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X (Twitter) blocks links to hacked JD Vance dossier
- Hizonner 2y agoWhat could possibly in there that would be more damaging than what you can get for free by waiting for Vance to open his mouth in public?
- malshe 2y agoSomeone on Bluesky said something to the effect that nine out of ten times the shooting around Trump is just JD Vance shooting himself in the foot
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y agoAnd the tenth time they miss.
- jonathanyc 2y agoOn the one hand, Musk has already retracted his claim[1] that he's a "free speech absolutist"[2], so I don't think it's fair to come after him for that: In last month’s interview with the BBC, Musk said, “the rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of a country … If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws.” At another point in the interview, Musk said: “If people of a given country are against a certain type of speech, they should talk to their elected representatives and pass a law to prevent it.” But blocking links to hacked documents regarding JD Vance seems a little suspect considering that, as the article mentions, he was opposed to blocking links to hacked documents about Hunter Biden: Twitter, before it was bought by Elon Musk, had a policy regarding hacked materials — but the page is no longer available. A pre-Musk version of the policy, dated 2019, stated that posting or linking to hacked content is prohibited. Under this policy, links to a story by The New York Post about Hunter Biden, the current president’s son, were banned. But in October 2020, Twitter changed its policy to say that it would no longer block hacked materials, after an outcry about how the company had handled the Post story. “Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix,” wrote then-CEO Jack Dorsey. Musk was one of the people who was unhappy with the decision to ban links to the Post’s story. “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk wrote of the decision on the story in April 2022. He even invited former Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi to examine internal documents showing how Twitter handled the decision. (In the course of tweeting his conclusions, Taibbi exposed the email addresses of Dorsey and Representative Ro Khanna.) [1]: https://www.cato.org/commentary/elon-musk-sues-critics-silence-so-much-free-speech# https://www.cato.org/commentary/elon-musk-sues-critics-silen... [2]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/29/tech/elon-musk-twitter-government-takedown/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/29/tech/elon-musk-twitter-govern...
- neaden 2y agoAt a certain point, if Musk consistently blocks things favoring one party and not another does X risk losing its Common Carrier status and start opening itself up to more liability?
- philipkglass 2y agoIf you're referring to US law, Twitter was never a telecommunications common carrier. So it can't lose that status through any sort of moderation decisions.
- krapp 2y agoTwitter (I still refuse to call it X) doesn't have "Common Carrier" status, no website or platform does. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects platforms from liability for user content even if they display bias towards that content.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 2y agoNo. This is not a thing.
- ursuscamp 2y ago>But blocking links to hacked documents regarding JD Vance seems a little suspect considering that, as the article mentions, he was opposed to blocking links to hacked documents about Hunter Biden Per X, the links were blocked because they included un-redacted personal information such as address and SSN.
- orochimaaru 2y agoIf that’s true I would say blocking is credible. I’d rather err on the side of caution on exposing potential privacy information. If there was no private info - obviously the block is b.s. But considering they’ve mentioned privacy details in the doc I’m prepared to give them the benefit of doubt for a few days or ask the initial poster to send a redacted version.
- klyrs 2y agoWow, good job Elon. I've downloaded the dossier and I'm telling my friends. Send Barbara Streisand my regards!
- grahamj 2y agoYep, I only found out about it because of this news
- rideontime 2y agoThe block is very amateurishly implemented, and can be circumvented by appending any query param to the URL, like so: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-the-jd-vance-dossier?foo=bar https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-the-jd-vance-dossier?... Update: I guess someone at Twitter reads Hacker News, because they finally forced me to delete the posts containing those links, a few hours later.
- ysofunny 2y agowow, I suppose this is the quality you get when you fire all the workforce "it's just code after all"
- talldayo 2y agoImagine being an original Twitter employee that's still stuck around. You could ask for a 7-figure salary, and your toughest job would be implementing a regex filter for the JD Vance leak.
- alsetmusic 2y agoI thought everyone was going to work hardcore to offset that. Oh well.
- klyrs 2y agoMusk would have identified the bug if only the programmer had printed their code.
- netsharc 2y agoI hope it's some developer implementing Elmo's order of "Block this exact url" with malicious compliance, knowing about the possible workarounds. (Could you replace e.g. an "a" with %61 and keep the URL working?)
- dlivingston 2y ago"Elmo"? Why the nickname?
- decremental 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- abraxas 2y agoElmo's "radical free speech" on full display.
- listenallyall 2y agoDocuments obtained via hacks don't qualify under "free speech" and should be blocked, just like you'd block a list of people's social security numbers obtained via hacking, or secretly-recorded nude/pornographic material (without the subject's knowledge or consent).
- chgs 2y agoYet more definitions of free speech that some agree with and some disagree with. That’s fine, block whatever you want. Just don’t whine that others have a different view on what “free speech” means.
- listenallyall 2y agoWell, numerous jurisdictions have passed laws against "revenge porn", so they seem to agree with my suggestion. I will agree that information gathered via hacking can be seen both ways (much of Wikileaks was gathered somewhat nefariously) but the idea of blocking should not automatically be considered a suppression of free speech.
- ToValueFunfetti 2y ago"Whining about other people having different views" accounts for pretty much all political speech, and I don't understand why you're saying it shouldn't happen on this topic.
- llamaimperative 2y agoIf you believe 1st Amendment protections extend to prevent censorship from private parties, as Elon et al claim to, then banning this material is unambiguously a violation of free speech. If you don’t believe that’s what free speech is, then that’s fine too (and you’re right), but then stop using that as a cultural cudgel.
- hiddencost 2y agohttps://youtu.be/1sbZLhuaZIY https://youtu.be/1sbZLhuaZIY Duck Sauce - Barbara Streisand (It's just a really catchy song. And I suspect this block will backfire.)
- worstspotgain 2y ago[flagged]
- threeseed 2y agoYou don't need to be a Musk supporter to be critical of OpenAI. In fact you would hope that wanting ethical behaviour would be universal.
- worstspotgain 2y agoSo you're saying that if A->B, then it's not necessarily the case that B->A? /s
- worstspotgain 2y agoThey showed up like clockwork and flagged the GGP post. I've posted ~15 Musk-critical comments in the last month and ~13 got flagged within an hour, usually within 15 minutes. Try getting that by criticizing OpenAI, or basically any non-Musk company.
- Freedom2 2y agoI don't doubt this will get flagged, but not for the reason you think. I think it's important that this meets the criteria of spurring 'curious' discussion, of which this might just devolve into flamebait and arguments without much intellectual curiosity to be found.
- draw_down 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- arctics 2y agoI scrolled over the dossier and there nothing significant there, most of it is bunch of things he said, his investments, property, donations, tickets, taxes and so on. Most of the information can be found online, this is just complied into one PDF file.
- tptacek 2y agoThis is why no major media outlet ran this story when the hackers offered the documents a month or two ago: there's literally nothing in it. It's a standard opposition research report. The Harris campaign has a document just like it on their own Google Drive. It isn't even directionally interesting; it records every line of attack the GOP could imagine Vance facing (they missed "childless cat ladies", though!), and so calls out places where Vance is in line with Trump as well as places he isn't. All the real stories about this piece are going to be from people like Klippenstein and Musk beclowning themselves over it.
- rideontime 2y agoIs Klippenstein self-beclowning? He readily admits in the piece that it's pretty much a nothingburger.
- nickthegreek 2y agoHe is using it as advertising. Saying he will publish what others won’t so subscribe to me.
- rideontime 2y agoIs that a bad thing?
- spamizbad 2y agoThe omission of the "Childless Cat Ladies" comment is arguably pretty newsworthy since it has a bunch of implications, most notably being its the attack line that likely drew blood so to speak (the other a potential campaign blind-spot for how to communicate with female voters, a demographic the Trump campaign has struggled with)
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoSo much free speech!
- sys32768 2y agoX (Twitter) policy on sharing private information: https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-information https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-informatio... Among others it prohibits sharing: >home address or physical location information, such as street addresses, GPS coordinates, or other identifying information related to locations that are considered private
- srid 2y agoAs it applies to JD Vance, > X suspended Ken Klippenstein after he shared the Iranian-hacked dossier on J.D. Vance, which doxed his home addresses, phone numbers, emails, and social security number. https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1839382777223164033 https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1839382777223164033 Official message from X Safety, > Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance’s physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number. https://x.com/Safety/status/1839392663864549688 https://x.com/Safety/status/1839392663864549688
- kenjackson 2y agoSo if those pieces of information are redacted then the document can be freely shared on X? This seems simple enough to test.
- coreyh14444 2y agoWhat about Hunter Biden's laptop? This was mentioned as a key reason Elon bought Twitter in the first place. And those documents contained way more sensitive data than the JD Vance one.
- whimsicalism 2y agowhat is your question actually? they also blocked the laptop stories
- whyohwhyoh 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rllearneratwork 2y agoMajority of Elon's net worth is tied to Tesla. Tesla has a massive presence in and therefore dependence on China. How can we accept Twitter as a free-speech platform? Just because he says so?
- two_handfuls 2y agoTwitter is obviously not a free speech platform, as demonstrated by basically anyone posting things critical of Musk or his allies.
- turingfeel 2y agoMuch of the dossier reads like it was written by ChatGPT. Similar style and structure of paragraphs. I think a Trump campaign staffer got a little lazy.
- smsm42 2y agoThe vibe I am getting here is that if somebody enables people who criticize government decisions and policies in a way that the government considers "dangerous", he's an evil idiot and doesn't understand what "free speech" is and something "needs to be done" about him. But if somebody publishes his political opponent's home address, phone number, SSN and other details who have absolutely no bearing to any political discussion, but may seriously jeopardize their personal safety in an environment where trying to shoot a presidential candidates is becoming a routine event - then in the name of free speech this must be allowed to be published, no restrictions. I think people that take such position care very little about free speech and a lot about hurting people who have different politics than they do. And they are part of what is wrong with the politics today.
- olliej 2y agoNo, the issue people are having is musk claims he has to allow nazis, transphobes, homophobes, racism, sexism, fake pornography of people, etc because otherwise it would be censorious and an attack on free speech. But things that attack or are damaging to him or his beliefs are frequently censored. The issue is not what he chooses to censor or not censor. The issue is that he claims that the reason he chooses not to censor horrific abuse and attacks on minorities is because he’s a free speech absolutist and all censorship is bad. He hides behind the claim of the sanctity of free speech as the justification for what he allows, publishes, and promotes, when he very clearly holds, and enforces, no such belief. Posts like this that claim that people are just disagreeing about politics, when the political viewpoint on one side is that the other side has no right to exist are entirely demonstrative of people who are so bigoted that they don’t see their own bigotry as that, because it could only be bigotry if the targets of their bullshit were people, which to them they aren’t.
- smsm42 2y ago> he has to allow <all the people you disagree with and despise> because otherwise it would be censorious and an attack on free speech Yes. Because all these people, however unpleasant their speech may be for you or me, have the same right to speak their mind on the questions of public importance as you and me. Yes, even racists. However, publishing somebody's private information that can easily lead to deadly attack on him or his family is in entirely different class of speech. It does not contribute to any public discussion or does anything positive, just endangers people and enables violence. It is not severe enough to make the law involved, but it is going far enough that restricting it on social media is summarily a positive thing. The owner of the social media platform has to draw the line, which speech is allowed on the platform and which is not. Some would draw it on "anything legal is allowed". Some would even do "anything is allowed" but those will find themselves in trouble with the law pretty quickly. Some would say "some legal speech - like porn - is not allowed", or "some legal speech - like revealing private information of public figures and their relatives - is not allowed", etc. These are valid choices (as it is valid to criticize them), and they are not inconsistent at all. You can support free speech without supplying your platform to organize attacks on public figures or hurting their families. You do not have to be "all or nothing" - and in fact, nobody has advocated "all or nothing" policy towards Twitter or Facebook or any of the social media platforms ever, before Musk. Now, because Musk is also not "all or nothing" - as is everybody else - how is he any special? His line is such that publishing private information about people that can hurt them is not ok, good for him I say. > when the political viewpoint on one side is that the other side has no right to exist Yes, I know, you only have to be bad because your opponents are so much worse. Always a good excuse. It is totally OK for good people to be bad to bad people, after all, we are good people and they are bad people, that makes it right when we do it to them, but wrong when they do it to us!
- wtfwhateven 2y agoSo posting publicly available information gets someone banned but people can post horrific videos of children being abused with no punishment? https://www.dailydot.com/debug/elon-musk-reinstates-child-abuse-account/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/elon-musk-reinstates-child-ab...
- adultSwim 2y agoThere is no evidence how the document, commissioned by the Trump team while vetting Vance, got out. I'm reminded of Facebook suppressing the New York Post's Hunter Biden story in 2020, minus any noteworthy revelations.