Facebook and Twitter Cross a Line in Censorship

If these claims are true, surely some journalist would have noticed the same things? Maybe they have and I completely missed the story?

Edit: after reading the post article, there are quite a number of things that aren't so easily explained away by the oddities pointed out in that Twitter thread.

If our self-proclaimed trustworthy legal and journalism institutions were less theatrics-based, the actual truth of these allegations could be uncovered without too much effort. But perhaps there's no budget remaining (in any governmental agency, or any journalism outlet) after the multi-year investigation into the alleged Trump/Russia collusion. Whatever the reason, I suspect that for some unknown reason, this issue will be added to the ever growing pile of "things that we know(!) are fake news, even though we don't actually know because we did not investigate them".

EDIT: Interesting (but not surprising) that this article is [flagged], further demonstrating the wide variety of ways in which the distribution of certain categories of ideas can be controlled, even without a central coordination authority. Ideas do very much seem to behave like living organisms, with human minds as their unwitting hosts.

“People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.”

― Carl Jung

Mind Control: How Parasites Manipulate Cognitive Functions in Their Insect Hosts

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0057...

Neuro-parasitology is an emerging branch of science that deals with parasites that can control the nervous system of the host. It offers the possibility of discovering how one species (the parasite) modifies a particular neural network, and thus particular behaviors, of another species (the host). Such parasite–host interactions, developed over millions of years of evolution, provide unique tools by which one can determine how neuromodulation up-or-down regulates specific behaviors. In some of the most fascinating manipulations, the parasite taps into the host brain neuronal circuities to manipulate hosts cognitive functions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/10/30/a...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

EDIT:

The Twitter thread:

"So just so I follow this story: Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, decides to fly 3000 miles across country, to drop off 3 MacBook Pros at a repair shop run by a blind guy who charges the insanely low price of $85 (because there aren't repair shops in LA). He drops them off, signs a contract for repair and then disappears."

Sounds fishy. Let's check Google:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden

Born Robert Hunter Biden

February 4, 1970 (age 50)

Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.

"Curiously" not mentioned in the Twitter thread (even though it was extremely specific about pointing out the distance between the shop and Hunter's hometown): Wilmington, Delaware

Given that the situation with Twitter a mess right now, the only responsible thing that should be done right away is for the President to issue an executive order barring the use of Twitter for any official purpose. Remove all tweets and close all accounts. A third party should not be intermediating between the government and the public.

If microblogging is a value, then he should also issue an EO which directs the appropriate federal agencies to establish standards defining protocols, create baseline implementations, and regulations around use, free speech, and the like.

If this is their policy, they're going to have to get rid of a very large number of reaction gifs. The first instance of any particular one might be able to make a fair use argument, but every reuse is straight up copyright violation, which is very specifically use without authorization.

Additionally, I wonder if security researchers are going to be able to tweet about the vulnerabilities they discover. Most software has EULAs that specifically exclude reverse engineering. For example, Apple's iOS 12 EULA says:

>You may not, and you agree not to or enable others to, copy (except as expressly permitted by this License), decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, decrypt, modify, or create derivative works of the iOS Software or any services provided by the iOS Software or any part thereof (except as and only to the extent any foregoing restriction is prohibited by applicable law or by licensing terms governing use of open-source components that may be included with the iOS Software).