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Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

nationalreview.com

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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email headers would trivially prove if that was actually an email sent via gmail. The rest of the email account would do a lot to back up the claim it was actually his laptop.

Ok, but I've never seen the media ever publicly discuss document verification in a story. Stories about Trump's tax returns don't include any sort of explanation about verification. They wouldn't even publish the documents in order to keep the source secret. So I don't think its reasonable to assume the lack of easy confirmation means it is necessarily fake.

Perhaps you just haven't read the newspaper much. "So-and-so McOfficial confirmed the authenticity of the documents" is standard copy. This is a result for just googling "confirmed the authenticity of the emails":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/09/12/trump-contr...

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#322
post #280
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you do. You pay with your attention and with your ability to understand the world around you. Twitter is an extremely powerful bit of technology that can basically make you believe anything. As a trade for entertainment/dopamine: you are allowing it to.

> Twitter is an extremely powerful bit of technology that can basically make you believe anything. I don't believe this.

Then why does it matter if they censor things or not?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#323
post #54

There's a recurring argument on social media censorship that goes: "you wouldn't want the telephone company censoring phone conversations would you?" And the response is along the lines: "these are hardly private conversations, any tweet can go viral and be seen by millions". This story breaks that mold in that it involves social media censoring private conversations via DM. If you think that's OK for Twitter on its…

exactly - most miss the point that biggest news here is Twitter censoring direct messages.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#324

I have a feeling that Facebook wants Trump to be elected. I think Mark Zuckerberg may have discovered how to play "Good cop, bad cop" this year. First, he played good cop trying to protect free speech while his employees played bad cop trying to censor. That was just a test to see how people reacted. To see if people perceived Mark Zuckerberg better after this. Now Facebook is playing bad cop so that Trump can be the…

Good to see the downvotes coming in as predicted. I must have got this right. The tech elites are all banding together as always.

Now votes started going back up after I posted this second comment. Again, as predicted.

I should have worked for Facebook. Trump would already be Supreme World Dictator by now and the Federal Reserve Bank would have been merged into Facebook.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said it at a rally on February 28th. Source: Video on c-span https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4865556/user-clip-trump-this-...

I remember this, he clearly refers to how he acted quickly to stop the flow of people from overseas and how few cases of COVID there were at that time. The "Hoax" was how Democrats were claiming Trump was xenophobic and/or accusing him of overreacting, if you remember Nancy Pelosi out walking around in Chinatown without a mask etc around this time. But how quickly the winds can shift. This and the Charlottesville "fi…

He literally didn't stop any flow. He's still talking about how he closed the border to China. False, he closed the border to Chinese nationals. Anyone else coming from China was fine. Trump lies constantly. Incessantly. It's legitimately ruined public discourse which is why people keep pushing social media to label/censor misinformation. Trump literally said "fine people" too, referring to literal white supremacists. I don't give a fuck if he walked it back or said something else first. Trump starting with a prepared statement before telling us how he really feels has happened over and over. Remember when Trump totally didn't leak classified info to Russia. Until he admitted himself that he had.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#326
post #104
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between the telephone company and Twitter is that the phone company was (historically) a monopoly - the only game in town . Use their wires or get lost. It required common carrier neutrality by regulation. Twitter (and every single commercial social media space) is not the above, and can do what it wants on its service. It's not a public utility.

It's not just Twitter, it's also Facebook. (I believe Facebook was actually the first to take action.) What if Google does it too? In the past few years, we've seen these big tech companies operate in a manner that seems collusive. They follow each other's cues. One company is the first to censor, and then the other companies follow very quickly with the exact same censorship. (The quick collective action tends to di…

> In the past few years, we've seen these big tech companies operate in a manner that seems collusive. They follow each other's cues. One company is the first to censor, and then the other companies follow very quickly with the exact same censorship.

Or they are using similar criteria to decide what is allowed, and so independently arrive at the same decision when the same thing is posted to them all.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#327
post #90

To be fair, the fact that it was published by the New York Post already seriously undercuts the article's credibility. Edit: and also the fact that it was written in collaboration with the President's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Yet I don't recall anyone questioning Buzzfeed News when they dropped their bombshell story years back. I remember the defenders saying something along the lines of "If the news is newsworthy and constitutes journalism, then the publication it was produced in shouldn't matter"

As HN audience mostly claim to be full of "independent thinkers" we should have no problem with this being published by the Post if it indeed is legitimate, correct?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#328

Let's be honest, the only people screaming for censorship are firmly on the left. Controlling "disinformation" is a dog whistle for censorship, hoping that average citizens don't realize what they're really after. We all know who is going to be the moderators in flagging "disinformation" and we all know which ideology they overwhelmingly favor. I'd sooner trust a pyromaniac as fire chief of my local county than I wou…

disinformation is a dog whistle for censorship, but fake news is...? Censorship for thee but not for me.

IIRC, fake news was originally used by the left, but co-opted by Trump.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post has a very odd tone, as if a private company enforcing their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence of a private citizen is some unquestionable moral wrongdoing that's apparently going to blow up. Surprised to see this as at the top, on HN. National Review is a conservative wing-nut website trying to turn this non-story into fuel for their censorship culture war.

Not only that, but IMO context matters here. We are 20 days away from the election. People are standing in lines to vote as we speak. If this was published at any other time (and the material for the story has apparently existed since December) the public and the professional media would have had time to scrutinize it, discuss its shortcomings, etc. But, as Winston Churchill said "A lie gets halfway around the world…

Funny how the same logic doesn't apply to the steele dossier :/

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#330

The interview with the repair shop owner is also reduces this story’s already dwindling credibility: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...

IMO it's relevant that twitter is blocking the story due to their rules about releasing hacked material, not misinformation. If the hard drive is a hoax, I think it's important to have an open discussion to shine a light on it. Banning the article in a way that appears to validate its claims will only embolden claims of a conspiracy. I think it's also interesting that the "hacking" ban doesn't have an exemption for t…

> If the hard drive is a hoax, I think it's important to have an open discussion to shine a light on it.

The damage is still done then. NYPost knows the article is fake news, and so does Giuliani and the other folks surrounding the article.

But put it there, and by the time your "open discussion" is done, the elections will be over.

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