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The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter
- DoItToMe81 4y ago[flagged]
- asakusaa 4y ago[flagged]
- hejaodbsidndbd 4y ago[dead]
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago[flagged]
- transcriptase 4y ago[flagged]
- asynchronous 4y ago[flagged]
- andrekandre 4y agoi wonder why they are cherry-picking and releasing things like this in a drop-drop fashion... shouldn't just release everything and let the media (and that includes fox et al) dig through it and report on it for us?
- acdha 4y agoThe problem is that so far there hasn’t been much of interest here. Having a few people tweet unsupported claims gets more traction because some people won’t read past the spin and it allows the more journalistic end of the right-wing media to talk about it without being directly criticized for the spin: Fox News can run a “people are saying” story rather than claiming it as an original story. The story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was similar: if there’d been anything significant revealed the WSJ or Fox would have covered it directly. There wasn’t and Giuliani’s sloppy handling made it unreliable, so they didn’t want to put their reputations on the line.
- therouwboat 4y agoElon probably increases cooperation when he realises that you can charge FBI for digging user info.
- stefan_ 4y agoCan't wait for Matt to hit the motherlode: Elon banning journalists out of personal spite, making a poll to unban them but underhandedly demanding they delete their (never rule-breaking) tweets. Just a few more searches and he will hit it for sure! Unless his handlers demand he ignore that, of course.
- SyzygistSix 4y agoWhat on earth happened to Matt Tiabbi and Glenn Greenwald? Does a certain amount of exposure to news and conspiracy break people at a certain point? I occasionally worry that they didn't change but that I did.
- acdha 4y agoI think it’s a combination of never having been as good as we might’ve liked (Taibbi’s stories from when he was working for The eXile suggest where this came from) and valuing being contrary to the establishment more than being right (Matt Yglesias is another good example of that). That can give them a big hit when the establishment is wrong (Iraq, whether bankers should be punished in 2008) but it sets them up for failure when it’s not (Trump), and since they have made their careers on that it’s extra hard to reconsider since that means acknowledging that their defining instinct led them astray.
- MarkPNeyer 4y agoAt what point did Wikileaks become the bad guys? Was this a change in their behavior, or a change in American political attitudes towards the role of journalism?
- d23 4y agoI’ll engage rather than downvoting. Something always struck me as odd about Assange, and while we can debate whether conspiring with the Russians in hack and leak operations against the US is a departure from their prior behavior, I think it’s unfair to pretend Americans suddenly had a huge value shift in not being okay with that.
- 4y ago
- martythemaniak 4y agoIt's like the boy who cried wolf, except the wolf never comes. But we should keep an open mind, perhaps part 27 will be the bombshell.
- themagician 4y agoBREAKING: tech companies usually cooperate with law enforcement and government when requested. Data shows they are more than 100 times more likely to continue to respond to requests when paid.
- potatototoo99 4y agoI think the important thing here is the lack of judicial oversight. There used to be needed a court order to request things from companies, so someone would actually weight in the evidence and legality of it. Now it's just someone from a secret agency shutting down news stories about laptops because it makes one political candidate look bad.
- themagician 4y agoRequests are different from demands. It’s not like the FBI tells Twitter to take something down under threat of violence. They say just ask and Twitter agrees, sometimes, because they are on the same page.
- ggreer 4y agoIf the FBI requests something, and you ignore or refuse them, they will find a way to make your life unpleasant. Remember, this organization has a long history of human rights abuses and illegal actions. They even tried to blackmail MLK.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–King_suicide_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–King_suicide_letter
- fl0wenol 4y agoWhile I agree with the premise of your statement, remember that: 1) A court order is only required for a subpoena to request information that the service provider isn't already voluntarily providing. It has been common pratice for decades where telecoms and now social media works together with federal entities outside of a legal action. And this was not limited to trap/trace. 2) It's never so specific to be about protecting an individual candidate. It's about the foreign interference, and if that interference backs a specific candidate and attacks their rivals, then it will look like they're trying to protect the rivals. But at the end of the day it they have to trace it back to the foreign influence campaign if they're going to do anything with it. If Twitter jumps the gun and suspends or bans someone they're trying to work backwards from before having evidence its unfortunate but I blame that on Twitter not having stricter standards about such a partnership.
- cyberphobe 4y agoI didn’t notice the author, almost took this in good faith, then I got to this banger: > After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles these people are delusional
- onos 4y agoAh the old ad hominem argument.
- counttheforks 4y agoLiterally the opposite when you ignore the author and judge the article on its contents.
- mef 4y agoI’ve been trying to read these Twitter files threads thoughtfully, and maybe it’s just a sign of the current average level of comfort with government involvement with social media platforms, but I’m generally not seeing much issue with the stuff being revealed. the worst thing about this particular thread seems like the govt agencies talking to Twitter about foreign influence are overreaching a bit (eg asking them to look at Russian oligarchs’ troll farms for promoting anti-Ukrainian spam). but I don’t see a problem with the FBI/CIA/etc having regular discussions with Twitter about potential threats, influence campaigns, etc.
- cyberphobe 4y agoYeah, these people are just desperately trying to generate outrage over nothing. It’s really really dumb. No need to give them too much thought
- asynchronous 4y ago[flagged]
- froggertoaster 4y ago[flagged]
- TylerLives 4y agoIt's a display of power. "Yeah, we're censoring you, so what? Everyone knew this already, and it's a good thing". I'm not sure what the people who decided to publish this were expecting. Who knows though, maybe in the long run it will have some consequences.
- andsoitis 4y agoWhat is good summary that point to the core of the issue as revealed by these “leaks”?
- cyberphobe 4y ago
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoWe're seriously still doing this? https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/12/the-core-argument-of-the-twitter-files-is-that-1-6-was-fine-and-there-is-no-legitimate-reason-to-find-it-objectionable https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/12/the-core-argume...
- cyberphobe 4y agoYes, this website full of brain dead right wingers.
- joshmn 4y agoI’m not sure brain-dead is accurate because that would mean unwittingness.
- fallingknife 4y ago[flagged]
- walrus01 4y agoI think you greatly underestimate the hardcore "libertarian" ideology that runs through tech-bro culture.
- mhoad 4y agoI’d actually argue that the idea that the US tech ecosystem is almost exclusively ultra left leaning is the myth here. You’ve just presented that as some kind of a fact which is in stark contrast to thousands of threads filled with comments demonstrating the opposite.
- fallingknife 4y agoJudging by the companies I've worked at and the people I know, it clearly is. This is biased towards the sv part of the industry, which is the largest concentration, though. It is also backed up by the data of who employees of large tech companies contribute to, which is overwhelmingly democrats.
- monsecchris 4y agoThe people trying to minimise every intelligence agency working with every tech company on behalf of the Democratic Party are the same people calling this a dangerous far right conspiracy theory not long ago.
- draw_down 4y ago[dead]
- themagician 4y agoNot really. What are the intelligence agencies supposed to do if not exactly what is being “revealed”? Are they not allowed to talk to private companies or citizens? If it was being revealed that they were making demands and forcing companies to do things that would be a serious issue. Instead they are asking, nicely, and even paying them for their time and work.
- asynchronous 4y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 4y ago> "these are Russian disinfo, eradicate them" The actual wording, of course, was this sort of thing: "FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter's Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy..." (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-employees-notified-twitter-workers-users-potentially-violate-terms-service-twitter-files https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-employees-notified-twit...)
- Fellshard 4y agoIf the FBI sends such an email, there is a tacit threat of criminal liability.
- toiletfuneral 4y ago[dead]
- epivosism 4y agoI think it's pretty reasonable to worry about a system of punishment (depriving someone of the right to use a communication platform) administered by the government, which doesn't obey the normal rules of justice: 1) right to see evidence 2) right to confront your accuser 3) right to judgement by a jury of your peers. OFC there is a role for private info and possibly preventing malicious, foreign government manipulation attacks on us - but the power is so strong and so easily misused that we need better checks on it. Don't forget the NYT and most lefty thought leaders were onboard with the 2nd Iraq war based on phony evidence.
- tosc 4y agoSo every troll and bot farm should be able to have each tweet judged by a jury?
- epivosism 4y agoDefinitely not. I'm more looking for a gesture towards respecting our values, and a more open negotiation process for developing safe use for this kind of powerful control system. The fact that the administrators of the process on the twitter side were quite polarized politically makes people doubt its fairness, as does the fact that it was mostly done in secret. i.e. it was more of a China-style "the state doesn't like you and bad things will happen to you and your family" style of punishment where you don't know what has actually happened (limitation of tweet reach, weird glitches in your tweet's spread with no acknowledgement) than a clear "you are charged with X and have received this penalty Y for time Z."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tosc 4y agoWhy not just stop using Twitter? Who cares whether the FBI has its thumb on the scales or if it’s Elon Musk and his friends? “The world’s digital town square” is a marketing slogan, and nothing more. If you instead accept that is simply just another way to sell eyeballs to advertisers, it’s easier to understand. If we do need a digital town square, someone needs to build one. If it needs to have free speech protections, then the government needs to run it because they are the only ones who are restrained by the 2nd amendment.
- poszlem 4y agoI am still baffled by the radio silence about any of that in the mainstream media. My prediction is that this, the Rittenhouse trial coverage, and the attempts to shut down the discussion about the lab Leak theory are going to be viewed in a few years the same way as the mainstream media's complicity and collusion with the government before the Iraq war.
- petesergeant 4y ago> radio silence about and of that in the mainstream media Do any of these help? site:washingtonpost.com "twitter files" site:cnn.com "twitter files" site:foxnews.com "twitter files"
- poszlem 4y agoNo, they don't. https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1605128180750319619 https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/16051281807503196...
- petesergeant 4y agoAh, so the "mainstream media" "radio silence" here for an American politics story is in-fact complaining that on a specific date, it wasn't front-page news in ... the UK?
- poszlem 4y agoCan you show me when it made front page in the US media?
- joshuamorton 4y agoI mean it helps that it isn't front page news. It's completely reasonable to disagree about the scale of a story. Most people disagree with you and shellenberger that this is important. What place do you have to demand that we interpret things the same way you do?
- elurg 4y agoThe argument that "it's not censorship if a private company does it" was always weak. What these revelations show is that a lot of so-called moderation was done at the explicit direction of government employees. How do you defend this? "it's not censorship if the private company willingly complies with government requests"? A refusal by twitter would have had quite high costs for the company. The cooperation between private companies and government censors is so deep that this is barely distinguishable from direct censorship.
- asynchronous 4y agoThe fact that comments such as yours are getting downvoted straight to the bottom tells me that people simply aren’t willing to see the implication this has to whatever illusion of freedom the American people still possess.
- truthisworse 4y agoThe truth is much worse. This didnt only happen a twitter, its happening at every major online space including here. The inability for hn commenters to speak forthright and integrity and principles shows the rot tgat exists here. Hn is largely controlled and nothing they dont want people to see is allowed. Accounts are shadow banned, ips are range banned, individuals here are tracked and not allowed Accounts or voices here. This comment not even allowed because of selective rules to ensure the truth is not seen. You cannot debate people here in good faith. HN is a moral cesspool.
- goostavos 4y ago>How do you defend this? From this thread, it seems by just going "pfft... no big deal." As long as there's a layer of abstraction ("I didn't kill him. The bullets and the fall did") and it's applying to speech we generally don't care for (misinformation, "hate speech", etc..), then I guess we're cool with it? It's tough not to be cynical at times. A decade after PRISM, the government controlling speech indirectly via "polite suggestions" mostly just fills me with similar feelings of "no big deal." Not because it isn't, but because it's expected.
- bparsons 4y agoPeople on the right are just now figuring out the connections between Silicon Valley and the security state?
- machina_ex_deus 4y agoIf you don't see anything wrong with the government forcing censorship on controversial political questions, such as whether elections are safe and fair, just imagine your own reaction if after the 2016 election, Trump's FBI would be monitoring Twitter for any information about Cambridge Analytica / Russia's interference, labeling them as misinformation and censoring and banning everyone mentioning them. If your values only apply when they fit your wanted outcome, they aren't values they are pathetic excuses. By the way, this opens the door to all the other agencies of the world outside US to demand same kind of access. Including European. Maybe China wants it too. And for the record, I think Elon banning Elon Jet and journalists is wrong too. But there are too many people who only care about the censorship when it hurts them, and cheer for it when it suits them.
- asynchronous 4y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 4y agoYou should probably briefly skim the Wikipedia article on the Gestapo.
- poszlem 4y agoIt's unsettling to see how lacking in ethical principles some people are. If you truly believe that you would not care if a highly Republican-leaning social media company was collaborating with the government to suppress content from Democratic creators, then I can understand your perspective. However, it's likely that this situation would be viewed differently if the roles were reversed.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoI do get bored of the evidently weak character and hypocrisy.
- cyberphobe 4y agoI’m fine with the government shutting down anti-democratic movements. I’m not fine with anti-democratic governments shutting down legitimate discussion that looks bad on them, or serving a foreign power. These are not the same thing.
- rc_subreme 4y agoAmericans are living in a world with a land war in Europe with an old foe on one side, and the increasing pressure exerted on Asian trade and policy partners by a Pacific rim empire we've not seen eye to eye with in the past 100 years. I'd like to see more effort expended on spying and undermining our rivals than ourselves. But such large diplomatic/economic/(hopefully cold)military projects require long term thinking we're poor at. Its so much easier to just fight the latest culture war against domestic weirdos and malcontents. Every time we have one of these internal thought-purity checks, it sows discord in an already discordant country made of too many different races religions and regional cultures to ever work if we're going to try and weaponize our own governmental security apparatus against each other, vying for control on the airwaves and at the polls, just so we can stick it to our domestic rivals for a few years. The cowboy and the indian are both Americans.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- PKop 4y ago>an already discordant country made of too many different races religions and regional cultures to ever work Diversity is our strength.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- froggertoaster 4y agoYou can downplay this all you want - but remember: stuff like this is a microcosm of a larger issue. Sections of your government worked directly with Twitter to control what information you saw. Much bigger organizations - Facebook comes to mind - must be doing the same thing every.single.day. And no one finds this even a little bit alarming?
- elurg 4y agoA lot of people completely agree with heavy-handed information control.
- quacked 4y ago"A well-armed and informed populace governing itself" is a pipe dream by indigenous uncontacted people and certain very intelligent dissenters. The majority of "civilized" people in the world are very happy to live in an authoritarian information-sanitized nation so long as the people in power cater to their own in-group.
- barnabee 4y agoI’d like to think this site of all places might be populated with very intermittent dissenters willing to be or at least support activists trying to change that, with the internet and technology as their tool. It’s always jarring to discover the extent to which it’s not.
- MarkPNeyer 4y agoBitcoin is people striving for financial self sovereignty. “Crypto” is a bunch of people trying to get rich using some cool new technology they nobody understands. See how much bigger the second is than the first.
- quacked 4y agoThe reason Bitcoin got so large so quickly is the same reason that "Crypto" got large so quickly. The majority of people who "invest" in Bitcoin aren't trying to figure out a way to trade goods and services in a way that undermines the Federal Reserve and the IRS, they're trying to increase their holdings in USD in order to better participate in the existing economy.
- ohCh6zos 4y ago“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
- rightbyte 4y agoThe only actual fascists in Italy were way more heavy on government power than the idealistic goal of unions and cooperations, though. It is hard to generalize one off concepts like fascism in my opion.
- trentnix 4y agoI have to say I’m astonished at the casual dismissal of the blatant lies of the previous Twitter regime, their clear election manipulation, and the governments involvement in drawing attention to utterly trivial social media activity. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks the governments attention on small, inconsequential accounts was all a backstop to justify the narratives they were feeding to the press about Russian election manipulation and “misinformation”. I feel like a frog in the boiling pot watching the other frogs try to convince me there’s no danger. I hope you’re correct.
- chamwislo 4y agoThis is how soft power works. You only need a few sock puppets to sway a crowd.
- cactusplant7374 4y ago> their clear election manipulation I’m confused here. I only see Republicans trying to manipulate elections with unsubstantiated voter fraud claims.
- refurb 4y agoI guess you haven't been following? FBI gets Hunter laptop Dec 2019, knows it's not a forgery. FBI proceeds to warn social media companies about "Russian disinformation campaigns" about a month or two before election. NY Post does story on Hunter laptop (which includes business dealing with Ukraine). "Former" intelligence agents go on media to say "this has all the markings of a disinformation campaign" (which they know 100% is a lie). Social media proceeds to ban a 100% factual story, about a presidential candidate weeks for an election. You don't see the issue?
- cactusplant7374 4y agoHow does a stolen laptop of Biden’s son change the election?
- 4y ago
- nathias 4y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 4y ago> Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. That's the Constitutional definition of treason in the United States. Who's levying war against the United States here?
- nathias 4y agoThe 'intelligence agancies'? Like in cases of a coup, when an institution that is part of the governmental body tries to take over the state by force. It seems pretty similar, just that the means are more peaceful.
- ceejayoz 4y ago“It’s the same, except it isn’t” is gonna be a tough treason prosecution.
- nathias 4y agoIf someone kills someone in a novel way its still murder right?
- ceejayoz 4y agoNot necessarily. It might be manslaughter, or justifiable homicide, or a number of other things based on the facts of the case. The FBI telling Twitter about potential TOS violations is treasonous as this comment is murderous, i.e. not at all.
- retinaros 4y agofor most americans it is not treason if the governement is siding with their political views.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter Being the primary domestic component of the intelligence community is overtly part of the FBI role, so that would be expected to be true with any domestic actor in the place of “Twitter”. Similarly, “major international public and private communication platform with a history of being used to recruit and organize insurrections and other acts of violence, execute international influence operations, single out targets for violent reprisals, etc., attracts lots of attention from intelligence, counterintelligence, and law enforcement agencies, of which the FBI is the lead federal domestic agency for all three purposes” is... not surprising.
- 082349872349872 4y agoindeed; cf https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence
- chitowneats 4y agoAre they supposed to be helping the CIA get around their mandate not to interfere domestically? https://nitter.moomoo.me/mtaibbi/status/1606701405443874816#m https://nitter.moomoo.me/mtaibbi/status/1606701405443874816#...
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Are they supposed to be helping the CIA get around their mandate not to interfere domestically? In that domestic in intelligence/counterintelligence is the FBIs job, and that they are expected to do it as part of and in close coordination with other parts of the intelligence community including the CIA, yes, but its not getting around anything since its exactly the way things are supposed to work.
- chitowneats 4y ago> In its 1947 charter, the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans, in part because President Truman was afraid that the agency would engage in political abuse. But the law didn't stop the CIA from spying on Americans. During the 1960s, in clear violation of its statutory mission to co-ordinate foreign intelligence operations only, the CIA ventured into the domestic spying business through "Operation Chaos," in which it spied on as many as 7,000 Americans involved in the peace movement.[1] "Liberal" apologists for the CIA will never cease to amaze me. 1.https://www.aclu.org/other/more-about-intelligence-agencies-ciadni-spying https://www.aclu.org/other/more-about-intelligence-agencies-...
- bell-cot 4y agoMaybe I'm dating myself...but how different is this, really, from stuff that was routine back in the days of J Edgar Hoover (FBI Director, 1935-1972)? Other than "with computers and the internet" instead of "with paper files and typewriters"? Idealistic youthful utopianism, techno- or otherwise, does not change human nature. And ignorance of history is a really poor recipe for long-term success.
- SyzygistSix 4y agoI don't find it incredible that Russia and China conduct disinformation campaigns via social media, regarding our elections and all manner of things. The accusation that they have used social media to inflame groups on both sides of the political divide in the US seems credible to me. However I'm not okay with unilateral censorship as a response necessarily. But I'd be okay with a tag on postings and accounts maybe. I'm not sure what the solution is, despite concerns over both foreign influence and domestic censorship. For now, if an item seems to demonize Americans or Westerners on the right OR the left, I try to be very skeptical.
- cactusplant7374 4y ago> However I'm not okay with unilateral censorship as a response necessarily. For foreign government owned accounts too?
- jasmer 4y agoAny public media entity represents enormous power - and by definition will involve agencies of all kinds from all over. Foreign actors will absolutely leverage the situation to the maximum extent possible and this is a fact irrespective of claims made by CIA/FBI to justify their existence. Even the Canadian government has finally admitted publicly that the Chinese government is doing 'full court press' inside the country including having literal Chinese Police Stations hidden within Canada. It's perverse. And of course, that's just the 'big actor' issue - there are legitimately a lot of small time bad people using these systems. Like they would any other. We should expect the government to do it's job - meaning that the 'story' should be about 'where the lines are' not 'that they exist'. Judicial oversight, proportionality, proper procedure, some mechanism for public oversight, lawfulness ... those are the issues. I'm glad for this bit of transparency because it probably helps us to parse the system a bit to see what's what ... but I suggest that we ought to be vigilant about the nuances, not the ideology. Putin and Xi will forevermore attempt to dust things up, and the CIA/FBI are known to overstep their bounds ... but there's a legit reason those agencies exist so we probably should focus on a way to make it work in a way that preserves freedom, lawfulness, basic civic virtues and common sense.
- dukeofdoom 4y ago[flagged]
- lovich 4y ago> The two people Kyle Rittenhouse shot, both had extensive criminal records. That's kind of amazing, that criminals would be such dedicated civil rights protestors. Simpler explanation is that FBI sent informants, or agent provocateurs. “People protesting against the government were criminals as defined by the government they were protesting against. It unbelievable that anyone who is a criminal could be involved in something positive whether out of an actual belief or just being angry at the government that had punished them previously, therefor it’s obvious that there must be a government conspiracy involved” Does that capture the gist of your argument?
- dukeofdoom 4y agoJoseph Don Rosenbaum, was imprisoned and made to register as a sex offender involved the molestation and rape of five separate boys. Yes, I'm skeptical that he was there because he was a civil rights advocate.
- lovich 4y agoAnd he needn’t be to have been protesting against government power. Him being there for entirely self serving reasons is a much simpler explanation than that he was an fbi plant who was willing to put his life on the line for some sort of social manipulation as you have claimed. You started with a view and appear to have worked your way backwards to justify it.
- dukeofdoom 4y agoWhy would would anyone ride a bicycle when the simpler unicycle exists. Is that the crux of your argument?
- lovich 4y ago
- yehudalouis 4y agoI prefer the old, anti-establishment left. Now the left is just comprised of journalists defending three letter agencies while calling the right "bootlickers." I don't like the idea of any three letter agency having any communication with a company like Twitter unless it is for a specific investigation.
- GaryNumanVevo 4y agoWhat? Democrats might be defending the TLAs but leftists have always been the explicit target of agencies like the FBI and CIA. So to suggest that they'd somehow be defending them is laughable.
- chaosbolt 4y agoI still remember how I said the government is telling social media websites and most of faang to censor things like 2 years ago and got downvoted here, it was so obvious a child would see it but somehow most people here blocked that part of their brain so they don't get labeled as a "conspiracy theorist". We kept running that propaganda about freedom and how authoritarian regimes are evil so much that I for one believed it and thought everyone shared the belief, then saw people ARGUING against free speech and other things I thought were solved problems in first world countries. The US for example is a country that invaded another country for oil and sold it to its people as a war for freedom, and called Iraqis who fought back terrorists, and now calls Ukrainians who fight back heroes, oh and both the US and the UK made fun of us for not joining their invasion (France). In my opinion, all types of ideas should be allowed to battle freely and trust that this will drive us forwards, we do it with marketing, everything is allowed to the point people don't even know if they're buying things because they want to or because they're controlled into doing it, just do it with ideas as well, let everyone present their case online and offline and let the opposition argue against it logically or emotionally or whatever, people know what's best for them it's the first principle of a democracy, as soon as you start saying well X-speech will make people do terrible things which are bad for them so we should ban it you stop being a democracy in my opinion.
- LeonTheremin 4y agoThe FBI will continue to be a victim of "conspiracy theories" because the FBI refuses to properly investigate the claims of civilians victims of electromagnetic weaponry (Havana Syndrome, etc), so the true criminals behind that will keep propagating the lie that the government (FBI included) are responsible.
- hellfish 4y agoThis whole issue revolves around how comfortable people are with DC sticking its nose in social media These agencies have already seen massive scope creep in the past couple decades. Seeing the FBI doing moderation for social media companies is a step too far and it's high time for the alphabet agencies to get pared down