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Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

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Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#51
post #23

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition th…

Doesn't matter if the story reeks or not. This is about censorship and even application of "community standards."

Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign.

Also, your criteria for this story to reek shows your bias. It's not like Joe Biden himself bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired with the threat of holding back a billion dollars. It's on video, just Google it. And Hunter Biden is an admitted drug addict. So nothing that has been exposed from that laptop reeks too much.

You want to say Hunter was set up? Okay, I'll go down that rabbit hole, but to say this is all false? Well, again, your bias is showing.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#52

I just don’t get it, what is Twitter so afraid of? It’s already a cesspool of flame wars and misinformation, I’m growing deeply concerned about their need to interject themselves into news stories like this.

The other side is people get mad at them for allowing legitimately fake news to propagate.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#53
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of Guilianni, they could have just said "persons familiar with the contents of the emails."

That or "anonymous sources" wouldn't have helped. That works with papers that have a long earned reputation of mostly reporting facts. They may have biases in their selection of which stories to run, or what angles to approach those stores from, but what they report as a fact is in fact a fact far far far far more often than not. (Pause for people to jump in to cite examples of such papers getting it wrong. This will…

Papers with long-earned reputations do themselves tremendous discredit when they hire full blown political activists with no regard for the truth, as the WP, NYT etc have done for at least a decade.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#54
post #23

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition th…

Literally the same thing that happened with the FBI announcing that they were "reopening" the Clinton investigation right before the election and then promptly deciding that they found nothing afterwards.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#55

Ignore the NYPost for the moment. A US government website put the details on their website. Twitter is now blocking the US government webpage hosting the details. They are blocking actual politicians linking these details. https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/13167418079595724... Worse yet, they have highlighted the exact opposite story. They are featuring washington post who are calling it false. https://twitt…

I have been pretty vocal about being against censorship from social media companies. But with the stakes being as high as they are this close to an election (not just this particular election, but any election in general), I see no problem with social media companies deciding they will not be a party to the spread of misinformation intended to sway the election.

These companies are not neutral communication platforms; they have no duty to neutrality. Although I agree they should remain neutral as much as reasonable, drawing the line at election manipulation is perfectly reasonable and consistent.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#56

Ignore the NYPost for the moment. A US government website put the details on their website. Twitter is now blocking the US government webpage hosting the details. They are blocking actual politicians linking these details. https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/13167418079595724... Worse yet, they have highlighted the exact opposite story. They are featuring washington post who are calling it false. https://twitt…

If the US government wants to they could host their own ActivityPub[0] compliant application and do whatever it wants from its server infrastructure.

The technology exists for the public sector to disentangle itself from these commercial platforms. I don't know why pols and journos are so blind to this.

[0] This is a W3C Recommendation -- a protocol, by the words of Wikipedia that is in "the most mature stage of development. At this point, the standard has undergone extensive review and testing, under both theoretical and practical conditions. The standard is now endorsed by the W3C, indicating its readiness for deployment to the public, and encouraging more widespread support among implementors and authors." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium#W3C_...

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#57

I just don’t get it, what is Twitter so afraid of? It’s already a cesspool of flame wars and misinformation, I’m growing deeply concerned about their need to interject themselves into news stories like this.

I wonder if FB and Twitter are in contact with some of the national intelligence agencies. US intelligence officials talking to NYT suggest that this "leak" is a forgery by the GRU.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#58
Ahhh: 1. We must censor terror propaganda and child abuse to avoid harm & because it's the law

2. We must censor stormfront and the far right because it's the right thing to do

3. We must censor covid misinformation because it could kill people

4. We must selectively censor news reporting for political candidates we are aligned with because it's probably false.

---- we are here now

5. We must remove all news critical of our position .

6. We must actively force people to be re-educated to avoid harm.

7. We must exterminate dangerous elements.

The mental gymnastics used to justify this kind of censorship are frightening. Most news is full of inaccuracies and outright lies, from all sources.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#59
post #23

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition th…

So? Other fake stories are certainly not censored in this manner. To demand the White House press secretary delete a tweet? To censor the U.S. House Judiciary Committee? I mean all parties hold their hot stories to close to the election for the greatest impact, but Twitter is certainly not even trying to appear partisan at this moment. It's quite clear this is not "hacked information", and if it wore, then it would be also an admission of guilt from Hunter Biden.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#60
post #23

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition th…

Doesn't matter if the story reeks or not. This is about censorship and even application of "community standards." Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign. Also, your criteria for this story to reek shows your bias. It's not like Joe Biden himself bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired with the threat of holding back a billion dollars. It's on video, just Google…

> Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign.

Of course not. It's selective interference. They're just getting more brazen about it as we get closer to election day.

Also telling is that they have a pinned story at the top of the empty search page with the link titled, "Joe Biden did not push out a Ukrainian prosecutor for investigating his son, The Washington Post reports"

EDIT: Here's a link showing the WaPo headline that Twitter is adding: https://twitter.com/RepLeeZeldin/status/1316523575373893632

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