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Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#411
Absolutely agree, but I don't think this is the tipping point yet. An important line was crossed, but it will probably take a bit more before there is enough political capital to do something.

On the other hand, if the party benefiting from this move gets into power, that might be enough to stop any change from happening.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#412

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…

The only reason measures to curb disinformation would have a partisan impact is because conservative parties (throughout the industrialized world, not just in the US) use disinformation strategies far, far more than do other parties. Center-left/left parties use reality to galvanize their base voters into action. Their voters are people who aren't pleased with what's happening in their countries and want to change it…

Here's the problem. A fact can be stated in a variety of different ways with different implications. A fact is also a fairly confined data point, and excludes any extrapolation, modeling, hypothesis, root cause analysis or policy prescription. Pretty much nothing worthy of discussion is a fact.

Debating facts is pointless. People debate opinions, interpretations, implications. You cannot declare an implication from a fact as itself a fact. Nor can you claim people disagreeing with an implication are lying about facts.

As an aside - right wing platforms as you put it generally include a variety of popular proposals with the lower and middle class. These include immigration protectionism, lowering consumption taxes like gas taxes, taking a conservative stance on societally expensive government policies, and lowering unemployment rate through encouraging business growth. You may not agree with these policies, but to claim they are disinformation and thus not worthy of consideration is blatant biased censorship.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#413
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was actually a fairly bipartisan term used to identify trivially disprovable stories.

The right wing tended to be more political ("Obama is a muslim communist who wants your guns") while left wing fake news tended to lean more towards new age, non-evidence-based "wellness" ("this juice cleanse will prevent cancer").

Trump, in what was quite frankly the smartest political move he's ever made, turned it on it's head and basically started using it to discredit actual stories that painted him in a bad light (inauguration numbers, etc).

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#414
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear your objection. Here is a fair and balanced coverage of the document's provenance by a 3rd party, uninvolved, newspaper: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8841255/Man-Hunter-...

This is a joke, right? The Daily Mail?

My pick - Daily Mail: a newspaper headquartered in London, UK - a 3rd party country, independent from the ongoing US election. Over 120 years long history of investigative journalism.

Your pick - The Daily Beast: a 12 years old opinion website in USA, directly interested in the ongoing US election.

Compare and contrast the opening - your choice focused on "character assassination" via conspiracy theory; my source focused on giving a broad background & overview as facts. The difference in quality of reporting is palpable.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, told The Post about the existence of the hard drive in late September and Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of it on Sunday. I want to see the raw emails.

So your theory is that the emails are fake...what about the video of Hunter smoking crack?

It is well know that Hunter had a drug problem. It came up in the last debate.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#416
post #362
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a matter of freedom. The standard argument is that freedom of speech only applies to governments, but that's based on an outdated assumption. In human history, we've never before had individual companies like Facebook and Twitter that are so enormous and have so much control over our public speech. (2.7 billion and 330 million monthly active users, respectively.) They have become "the town square of the world",…

>The standard argument is that freedom of speech only applies to governments, but that's based on an outdated assumption.

>There's nothing special about governments with regard to freedom of speech except that it has always been assumed governments are the only entities with enough individual power to significantly restrict free speech.

The difference is that Twitter can't put you in prison and it can't seize your property. The government can. It's an extraordinary power wielded exclusively by the government.

Consider this: If you think Twitter should be restrained from censoring their platform because the extent of their power is on par with the government, who will enforce any violations of that restraint?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#417
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre story. Unidentified person drops off a damaged computer at a repair shop and never comes back. Hard drive contains lots of salacious info about Hunter Biden. Repair shop decides the correct course of action is to give it to Rudy Giuliani. That is fishy as hell.

> Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, told The Post about the existence of the hard drive in late September and Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of it on Sunday. I want to see the raw emails.

I almost forgot that Bannon was already arrested.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#418
post #369
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care about Twitter or Facebook to be honest. It's not the only game in town. I'd be more concerned if I bought server hosting from AWS, stood up a WordPress blog about my thoughts on capitalism, socialism, sports, and dogs, and Amazon decides to suspend my account due to my writings.

Another reply more or less had the same response I had, which is that it's entirely possible for you to start blogging about certain topics (some could be approached from a capitalism/socialism discussion starting point, even) and be shut down by AWS. I'd like to add a bit more though. Deplatforming is commonplace, by all parties with a platform, and its causes aren't just written comments but also artwork and legal…

I will add one more thing, although not directly related to your comment about deplatforming being commonplace. In banking, we call it derisking ( closing customer's account due to ).

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter, the claim " Let's be honest, the only people screaming for censorship are firmly on the left. " is demonstrably false.

A strange thing to say in a thread commenting on a news item where the left are censoring the right. Again.

Today, I flipped a coin and it landed heads, the same as yesterday. Very strange of you to say it would ever land tails.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#420
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I question if the National Review is really the best home for this story.

I also felt more comfortable with yahoo.com than with a politicized site like NR. The intention here is simply to be accurate and neutral to the extent possible. But it's the same article, so it doesn't make sense to pretend that it comes from a different source, besides which the HN guidelines say " Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter. " ( https:…

The headlines on this story are all over the place - I think the one that does the least to inject their own voice is NPR:

>[Facebook And Twitter Limit Sharing New York Post Story About Joe Biden](https://www.npr.org/2020/10/14/923766097/facebook-and-twitte...)

In comparison, there's Bloomberg:

>[Facebook Slows Spread of N.Y. Post Biden Story to Fact-Check](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-14/facebook-...)

Or CNBC:

>[Facebook, Twitter make editorial decisions to limit distribution of story claiming to show ‘smoking gun’ emails related to Biden and his son](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/14/facebook-makes-editorial-dec...)

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