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

bbc.com

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

#191

Post by AnimalMuppet »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #57
Simulacra wrote: post #35

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-...

I don't see that claim anywhere in the article you linked.

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

#192

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #135
cirgue wrote: post #85

Hot take: they should do more of this, not less. As a medium it’s fundamentally distortionary, what is popular on Twitter is as much a function of the peculiarities of its ranking algorithm as it is of the material significance of the information. The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is, and the more diverse the online media ecosystem can be.

The idea that Twitter and Facebook can do this in a “non-distortionary” way is unrealistic. Peoples’ personal biases are too strong. The “fact check” websites used to be great. Now, they wander way over “fact checking.” The worst abuses are when they provide “context” or challenge assumptions. Conservatives and liberals are not working from the same assumptions, and have a different set of contextual facts top of min…

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by gok »

CivBase wrote: post #189
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…

Let us ignore the question of whether or the story is true. Twitter and Facebook clearly think it is false.

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

#194

Post by gnicholas »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #57
Simulacra wrote: post #35

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-...

This is a fair concern, and it is a tricky issue because if true Twitter might not be able to disclose this fact.

But if it were true, wouldn't Joe Biden have come out already and said "These emails are fake and I never met with that person"? Instead, all we get is the campaign saying that those meetings do not appear on his calendar.

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

#195

Post by cirgue »

CivBase wrote: post #178
cirgue wrote: post #85

Hot take: they should do more of this, not less. As a medium it’s fundamentally distortionary, what is popular on Twitter is as much a function of the peculiarities of its ranking algorithm as it is of the material significance of the information. The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is, and the more diverse the online media ecosystem can be.

> they should do more of this, not less > The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is How exactly will Twitter doing "more of this" result in "less people trust[ing] twitter popularity as an indication of importance"? If anything, I think Twitter should just wear their bias on their sleave and stop pretending to be an open platform. Same goes for all social media…

> Twitter should just wear their bias on their sleave and stop pretending to be an open platform.

This is kind of what I was getting at.

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

#196

Post by rightbyte »

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.

Funny that you mention public squares vs shopping malls. In many places in the US the shopping malls have replaced the public squares and stores.

Maybe shopping mall alleys should be considered public space instead.

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

#197

Post by tzs »

rayiner wrote: post #135
cirgue wrote: post #85

Hot take: they should do more of this, not less. As a medium it’s fundamentally distortionary, what is popular on Twitter is as much a function of the peculiarities of its ranking algorithm as it is of the material significance of the information. The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is, and the more diverse the online media ecosystem can be.

The idea that Twitter and Facebook can do this in a “non-distortionary” way is unrealistic. Peoples’ personal biases are too strong. The “fact check” websites used to be great. Now, they wander way over “fact checking.” The worst abuses are when they provide “context” or challenge assumptions. Conservatives and liberals are not working from the same assumptions, and have a different set of contextual facts top of min…

The Puerto Rico bill had good support from both parties.

The vote in the House to send the bill to the Senate was 227-0 among Republicans and 186-10 among Democrats.

When the Senate's modified version came back to the House, the R vote was 160-70 and the D voter was 192-2.

When it got back to the Senate in final form, the Senate vote was 76-22. The stupid senate.gov site does not tabulate vote by party and I'm too lazy to do it by hand, but the Senate at the time was 55 R to 45 D. I do see that all 22 Nay votes were from R, and two D did not vote, so that would give the R vote as 33-22 and the D vote as 43-0.

Among the Yea votes in the Senate I see several current R Senators: Grassley, McConnell, Shelby, and Murkowski. I think Inhofe is the only current R Senator who was in the Nays.

I bet someone running against whichever of those first four Senators are up for re-election this year could put together a pretty good ad featuring Trump's talk of the bill "obliterating" Puerto Rico's pharmaceuticals and then calling out that Senator for doing so. How is the Senator going to respond? Say it was a bipartisan bill that was widely supported by both parties, which risks highlighting Trump's misleading use of it?

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

#198

Post by sangnoir »

rayiner wrote: post #187
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?

I'd say the article is self-consistent, but not necessarily credible. I don't think "hack" means literal network intrusion. If the article's own description of the provenance of the information is taken at face value, cloning a hard drive at a repair shop without authorization still qualifies as "hacked", and in violation of Twitter terms.

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

#199

Post by messick »

jungletime wrote: post #90
wesleywt wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think its correct to delibrately spread a false story about Hunter Biden? Is this type removing false information censorship?

Just curious, what do you make of the Biden photos with a crack pipe found on the laptop too. Are those fake? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8842709/Joe-Bidens-...

That’s real bad news for Hunter’s 2020 election campaign!

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

#200

Post by CivBase »

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…

How does this constitute hacking?

The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed deviced after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop. The data is theirs to do with as they please and they chose to publish it (at least, that's the story). No hacking necessary.

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