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The FBI and CIA were driving the removal or soft-censoring of speech that the US government didn't like. People spent a lot of the last decade saying that this

by lhnz 4y ago

The FBI and CIA were driving the removal or soft-censoring of speech that the US government didn't like. People spent a lot of the last decade saying that this never happened and that Twitter was just a private company operating on their own, instead of being the censorship arm of the government and in many cases staffed by ex-government... Also, I wouldn't call Twitter's original moderation fair or balanced. There were clearly voices within who thought they were trying to fit policy to decisions they'd already made post-hoc. (Unfortunately if anything it's even worse now.)

astrange 4y ago
> The FBI and CIA were driving the removal or soft-censoring of speech that the US government didn't like. There’s no right to post CSAM or revenge porn on the internet, so of course the FBI “drives the removal” of that, it is their job. I’ve done legal compliance for this elsewhere, I have turned down government requests without being persecuted in return, and I know for a fact Twitter’s previous administration was one of the most aggressive at fighting back here and put a great deal of legal effort into it. Example of a more cooperative response would maybe be Amazon Ring. There’s also no right for foreign intelligence ops to post on US social media so of course the CIA has opinions on that, it’s their job. Etc. (Current example of this one: a Chinese group is flooding Twitter search for different Chinese city names with ads for sex workers, to block people searching covid news.) All these things happen under the rule of law, not random emails. If you don’t like it, change the law. I don’t know why you’d want to do that though. I agree people might’ve said something other than this, but those people are amateurs and are wrong; talk to the EFF if you actually need advice here.
- bboygravity 4y ago
  Or... you could just actually read the Twitter files? You clearly have no idea what's in them judging from your comment...
  - throwaway82388 4y ago
    There are a few responses people have found useful to misdirect and shut down conversation around this topic. Nothing burger, and the claim that it was about revenge porn, are strong signals that this is one such stock response. It’s disappointing how the commenting postures surrounding culture war issues curtail curiosity, the spirit of inquiry more generally. A now naive-seeming but widely held assumption about the information revolution was that the instant availability of primary source material would lead to more informed public debate. It’s now apparent to me that knowing how you’re supposed to feel, and what others think, are more important— at the very least more useful— than any naive interest in trying to interpret the messy reality.
- trogdor 4y ago
  >There’s no right to post CSAM or revenge porn on the internet, so of course the FBI “drives the removal” of that, it is their job. Why would the FBI be involved with anything related to revenge porn? Posting revenge porn is not a federal crime. (Tangentially, it appears that there remain two states in which revenge porn is not a crime. Yuck.)
  - astrange 4y ago
    It’s not not their job to be informed about state crimes. I don’t think it’s a crime to literally leave it up in the same way distributing CSAM is, but it’s evidence someone is committing a crime, which is a TOS violation most places as most sites don’t want to encourage that. And Twitter’s TOS is what Twitter cares about. Whether reports come in as emails or their annoying inefficient report form is not important.
- lhnz 4y ago
  Why are you bringing up CSAM or revenge porn when the material and accounts referenced by the Twitter Files were ones that post content that was misaligned with the geopolitical goals of various US government organisations? See: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701436104245248?s=46&t=l9Mz-OVjOpDrmwGJvq5udg https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701436104245248?s=46&... and earlier parts that show that their own influence campaigns had free reign: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605294195975114765?s=46&t=c1XYo2QEa4dWVRcxNAhWBg https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605294195975114765?s=46&t...
  - astrange 4y ago
    No, Taibbi is just lying. You can look up the deleted posts on archive.org and they’re pictures of Hunter Biden’s penis, which I will not link. Some of them aren’t; these are mistakes. law enforcement can report posts the same way anyone else can, and if they report the wrong ones you can ignore them. They don’t have special powers. It’s fine. (Also, Taibbi moved to Russia in the 90s, assaulted underage women, and publicly wrote about it in his publication the Exile. This is also a kind of bias.)
    - lhnz 4y ago
      The context and text within the emails doesn't match what you just wrote and from what I've seen there were 1000s of deletions -- not only of Hunter Biden's penis as you imply... It makes zero sense to me that this email (https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701482308669440?s=46&t=KYdL5AiudlmhYzDDj3HeLA https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701482308669440?s=46&...) would have anything to do with Hunter Biden's penis. The Twitter employee is clearly talking about feeling unable to not act on a pro-russian tweet even though they hadn't been able to support any action on it using Twitter's own policies. The point is, the US government partially infiltrated Twitter, and then applied regular external pressure on it to applying badly defined policies against their targets.
      - astrange 4y ago
        Btw, I endorse all US influence operations run on any websites and think all of them are awesome. America #1, after all. If you want Twitter to be upset about that one, you may have to get them to move to some non-aligned country. Maybe there’s some kind of Yandex Twitter? In the meantime, it’s probably against TOS insofar as it’s a spambot, but state media like VOA seem okay.

by lhnz 4y ago

astrange 4y ago

> The FBI and CIA were driving the removal or soft-censoring of speech that the US government didn't like. There’s no right to post CSAM or revenge porn on the internet, so of course the FBI “drives the removal” of that, it is their job. I’ve done legal compliance for this elsewhere, I have turned down government requests without being persecuted in return, and I know for a fact Twitter’s previous administration was one of the most aggressive at fighting back here and put a great deal of legal effort into it. Example of a more cooperative response would maybe be Amazon Ring. There’s also no right for foreign intelligence ops to post on US social media so of course the CIA has opinions on that, it’s their job. Etc. (Current example of this one: a Chinese group is flooding Twitter search for different Chinese city names with ads for sex workers, to block people searching covid news.) All these things happen under the rule of law, not random emails. If you don’t like it, change the law. I don’t know why you’d want to do that though. I agree people might’ve said something other than this, but those people are amateurs and are wrong; talk to the EFF if you actually need advice here.

bboygravity 4y ago
Or... you could just actually read the Twitter files? You clearly have no idea what's in them judging from your comment...
- throwaway82388 4y ago
  There are a few responses people have found useful to misdirect and shut down conversation around this topic. Nothing burger, and the claim that it was about revenge porn, are strong signals that this is one such stock response. It’s disappointing how the commenting postures surrounding culture war issues curtail curiosity, the spirit of inquiry more generally. A now naive-seeming but widely held assumption about the information revolution was that the instant availability of primary source material would lead to more informed public debate. It’s now apparent to me that knowing how you’re supposed to feel, and what others think, are more important— at the very least more useful— than any naive interest in trying to interpret the messy reality.
trogdor 4y ago
>There’s no right to post CSAM or revenge porn on the internet, so of course the FBI “drives the removal” of that, it is their job. Why would the FBI be involved with anything related to revenge porn? Posting revenge porn is not a federal crime. (Tangentially, it appears that there remain two states in which revenge porn is not a crime. Yuck.)
- astrange 4y ago
  It’s not not their job to be informed about state crimes. I don’t think it’s a crime to literally leave it up in the same way distributing CSAM is, but it’s evidence someone is committing a crime, which is a TOS violation most places as most sites don’t want to encourage that. And Twitter’s TOS is what Twitter cares about. Whether reports come in as emails or their annoying inefficient report form is not important.
lhnz 4y ago
Why are you bringing up CSAM or revenge porn when the material and accounts referenced by the Twitter Files were ones that post content that was misaligned with the geopolitical goals of various US government organisations? See: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701436104245248?s=46&t=l9Mz-OVjOpDrmwGJvq5udg https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701436104245248?s=46&... and earlier parts that show that their own influence campaigns had free reign: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605294195975114765?s=46&t=c1XYo2QEa4dWVRcxNAhWBg https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605294195975114765?s=46&t...
- astrange 4y ago
  No, Taibbi is just lying. You can look up the deleted posts on archive.org and they’re pictures of Hunter Biden’s penis, which I will not link. Some of them aren’t; these are mistakes. law enforcement can report posts the same way anyone else can, and if they report the wrong ones you can ignore them. They don’t have special powers. It’s fine. (Also, Taibbi moved to Russia in the 90s, assaulted underage women, and publicly wrote about it in his publication the Exile. This is also a kind of bias.)
  - lhnz 4y ago
    The context and text within the emails doesn't match what you just wrote and from what I've seen there were 1000s of deletions -- not only of Hunter Biden's penis as you imply... It makes zero sense to me that this email (https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701482308669440?s=46&t=KYdL5AiudlmhYzDDj3HeLA https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701482308669440?s=46&...) would have anything to do with Hunter Biden's penis. The Twitter employee is clearly talking about feeling unable to not act on a pro-russian tweet even though they hadn't been able to support any action on it using Twitter's own policies. The point is, the US government partially infiltrated Twitter, and then applied regular external pressure on it to applying badly defined policies against their targets.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Btw, I endorse all US influence operations run on any websites and think all of them are awesome. America #1, after all. If you want Twitter to be upset about that one, you may have to get them to move to some non-aligned country. Maybe there’s some kind of Yandex Twitter? In the meantime, it’s probably against TOS insofar as it’s a spambot, but state media like VOA seem okay.