4 ms·

The Twitter Files were precisely what Taibbi said. The USG telling social media companies which people should have their speech censored.

splitstud 3y ago
[dead]
lesuorac 3y ago
Uh, I guess one could phrase it that way but it's rather dishonest. It'd be akin to saying a police officer testifying that they saw X person shoot Y person as attempting to deplatform X person. -- Honestly the only thing questionable in the twitter files was the USG telling twiter which accounts were their cy-ops accounts so they wouldn't get banned. Twitter having a policy of you can't do Y on the platform and the USG asking Twitter if X person is violating Y is not illegal censorship.
- prometheus76 3y ago
  Is government censorship via a third party not a problem for you?
  - costigan 3y ago
    Was it Twitter's policy or not? (Of course it was, as we see by how easily it was changed by the new owner.)
  - ToDougie 3y ago
    It clearly isn't. Wait until the tables turn on them, though :)
    - lesuorac 3y ago
      You understand that USG in reference to the twitter files means Donald Trump as he happened to be in charge of the executive branch during that period?
- obviouslynotme 3y ago
  All governmental prosecution should be before a court with the protection of rights. Even in your contrived example, the defendant has the right to face his accuser, cross-examine, attorneys, judges, juries, and the many things we throw in the government's way of harming people, justified or not. When the USG tells anyone to do something, chances are they will comply, legal or not, just because it isn't worth the pain and suffering of fighting, especially for someone you don't even know. We have relearning what it is like to have your personal life ruled by people you have never met in places you have never been. The USG has stepped too far and the overreaction to public/private partnerships is coming.
cma 3y ago
Didn't he read an acronym wrong and it was a nongovernmental agency in one of the most prominent examples he used? And Biden wasn't in office for the laptop stuff but Trump was for the stuff they requested get removed?
- gottorf 3y ago
  > it was a nongovernmental agency Several "non-governmental" agencies (like the Election Integrity Partnership or the Stanford Internet Observatory[0]) were involved in making recommendations to censor. I say "non-governmental" in quotes because entities like SIO receive a lot of federal funding, and key players shuttle back and forth between private and government functions. > Biden wasn't in office for the laptop stuff but Trump was I'm not sure what "laptop stuff" you're referring to, but whether Biden, Trump, or whoever else was in office has no bearing on the illegality of the executive actions in question. [0]: https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-dark-hand-in-twitter-censorship/ https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-dark-hand-in-twitter-ce...
  - cma 3y ago
    Didn't EIP not apply for/receive federal grants in that timeframe (why put non-governmental in quotes wrt to them?
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  https://www.leefang.com/p/house-democrat-threatens-twitter https://www.leefang.com/p/house-democrat-threatens-twitter > Taibbi has admitted mistaking CIS for CISA in a single tweet in one of his many threads, but his testimony to Congress was entirely different. Hasan deceptively conflated this quickly corrected tweet with Taibbi’s testimony. > But the evidence shows that Taibbi’s congressional remarks were correct. CIS and CISA collaborated with EIP on moderation requests, with both organizations directly appealing to Twitter for censorship, making Taibbi’s overall point and particular argument completely accurate. He swapped them in one particular tweet, quickly corrected, but it was nowhere near "one of the most prominent examples".
  - deleted 3y ago
jjoonathan 3y ago
Not even close. Taibbi made it sound like Biden, who wasn't in office, pulled strings to have the government lean on Twitter to suppress important scandalous revelations from Hunter Biden's Laptop. The reality was that Trump was in office at the time and the Biden team, as private citizens, requested TOS enforcement on Hunter's naked pics and received it. Yes, some of the TOS enforcement hit conservative outlets merely on account of association with the material despite the fact that they made an effort to censor the private pics, but from the emails it was crystal clear that this was because twitter lacked a mechanism to grant special trust to these outlets and not an intentional effort to kill a story (and a sorry nothingburger of a story at that). Revenge porn doesn't typically have a legitimate public interest involved; their infrastructure to deal with this edge case was not well developed. Ro Khanna (D) was the only Dem in office to wander into the fray and he did it on the side of Free Speech. Interesting how that tends to get omitted from the story. Thanks, Republicans. You defeated the terrible censorship. Now I know what THEY didn't want me to: Hunter Biden has a huge cock.
- woooooo 3y ago
  Taibbi specifically had tons of meeting notes on "alignment" between twitter's content policy team and people from DOJ, FBI, etc. Yes, Trump was president at the time.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    Yes, there were meetings between twitter and the feds monitoring Prigozhin's bot farms. Taibbi implied -- over and over again, as you are now -- that these meetings saw the feds lean on Twitter to suppress the Hunter Biden Laptop story. They didn't. Not only did the feds not lean on Twitter to suppress Hunter's dick picks, but the coordination that I saw is actually coordination I want to see. Yeah, the spooks should talk with the social networks, so long as the social networks can check and balance the requests. If you disagree I would like you to explain to me what is so important about allowing Dimitri Prigozhin's bot farms to go unchallenged? Do you want another TEN_GOP incident, where a prominent republican account turns out to literally be run out of Dimitri Prigozhin's IRA just outside Moscow? I'd think you would want to avoid another embarrassment like that.

splitstud 3y ago

[dead]

lesuorac 3y ago

Uh, I guess one could phrase it that way but it's rather dishonest. It'd be akin to saying a police officer testifying that they saw X person shoot Y person as attempting to deplatform X person. -- Honestly the only thing questionable in the twitter files was the USG telling twiter which accounts were their cy-ops accounts so they wouldn't get banned. Twitter having a policy of you can't do Y on the platform and the USG asking Twitter if X person is violating Y is not illegal censorship.

prometheus76 3y ago
Is government censorship via a third party not a problem for you?
- costigan 3y ago
  Was it Twitter's policy or not? (Of course it was, as we see by how easily it was changed by the new owner.)
- ToDougie 3y ago
  It clearly isn't. Wait until the tables turn on them, though :)
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    You understand that USG in reference to the twitter files means Donald Trump as he happened to be in charge of the executive branch during that period?
obviouslynotme 3y ago
All governmental prosecution should be before a court with the protection of rights. Even in your contrived example, the defendant has the right to face his accuser, cross-examine, attorneys, judges, juries, and the many things we throw in the government's way of harming people, justified or not. When the USG tells anyone to do something, chances are they will comply, legal or not, just because it isn't worth the pain and suffering of fighting, especially for someone you don't even know. We have relearning what it is like to have your personal life ruled by people you have never met in places you have never been. The USG has stepped too far and the overreaction to public/private partnerships is coming.

cma 3y ago

Didn't he read an acronym wrong and it was a nongovernmental agency in one of the most prominent examples he used? And Biden wasn't in office for the laptop stuff but Trump was for the stuff they requested get removed?

gottorf 3y ago
> it was a nongovernmental agency Several "non-governmental" agencies (like the Election Integrity Partnership or the Stanford Internet Observatory[0]) were involved in making recommendations to censor. I say "non-governmental" in quotes because entities like SIO receive a lot of federal funding, and key players shuttle back and forth between private and government functions. > Biden wasn't in office for the laptop stuff but Trump was I'm not sure what "laptop stuff" you're referring to, but whether Biden, Trump, or whoever else was in office has no bearing on the illegality of the executive actions in question. [0]: https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-dark-hand-in-twitter-censorship/ https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-dark-hand-in-twitter-ce...
- cma 3y ago
  Didn't EIP not apply for/receive federal grants in that timeframe (why put non-governmental in quotes wrt to them?
Manuel_D 3y ago
https://www.leefang.com/p/house-democrat-threatens-twitter https://www.leefang.com/p/house-democrat-threatens-twitter > Taibbi has admitted mistaking CIS for CISA in a single tweet in one of his many threads, but his testimony to Congress was entirely different. Hasan deceptively conflated this quickly corrected tweet with Taibbi’s testimony. > But the evidence shows that Taibbi’s congressional remarks were correct. CIS and CISA collaborated with EIP on moderation requests, with both organizations directly appealing to Twitter for censorship, making Taibbi’s overall point and particular argument completely accurate. He swapped them in one particular tweet, quickly corrected, but it was nowhere near "one of the most prominent examples".
- deleted 3y ago

jjoonathan 3y ago

Not even close. Taibbi made it sound like Biden, who wasn't in office, pulled strings to have the government lean on Twitter to suppress important scandalous revelations from Hunter Biden's Laptop. The reality was that Trump was in office at the time and the Biden team, as private citizens, requested TOS enforcement on Hunter's naked pics and received it. Yes, some of the TOS enforcement hit conservative outlets merely on account of association with the material despite the fact that they made an effort to censor the private pics, but from the emails it was crystal clear that this was because twitter lacked a mechanism to grant special trust to these outlets and not an intentional effort to kill a story (and a sorry nothingburger of a story at that). Revenge porn doesn't typically have a legitimate public interest involved; their infrastructure to deal with this edge case was not well developed. Ro Khanna (D) was the only Dem in office to wander into the fray and he did it on the side of Free Speech. Interesting how that tends to get omitted from the story. Thanks, Republicans. You defeated the terrible censorship. Now I know what THEY didn't want me to: Hunter Biden has a huge cock.

woooooo 3y ago
Taibbi specifically had tons of meeting notes on "alignment" between twitter's content policy team and people from DOJ, FBI, etc. Yes, Trump was president at the time.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Yes, there were meetings between twitter and the feds monitoring Prigozhin's bot farms. Taibbi implied -- over and over again, as you are now -- that these meetings saw the feds lean on Twitter to suppress the Hunter Biden Laptop story. They didn't. Not only did the feds not lean on Twitter to suppress Hunter's dick picks, but the coordination that I saw is actually coordination I want to see. Yeah, the spooks should talk with the social networks, so long as the social networks can check and balance the requests. If you disagree I would like you to explain to me what is so important about allowing Dimitri Prigozhin's bot farms to go unchallenged? Do you want another TEN_GOP incident, where a prominent republican account turns out to literally be run out of Dimitri Prigozhin's IRA just outside Moscow? I'd think you would want to avoid another embarrassment like that.