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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

#551

Post by hardtke »

sailingparrot wrote: post #264
prudhvis wrote: post #223

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.

New technologies brought new challenges. There was no social network in the 2000s and before. No retweet button, no "curated" timeline that showed you what you "like". YouTube did not try to push more videos like the ones you watched previously until the mid 2010s. Free speech does not have the same meaning as before. Before it just meant that you could say whatever you wanted. Now people use it implicitly to mean th…

Stepping outside the US, there is evidence that misinformation spread of Facebook (including WhatsApp) was directly responsible for the Rohingya genocide and forced migration [1]. At what point do these platforms have an obligation to not allow themselves be used for such campaigns?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

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

#552

Post by octoberfranklin »

rtx wrote: post #293
jungletime wrote: post #183

@Jack thinks China is going to win the war, and already picking sides. There are reasons why being Neutral is a bad option, if you read Machiavelli. "Do not be Neutral" https://www.obtaineudaimonia.com/do-not-be-neutral-prince-ni...

That's why this election is so important. It will chart our paths for next 100 years.

If that's true we were already doomed, being given the choice between two very crappy paths.

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

#553

Post by mhh__ »

mc32 wrote: post #244
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…

So obviously no Wikileaks or any “sources inside the $agency with access to information” (but with no clearance to leak) cannot be published on Twitter any more, right? No guessing in who poisoned Navalni, etc... Got it!

If it forces wikileaks to redact the CC details of innocent bystanders then I'm all for it.

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

#554

Post by cbvan »

prudhvis wrote: post #223

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.

What happened during the early 2010s is that colleges and universities started implementing Stasi methods like anonymous reporting on professors and making professors write humiliating self-criticisms.

All this to appease a fragile and spoiled generation.

The effects now show on the Internet, where "open" source projects implement similar oppressive tactics in the name of attracting new "contributors" (who rarely do anything useful).

Unfortunately, the boomers, who first raked in all the money and leadership positions in SV companies, support this cultural revolution in a last attempt to preserve their power.

[1] former East German surveillance apparatus

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

#555

Post by codelord »

saurik wrote: post #325
sailingparrot wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New technologies brought new challenges. There was no social network in the 2000s and before. No retweet button, no "curated" timeline that showed you what you "like". YouTube did not try to push more videos like the ones you watched previously until the mid 2010s. Free speech does not have the same meaning as before. Before it just meant that you could say whatever you wanted. Now people use it implicitly to mean th…

I agree wholeheartedly: the "right to free speech" is not the same as a "right to be heard", but we have managed to conflate the two with all of this "free amplification", as you describe; there is a big difference between someone getting to say something to their followers and that content being broadcast and even recommended by Twitter to random people. I personally believe that if a website has a recommendation al…

I believe the vast majority of the content you see on Twitter and pretty much everything you see on Facebook is from people you follow (ads excluded). Twitter/FB though use an algorithmic feed mechanism to reorder the posts which makes sense. I think they should be transparent about how they generate the feed, but I don't think you can hold them accountable for the content of a post someone made just because it got reordered to the top by an algorithm.

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

#556

Post by patagonia »

Remember all those "Build a Twitter Clone" coding tutorials? They'll all have to be updated to now include legal teams and should probably include a primer on the political process as well as a primer on the history and continued evolution of free speech.

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

#557

Post by augustt »

giardini wrote: post #508
ffggvv wrote: post #105

so many stories about trump are later proven to be fake or unsubstantiated such as the russian bounties, that he owes money to russia, the steele dossier etc... and his tax returns were also stolen or hacked yet ofc they aren’t censored

ffggvv says >"so many stories about trump are later proven to be fake or unsubstantiated such as the russian bounties, that he owes money to russia, the steele dossier etc... and his tax returns were also stolen or hacked" By now you should understand the Democratic Party's news cycle: a) Make up a message (something, anything bad) and present it to the press as a Presidential abomination, b) Get Democratically-favor…

Can you add some more steps to the flow chart? wondering how insane we can sound here.

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

#558

Post by esoterica »

prudhvis wrote: post #223

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.

If you believe in free speech then you must believe that Twitter has the free speech right to choose what they want to host on their privately owned servers, the same way a homeowner has the free speech right to choose what lawn signs they want to display on their yard, and a newspaper has the free speech right to decide what editorials they want to publish.

If you think free speech gives you the right to force your speech onto other people then you don't understand the concept of free speech.

You reminisce fondly of the old internet, but the old school forums were all heavily and completely arbitrarily moderated according to the whims and egos of the mods. Unrestricted free speech was never a thing there.

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

#559

Post by dilap »

> It did not provide evidence that the meeting ever took place, and the Biden election campaign says it did not.

This conflicts w/ a report by Politico:

> Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory.

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

#560

Post by mhh__ »

partiallypro wrote: post #406
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…

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)

Why? Watergate was largely built off journalistic work not hacked materials, obviously deep throat was inside the FBI but he was never quoted
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