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The 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 dan

The 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 ago
Not 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 ago
      If the FBI sends such an email, there is a tacit threat of criminal liability.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        That's really not how criminal liability works.
        Fellshard 4y ago
        De facto more than de jour, given how the FBI has been operating.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > these are Russian disinfo And is that the case of those accounts? Do we have access to what 5ose accounts have propagated?
  - acdha 4y ago
    Can you cite a source? Be specific.
- elurg 4y ago
  The distinction between the government "asking nicely" and "making demands" is not strong enough. In theory could Twitter could have resisted but the costs would have been quite high. The government should be prohibited from making such requests. It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story the FBI outright lied in order to make web platforms censor the story.
  - acdha 4y ago
    > The distinction between the government "asking nicely" and "making demands" is not strong enough. In theory could Twitter could have resisted but the costs would have been quite high. Really? Companies do this all of the time. For example, how many billions did Apple lose for resisting the FBI’s requests with the San Bernardino shooter? > It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story the FBI outright lied in order to make web platforms censor the story. Can you be specific about this? The “Twitter Files” and all extent accounts say the opposite – and that was the best the right-wing media could find – and if you’re thinking about Zuckerberg’s interview, he specifically said the FBI did not make a request in this case.
    - elurg 4y ago
      As far as I understand the FBI knew that the Hunter Biden story was real but encouraged everybody else to believe that it was a Russian hoax. Doesn't this count as lying? It's not just lying, it's explicit disinformation with an electoral goal. This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective. I hate Trump's guts but it's important to acknowledge the enormous amount of effort that went into covering up the behavior of Biden's son.
      - acdha 4y ago
        Can you cite any of those claims? What’s been established in public and e.g. Zuckerberg’s interview was that they warned companies to be wary about another repeat of election interference, but nobody is saying that the FBI told them to kill this story. > This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective This is imaginary: I’m not even sure why you’re lying about something we all remember, especially since nothing in the laptop data was even substantial even if was all true.
decremental 4y ago
[flagged]
- quacked 4y ago
  The middle step is "it's not a big deal/it doesn't affect you"
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    The final stage is always "Yes, $GovernmentAgency did actually do $BadThing, and that's a good thing (TM)"
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
phphphphp 4y ago
If any party was responsible for this FBI behaviour, surely it would be the party that was in power at the time? The Republican party were in control in 2020.
- slenocchio 4y ago
  Not necessarily. The FBI doesn't change much from administration to administration, no?
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Trump dismissed the FBI Director and picked the new one in 2017. That's a fairly significant change.
    - retinaros 4y ago
      so? the history of mankind is built on people picking other people thinking they will do X while they will use all their force to do Y.
      - bell-cot 4y ago
        Which is why the admirals of the Imperial Japanese Navy refused to attack Pearl Harbor when ordered to do so...right? The ones who do Y instead of X are often pretty interesting. But that's partly because they're pretty rare.
        retinaros 4y ago
        [flagged]
        hermitdev 4y ago
        The oil embargo was in response to Japanese Imperialism in the Pacific, having already conquered a fair amount of territory. It wasn't just out of the blue with Japan sitting there behaving themselves.
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
Schrodinger's conspiracy: in superposition of being a dangerous conspiracy theory and well known fact everyone knew and nothing interesting. Of course, the status of a Schrodinger's conspiracy is only known when the truth is revealed and the conspiracy is measured. When the truth becomes known, it is retconned to have always been known.
- doublepg23 4y ago
  “This isn’t happening.” => “It’s happening and it’s actually good.” Also seems popular lately.
jimbob45 4y ago
I thought Musk and co did a decent job showing that both the Democrats and the Republicans both had access to the tools of censorship and used them at regular intervals. This should have been a nice time for everyone to come together against tool misuse - if everyone is guilty, then there is no need to pass judgement. Instead both sides are blaming one another (justifiably) while ignoring their own misuse (unjustifiably).
- hermitdev 4y ago
  It really doesn't matter that it was either Democrats, Republicans or both. It's that it was happening at all. The government should not be inserting itself into censoring speech of any kind, especially the sort they don't agree with. We have constitutional protections against this. It's bad, no matter which political party directed it.
Avshalom 4y ago
Everything the FBI did here was under republican leadership. It's the fucking FBI, it's a fundamentally right wing organization that has always and will always be so.
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago
  > In District of Columbia County, DC 92.1% of the people voted Democrat Washington DC is overwhelmingly a Democrat bastion, so, regardless of the political appointee SESers, the rank and file that live around DC are likely to have a specific political leaning. Feel free to fact check this. https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-washington-dc/ https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-was...
  - acdha 4y ago
    Now do the Virginia suburbs where a large fraction of them actually live — or, since the DC field office is about 5% of their total staff, the other 55 field offices. DC’s residents skew Democratic for a reason: having such a large black population means that they don’t trust the party which has such a questionable racial history, and that’s important to understand because the FBI’s history means the same people who don’t vote for Republicans are not jumping to join an organization with its history.
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      > DC’s residents skew Democratic for a reason: having such a large black population means that they don’t trust the party which has such a questionable racial history Hmmm.
      - acdha 4y ago
        Continue that thought? I have a hunch that you’re about to repeat the usual conservative “the Democrats were the party of slavery” claim which assumes the reader is unaware of the Southern Strategy half a century ago[1], but I’d love to be wrong in that pessimism. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
lovich 4y ago
>… on behalf of the Democratic Party… This persecution complex the Republicans have promulgated is amazing with how widely believed it is. The republicans have controlled the reigns of power repeatedly over the past few decades and for a greater number of elections than you’d anticipate looking at the popular vote. The timeline the Twitter files is talking about was explicitly during Republican control and not something like a month after the elections where bureaucratic momentum might have still been in play but years after they had taken the executive and legislature. The FBI head was 2-3 years into his job after being placed by a Republican president at this point. How are they possibly working as an arm of the Democratic Party?
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - lovich 4y ago
    What does anything you just posted have to do with the parent comment talking about intelligence agencies working with every tech company on behalf of the Democrats. Singling out Democrats doesn’t imply “Uniparty”. And this was the “outsider’s”(Trump’s) FBI attempting to get Twitter to censor things. How is that the “uniparty” working against populists like Trump?
mynameishere 4y ago
People have a curious inability to imagine "What if the other side was doing this?" If the FBI was regulating content on Twitter (and god knows where else) in order to swing the election towards Trump, it would be 24/7/365 outrage from liberals for years.

draw_down 4y ago

[dead]

themagician 4y ago

Not 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 ago
    If the FBI sends such an email, there is a tacit threat of criminal liability.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      That's really not how criminal liability works.
      - Fellshard 4y ago
        De facto more than de jour, given how the FBI has been operating.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > these are Russian disinfo And is that the case of those accounts? Do we have access to what 5ose accounts have propagated?
- acdha 4y ago
  Can you cite a source? Be specific.
elurg 4y ago
The distinction between the government "asking nicely" and "making demands" is not strong enough. In theory could Twitter could have resisted but the costs would have been quite high. The government should be prohibited from making such requests. It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story the FBI outright lied in order to make web platforms censor the story.
- acdha 4y ago
  > The distinction between the government "asking nicely" and "making demands" is not strong enough. In theory could Twitter could have resisted but the costs would have been quite high. Really? Companies do this all of the time. For example, how many billions did Apple lose for resisting the FBI’s requests with the San Bernardino shooter? > It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story the FBI outright lied in order to make web platforms censor the story. Can you be specific about this? The “Twitter Files” and all extent accounts say the opposite – and that was the best the right-wing media could find – and if you’re thinking about Zuckerberg’s interview, he specifically said the FBI did not make a request in this case.
  - elurg 4y ago
    As far as I understand the FBI knew that the Hunter Biden story was real but encouraged everybody else to believe that it was a Russian hoax. Doesn't this count as lying? It's not just lying, it's explicit disinformation with an electoral goal. This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective. I hate Trump's guts but it's important to acknowledge the enormous amount of effort that went into covering up the behavior of Biden's son.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Can you cite any of those claims? What’s been established in public and e.g. Zuckerberg’s interview was that they warned companies to be wary about another repeat of election interference, but nobody is saying that the FBI told them to kill this story. > This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective This is imaginary: I’m not even sure why you’re lying about something we all remember, especially since nothing in the laptop data was even substantial even if was all true.

decremental 4y ago

[flagged]

quacked 4y ago
The middle step is "it's not a big deal/it doesn't affect you"
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  The final stage is always "Yes, $GovernmentAgency did actually do $BadThing, and that's a good thing (TM)"

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

phphphphp 4y ago

If any party was responsible for this FBI behaviour, surely it would be the party that was in power at the time? The Republican party were in control in 2020.

slenocchio 4y ago
Not necessarily. The FBI doesn't change much from administration to administration, no?
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Trump dismissed the FBI Director and picked the new one in 2017. That's a fairly significant change.
  - retinaros 4y ago
    so? the history of mankind is built on people picking other people thinking they will do X while they will use all their force to do Y.
    - bell-cot 4y ago
      Which is why the admirals of the Imperial Japanese Navy refused to attack Pearl Harbor when ordered to do so...right? The ones who do Y instead of X are often pretty interesting. But that's partly because they're pretty rare.
      - retinaros 4y ago
        [flagged]
        hermitdev 4y ago
        The oil embargo was in response to Japanese Imperialism in the Pacific, having already conquered a fair amount of territory. It wasn't just out of the blue with Japan sitting there behaving themselves.

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

Schrodinger's conspiracy: in superposition of being a dangerous conspiracy theory and well known fact everyone knew and nothing interesting. Of course, the status of a Schrodinger's conspiracy is only known when the truth is revealed and the conspiracy is measured. When the truth becomes known, it is retconned to have always been known.

doublepg23 4y ago
“This isn’t happening.” => “It’s happening and it’s actually good.” Also seems popular lately.

jimbob45 4y ago

I thought Musk and co did a decent job showing that both the Democrats and the Republicans both had access to the tools of censorship and used them at regular intervals. This should have been a nice time for everyone to come together against tool misuse - if everyone is guilty, then there is no need to pass judgement. Instead both sides are blaming one another (justifiably) while ignoring their own misuse (unjustifiably).

hermitdev 4y ago
It really doesn't matter that it was either Democrats, Republicans or both. It's that it was happening at all. The government should not be inserting itself into censoring speech of any kind, especially the sort they don't agree with. We have constitutional protections against this. It's bad, no matter which political party directed it.

Avshalom 4y ago

Everything the FBI did here was under republican leadership. It's the fucking FBI, it's a fundamentally right wing organization that has always and will always be so.

OrvalWintermute 4y ago
> In District of Columbia County, DC 92.1% of the people voted Democrat Washington DC is overwhelmingly a Democrat bastion, so, regardless of the political appointee SESers, the rank and file that live around DC are likely to have a specific political leaning. Feel free to fact check this. https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-washington-dc/ https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-was...
- acdha 4y ago
  Now do the Virginia suburbs where a large fraction of them actually live — or, since the DC field office is about 5% of their total staff, the other 55 field offices. DC’s residents skew Democratic for a reason: having such a large black population means that they don’t trust the party which has such a questionable racial history, and that’s important to understand because the FBI’s history means the same people who don’t vote for Republicans are not jumping to join an organization with its history.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    > DC’s residents skew Democratic for a reason: having such a large black population means that they don’t trust the party which has such a questionable racial history Hmmm.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Continue that thought? I have a hunch that you’re about to repeat the usual conservative “the Democrats were the party of slavery” claim which assumes the reader is unaware of the Southern Strategy half a century ago[1], but I’d love to be wrong in that pessimism. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

lovich 4y ago

>… on behalf of the Democratic Party… This persecution complex the Republicans have promulgated is amazing with how widely believed it is. The republicans have controlled the reigns of power repeatedly over the past few decades and for a greater number of elections than you’d anticipate looking at the popular vote. The timeline the Twitter files is talking about was explicitly during Republican control and not something like a month after the elections where bureaucratic momentum might have still been in play but years after they had taken the executive and legislature. The FBI head was 2-3 years into his job after being placed by a Republican president at this point. How are they possibly working as an arm of the Democratic Party?

OrvalWintermute 4y ago
[flagged]
- lovich 4y ago
  What does anything you just posted have to do with the parent comment talking about intelligence agencies working with every tech company on behalf of the Democrats. Singling out Democrats doesn’t imply “Uniparty”. And this was the “outsider’s”(Trump’s) FBI attempting to get Twitter to censor things. How is that the “uniparty” working against populists like Trump?

mynameishere 4y ago

People have a curious inability to imagine "What if the other side was doing this?" If the FBI was regulating content on Twitter (and god knows where else) in order to swing the election towards Trump, it would be 24/7/365 outrage from liberals for years.