8 ms·

Apparently the dissemination of illegal content refers to the October 7th videos of the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel that galvanized American support f

by lhnz 3y ago

Apparently the dissemination of illegal content refers to the October 7th videos of the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel that galvanized American support for Israel [0]. I personally don't think it's in people's interest to have this kind of thing hidden from them and I really dislike the EU for attempting to censor this. Musk is really under a lot of financial pressure and it might be a losing battle to try to fight the EU over this in court. To be honest, I hope he is able to pull out from the EU without cratering the company, but he is now being pulled into lawfare with multiple actors across the globe so Twitter might have no choice but to accept is role as a conduit of censorship for state-level actors. [0] https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1736707341070860689

alkonaut 3y ago
One can think anything about the particular line-drawing about what is and what isn't something X should moderate. By operating in the EU they do agree to the DSA though. And no one is saying that the content in question is or isn't something that twitter has handled incorrectly. All that's happening is that there is an investigation into it. There really isn't much to talk about (yet).
- lhnz 3y ago
  Even though we don't know everything about what is happening in this particular instance, I do think there should be a global conversation on the ability for state-level actors to directly or indirectly pull strings in order to coerce Twitter into censoring information on their behalf. I think this should be of particular importance to the US which has fudamental rights protecting freedom of expression. I'm very worried about co-ordinated lawfare against Musk-operated companies being used as a tool to force his compliance with systems that exist to get around laws against the US government's direct involvement in censorship. I'm also worried about the EU's lurch towards Chinese-style censorship of social media. And, I think we should be able to talk about it now while we still can.
  - alkonaut 3y ago
    > I think we should be able to talk about it now while we still can. What does that even mean? Are you saying the debate about free speech itself is somehow silenced?
    - matchapples 3y ago
      He probably does mean that. An environment of censorship very quickly demands meta-censorship -- censoring discussion about the existence of censorship, otherwise you could circumvent the censorship of the particular topic by discussing the fact that it's being censored. We saw this clearly demonstrated during covid -- discussion about covid censorship was also censored.
      - alkonaut 3y ago
        > censoring discussion about the existence of censorship, otherwise you could circumvent the censorship of the particular topic by discussing the fact that it's being censored. Can you elaborate what that would consist of here?` > discussion about covid censorship was also censored. Any examples?
        raxxorraxor 3y ago
        Examples of censorship around Covid? Are you serious? Pick the topic. Either about the existence of Covid in countries like China, or about the questioning that a vaccinated person still being able to transmit the virus. This is very thoroughly documented.
        alkonaut 3y ago
        Those are on the topic itself. We were arguing whether the discussion of the existence of censorship was being silenced or not. Basically: did someone who said "I can't talk about X or I'll be silenced! there is censorship!" also get THAT opinion muted? While it was off the topic of the original argument: was there censorship of the opinion that Covid existed in China in any countries with supposedly free speech?
- g1a55er 3y ago
  I’m fairly concerned about how broadly some are interpreting “operating in the EU”. The furthest this has gone that I’m aware of is the Dutch, alongside other EU authorities, has issued a fine to an American website, alleging that they subject themselves to EU jurisdiction by merely hosting information about EU citizens. This seems to me to be too far. https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/dutch-dpa-imposes-fine-eu525000-locatefamilycom_en https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/dutch-dpa-imp...
asylteltine 3y ago
[flagged]
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Just because young people are critical of Israel, doesn't mean they've been "brainwashed" by Hamas. Believe it or not, people can have different points of view from you without being brainwashed.
  - slily 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - ilikehurdles 3y ago
    Twitter is chock full of accounts like Jackson Hinkle and Syrian Girl (two of the most prominent) who post lie after lie after lie in favor of Hamas. Just an endless stream of claims that have been proven wrong. TikTok and Instagram, without moderation like a community note feature, is far worse at this. Whenever talking to someone who is “critical of Israel” (who isn’t critical of that government? That’s not the point!) they use this line of defense despite leaving no room for criticism of their own extremely flawed and manipulative sources.
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      Twitter is also chock full of Zionists who lie. But there's little basis to say that either camp of liars is responsible for the lionshare of support either side has.
      - asylteltine 3y ago
        How can you say that with a straight face? There are something like 2 billion Muslims compared to a few million Jews in the entire world. You can very easily go on twitter yourself and see how much louder the blatantly anti-Israel voices are compared to your antisemitic claims of “zionists” Can’t roll my eyes hard enough
SiempreViernes 3y ago
Where did you find a reference by the EC to that particular video?
mytailorisrich 3y ago
Officially it is to prevent propaganda in favour of 'terrorism', but I suspect it is also to hide what can likely boost support for the (far-)right. For instance, I've found this in France in 2021 (though it looks like it relates to tweets from 2015) and the law might be even stricter now: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210210-french-far-right-leader-marine-le-pen-in-court-over-is-group-tweets https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210210-french-far-right...
dmix 3y ago
The previous iteration of Twitter under @jack already learned this lesson. Once you say yes to stuff beyond warrants/criminally illegal stuff it's just an ever increasing set of demands until it's borderline automatic between gov requests->deletions. With low level agencies sending lists of a 1000 tweets to be flagged or accounts with tenuous connections to current bad thing (ie Russia) to be banned etc.
- throwawayghg 3y ago
  Then what's the point of sovereign governments if they can't even control misinformation? If everyone should have free speach, why blocking nut jobs like Trump and info wars guy? As someone from non usa, all I see is hypocrisy coming America. They are fine with misinformation in other countries but not in theirs
  - blitz_skull 3y ago
    You think governments have the ability to combat misinformation without living in some Orwellian-esque regime? "Misinformation" is probably one of the most abused phrases of our age. If we could even start by labeling misinformation properly, then maybe we could do something about it. The point of a sovereign government is to serve the people—that's it. Keep them safe, keep things "fair" (to whatever degree that's possible), and to fight for the prolonged existence of said people. "Misinformation" hardly fits into that in its current state.
    - dmix 3y ago
      > "Misinformation" is probably one of the most abused phrases of our age. Politifact is a good case study. Academics have repeatedly published data since 2011 [1] and most recently 2023 [2] showing an overt bias yet it's still used as a reputable source to fact check things in many places on the internet. [1] https://smartpolitics.lib.umn.edu/2011/02/10/selection-bias-politifact-rate/ https://smartpolitics.lib.umn.edu/2011/02/10/selection-bias-... [2] https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/8f9a6f3b-efd7-46f3-b4be-49fe0fb8e0c3 https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/8f9a6f3b-efd7-46f3-b4be...
AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
[dead]
Vinnl 3y ago
"Apparently" means some guy on Twitter says he seems to remember that those videos were the reason? Would be great to see a real source for the footage of the attacks themselves being the problem.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  Well, if Thierry Bretton (French business executive, politician, writer and the current Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union) will link to the document that describes the reason for the formal infringement proceedings rather than post a meaningless screenshot of the front page that includes redactions, we can all have a more meaningful debate. https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1736701607553692020 https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1736701607553692020
  - SiempreViernes 3y ago
    > that includes redactions Are you really complaining that Bretton didn't dox some Twitter contact person?
  - Vinnl 3y ago
    Right, just seems a bit premature to be drawing conclusions about how wide-ranging censorship is going on? (I agree that getting that full document would be great.)
- lhnz 3y ago
  The press release itself says that the formal proceeding concern "the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas' terrorist attacks against Israel" and the person you refer to as "some guy" is a adjunct professor of law at a few institutions, as well as a legal fellow of the Adam Smith Institute where his research interests have focused on free speech and related technology regulation.
  - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
    Some guy's credentials have nothing to do with the lack of evidence provided.
grecy 3y ago
> Musk is really under a lot of financial pressure I find it amusing this has become common "knowledge" now, and everyone thinks it will shape his actions. With Tesla and SpaceX printing money, why does everyone assume he cares about a few billion here or there? it's like you or I losing a few hundred.
- ikt 3y ago
  > With Tesla and SpaceX printing money Are they printing money?
  - grecy 3y ago
    Sure are. SpaceX valuation just went up from $150B to $180B, now likely the world's most valuable private company. Musk owns 42% of it, so just in the last few months his slice went up $12.8B. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/spacex-value-climbs-to-180-billion-higher-than-boeing-verizon.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/spacex-value-climbs-to-180-b... Tesla Model Y is now the world's most popular vehicle. Number 2 in the US, soon to be number 1.
f38zf5vdt 3y ago
I think it's more that Birdwatch/Community Notes, which gets a lot of feature-love from Valley types, is already being weaponized to the point of failure. In the absence of any other moderation, this is leading Twitter into a dark descent of increasingly moderationless content. > How Twitter's Community Notes Accelerates Denialism About Hamas Atrocities Against Israelis > The Community Notes feature was supposed to shut down conspiracy theories on X, formerly Twitter. Instead Elon Musk's preference for crowdsourced moderation is allowing malicious users to weaponize hatred, lies and disinformation about the October 7 Hamas attack https://archive.is/j1Diy https://archive.is/j1Diy Community Notes is just a subset of rank-based comment systems (e.g. Reddit and HN), and these are known to fail over time due to the commodification of votes. Even now you can go on certain forums and purchase a Community Note for a post for some hundreds of USD. It's not a substitute for moderation and everyone knows that if Hackernews defaulted to it instead of relying on dang that HN would fall apart.
GordonS 3y ago
I actually think it's more likely that this is to prevent people from posting videos of ongoing Israeli war crimes and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and also to prevent people from posting anything in support of Palestine or Hamas. It's become apparent that the Israeli political/war/propaganda machine has an incredible amount of influence - far beyond anything I'd personally imagined could be possible. They've been able to effectively commandeer most of the West's "traditional" mass media, but social media is a huge problem for their narrative, as it allows people to see what is really happening, often in real-time. I clearly see now the benefit to humanity or a system like Twitter, but it really worries me that Twitter/X is in the hands of a single billionaire, especially one with some very controversial views. I'm not sure what the solution is, but we (humanity) really need something free from the influence of government (foreign or domestic) and other bad actors.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  Even a casual glance of the major Western media sites in the U.S. would confirm that Israeli doesn't appear to wield any influence over the Western media. Right now, the top story on the Israel-Gaza conflict on NBC, WaPo, NYT, and LAT is the IDF accidentally killing 3 hostages. Stories from the last week include multiple reports about potential Geneva Code violations. And in the weeks before the ceasefire, there was a constant drumbeat of opinion pieces calling for a ceasefire. Yeah, such influence they have... /s
  - GordonS 3y ago
    You've cherry-picked the single incident that Israel has been forthcoming about. Everything I see has a very heavy and obvious bias in favour of Israel, even for the few stories they do choose to cover, e.g. "42 perished in airstrike" vs "3 IDF soldiers murdered by militant extremists". We also still see Western media repeating the falsehoods about beheaded babies, baked babies, mass rapes etc - even though Israel eventually admitted it wasn't true. And that's aside from the absolute nonsense we've seen where anyone against the ethic cleansing is branded an anti-semite and risks cancrllation. Israeli politicians are publicly calling for the total destruction of Gaza and relocation of anyone left, and for settling Gaza with Israelis - they're not even trying to hide it anymore, yet Western media is largely silent.
intended 3y ago
This is Musk creating his own mess. He is under pressure because he cosplayed as internet libertarian instead of CEO. It’s a private company, so he can do what he likes - gutting your own trust and safety team is not a consequence free move.
ElectronCharge 3y ago
>Musk is really under a lot of financial pressure Actually, not really. His Tesla and SpaceX assets completely overshadow X. Its value could shrink to zero, and he’d still be one of the wealthiest folks on the planet. I’m personally grateful that he’s standing on principle regarding free speech! So much that we get from “official” channels turns out to be fiction, or propaganda.

by lhnz 3y ago

alkonaut 3y ago

One can think anything about the particular line-drawing about what is and what isn't something X should moderate. By operating in the EU they do agree to the DSA though. And no one is saying that the content in question is or isn't something that twitter has handled incorrectly. All that's happening is that there is an investigation into it. There really isn't much to talk about (yet).

lhnz 3y ago
Even though we don't know everything about what is happening in this particular instance, I do think there should be a global conversation on the ability for state-level actors to directly or indirectly pull strings in order to coerce Twitter into censoring information on their behalf. I think this should be of particular importance to the US which has fudamental rights protecting freedom of expression. I'm very worried about co-ordinated lawfare against Musk-operated companies being used as a tool to force his compliance with systems that exist to get around laws against the US government's direct involvement in censorship. I'm also worried about the EU's lurch towards Chinese-style censorship of social media. And, I think we should be able to talk about it now while we still can.
- alkonaut 3y ago
  > I think we should be able to talk about it now while we still can. What does that even mean? Are you saying the debate about free speech itself is somehow silenced?
  - matchapples 3y ago
    He probably does mean that. An environment of censorship very quickly demands meta-censorship -- censoring discussion about the existence of censorship, otherwise you could circumvent the censorship of the particular topic by discussing the fact that it's being censored. We saw this clearly demonstrated during covid -- discussion about covid censorship was also censored.
    - alkonaut 3y ago
      > censoring discussion about the existence of censorship, otherwise you could circumvent the censorship of the particular topic by discussing the fact that it's being censored. Can you elaborate what that would consist of here?` > discussion about covid censorship was also censored. Any examples?
      - raxxorraxor 3y ago
        Examples of censorship around Covid? Are you serious? Pick the topic. Either about the existence of Covid in countries like China, or about the questioning that a vaccinated person still being able to transmit the virus. This is very thoroughly documented.
        alkonaut 3y ago
        Those are on the topic itself. We were arguing whether the discussion of the existence of censorship was being silenced or not. Basically: did someone who said "I can't talk about X or I'll be silenced! there is censorship!" also get THAT opinion muted? While it was off the topic of the original argument: was there censorship of the opinion that Covid existed in China in any countries with supposedly free speech?
g1a55er 3y ago
I’m fairly concerned about how broadly some are interpreting “operating in the EU”. The furthest this has gone that I’m aware of is the Dutch, alongside other EU authorities, has issued a fine to an American website, alleging that they subject themselves to EU jurisdiction by merely hosting information about EU citizens. This seems to me to be too far. https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/dutch-dpa-imposes-fine-eu525000-locatefamilycom_en https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/dutch-dpa-imp...

asylteltine 3y ago

[flagged]

lupusreal 3y ago
Just because young people are critical of Israel, doesn't mean they've been "brainwashed" by Hamas. Believe it or not, people can have different points of view from you without being brainwashed.
- slily 3y ago
  [flagged]
- ilikehurdles 3y ago
  Twitter is chock full of accounts like Jackson Hinkle and Syrian Girl (two of the most prominent) who post lie after lie after lie in favor of Hamas. Just an endless stream of claims that have been proven wrong. TikTok and Instagram, without moderation like a community note feature, is far worse at this. Whenever talking to someone who is “critical of Israel” (who isn’t critical of that government? That’s not the point!) they use this line of defense despite leaving no room for criticism of their own extremely flawed and manipulative sources.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Twitter is also chock full of Zionists who lie. But there's little basis to say that either camp of liars is responsible for the lionshare of support either side has.
    - asylteltine 3y ago
      How can you say that with a straight face? There are something like 2 billion Muslims compared to a few million Jews in the entire world. You can very easily go on twitter yourself and see how much louder the blatantly anti-Israel voices are compared to your antisemitic claims of “zionists” Can’t roll my eyes hard enough

SiempreViernes 3y ago

Where did you find a reference by the EC to that particular video?

mytailorisrich 3y ago

Officially it is to prevent propaganda in favour of 'terrorism', but I suspect it is also to hide what can likely boost support for the (far-)right. For instance, I've found this in France in 2021 (though it looks like it relates to tweets from 2015) and the law might be even stricter now: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210210-french-far-right-leader-marine-le-pen-in-court-over-is-group-tweets https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210210-french-far-right...

dmix 3y ago

The previous iteration of Twitter under @jack already learned this lesson. Once you say yes to stuff beyond warrants/criminally illegal stuff it's just an ever increasing set of demands until it's borderline automatic between gov requests->deletions. With low level agencies sending lists of a 1000 tweets to be flagged or accounts with tenuous connections to current bad thing (ie Russia) to be banned etc.

throwawayghg 3y ago
Then what's the point of sovereign governments if they can't even control misinformation? If everyone should have free speach, why blocking nut jobs like Trump and info wars guy? As someone from non usa, all I see is hypocrisy coming America. They are fine with misinformation in other countries but not in theirs
- blitz_skull 3y ago
  You think governments have the ability to combat misinformation without living in some Orwellian-esque regime? "Misinformation" is probably one of the most abused phrases of our age. If we could even start by labeling misinformation properly, then maybe we could do something about it. The point of a sovereign government is to serve the people—that's it. Keep them safe, keep things "fair" (to whatever degree that's possible), and to fight for the prolonged existence of said people. "Misinformation" hardly fits into that in its current state.
  - dmix 3y ago
    > "Misinformation" is probably one of the most abused phrases of our age. Politifact is a good case study. Academics have repeatedly published data since 2011 [1] and most recently 2023 [2] showing an overt bias yet it's still used as a reputable source to fact check things in many places on the internet. [1] https://smartpolitics.lib.umn.edu/2011/02/10/selection-bias-politifact-rate/ https://smartpolitics.lib.umn.edu/2011/02/10/selection-bias-... [2] https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/8f9a6f3b-efd7-46f3-b4be-49fe0fb8e0c3 https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/8f9a6f3b-efd7-46f3-b4be...

AlgorithmicTime 3y ago

[dead]

Vinnl 3y ago

"Apparently" means some guy on Twitter says he seems to remember that those videos were the reason? Would be great to see a real source for the footage of the attacks themselves being the problem.

andsoitis 3y ago
Well, if Thierry Bretton (French business executive, politician, writer and the current Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union) will link to the document that describes the reason for the formal infringement proceedings rather than post a meaningless screenshot of the front page that includes redactions, we can all have a more meaningful debate. https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1736701607553692020 https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1736701607553692020
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  > that includes redactions Are you really complaining that Bretton didn't dox some Twitter contact person?
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Right, just seems a bit premature to be drawing conclusions about how wide-ranging censorship is going on? (I agree that getting that full document would be great.)
lhnz 3y ago
The press release itself says that the formal proceeding concern "the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas' terrorist attacks against Israel" and the person you refer to as "some guy" is a adjunct professor of law at a few institutions, as well as a legal fellow of the Adam Smith Institute where his research interests have focused on free speech and related technology regulation.
- downWidOutaFite 3y ago
  Some guy's credentials have nothing to do with the lack of evidence provided.

grecy 3y ago

> Musk is really under a lot of financial pressure I find it amusing this has become common "knowledge" now, and everyone thinks it will shape his actions. With Tesla and SpaceX printing money, why does everyone assume he cares about a few billion here or there? it's like you or I losing a few hundred.

ikt 3y ago
> With Tesla and SpaceX printing money Are they printing money?
- grecy 3y ago
  Sure are. SpaceX valuation just went up from $150B to $180B, now likely the world's most valuable private company. Musk owns 42% of it, so just in the last few months his slice went up $12.8B. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/spacex-value-climbs-to-180-billion-higher-than-boeing-verizon.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/spacex-value-climbs-to-180-b... Tesla Model Y is now the world's most popular vehicle. Number 2 in the US, soon to be number 1.

f38zf5vdt 3y ago

I think it's more that Birdwatch/Community Notes, which gets a lot of feature-love from Valley types, is already being weaponized to the point of failure. In the absence of any other moderation, this is leading Twitter into a dark descent of increasingly moderationless content. > How Twitter's Community Notes Accelerates Denialism About Hamas Atrocities Against Israelis > The Community Notes feature was supposed to shut down conspiracy theories on X, formerly Twitter. Instead Elon Musk's preference for crowdsourced moderation is allowing malicious users to weaponize hatred, lies and disinformation about the October 7 Hamas attack https://archive.is/j1Diy https://archive.is/j1Diy Community Notes is just a subset of rank-based comment systems (e.g. Reddit and HN), and these are known to fail over time due to the commodification of votes. Even now you can go on certain forums and purchase a Community Note for a post for some hundreds of USD. It's not a substitute for moderation and everyone knows that if Hackernews defaulted to it instead of relying on dang that HN would fall apart.

GordonS 3y ago

I actually think it's more likely that this is to prevent people from posting videos of ongoing Israeli war crimes and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and also to prevent people from posting anything in support of Palestine or Hamas. It's become apparent that the Israeli political/war/propaganda machine has an incredible amount of influence - far beyond anything I'd personally imagined could be possible. They've been able to effectively commandeer most of the West's "traditional" mass media, but social media is a huge problem for their narrative, as it allows people to see what is really happening, often in real-time. I clearly see now the benefit to humanity or a system like Twitter, but it really worries me that Twitter/X is in the hands of a single billionaire, especially one with some very controversial views. I'm not sure what the solution is, but we (humanity) really need something free from the influence of government (foreign or domestic) and other bad actors.

gamblor956 3y ago
Even a casual glance of the major Western media sites in the U.S. would confirm that Israeli doesn't appear to wield any influence over the Western media. Right now, the top story on the Israel-Gaza conflict on NBC, WaPo, NYT, and LAT is the IDF accidentally killing 3 hostages. Stories from the last week include multiple reports about potential Geneva Code violations. And in the weeks before the ceasefire, there was a constant drumbeat of opinion pieces calling for a ceasefire. Yeah, such influence they have... /s
- GordonS 3y ago
  You've cherry-picked the single incident that Israel has been forthcoming about. Everything I see has a very heavy and obvious bias in favour of Israel, even for the few stories they do choose to cover, e.g. "42 perished in airstrike" vs "3 IDF soldiers murdered by militant extremists". We also still see Western media repeating the falsehoods about beheaded babies, baked babies, mass rapes etc - even though Israel eventually admitted it wasn't true. And that's aside from the absolute nonsense we've seen where anyone against the ethic cleansing is branded an anti-semite and risks cancrllation. Israeli politicians are publicly calling for the total destruction of Gaza and relocation of anyone left, and for settling Gaza with Israelis - they're not even trying to hide it anymore, yet Western media is largely silent.

intended 3y ago

This is Musk creating his own mess. He is under pressure because he cosplayed as internet libertarian instead of CEO. It’s a private company, so he can do what he likes - gutting your own trust and safety team is not a consequence free move.

ElectronCharge 3y ago

>Musk is really under a lot of financial pressure Actually, not really. His Tesla and SpaceX assets completely overshadow X. Its value could shrink to zero, and he’d still be one of the wealthiest folks on the planet. I’m personally grateful that he’s standing on principle regarding free speech! So much that we get from “official” channels turns out to be fiction, or propaganda.