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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

#841

Post by whoevercares »

labster wrote: post #702
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The safest bet is it changes nobody's opinion. If you're left leaning, you've drowned out Trump's repeatedly false statements --or become numb to them-- no October surprise will have an effect on you. If you're right leaning, this furthers your perspective that Clinton and Deep State are up to no good. Nobody comes across content like this without an existing world view to inspect it, and the lines have been drawn a…

Right, but this is what makes the situation so dangerous in the U.S. If no one’s mind is changed over events like these, then we’re at a point where there are essentially two citizenries which both see the other side as toxic. We’re slouching towards civil war. Most people don’t want war, but do see the other side as harmful, so we have to try hard to avoid it. Maybe we’re all looking at it wrong, maybe a civil war i…

Is Civil war possible at all in US’s military system today?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#842

Post by ravenstine »

esoterica wrote: post #555
hirundo wrote: 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…

You realize that Google already "censors" spam emails by redirecting them to a different inbox right? No one seems to complain about that.

That's because it's not obvious if there's any political bias behind the Gmail spam detection algorithm.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#843

Post by ausbah »

blisseyGo wrote: post #670
untog wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big Tech also has plenty of close ties to Republicans: remember when Facebook’s Joel Kaplan appeared at Kavanaugh’s Senate hearing? https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-facebook-exec-backs-kavana... And find one of @pinboard’s regular threads on the political donations big tech companies make and you’ll find a lot of Republicans: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1152245502361997314 The reality is that once you’re as…

EDIT: dang, I understand my political views don't align with vast majority of HN but me replying to correct false info keeps giving me this error on HN: "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." I think HN keeps turning into an echo chamber and any opposing view point on a specific political topic gets censored/throttled here too. How can you expect me to have a proper discussion when I am not even allowed…

when you mean "Big Tech" do you mean employees, the companies themselves, and / or the executives that lead those companies. Looking around, I only see some statements says only 96% employees of tech firms and media orgs back Democrats.

Looking at companies themselves it seems like they readily back Republicans as much as Democrats. I didn't do any super deep digging, but this is what I am basing my statements on.

https://www.mic.com/p/tech-companies-have-given-millions-of-...

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17219930/facebook-campaig...

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#844

Post by pjc50 »

nullc wrote: post #802
pjc50 wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way Facebook has to not "use its power to shape public discourse" is to turn itself off. Having the platform up shapes the discourse. Algorithmic timelines shape the discourse. Adverts, whether political or not, shape the discourse. Neutrality is only an option if you limit yourself to making cuckoo clocks.

> Neutrality is only an option if you limit yourself to making cuckoo clocks. Heretic! True clocks look like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Hexadeci...

That was a specific reference to a famous speech of Orson Welles in The Third Man:

> You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#845

Post by UncleMeat »

dahfizz wrote: post #833
untog wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just as easily counter and ask why anyone would expect a Republican victory when Democrats did so well in the 2018 midterms. Previous result are only predictive to a point.

The party that is "behind" always does well in the mid terms, this is a very well documentes phenomenon. In fact, I think the Dems did much worse in 2018 than expected

That’s not true. The 538 model was very close to the actual outcome in 2018.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#846

Post by UncleMeat »

remarkEon wrote: post #654
sdenton4 wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Senate map for a given year can tilt towards one party or another; 2018 was a structurally bad year for the Senate Dems. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-horrible-2018...

Right, this is a good data point in favor of the argument that it's unwise to extrapolate too much from midterm races for the general.

No. It is a good datapoint that one should consider the seats in play when making claims about the senate. The map this time is much less unfavorable for the Democrats.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#847

Post by dunkelheit »

res0nat0r wrote: post #741
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the NY Post article actually filled with disinformation? If the roles were reversed and a similar story came out about Trump and his son, would Twitter and Facebook have taken it down as part of a misinformation campaign?

> Was the NY Post article actually filled with disinformation? Yes. Parroting Russian disinformation during an election campaign because your owners don't like the politics of said disinformation target should be removed. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lash... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-... There needs to be more censorship on FB and YouTube which are in addit…

Right there in the first article:

> There was no immediate indication of Russian involvement in the release of emails that the Post obtained, but its general thrust mirrors a narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies have described as part of an active Russian disinformation effort aimed at the 2020 election.

So the only proof that it comes from Russia is basically "that's the kind of thing the Russians would do." Aren't you spreading disinformation yourself by claiming that it is Russian disinformation?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#848

Post by thu2111 »

res0nat0r wrote: post #741
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the NY Post article actually filled with disinformation? If the roles were reversed and a similar story came out about Trump and his son, would Twitter and Facebook have taken it down as part of a misinformation campaign?

> Was the NY Post article actually filled with disinformation? Yes. Parroting Russian disinformation during an election campaign because your owners don't like the politics of said disinformation target should be removed. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lash... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-... There needs to be more censorship on FB and YouTube which are in addit…

What was the "disinformation" exactly?

YouTube has spent the summer censoring doctors because their views didn't match the WHO. The WHO has changed its own views so much that it's now contradicted itself many times, showing how terribly naive Google's policies are on this. Google never used to be naive, but clearly, times have changed.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#849

Post by bipson »

robertlagrant wrote: post #822
runarberg wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the grand scheme of things, the Pandora's box Twitter and Facebook might have opened today seems minute next to the Pandora’s box the Bush administration opened after the 9-11 attacks, the homeland security and all. I think after the election we will have completely forgotten about this conduct while we still have to live with the spying on innocent people, non-sense travel restriction, and human-rights violating…

How does the immigration system violate human rights?

not GP, but most immigration systems violate human rights all the time by treating people as if they were people without these rights - or not people at all. Most of the time the legal leeway is based upon them not being citizens (yet). What is the path to immigration in your country?

It begins with a legal dilemma: E.g. asylum is a human right, but how to determine who is eligible? In a timely manner that is. Especially if you have thousands of applicants and (almost) no documents. How do you house people in the meantime? What rights do they have?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#850

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #633
rectang wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the moderation decisions made today, but I'm alienated by them. A political article like this one would ordinarily get flagged off the HN front page. The subject matter of Twitter and Facebook imposing constraints on distribution is germane, but this article goes way beyond that by propagating the suspect email content.

Obviously HN readers are going to want to see the emails and decide for themselves. There's zero implication of authenticity (or inauthenticity for that matter). The only thing we care about at our end is having an accurate article (and headline) for the story. Politics isn't completely off-topic for HN—there's overlap and it depends. There's lots of previous explanation about that at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRang…

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