4 ms·

Quoting from the article; I think you're looking for the bit I italicised in the second paragraph > The files confirm something that we’d previously only learn

Quoting from the article; I think you're looking for the bit I italicised in the second paragraph > The files confirm something that we’d previously only learned through a lawsuit: that Twitter and other tech executives were having regular monthly and even weekly meetings with not just the FBI and its Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) — the eighty-person counterintelligence division made to combat foreign disinformation campaigns — but pretty much every security agency under the sun. Besides the bureau, those named include the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, state governments like that of California, the justice and state departments, even the National Security Agency (NSA), which requested to be included in a special Signal channel set up for the election period to let government agencies feed information to social media companies, or “the industry.” [...] > The significance of this should be obvious. Many shortsightedly dismissed the first Twitter Files release about Twitter’s outrageous censorship of the New York Post on the grounds that because the government wasn’t involved, such censorship shouldn’t concern us. That premise is wrong, but even if we were to accept it, the fact is that the FBI and a host of other shadowy security agencies are clearly knee-deep in the decisions over what Twitter and other companies decide to censor.

smoldesu 4y ago
That's certainly a thesis of sorts, but I don't think it's much of an argument. - Twitter is a privately-owned, for-profit platform that can ultimately decide what stays and goes - The New York Post isn't protected by special rights or Twitter rules that normal users aren't subject to - The dismissive response to this 'leak' is not unsubstantiated, since we've seen much more harrowing releases with much less proportional reactions (see: Snowden, Wikileaks, et. al) Considering those points, it's hard to listen to the Twitter Files with a straight face. Not only is none of the behavior criminal, but we didn't even learn anything here. We already knew that Twitter worked with the government during the election season to fight whatever they consider 'misinformation'. Even before that, Snowden leaked the PRISM roadmap that clearly shows Twitter and Facebook with FBI/NSA correspondence. So again, I'm not sure if I follow the author. Not an attack on you, I understand that you're trying to cite relevant source material, but I feel like their thesis can be easily refuted.
- ttctciyf 4y ago
  I mean, if you find privately owned social media companies dominant in the field of journalism and breaking news co-opted by the state in the form of agencies like FBI and CIA in the wholesale manipulation of public information "no big deal" then ... you're welcome to your views, I guess. It should be unsurprising to anyone properly aware of the facts and context that others do find it to be noteworthy, however. > we've seen much more harrowing releases with much less proportional reactions (see: Snowden, Wikileaks, et. al) Not sure what you intend by "proportional" here ('proportionate'?) - but Snowden, for example (avowedly a much more significant story) received weeks of headlines and coverage here in UK. Of course, much of that coverage was of the form: "Not true -> Maybe somewhat true; Snowden is a traitor -> True but no big deal, security trumps legality -> True, but so what, we already knew all that." And we did know a lot of that - see Duncan Campbell's reporting on Echelon, for example, as early as 1988! - but detail and documentary evidence was nonetheless important and worth publishing.

smoldesu 4y ago

That's certainly a thesis of sorts, but I don't think it's much of an argument. - Twitter is a privately-owned, for-profit platform that can ultimately decide what stays and goes - The New York Post isn't protected by special rights or Twitter rules that normal users aren't subject to - The dismissive response to this 'leak' is not unsubstantiated, since we've seen much more harrowing releases with much less proportional reactions (see: Snowden, Wikileaks, et. al) Considering those points, it's hard to listen to the Twitter Files with a straight face. Not only is none of the behavior criminal, but we didn't even learn anything here. We already knew that Twitter worked with the government during the election season to fight whatever they consider 'misinformation'. Even before that, Snowden leaked the PRISM roadmap that clearly shows Twitter and Facebook with FBI/NSA correspondence. So again, I'm not sure if I follow the author. Not an attack on you, I understand that you're trying to cite relevant source material, but I feel like their thesis can be easily refuted.

ttctciyf 4y ago
I mean, if you find privately owned social media companies dominant in the field of journalism and breaking news co-opted by the state in the form of agencies like FBI and CIA in the wholesale manipulation of public information "no big deal" then ... you're welcome to your views, I guess. It should be unsurprising to anyone properly aware of the facts and context that others do find it to be noteworthy, however. > we've seen much more harrowing releases with much less proportional reactions (see: Snowden, Wikileaks, et. al) Not sure what you intend by "proportional" here ('proportionate'?) - but Snowden, for example (avowedly a much more significant story) received weeks of headlines and coverage here in UK. Of course, much of that coverage was of the form: "Not true -> Maybe somewhat true; Snowden is a traitor -> True but no big deal, security trumps legality -> True, but so what, we already knew all that." And we did know a lot of that - see Duncan Campbell's reporting on Echelon, for example, as early as 1988! - but detail and documentary evidence was nonetheless important and worth publishing.