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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

#821

Post by esoterica »

8note wrote: post #462
appleflaxen wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What twitter does has nothing to do with the NY Posts' free speech. Just as NYP is free to say whatever they want, Twitter is free to silence it on their platform . Freedom of speech and the first amendment is to restrain the federal government from prohibiting speech. That is the hill to die on, as it protects twitter's right to do what it wants to do with its platform. An orthogonal issue is social platform monopol…

They should also be taking responsibility for copyright infringement in that case, which to my understanding is what the section 230 changes are? If twitter wants to defer to users being responsible for their speech, the users should be having the rights to post what they want.

Do you think it should be illegal for HN to moderate posts and ban users (without accepting legal liability for all user generated comments)? If HN can moderate comments, why not Twitter? If you think it's unethical for HN to operate the way it currently does, why are you still here? Maybe you should stick to your principles and delete your account.

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

#822

Post by mNovak »

christoph wrote: post #365
meroes wrote: 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.

I've been here over 10 years and I don't really recall seeing anything other than blatant spam or crap removed in that time. Maybe I've just not seen it happen. But, the way things seem to have worked here (very well I might add) is that when enough of the community disagrees, things get downvoted to death and if you don't have "Show dead" enabled, you don't see them. Your choice. I've had show dead enabled as long a…

Controversial content (lately that means political) regularly gets flagged and removed. As a recent example the NYT Trump Taxes article went through cycles of being posted, rapidly upvoted, then flagged to algorithmic removal, over and over again. To point where meta-discussion came online (and was flagged) [1]

Personally I think downvoting is the appropriate response to say "this is not interesting or relevant to HN", but many have realized flagging provides outsized influence.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610890

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

#823

Post by djsumdog »

pcmoney wrote: post #155
oxymoran wrote: post #127

Election meddling is a little more than bias.

I don't understand why this is so controversial. You cannot reveal personal details of someone on Twitter (email, phone number etc.) The article contained unreacted personal info so should be blocked. You also cannot link directly to hacked/obtained without consent material on twitter. The article contained screenshot of the material so should be blocked. You CAN link to material that discusses hacked/obtained withou…

Tax returns are an interesting case, because even revealing that information could constitute a federal crime. You also can't reveal someone's protected medical information (HIPPA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvYNfsAgJY

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

#824

Post by boomboomsubban »

eitland wrote: post #735
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…

> 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 think the idea is that if this is the rule, a lot of Republicans think it has already been broken a number of times against them.

Do you have any examples of someone's non-public contact information being shared without a response? Their guidelines permit discussion and linking to press stories of hacks provided they don't include someone’s private information, information that could put people at risk of physical harm or danger; and/or information related to trade secrets.

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

#825

Post by alentist »

Latty wrote: post #596
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.

A private company stopping people spewing misinformation to huge numbers of people using their private platform isn't "censorship". The problem with "some people only use facebook for news and so this means they are effectively censored" is "some people only use facebook for news". Fix that, don't try to force services to broadcast obvious harmful nonsense to people. The idea of truly unfiltered free speech on a glob…

> A private company stopping people spewing misinformation to huge numbers of people using their private platform isn't "censorship".

How does this relate to Twitter blocking private messages between two people for including the NYP article?

> because you have to be heard and we can't let everyone broadcast to everyone: there is too much noise.

How does this relate to Twitter blocking people from seeing an NYP article shared by people they explicitly chose to follow?

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

#826

Post by djsumdog »

interlocutor wrote: post #433

Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. I believe this is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently en…

So these individuals are malicious and misleading, but what you believe is pure and good and right and holy?

How do you know you're not the one being deceived or are believing a lie? The freedom of speech allows people to talk about things that might be true, but unpopular.

> have decided that some censorship is in order

Freedom of speech is not absolute. It doesn't include images of child abuse, lying to Federal Agents, lying under oath before a Court or Congress, or speech that advocates for immediate and imminent harm of a person.

Those seem like decent limit breaks. Americas freedom of speech is very strong, stronger than German, Australia, the UK, NZ .. the US and Japan probably have the strongest free speech laws in the world (although Japan's is crippled by insane copyright law, which is another mess).

People who are on the wrong side of history, rarely know or realize it, while they're in it.

Free speech is about acknowledging someone else could be right and you might be wrong.

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

#827

Post by boomboomsubban »

johndevor wrote: post #715
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…

The Steele Dossier was widely spread on Twitter and was debunked.

I believe the policy was changed in 2019.

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

#829

Post by CivBase »

dlivingston wrote: post #820
CivBase wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> On that note, I really do think distributed social media networks are the future. I think they could be the future, but any social media platform is only as strong as its underlying social graph. A flawless platform which checks every box will still fail unless you can convince a significant amount of users to join. Or, more to the point, a certain amount of graph edges need to be formed. How do you do that? That’s…

Sure, but all we have to do is wait. Once a distributed platform finally takes off, I doubt we'll ever go back to centralized ones. I don't know how long it will take or how many platforms will rise and fall in the mean time, but it's just a matter of time.

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

#830

Post by blackflame7000 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #758
CivBase wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't it classify as hacking if the data had any encryption? Bypassing encryption to reach copyrighted media would be a DMCA violation if nothing else. No clue if any encryption was used though, and either way the doxxing restriction could stop it.

It's not hacking to decrypt your own data. The argument is, and the precedent set by law supports, that failure to pay for and retrieve the device after a set period of time transfers ownership. It's basically the legal grounds of "finders keepers"
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