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I mean, hypothetically, what if Twitter said, "We really think it's bad for our brand to be connected to state sponsored info ops, and we'd like help avoiding i
by md_ 4y ago
I mean, hypothetically, what if Twitter said, "We really think it's bad for our brand to be connected to state sponsored info ops, and we'd like help avoiding it. Let's reach out to the FBI for threat intel to help us keep abreast of info ops."
(To be clear, I'm not saying this is what happened. In particular, Twitter's allowing Pentagon information operations--apparently by accident--on their platform doesn't look great.)
As a hypothetical--is that bad? It seems like it runs afoul of your "government should play no role in policing speech." But that seems like a somewhat oddly absolutist stance to me.
(For another hypothetical: let's say I'm Fox News, and I want to have a commentator on, but first I ping some buddies at the FBI and ask, "Is this commentator known to be an unregistered foreign agent?" Again, is it bad?)
A lot of these things could be bad. We might argue for some sort of firewall between anything involving media and private speech and anyone working in government ever. But that seems like a pretty radical departure from the status quo, and it's not obvious to me that what Twitter did was in bad faith or really different than the above examples.
- ashwagary 4y agoIt's not radical. The idea that an inherently biased 3 letter agency should be given any say in who gets to express an opinion publicly is anti-American at its core. Good thing newer protocols like Nostr kill these attempts to weaken freedom of speech by mongers.
- md_ 4y agoThe idea that a social network might ask their government for assistance in identifying foreign influence operations...is pretty run of the mill? Not sure what a "monger" is in this context.