Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

401–410 of 1001 posts

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

#401
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When guns were flint locks, the amount of damage one person could do was pretty limited. When machine guns became generally available (and i'm aware $200 is not "generally available" in 1920). That changed. These weapons were introduced to "force multiply" an individual. Before the internet, the amount of damange a single guy with free speech could do was pretty limited. But with the internet, we're all force-multipl…

Never owned gun, and never thought of owning one, until this year, precisely when politicians told us, on TV, that calling 911 is a privilege, and when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police. I never felt so much need to own many guns and train for tactical shooting to defend my family when needed.

If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group. That is not meant to be an overly hateful statement.

Police (and other law-enforcement) are an exercise of the power of government. The former exists to ensure the latter can continue to exist.

Therefore, police (and law-enforcement) exist to enact laws to preserve the status quo and whatever accepted social mores happen to be in vogue at the time via statute. Protecting you and your loved ones only occurs when your needs align with the desires of the state.

If you happen to be part of a marginalized group, often, power structures dictate that the desires of the state run contrary to your needs, or, more often, the desires of the state are literally enacted to make your life more difficult.

For example - Where I live, we have a saying, "No cops, no problems." This is because a) police take 45+ minutes to respond because we're very rural, b) police generally only respond by taking notes and harassing anyone they find on the scene, regardless of their role, and c) police, once they respond, are well known to run warrants on anyone around just to be able to say they've arrested someone that day (the second part of that is my conjecture, but I also can't come up with a reason they would run warrants on an innocent bystander, regardless of said bystander's past).

My need of having my car not be stolen apparently does not align with the government's need to ensure my father is prosecuted for low-level drug offenses from many years ago. (to use the next word too much, I think) Therefore, police do not have my interests at heart. Please apply this lesson to any other marginalized group to see where the problems with police come from, and why I called you naive.

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

#402
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…

It is super weird to read a comment about the difference between advocates and journalists holding Matt Taibbi out as a "real journalist". Taibbi is the apotheosis of the journaladvocate you're talking about. He's also a lot of other things that you don't like about journalism; for instance, see his coverage of financial engineering topics during the "sucking blood funnel days" of the 2008 crisis, for some Crichton A…

That’s fair. I was going to add in a comment about how Taibbi presaged the phenomenon that he’s now complaining about but that seemed like an unnecessary dig.

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

#403
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When guns were flint locks, the amount of damage one person could do was pretty limited. When machine guns became generally available (and i'm aware $200 is not "generally available" in 1920). That changed. These weapons were introduced to "force multiply" an individual. Before the internet, the amount of damange a single guy with free speech could do was pretty limited. But with the internet, we're all force-multipl…

Never owned gun, and never thought of owning one, until this year, precisely when politicians told us, on TV, that calling 911 is a privilege, and when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police. I never felt so much need to own many guns and train for tactical shooting to defend my family when needed.

If you're only just finding out that calling 911 is a privilege, you have that privilege. What are you worried about?

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

#404
post #3
post #2

To add to this Trump's official campaign Twitter had it's account locked this morning and a video Trump uploaded was promptly deleted. This is new information from today. The thread yesterday was about the initial wave of censorship. I posted about the new actions this morning but it got flagged as a dupe of yesterday's discussion. It was not a duplicate, Twitter has taken new action and decided to go further this mo…

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

How can you say its false. The FBI took it seriously. If we said the same about wikileaks or trump taxes we'd all flip out. Twitter shouldn't be the people who get to say whats false or not.

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

#405
post #334
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So HN can't remove posts either because that violates free speech? I grew up on the internet too and forum bans were always a thing. You haven't convinced me this is different.

The president doesn't make major annoucements using HN. The fact is, Twitter has taken on a different role.

But if the president did make major announcements on HN, he would not be subject to moderation on here? If the president has unilaterally imposed these restrictions on what Twitter can do by virtue of using it, he should make it official and make Twitter a public service. Otherwise, I don't understand how this is different than the president showing up at your house yelling at you with a megaphone and refusing to leave because your property has now "taken on a different role".

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

#406

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…

Twitter's "rules" would have stopped huge stories like The Pentagon Papers, Panama Papers, Watergate, etc from being posted on their platform. The statement read like it was typed up by an intern that didn't communicate with the legal team or any logical person.

(edited for clarification)

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

#408

The Galileo Principle. If you and everybody else is trying to silence something. You probably are on the wrong side of history.

this is like thinking because everyone is against what you are doing you must be doing the right thing. it could be what you are selling is just bullshit and everyone knows it is bullshit.

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

#409

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

Entry barrier became too low, no skills required to post anything.

Web became centralized. Instead of visiting dozens websites you started visiting few conglomerates.

People thought that their opinions are unique and matters anything, so they started posting everything everywhere.

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish. Even if it is a very popular website. If they make bad decisions, then people can go to competitors; it's as easy as typing in a different URL. That's how the Internet--and open societies in general--are supposed to work. What it looks like to me--someone who has been on the Internet since before the turn of the century--is tha…

Where does one go when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seem to take these steps in tandem? The joke of "go make your own social network" has been tried with places like Parler and Gab, but they get banned from app stores, ironically blocked from technically, but not ideologically, decentralized services like Mastodon, or even dropped from web hosts. The open Internet is dead.

> Where does one go when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seem to take these steps in tandem?

I know folks like to get all conspiratorial over social networks "acting in tandem", but it really shouldn't be all that surprising.

Individuals have vastly different tolerances for all sorts of things, but if you lump them into groups of tens of thousands, the average tolerance for things will be quite similar.

When the latest alt-right provocateur hits the threshold of bad PR for Facebook, he's likely right at the threshold for the other major social networks. No need for a shadowy cabal.

Post reply on HN