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The 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 inter

• jacquesm 4y ago
  They need to spice it up somehow, the evidence by itself won't do the trick.
  • akomtu 4y ago
    I 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 ago
      I think your reading of all this differs from mine.
    • ethanbond 4y ago
      What you’re actually seeing is people who already believed govt is censoring speech now feeling like they have evidence of that claim despite none actually being put forward. On the flip side you have people who figured that, yeah, the government asks private entities to control information in certain ways and sometimes companies oblige despite not being required to. This latter claim remains the only one “evidenced” by the Twitter Files but it has also been evidenced by about 200 years of case law.
• gfodor 4y ago
  The government working with Twitter to create broad misinformation policies and then issuing requests for takedowns under those policies once adopted is a great way for the government to violate the first amendment with plausible deniability. I guess we’ll see what the courts think.
  • cactusplant7374 4y ago
    Do you believe free speech applies to foreign governments spreading propaganda and hate? https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/1603859660431167488?s=46&t=cKJVnMldhGDSf1jrEW8QDw https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/160385966043116748...
    • gfodor 4y ago
      It doesn’t matter what I believe - but I do think SCOTUS will have something interesting to say here.
      • cactusplant7374 4y ago
        It looks like they may get a chance. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/15/tech-groups-supreme-court-social-media-00074069 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/15/tech-groups-supreme...
• scifibestfi 4y ago
  Why are they contacting Twitter as the FBI in a backchannel to report potentially ToS offending tweets as opposed to the way we all report tweets to Twitter? Or indeed at all when they're not illegal tweets. Imagine Trump is in charge of the FBI.
  • cmdli 4y ago
    Because more important users get special treatment? If you are a user that are of special importance to the business (like politicians, news outlets, or major Twitter users), then of course their requests are going to get escalated more quickly. Twitter isn’t a democracy; some users matter a lot more to them than others, and it’s not really based on political lines.
    • woooooo 4y ago
      That's the point of the Twitter Files (tm). Shining a light on how that process worked. It is of course tied up with partisan politics, who won or lost this week from some particular story, but more transparency is good.
      • acdha 4y ago
        Transparency would be full and open disclosure. Cherry-picking for right-wing writers to base stories on is pretty different, as evidenced by all of the people who think there was anything new revealed this week. This showed some of the internal conversations but the story matched what we already knew from statements at the time and subsequent testimony before the Congress. From a transparency win that seems small to non-existent but it’s clearly been successful at giving partisans more ammunition.
  • jacquesm 4y ago
    Think of it as a priority queue in terms of software. Does it make more sense now? If the FBI had to go through the same queue as Joe Average then their requests may well end up at the head of the queue too late for action. The same goes for celebrities, advertisers and so on. All of these have different contact points. And because law enforcement contact is one step away from the company doing something that is potentially illegal their messages are given a higher priority.
• rayiner 4y ago
  I’ve never been a big fan of Taibbi. But all the things you’re mentioning are characteristic of his journalistic style, which made him famous in his coverage of Wall Street back in 2008. It’s uncharitable and filtered through a fundamental distrust of moneyed corporations, but I’ve never heard it described as “unhinged.” And I’m not sure “unhinged” is an appropriate description. For example, while “internal lingo” may be common, isn’t it also fair to observe that much corporate internal lingo is pretty Orwellian? Similarly, as to your second point, is it unreasonable to draw an inference that Twitter is doing what some agency wants it to do, when the agency asks Twitter to do something and then Twitter does it?
  • emodendroket 4y ago
    The argument seems to be that what the FBI is doing is more or less analogous to you clicking the report button, which hardly makes you a shadowy figure controlling Twitter if they act on your report.
    • pasquinelli 4y ago
      yeah except i'm just me and the fbi is the fbi.
      • emodendroket 4y ago
        Obviously these reports are given more priority but who's going to just ignore FBI reports?
        • devmunchies 4y ago
          For real. exactly why the govt is supposed to stay out of censorship.
        • pasquinelli 4y ago
          i'd probably just do whatever the fbi wanted so as to save myself a possible hassle. which is the point: the fbi can fuck with me. to say, "well, the fbi is just reporting stuff" ignores that the fbi has power. power is something people seem to have an odd tendency to ignore.
• oxff 4y ago
• rhaksw 4y ago
  > 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" The fact that you need different internal descriptors should be a red flag. All kinds of phrases get used like selective invisibility, visibility filtering, ranking, visible to self, reducing, deboosting, or disguising a gag. Each is a form of censorship, but that's a bad word since the days of Anthony Comstock so it is never used. Censors never describe themselves as censors. See the book "The Mind of the Censor", https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58150067-the-mind-of-the-censor-and-the-eye-of-the-beholder https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58150067-the-mind-of-the...
  • lathiat 4y ago
    OK but at the same time Elon is proposing “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach”. Which is basically the same thing, no?
    • andrei_says_ 4y ago
      Regardless of what he says, his actions show he controls speech. What he said, says, or will say, doesn’t matter. Twitter is a global platform ideal for steering public sentiment, opinion, and influencing political outcomes. https://youtu.be/RII0eBszJJ4 https://youtu.be/RII0eBszJJ4
      • dzhiurgis 4y ago
        Steered into global sustainable energy and humans into planetary species by a tyrant!
        • solarpunk 4y ago
          The man who was just forced to buy a 44B company, and is liquidating shares in his self-driving car company to pay twitters rent, and is now beholden to weird Saudi financiers who bailed him out, is certainly not steering lol.
    • 4y ago
• emodendroket 4y ago
  I am also rather skeptical of the notion of a series of purportedly journalistic exposes of a company presented in collaboration with the new boss. Of course any source has an agenda but it seems too much like the tail wagging the dog here.
• benmmurphy 4y ago
  The Tweets the FBI were asking to be removed were speech protected under the first amendment. It is very likely that this is unconstitutional but at a minimum this violates a strong norm in the US that the State does not interfere with people’s speech. When it comes to twitter a court had previously found that Trump could not even block people from his personal Twitter account (a final ruling was never made because trump left office: https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/05/trump-twitter-block-case-supreme-court-decision https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/05/trump-twitte... )and now people are going to seriously argue that it’s ok for government officials to advise that Tweets or people should be banned.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • refurb 4y ago
    Precisely. There is no issue with the FBI investigating crimes using the Twitter platform. I would hope that Twitter tells the FBI to “come back with a warrant” if they want non-public information. But the FBI flagging content for removal. Including “disinformation”? That goes well beyond the remit of the FBI and violates numerous norms of law enforcement influence over public speech. A good analogy would be a debate club being held in a private bar and the police coming by and saying "yeah, that guy you invited to debate, you think you can "handle" that for us?". It’s frankly shocking how many people on HN are like “meh…what’s the big deal?”
    • Apocryphon 4y ago
      The FBI already does this IRL even pre-Twitter, and no one batted an eye. https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/election-crimes-and-security https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca... > Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime. > Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting. This can include inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods, such as false information suggesting that one may vote by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction. If that debate club guy was spreading voter misinformation, the FBI would come by and investigate him, too.
• nathias 4y ago
  Look at it from another perspective, proponents of free speech and platform neutrality were talking about this and were considered 'conspiracy theorists', then it got out and its 'unhinged framing' in a few weeks it will be 'we all knew about it and its good'.
• rlt 4y ago
  > 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. This is an extension of the whole “Three Felonies a Day” idea: it’s likely any prolific account will violate Twitter Terms of Service at some point, so you can target almost anyone by looking hard enough. And Twitter is likely to look harder at reports from the FBI than your average user, therefore the FBI has more influence over who they can silence. Maybe they’re abusing it, maybe they’re not, either way it feels improper at best.
  • ethanbond 4y ago
    Is it improper? It obviously creates room for impropriety, but I personally find it very obvious that organizations responsible and equipped for e.g. finding CSAM or for mitigating foreign influence campaigns (yes, real things!) or for reducing the spread of ISIS recruitment material should have their reports sit above those of newuser1737382847. You’d really suggest that all reports must be treated equally?
• the_gipsy 4y ago
  There is no proof of any agency threatening (or implied threat) in these emails. Just some hints and voluntary action from Twitter. I imagine these agencies do put pressure on private entities on a regular basis, but without actual further proof this is all just ridiculous hand waving.
• kweingar 4y ago
  It is clear that Taibbi et al. are cherry-picking FBI interactions that will draw the most clicks and outrage from fans of the new management. If they had published communications between the FBI and Twitter from, say, June 2020, I imagine their audience would not be able to muster quite as much indignation.
  • jasmer 4y ago
    His story is slanted, but it's not fair to suggest he is 'cherry picking' - that's what the press does, they 'find the stuff that matters' and filters out the stuff that does not. It would be 'cherry picking' if the result was something out of context and therefore misrepresented. There's a legit story here, probably not to the extent made out to be but it's newsworthy. What could be 'cherry picking' in the grand context, is that SpaceX has 'deep ties' with state apparatus, even the military, and we just don't talk about that. So by highlighting 'this thing over here' and not 'that thing over there' we lose context that Musk is in bed with the Pentagon while lambasting something happening with the FBI. And I'm not suggesting working with either is wrong, but that it's a bit hypocritical.
    • ModernMech 4y ago
      Musk is the one cherry picking by choosing which data journalists get. Taibbi alleges that the Biden Campaign was censoring content but leaves out that it was revenge porn. He says the Trump team made requests for removal of other content but leaves those out entirely. Bari Weiss was given an incomplete dataset which showed only Democratic messages but left out those from Republicans. There’s more, but that’s not enough cherry picking to make the entire thing dubious.
      • jasmer 4y ago
        Yes, this is fair.
  • jimmySixDOF 4y ago
    I Can't wait for the Twitter Drops covering the last week or two.
• partiallypro 4y ago
  That's all well and good, and I am not a fan of Elon's latest moves toward Twitter (banning some journalists and sources of freely available information on other platforms), but the FBI has absolutely no right to try to get a private company to stop free speech. That's a direct violation of the 1st Amendment. This is a story because the FBI has absolutely no business doing this. There is no "framing" in that, the FBI has overstepped its bounds, forget Twitter and Elon Musk. I've seen people here say, "this is normal" and "the FBI is making no threats, so no big deal." That viewpoint is very problematic and has a fundamental lack of understanding about how federal agencies coerce private companies to do their bidding. I've seen other comments "it didn't happen that often, only once a week," it should have never happened at all. Unless there is something that is a threat to an investigation, jury identity, literally against federal law, etc...the FBI has absolutely no business doing this. I'm baffled it has any sort of support.
  • benjaminwootton 4y ago
    But aren’t they just flagging Tweets as potential violations of TOS? That sounds as tame as it could possibly be. The same option is open to me as an ordinary user.
    • hgfdhgdhg 4y ago
      They're not a normal user. Wouldn't you expect more transparency from your government? It appalls me that many find this okay.
      • ethanbond 4y ago
        What more transparency do you want? Their right to request moderation actions and Twitter’s right to refuse those requests is extremely well documented in court cases. You want a published list of every request FBI made? So that way FBI can become the primary curator of information that FBI doesn’t like?
      • synergyS 4y ago
        Exactly, we need more transparency.
• benjaminwootton 4y ago
  I agree. I am a supporter of the freedom of speech angle, but this is all a total nothing-burger. A few TOS violations and some internal debate. I also suspected that BAU was much worse than presented.
• pibechorro 4y ago
  Ya facism (gov in bed with private biz) used to manipulate election results (hunter laptop, muffling conservatives en mass) and treading all over free speech is "unhinged framing". What twitter, the fbi and the white house did are th opposite of what the USA is supposed to stand for.
• gadders 4y ago
• brightball 4y ago
  The Orwellian aspect of this is that they went after people for saying things that were true and made up reasons to justify it.
• naasking 4y ago
  > 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" Internal jargon can be Orwellian. These are not mutually exclusive. > But it's presented as a "deep state"-like collusion where the agencies control if twitter act on them or not. No, this chummy relationship is presented as problematic. Nowhere does he imply that the FBI controls what Twitter does. It's not a priori wrong to think that the government should not have such a close involvement with Twitter in its act of moderating/censoring. Having a lower threshold than you for risk of malfeasance is not a priori wrong. If you think your risk assessment is better, now you can make that argument using actual data, and those who disagree can make theirs. Fostering public debate is exactly what good journalism is supposed to do. > 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. Sounds like standard journalism to me. Maybe your beef is not with Taibbi and the "Twitter files" but with how journalism as a whole is conducted. I agree, but don't apply a higher bar here where it's inconvenient.
  • MAGZine 4y ago
    Journalism should present things in the correct context, and contextualize statements, situations, etc. If feels like you're accusing journalists of lying to push an agenda, which is, by definition, not journalism. Journalism is about informing. Not saying everyone does it perfectly, in the same way you can do bad science that is still technically science.
    • naasking 4y ago
      > Journalism should present things in the correct context, and contextualize statements, situations, etc. Even if we agree that that's what journalism should be, what is your assessment of how accurately this definition matches most high profile journalism today? How much context did the Covington kids get, or how much context did the rail workers who wanted to strike get? There are very clearly some contexts that get priority coverage and are hammered non-stop, and some contexts that barely get any coverage at all. To be clear, I'm not sure that I do agree with your definition. I think journalists typically do what you describe, but I think merely reporting raw data without context is also perfectly valid journalism. This "contextualisation" narrative is how some journalists are excusing their lack of support for Assange, and it's bullshit IMO. > If feels like you're accusing journalists of lying to push an agenda, which is, by definition, not journalism Unbiased journalism is a fiction. I agree that the best journalists try for objectivity, but this is an ethos that is slowly being pushed out of mainstream journalism, and activism has become standard practice (edit: this is probably because outrage generates more clicks/views, so activism "sells" in a sense). I also think some professional journalists absolutely do outright lie for utilitarian reasons, such as "fighting evil" (typically Republicans). This goes back to the activism point. Far more common are various forms of well known bias, my side bias, bias blind spot etc. This leads to one convincing oneself of a falsehood and then vehemently arguing for it, despite countervailing evidence.
• justanother 4y ago
  I have no dog in this fight (I thought Twitter was a cesspool then, and I know it is now), but before we go much farther in the conversation about collusion between LE and big business, we must remember how Qwest lost an enormous contract (and more, arguably) for refusing to cooperate with the NSA's plan to gobble everyone's data. The fact that this happened at all, creates a chilling effect, a shining example for all to see. In such light, American business that call themselves 'common carriers' all know the score: Cooperate or it would be a shame if something happened to you. Would anyone be shocked that Twitter kept a cordial relationship with the agency that murdered Fred Hampton? Of course not.
• api 4y ago
  It’s Matt Taibbi. Unhinged framing designed to inflame populist rage is something he’s been doing since the 2008 financial crisis when he made his career on it. He used to aim “left” with it but seems to have drifted in the same fashy direction as Greenwald and other populists as well as a lot of former “Chomskyan” leftists.
  • woooooo 4y ago
    Please be more careful with words like "fashy" unless you have some quotes extolling the tenets of national socialism. "Disloyal to the team" is not fascism.
    • SauciestGNU 4y ago
      Just want to say that fascism is bigger than Nazism, butt agree that Taibi is probably a regular conservative making himself useful to Elon.
      • woooooo 4y ago
        This thread is about the FBI, aka the actual jackboots, compelling private companies extralegally in order to shift democratic narratives. And you're saying it's conservative to be opposed to that? I understand it lined up with the liberal side regarding the election but that doesn't make Taibbi (or myself) a conservative for opposing it. Distrusting the FBI ought to be a liberal value.
        • SauciestGNU 4y ago
          I'm a leftist and not a liberal. I recognize that the FBI is a largely unrestrained organization that's responsible for a lot of evil, including the assassination of civil rights figures.
  • DoItToMe81 4y ago
    Fascism is when you're critical of federal agencies having a privileged relationship with the media to the point of weekly meetings to influence moderation policy? What?
• mola 4y ago
  This is not meant for anything but stirring up the far right and hoping it'll radicalize more right wingers. Being unhinged is part of the strategy. Musk is out on revenge for being force to buy Twitter, and for being framed as an idiot in the media. He is using his newly acquired media sledgehammer to do exactly what he bought it for. Creating the narrative for advancing his personal interests. This is why it's bad for society to let individuals be richer than nation states. This is why aristocracy was bad. Too bad the notion of freedom was used to rebuild aristocracy.
• tootie 4y ago
  I work at a much smaller shop than Twitter, but notable enough to get reporters sniffing around when we have internal scandals. Without giving any details I was an insider on few actions that got media coverage that was framed in a very nefarious way. Having personally witnessed the deliberations, I can confirm it was a mix of inside baseball that outsiders just don't usually see and a handful of sincere people really trying to do the right thing in a difficult situation and not really knowing one way or the other how things will work out.