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Mehdi Hasan Dismantles the Entire Foundation of the Twitter Files

32 points by pulisse 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 4y ago
This points out some important oversights, but goes off the rails here: > But, more importantly, regarding the small number of tweets that EIP did report to Twitter… it never suggested what Twitter should do about them Someone should read Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent.” You don’t need express collusion for the result to resemble express collusion. The broader issue here is trust, or lack thereof. Do you agree with Hasan here because you trust the organizations and people involved, or because the structure of the system provides assurance that you don’t need to trust them? For example, if the actors involved were faith based organizations rather than non-profits, would you feel the same way? Zoom all the way out here: Twitter is partnering with organizations (universities, non-profits) where 90%+ of members support one party to help monitor “election information.” You cannot defuse that problem by saying that we should just trust those people to be impartial. It’s like computer security: look at the system assuming everyone is a malicious actor. How does this Twitter’s system look from that vantage point?
- remarkEon 4y ago
  It's not even worth refuting because Hasan got his assertion wrong, or is using the confusing nature of the CIS/CISA naming conventions to his advantage. Everyone seems to have forgotten that the government using NGOs to launder their preferred policy/other outcomes into the public consciousness is just bog standard behavior. https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1644392551066255361 https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1644392551066255361
  - tptacek 4y ago
    This doesn't establish anything other than that someone at CISA saw some of the work product of the EIP, an academic project run out of Stanford. Taibbi's tweet was quoted on screen, and appears to be facially incorrect.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      Calling EIP an academic project is, I think, grossly misleading. If only because it makes it sound like a bunch of college kids running regression analyses on Twitter trends.
- tptacek 4y ago
  That's not the claim Taibbi made; he made a much stronger claim, which MSNBC managed to trivially refute.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    It’s the claim I’m making. As to the error—I don’t think anything is “trivial” here. In the EIP study, there were 181 tickets, with almost 6 million tweets “directly referenced in a ticket.” If you flag a tweet and it’s removed, what happens to the associated tweets? I believe retweets and replies are removed too, right? If so, I don’t see how Hassan’s characterization is accurate either. EIP is shooting at the roots of information trees that branch out. They don’t need to shoot at all the leaves.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      Mohdi Hasan didn't have you on his show to confront you about your claims, because very few people know or care that you made them, unlike the claims Taibbi made, which went viral. The mistakes you're making in your analysis just aren't newsworthy.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        That’s kind of how online forums work, right? People make points such as “Party B’s rebuttal to Party A misses the larger picture”—without necessarily reiterating Party A’s point And as noted above—Hassan’s rebuttal seems equally if not more mistaken. Taibbi is being sloppy with the definition of “flag.” But the end result—in terms of what happens if a flagged tweet is removed—is closer to Taibbi’s characterization.
        tptacek 4y ago
        I can't tell which formulation I'm meant to be responding to at this point: is it Hasan's takedown of Taibbi's clearly-flawed reporting, or is it the way Hasan's takedown applies to your own beliefs?
onetimeusename 4y ago
This looks like the correction Matt Taibbi gave (https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1644086708252684288 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1644086708252684288) about the 22 million flagged tweets number. Presented without comment.

32 points by pulisse 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

This points out some important oversights, but goes off the rails here: > But, more importantly, regarding the small number of tweets that EIP did report to Twitter… it never suggested what Twitter should do about them Someone should read Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent.” You don’t need express collusion for the result to resemble express collusion. The broader issue here is trust, or lack thereof. Do you agree with Hasan here because you trust the organizations and people involved, or because the structure of the system provides assurance that you don’t need to trust them? For example, if the actors involved were faith based organizations rather than non-profits, would you feel the same way? Zoom all the way out here: Twitter is partnering with organizations (universities, non-profits) where 90%+ of members support one party to help monitor “election information.” You cannot defuse that problem by saying that we should just trust those people to be impartial. It’s like computer security: look at the system assuming everyone is a malicious actor. How does this Twitter’s system look from that vantage point?

remarkEon 4y ago
It's not even worth refuting because Hasan got his assertion wrong, or is using the confusing nature of the CIS/CISA naming conventions to his advantage. Everyone seems to have forgotten that the government using NGOs to launder their preferred policy/other outcomes into the public consciousness is just bog standard behavior. https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1644392551066255361 https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1644392551066255361
- tptacek 4y ago
  This doesn't establish anything other than that someone at CISA saw some of the work product of the EIP, an academic project run out of Stanford. Taibbi's tweet was quoted on screen, and appears to be facially incorrect.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    Calling EIP an academic project is, I think, grossly misleading. If only because it makes it sound like a bunch of college kids running regression analyses on Twitter trends.
tptacek 4y ago
That's not the claim Taibbi made; he made a much stronger claim, which MSNBC managed to trivially refute.
- rayiner 4y ago
  It’s the claim I’m making. As to the error—I don’t think anything is “trivial” here. In the EIP study, there were 181 tickets, with almost 6 million tweets “directly referenced in a ticket.” If you flag a tweet and it’s removed, what happens to the associated tweets? I believe retweets and replies are removed too, right? If so, I don’t see how Hassan’s characterization is accurate either. EIP is shooting at the roots of information trees that branch out. They don’t need to shoot at all the leaves.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Mohdi Hasan didn't have you on his show to confront you about your claims, because very few people know or care that you made them, unlike the claims Taibbi made, which went viral. The mistakes you're making in your analysis just aren't newsworthy.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      That’s kind of how online forums work, right? People make points such as “Party B’s rebuttal to Party A misses the larger picture”—without necessarily reiterating Party A’s point And as noted above—Hassan’s rebuttal seems equally if not more mistaken. Taibbi is being sloppy with the definition of “flag.” But the end result—in terms of what happens if a flagged tweet is removed—is closer to Taibbi’s characterization.
      - tptacek 4y ago
        I can't tell which formulation I'm meant to be responding to at this point: is it Hasan's takedown of Taibbi's clearly-flawed reporting, or is it the way Hasan's takedown applies to your own beliefs?

onetimeusename 4y ago

This looks like the correction Matt Taibbi gave (https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1644086708252684288 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1644086708252684288) about the 22 million flagged tweets number. Presented without comment.