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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

#181

Post by op03 »

riffic wrote: post #158
zalkota wrote: post #106

Here's a list of various hoaxes/leaks/etc. that the big tech social media companies allowed and did not censor, even though they took action in this instance: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax ... This list seems like strong proof that the we cannot trust these social media companies to be neutral actors. They shouldn't be given controlling power to the digital public square.

> digital public square I don't know if you know this or not, but the technology exists for anyone to participate in a " digital public square " without use of the incumbent services (Facebook, Twitter, et cetera). These services are not the digital public square . They are private spaces (like a shopping mall.) it would be wholly incorrect to make that assumption.

At the shopping mall they dont hand out as much Dopamine, as FB and Twitter have.

People don't even realize what is going on. The addicts are getting cut of from their favorite drug. A drug that has conditioned their behavior for 10-15 years.

FB and Twitter, every time they make these moves all over the world, need to check out how good ol Alex Jones is doing. Cause thats where a lot of ppl who get cut off will be in a year or two.

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

#182

Post by spikels »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #111
rayiner wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “professional journalists” aren’t that great either. The field has been overtaken by 20 year olds. Even Matt Yglesias, who has spent most of his career to the left of Democrats as a whole, has been grumbling on his podcast about journalists these days failing to respect the difference between journalism and advocacy. Matt Taibbi (who I don’t like as a person but who is at least a real journalist) has written an e…

The field being taken over by 20 year olds is a consequence of the field's revenue being eaten by tech. There's not enough money to make a decent living on now, so those filling the void will be more ideologically motivated.

Many journalists today come from wealthy families and have went to schools like Harvard and Princeton. They don’t need the shitty pay (although many are well paid) and are driven by the desire to be influential (i.e. power) more than any coherent ideology.

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

#184

Post by ptaffs »

naiveprogrammer wrote: post #70
taxicab wrote: 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…

The media has been pedaling the Russian collusion story for 4 years and you don't seem to care because it fits your priors and political agenda. The bigger lesson here is that everybody is ready to accept censorship as long as they are not bearing the (immediate) costs of it.

"The media has...", really? There's no coordinated media, there are several media corporations (like Twitter, BBC, News Corp (NY Post owner)) with their own bias and their own audience.

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

#185

Post by sangnoir »

Why is everyone ignoring @jack's official explanation for why Twitter blocked the specific link from being shared? This is the one falsifiable action Twitter clearly took. Twitters official policy is to not allow publication of hacked material or information with Personally Identifying Information - and this material was hacked and had unredacted personal email addresses. I haven't seen any reasonable arguments against these policies, instead I've seen nebulous accusations of biased censorship.

Twitter is clearly okay with the discussion of these emails - no hashtags or keywords are being suppressed: it was a link to a single story that was blocked since it violated stated policy.

Incidentally, the NYT reports that the US intelligence community heard chatter of the GRU using hacked Burisma emails as an October surprise before the NY Post story broke (a trick so nice, they had to do it twice). I guess no one cares for facts anymore, as long as they see patterns that fit their preconceptions

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

#186

Post by AnimalMuppet »

taxicab wrote: 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…

An "October surprise". A time-honored tradition in US presidential elections. Done by both sides. In the past, covered by all major news outlets.

Now if Twitter wants to not allow tweeting of October surprises, I suppose that's their business. But if so, block it for both sides.

I also think it's totally counterproductive for them to (try to) do so. Block links to the NY Post article? Great, but then what? Block links to the BBC article? To the HN discussion? To every random blogger who writes up a post about it, with links to the BBC article, the NY Post article, and the HN discussion? Twitter might be able to stay on top of that, but it's going to be hard, it's going to leak, and it's going to look really bad. It's going to give the story far more legs than it otherwise would have had (Streisand effect). It's going to spawn a whole bunch of new conspiracy theories, with Twitter as part of the bad guys. The net effect of all this is not going to be what Twitter wants...

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

#187

Post by rayiner »

sangnoir wrote: post #185

Why is everyone ignoring @jack's official explanation for why Twitter blocked the specific link from being shared? This is the one falsifiable action Twitter clearly took. Twitters official policy is to not allow publication of hacked material or information with Personally Identifying Information - and this material was hacked and had unredacted personal email addresses. I haven't seen any reasonable arguments again…

If this is hacked emails, doesn’t that prove the article is credible?

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

#188

Post by slg »

rayiner wrote: post #161
mellosouls wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that the liberal-run tech firms are biased against conservative news sources, I think it is only fair to point out that the list you link is compiled and presented by a conservative organisation that has apparently been under criticism for its own approach to covid reporting (see the wiki page; and yes, I think wikipedia seems often liberal-biased), and can not be considered a neutral voice in this part…

I would encourage folks to resist the urge to put up blinders based on the URL. Particularly where, as here, the source is just collecting publicly-available documents and links. You’re not being asked to trust the author’s synthesis of a bunch of facts. You can check the underlying links yourself. Obviously conservative organizations have more of an incentive to compile this sort of thing. That doesn’t make it in an…

>You’re not being asked to trust the author’s synthesis of a bunch of facts. You can check the underlying links yourself.

This argument doesn't work in this specific instance because for most of the items on the list the only links are to other articles by The Federalist.

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

#189

Post by CivBase »

gok wrote: post #146

It's frustrating Twitter and Facebook won't just say the truth: "This is a blatant attempt at disinformation by politicians who have repeatedly attacked our employees, and we don't want it. It's our web site, stop trying to tell us what our own rules are. Go spread your nonsense somewhere else. If you think this is a 230 violation sue us."

Reading through these HN comments, it is amazing to me how many people have already concluded the NY Post story is either obviously true or false.

But I agree with the gist of your point. Social media platforms should stop pretending to be unbiased disinformation watchmen. It's their platform and they don't have to justify squat. If people want free speech, they can go somewhere else.

On that note, I really do think distributed social media networks are the future.

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

#190

Post by rayiner »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #118
naiveprogrammer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media has been pedaling the Russian collusion story for 4 years and you don't seem to care because it fits your priors and political agenda. The bigger lesson here is that everybody is ready to accept censorship as long as they are not bearing the (immediate) costs of it.

There's a conflation of issues whenever someone comes along claiming the "Russia collusion" story is fake news. Russia did meddle in the election and did hack the DNC. Russia also had close ties to high level members of the Trump campaign. It is not reasonable to dispute these facts. The question of whether Trump personally colluded with Russia is in doubt. But I don't see this specific claim made much at all from le…

> But I don't see this specific claim made much at all from legitimate news organizations.

You really missed all of 2017-2018. My wife is a never-Trumper and this issue got her to tune into Rachel Maddow and all the podcasts and the idea that the collusion was two-sided and went to the highest levels in the Trump campaign was pervasive.

See: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russ...

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