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Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

taibbi.substack.com

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Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#11

Post by mmastrac »

nabla9 wrote: post #6

There is no clear principles or policies for censorship or suppression for economic or political reasons. Until there is, we must look each case as single instance. That case was hilariously crude attempt at influencing and creating false narratives. The whole thing collapsed quickly but it still had huge impact. Mixing something real and something false makes people accept falsehoods. Censoring obvious falsehoods li…

Yeah, Twitter managed to kneecap a false narrative before it took hold and influenced an election. If there's a 48h waiting period for questionable stories like this, I'm all for it.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#12

Post by darkerside »

rootsudo wrote: post #5

I agree, twitter suppression made the story bigger. The NYPost has issued much fewer retractions than NYT and CNN, yet, Twitter does not attack those institutions. Ironic, considering the founder of the NYPost and his opinions on market economies.

I would consider retractions a mark of respectability, and the failure to issue them a tacit admission of failure in accountability.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#13

Post by tracer4201 »

haltingproblem wrote: post #2

I fear Taibbi is right, the suppression by Twitter, irrespective of the merits and veracity of NY Post's report, will now normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and small. Which will then incentivize governments to take on the platforms. This also raises issues of unequal treatment - say the NY Post report was factually wrong - why pick on the NY Post only? Why not the hundreds of other "news o…

The liberal wing was upset that state and non state actors influenced the 2016 election by manipulating social media.

Now, Twitter is working to suppress some content that they believe is a repeat attempt — the October surprise if you will.

I don’t have strong opinions on whether it’s right or wrong, but I don’t think this is a scandal.

Twitter is a private company. You don’t have a constitutional right to write whatever you want on Twitter. If Americans believe otherwise, then they’d have to nationalize Twitter or at least pass legislation that mandates what content Twitter can or cannot moderate.

I do find it surprising that social media companies are being held to a very different standard than “news”. In the US, we have specific news organizations that are unashamedly biased and blasting the airwaves with dangerous propaganda.

I’m not trying to make a case of whataboutism, but it’s mind boggling that social media receives so much scrutiny when this other group of fairly openly nefarious actors get a free pass. As far as I can tell, this is because the media organizations have fairly established relationships with politicians from one party or the other, with political parties using them as propaganda loud speakers.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#14

Post by crocodiletears »

eyeball wrote: post #3
haltingproblem wrote: post #2

I fear Taibbi is right, the suppression by Twitter, irrespective of the merits and veracity of NY Post's report, will now normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and small. Which will then incentivize governments to take on the platforms. This also raises issues of unequal treatment - say the NY Post report was factually wrong - why pick on the NY Post only? Why not the hundreds of other "news o…

It’s crazy that they’re even blocking links to the ny post article via direct message. What’s next? Email? Will we have to resort to signal and other encrypted direct messaging methods to have open discussion? Or run your own mail server end hope your recipient doesn’t use one that censors? Creepy stuff.

This has been the reality for people on the political fringes for some time now. Unfortunately nobody's been paying attention to it due in large part to the commentariat/journalistic class's willingness to encourage and provide cover for this behavior as a matter of political expedience.

Another example: Messenger's been blocking links to joebiden.info (this may have changed, it's been six months since I've checked)

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#15

Post by darkerside »

gotoeleven wrote: post #8

Yeah the censorship is bad and further reduces trust in the media and tech companies (though its already at zero for many people). But isn't the story here that the vice presidents son was being paid millions of dollars by chinese, ukrainian, and other companies for .. something? It's not his business accumen, right? What could they possibly be paying him for other than access to his dad? Is there any other reasonabl…

It's a lot of money for a person, but it's not a lot for a business. It's a cheap insurance policy to stay on the "good side" of someone who operates, even privately, in the quid pro quo seeking way that Trump does very publicly.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#17

Post by mullr »

darkerside wrote: post #10
haltingproblem wrote: post #2

I fear Taibbi is right, the suppression by Twitter, irrespective of the merits and veracity of NY Post's report, will now normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and small. Which will then incentivize governments to take on the platforms. This also raises issues of unequal treatment - say the NY Post report was factually wrong - why pick on the NY Post only? Why not the hundreds of other "news o…

I think you're right, but I don't think the previous status quo was tenable either, and maybe even more problematic. Disclaimer: these are opinions. We allow mainstream press, owned by allies of a politician, to make outlandish claims unverified in the weeks leading up to an election. This has always been "correctable" in the past, in a world where articles could be retracted or condemned, particularly by even more m…

It’s completely correctable. If fb/Twitter wanted to, they could track every person who saw a piece of “wrong” information, and plaster the retraction in front of their face.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#18

Post by thebigblueguy »

gotoeleven wrote: post #8

Yeah the censorship is bad and further reduces trust in the media and tech companies (though its already at zero for many people). But isn't the story here that the vice presidents son was being paid millions of dollars by chinese, ukrainian, and other companies for .. something? It's not his business accumen, right? What could they possibly be paying him for other than access to his dad? Is there any other reasonabl…

They paid for introductions to “the big guy”.

I’m surprised HN keeps this story up given the overlap of philosophies between the tech bubble and Democrat politicians.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#19

Post by chowchowchow »

gotoeleven wrote: post #8

Yeah the censorship is bad and further reduces trust in the media and tech companies (though its already at zero for many people). But isn't the story here that the vice presidents son was being paid millions of dollars by chinese, ukrainian, and other companies for .. something? It's not his business accumen, right? What could they possibly be paying him for other than access to his dad? Is there any other reasonabl…

And? I don’t think the NYP story was supposed to be a bombshell that Hunter Biden got jobs because his last name was Biden.

That may be unfair but that particular point is not even the subject of the New York Post story.

Companies hire people in useless positions all the time you know.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#20

Post by gotoeleven »

nabla9 wrote: post #6

There is no clear principles or policies for censorship or suppression for economic or political reasons. Until there is, we must look each case as single instance. That case was hilariously crude attempt at influencing and creating false narratives. The whole thing collapsed quickly but it still had huge impact. Mixing something real and something false makes people accept falsehoods. Censoring obvious falsehoods li…

Could someone just explain in simple words why everyone keeps calling this story false or debunked or whatever? Everyone keeps downvoting me and I don't know why. It seems like to debunk this story you'd have to have a journalist do some journalism and figure out why all these companies were giving hunter biden money.
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