd be interested to know the user number.
- cyberphobe 4y ago[flagged]
- simpleblend 4y ago[flagged]
- the_only_law 4y ago
- simpleblend 4y ago
- RosanaAnaDana 4y agoThe conversation internally is obviously very dismissive of the farse, so if I were a betting person, I'd guess bots.
- roflyear 4y agoHN like many other online communities have had a lot of political ideologues come out of the woodwork since 2016ish
- userbinator 4y agoHN is "right wing"?
- olliecornelia 4y agoI mean it definitely has a tech-brained libertarian bent. And why shouldn't it? This is a forum geared towards aspiring tech entrepreneurs.
- mondayp 4y agoWhat does FTIF stand for?
- zerocrates 4y agoHe probably meant to write FITF: Foreign Influence Task Force
- goodmunky 4y ago
- colordrops 4y agoI think it's against HN rules to call people shills, but I am too flabbergasted at people acting like it's no big deal that the FBI is working in secret to shut down narratives.
- Apocryphon 4y agoIt is neither leftist nor shill to avoid distractions from real scandals like PRISM or Epstein. As Orwell said in 1984, his science fiction novel about big government, “If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.” The nitpickers in this thread stress out about content moderation when the FBI is getting away with the big stuff like failing to stop SBF or shutting down the Z-Library. That’s a case where Google and Amazon aided the FBI, too! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33646513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33646513
- simple-thoughts 4y ago“Don’t focus on the real, proven and documented conspiracy. Focus on the fake ones.” Epstein killed himself which is well documented. No, pizza gate is not real and a anon is a larper. This Twitter leaks are on the same level as PRISM, except it’s FBI instead of NSA. It’s significant because USG is fairly decentralized and just because one agency has gone rogue does not mean all have. We now have evidence that both FBI and NSA are rogue agencies.
- Apocryphon 4y agoYou know what is real? The FBI killed the Z-Library last month. They just let the InfraGard network get hacked. They’re spreading FUD against Apple’s new E2E encryption. I’d rather us focus our energies on the substantive and real than embarking on another grandstanding set of histrionics about social media first amendment rights. This is far from PRISM, which was surveillance. This is busybodying and enforcing federal election laws. Ho-hum. You want to call the FBI rogue, call them out for the important things they did wrong.
- jacksonkmarley 4y agoSo far this whole Twitter Files thing seems underwhelming, but not exactly a "nothing burger". I feel like it's a good thing that they got published, but the details aren't big news, more like a whole bunch of mildly unsatisfactory situations that probably should be addressed by people directly involved. For example FBI trawling through social media and flagging accounts for review doesn't seem like a strict constitutional violation unless you can prove some coercion; but it does seem like a questionable use of the FBI to be doing content moderation for Twitter absent a criminal investigation. Maybe this sort of stuff (i.e. government/law enforcement communications with social media companies) should be automatically in the public domain if it isn't part of a criminal investigation.
- Apocryphon 4y agoA moderate, and reasonable position. I would definitely agree that this sort of stuff should be readily available for review, not requiring FOIA requests.
- jacquesm 4y agoI disagree. For instance: LE might become aware of a sexting or suicide attempt or some other thing that people do that is not strictly illegal but that might be embarrassing or that could cause the person trouble in their private life. Having a degree of confidentiality helps to both speed up the process because not every word has to be weighed on the scale of 'how does this look in the public arena' and it helps to preserve the privacy of all parties involved.
- xiphias2 4y agoSure, ,,let's think of the children''. We heared it many times, but we're talking about a govermental agency meddling with election results. Politics and these cases are very different in nature. Personally I wouldn't be comfortable not taking action when the FBI would ask anything from me, because it's safer to just comply.
- 4y ago
- huitzitziltzin 4y agoThe revelations I have read so far have been extremely underwhelming. Content moderation of any kind is hard. The easy cases don’t take up most of your time or energy. These emails read like people doing their best. Maybe my decision would have been different but maybe not.
- jacquesm 4y agoAnd that's before you get into the hairy territory created by multiple jurisdictions, nations, pressure groups, grass roots organizations and so on. From personal experience: it is a minefield and it is impossible to satisfy everybody and to get everything right.
- jasonhansel 4y agoTellingly, none of these journalists have actually released the full set of emails on which their conclusions are based.
- huitzitziltzin 4y agoYeah. Which would probably reveal that not only are content moderation decisions really hard, they are extremely boring, require a huge number of meetings, and probably in many cases involve consulting lawyers
- Balgair 4y agoWeiss goes into it on her site, but it's more complicated than just emails. She says they are using some lawyer SW that is meant for speeding up discovery in legal battles. Seems like she should be a real tech person and just learn how to use grep. Her explanations all just feel like a first year journalism student trying to explain the hot new program she just learned about and everyone else has been just suffering through for a decade.
- cloutchaser 4y agoCompletely blocking the spread of a news story that could have a major effect on an election is not moderation. Moderation is about moderating bad behaviour of individuals. Censorship is blocking entire topics from discussion. If you think it's underwhelming, just think how you'd feel if it would have been revealed that Don Trump Jr was smoking crack with prostitutes, and twitter blocked the story from spreading. 10 days before an election. Like seriously, think about that. Would you be fine with that?
- NelsonMinar 4y agoThere's an odd new risk for startups: someone buys your company and then releases all the internal documents with hostile intent. The Twitter stuff that's come out now has been pretty uninteresting, surprising and often basically telling a story of people doing the best job they could in difficult circumstances. But if you are at a small company consider what all could be acquired and used to defame your employees and mission.
- jacquesm 4y agoThe thing to really worry about is that someone like Musk has direct access to all of your DMs, including those of politicians the world over.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- briandear 4y agoSomeone like Zuckerberg has access to your data as well. And what about the government having access to DMs? That’s far scarier. Has Snowden not taught us anything? We are only just now worried about this? Complaining about Musk without complaining about Zuckerberg or the government is just hypocrisy.
- dmix 4y agoHe means someone who doesn't share your political perspective. Not someone with actual threat of force. We haven't seen Twitter arbitrarily leak DMs yet. Even Matt Taibbi said they only have access to screenshots of admin interfaces directly related to their specific stories around uncritical FBI/DHS access, shadowbanning for questionable political purposes, and the whole Trump thing. It's far from the ideological free-for-all people are suggesting. But Elon has already shown he's willing to play dangerous games with his power. So far we haven't seen the FUDy stuff yet beyond the stupid new doxxing rule for which he's burned tons of good will. Nothing comes without costs.
- 4y ago
- jasonhansel 4y agoYet another set of overhyped allegations against Yoel Roth, who Elon is currently targeting with a homophobic smear campaign: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/12/musk-child-porn-qanon/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/12/musk-ch...
- jacquesm 4y agoRoth may well have an excellent case against Musk. I'd definitely chip in.
- exodust 4y agoThe implication of chipping in might mean an unwise alignment with Roth's PhD idea. His idea wasn't even "Grindr for teens". It was worse because he wasn't proposing a separate service. His idea was to update those sites to accommodate young people. Yoth wrote: "those services should consider offering toned-down content alongside adult fare." Even if we're charitable, Yoth's use of the word "alongside" was unfortunate. Less charitable, a serious error. It's unrealistic to expect a service with such a concentrated historical purpose for gay adults, could pivot to a harmonized family-friendly vibe for young and old. I wonder how he landed such a role at Twitter over other applicants, and what criteria he met, that others did not.
- troad 4y agoYour assumption appears to be that gay teens are not already on the existing adult Grindr, lying about their age, and being forced to wade their way through some of the darkest, seediest corners of the Internet. I don’t know much about his proposed solution, I haven’t read his work, but judging by my own teenage use of Grindr (many years ago), a toned down, protected version of something gay teens were already going to use seems like a net gain for their safety and sanity. I doubt anything like it would ever be legally possible, though. There’s just no amount of moderating that would keep a teen Grindr safe and PG-13. If even one thing slips through - and it would - it’s not hard to picture the media coverage. No sane company is touching this idea with a ten foot pole.
- archagon 4y agoThis was flagged previously. What makes an article qualify for manual unflagging? I've seen plenty of articles with relevance to the tech community remain flagged.
- dang 4y agoI wrote about this earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34020263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34020263. Does it answer your question? I think Part One and Part Two had significant frontpage time on HN, then not so much until now. That raises the question (at least in my mind) what's different about Part Six? I think part of the answer is random fluctuation (you can think of HN's frontpage as a slot machine with 30 slots—it's not random, but randomness is involved), and part of it is maybe that the government involvement aspect makes the information here more significant. When it comes to divisive topics, HN moderation spends a lot of time in the uncanny valley between the major ideological camps. This topic is a good example. One passionate subset of the community would like all of these submissions to get major attention, while an opposing passionate subset would like all of them to be soundly ignored. Our job is to somehow balance the conflicting vectors. That's not so easy, and also not so easy to articulate. The idea is not to maintain a centrist position*, it's to try to keep the community from wrecking itself via ideological fracture. * for some reason that is a pet peeve of mine - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20centris&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- GavCo 4y agoReally appreciate that you take the time to weigh in with these explanations. The moderation can feel heavy handed and arbitrary at times so these comments help to shine a light on the difficult balance you're trying to maintain. The explanation about SNI especially helped me understand some of the tough judgement calls that the mods need to make. Is there a manifesto of some sort that defines the philosophy and approach of HN moderation? Or is just tribal knowledge that mods have built over time?
- 4y ago
- snowwrestler 4y agoIn a system of free speech, the government may also speak. I think that is where a lot of people are getting confused or hung up. They think the First Amendment means the government is not allowed to speak at all. That is incorrect. It prohibits "abridging the freedom of speech," in other words, forcibly restraining other people from speaking. So: it is legal for the FBI to call up a company and say what they think. And the company is free to act on that, or not, as they wish. If the FBI wishes to apply the force of law, that is when they would need to show evidence, get a warrant, etc. But just speaking to companies is normal, and often welcomed by the company if the FBI is sharing information that is useful.
- ekianjo 4y agoNope, free speech applies to individuals, not to the government as a single entity. And this for good reasons, since they wield much more power than a single individual.
- otterley 4y agoDo you have citations to any cases to support this theory of yours?
- rideontime 4y agoMarc Andreesen seems convinced that indictments are coming. Delusional.
- jacquesm 4y agoYet another name that I once looked up to.
- revscat 4y agoIt seems that to be included in the billionaire tech bro club you must adhere to a certain right-wing worldview. Or, if you are more Marxist in bent, that the accumulation of capital naturally and inevitably leads to the internalization of right-wing worldviews.
- angelbreakfree 4y agoThe wildest part of the Twitter files is the unhinged framing that they are presented under. 1. Anyone who has been in a tech company knows that there is internal lingo that refers to features we devs make. But it's presented as being an "Orwellian language" 2. Based on the emails he posts, the agencies give links to review based on tips they receive or their own intel and twitter then decides if it violates ToS or not (and they sometimes did not act or simply temporarily suspended). But it's presented as a "deep state"-like collusion where the agencies control if twitter act on them or not. 3. The people in the company discuss internal matters and are sometimes critical of potential decisions. But they are presented mostly stripped of context and the focus is on anonymized employees snarky comments to make it seem like decisions were arbitrary, partisan, and without any regard to logic or context. I could go for hours listing these. Most quote tweets are people thinking this confirms a suspected malicious intent from twitter and that they intentionally dramatically shifted the outcomes while colluding with one side. If anything, this confirms that Twitter acted (outside of a couple isolated occurences) in a way tamer way than I ever imagined them acting while handling the issues at hand. EDIT: Formatting
- jacquesm 4y agoThey need to spice it up somehow, the evidence by itself won't do the trick.
- akomtu 4y agoI think the goal is to anchor the discourse around "the gov is censoring speech" and let high-rank politicians talk about it openly, since now they are backed by undeniable facts. A few weeks ago anyone auggesting the gov is censoring twitter would be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. Now anyone who says the opposite will be seen as a fool or a shill. The goal has been achieved, in other words.
- jacquesm 4y agoI think your reading of all this differs from mine.
- neuronexmachina 4y ago> 7. The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds. I think this is a typo and should be FITF, the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/foreign-influence https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/foreign-...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- trap_goes_hot 4y agoWhile LE probably has legitimate reason to have contacts in every major company SV company, its still chilling to see how friendly and obedient Twitter was, makes you wonder what other social media companies are doing with the government, and how they respond to "suggestions".
- whalesalad 4y agoI was banned for twelve hours yesterday for responding to a Dril tweet. Deleted my account instantly. It was fun while it lasted.
- kweingar 4y agoWhat did you tweet?
- simple-thoughts 4y ago
- theCrowing 4y agoMight be the most unhinged thread in HN History. Nearly every comment full of hate and vitriol.
- Apocryphon 4y agoWhy would the FBI do this to us
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- padjo 4y agoA link to Matt Taibbi’s twitter account? Why on earth would I click on that.
- anshumankmr 4y agoThread Reader Link: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1603857534737072128.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1603857534737072128.html you are welcome
- spritefs 4y agoThe positions I see on this are either conspiratorially raising questions about FBI involvement at Twitter or insisting that those questions are conspiratorial and that there's nothing more here Which one is correct? I have no idea, but I'd bet that regardless of any additional releases, convincing or unconvincing, the same pods of people are going to keep making the same assumptions and insisting on the same bullshit. That's the one thing that never changes
- christkv 4y agoI think the most damning stuff will be difficult to discover because that probably happened in the regular meetings between Joel and the FBI of which I’m sure there are no records right?
- birracerveza 4y ago...this was the coup the grace? I supposed this was pretty much widely known.
- jasmer 4y agoIt's actually good that there is transparency and oversight but this is a study in journalism and populism more than anything. The media is under incredible pressure to make stories, particularly in the US. All of us have seen how MSNBC veered politically over the last 15 years - as have other news outlets. Matt Taibbi is a good guy, smart, down to earth. But he's a 'lone warrior' now, his income comes from substack subs, he has to make noise just like any other entity. The substack people tend to market themselves as 'alt something' which is legit in some ways, but they push it pretty hard. Taibbi has really been ginning it up lately. It's a bit sad really, but we see this happen all over - I think most of our 'venerable' media institutions are at the same level so we can't fully blame him. All of that said this is a legit story and there are 'kernels of truth' to this notion that Twitter is doing things maybe it should not, or inconsistently etc. Elon is not wrong to be suspicious, of course now he's banning actual, legit journalists who dare to question him, in a feat of absolute hypocrisy that should completely undermine is 'free speech' credentials. Sadly I'm doubtful his fanboys will care.
- myvoiceismypass 4y ago> Matt Taibbi is a good guy, smart, down to earth. His memoir paints a radically different picture.
- concordDance 4y ago> Elon is not wrong to be suspicious, of course now he's banning actual, legit journalists who dare to question him, As far as I know he's only banning those that link to ElonJet. He's been a bit irrational since his two year old kid had a close encounter with a crazy person a few days ago.
- jasmer 4y agoHe banned a number of MSM journalists who have nothing to do with ElonJet. There was an outcry, he immediately backpedalled and blamed it on some kind of 'internal problem'. It was a big deal, international entities spoke up and fired some warning shots. On one hand it's a private media company, on the other it's an issue when people interfere directly with the press. I'm afraid we don't have our boundaries figured out on this issue yet.
- wadayano 4y agoThe emphasis on there being an FBI connection seems naive to me, as I had always assumed some gov agency coordination on some level, both in software and hardware companies. Furthermore their involvement does not sound that deep/frequent, some pointed out once a week on average, if viewed in context proportional to amount of users, both real and fake, this does not seem that large.
- gadders 4y agoI can remember when the patriot act came out, and everyone argued what a disgusting infringement on privacy and civil liberties it was. Now everyone seems to be arguing for even greater infringements.
- macinjosh 4y agoThe FBI can come after you or your company for any reason they come up with. They just have to make it look like you lied to them. They email you that a user on your site is breaking TOS. If you say they aren’t in their eyes you are lying to them and you could be charged if they don’t like you.
- Kuinox 4y agoPart 1 complained about "censoring" even well known actors in favor of a political party, and 'proved' it by displaying an email asking to take down tweets and a response saying 'handled'. Archive.org archived the tweets listed in the email screenshot that has been shared, it was tweets posting leaked nude of a politic, of course it has to be censored, actor or not, that's simply illegal.
- vdbx 4y agothis is already been done and we know what the outcome is. what facinating is how people respond. are we dealing this (or perceiving it if your not us citizen) with high standard?
- bradhe 4y agoDear god make it stop. Can we get over this already and stop feeding the right wing trolls?
- DoItToMe81 4y agoThose unconcerned by this should ponder for a moment that not even Russian tech has such a direct relationship with state security organizations.
- rolenthedeep 4y agoMaking Twitter look as bad and evil as possible sure is an interesting strategy. Seems to be going great so far, truly galaxy-brain tier marketing.