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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

#101

Post by jsu32 »

timoth3y wrote: post #96

Many are confusing "censorship" with "content moderation". The difference is very important. Censorship is when you are prevented from publishing on your own platform. Content moderation is when a platform owner choses what can be published on theirs. Twitter decided they did not want their platform used to spread what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda, but they in no way prevented the NY Po…

It's a matter of scale. As the article says, the current Democratic Party Alliance for suppressing damaging stories is so broad, that even though you can publish your story, the chances of reaching its intended audience at scale are slim.

Also - if Twitter gets to decide whats get published on their platform, they are an editorial organization - something they've vehemently denied they are in the past.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#102

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

__float wrote: post #7

At what point do we look to capitalism as a driving factor for misinformation spreading? Media outlets are incentivized to bring in clicks/shares/likes. They're not incentivized to research stories sufficiently, so...a shaky lead from a sketchy source but a super compelling headline? Of course that gets published. Taking this as some anti-conservative war from the tech industry is super misleading.

> Taking this as some anti-conservative war from the tech industry is super misleading.

Very wrong, but we both know that. Not the brightest war for leftie tech companies to be provoking though.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#103

Post by hackinthebochs »

akvadrako wrote: post #50
nabla9 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Burisma story have been repeatedly found to be false. Trump Revives False Narrative on Biden and Ukraine https://www.factcheck.org/2020/10/trump-revives-false-narrat... Trump's conspiracy theories thrive in Ukraine, where a young democracy battles corruption and distrust. We talked with two dozen leaders and investigators in Ukraine. They all agree the claims against Joe and Hunter Biden are baseless. Yet they pe…

Most of what you wrote is irrelevant. If the basic facts of the story are wrong, like the laptop or emails are not genuine, why don’t the Biden’s deny it?

Repudiable media outlets will generally avoid writing stories about unverifiable claims. But once you deny the claims, then repudiable media outlets can bypass the need for corroboration and write stories on your denials, while also detailing the claims you are denying, which just further spreads the content of the claims.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#104

Post by adventured »

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…

> Edit: This story was flagged which is unbelievable.

You just wrote a comment about the big tech left being a happy joiner in conspiring to commit election fraud.

Which part of it is not believable?

We've got the US version of the CCP in big tech going to work overtime on press and speech control / suppression to intentionally try to throw an election in favor of their preferred candidate. Over the prior few years big tech more than hinted about what they were going to do. This could all be seen coming a zillion miles away.

The long-term outcome of their extraordinarily dumb choice is obvious and it will have immense, horrible consequences politically (the Republicans will do a lot of damage going to war over this in response).

There's a recent op-ed in the Washington Post saying that the Biden bought-and-paid-for scandal should be lied about and proclaimed to be a foreign intel operation regardless of whether it is or not. That side will do anything to get rid of Trump at this point. There is no length big tech won't go to, to assist and play their part. They're betting the downside risk is minimal and the upside is Biden wins and they'll face zero consequences (the FBI will immediately cease any interest in anything the Bidens have done, absolutely nothing will come of it, all evidence will be washed away forever - instead of eg the FBI following the money trail back to Joe Biden for his cut of the proceeds).

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#105

Post by throwawayay02 »

timoth3y wrote: post #96

Many are confusing "censorship" with "content moderation". The difference is very important. Censorship is when you are prevented from publishing on your own platform. Content moderation is when a platform owner choses what can be published on theirs. Twitter decided they did not want their platform used to spread what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda, but they in no way prevented the NY Po…

Twitter did not decide that in good faight. First, because they are used as a public platform, like it or not, and as such they are not expected to moderate anything. People follow or block what they want. And second, because they are biased in their censorship and are not forthcoming about it.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#106

Post by centimeter »

timoth3y wrote: post #96

Many are confusing "censorship" with "content moderation". The difference is very important. Censorship is when you are prevented from publishing on your own platform. Content moderation is when a platform owner choses what can be published on theirs. Twitter decided they did not want their platform used to spread what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda, but they in no way prevented the NY Po…

> censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security

There's no sane way to interpret twitter's actions as anything except censorship. The fact that they're legally entitled to commit this censorship doesn't make it something else.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#107

Post by googthrowaway42 »

timoth3y wrote: post #96

Many are confusing "censorship" with "content moderation". The difference is very important. Censorship is when you are prevented from publishing on your own platform. Content moderation is when a platform owner choses what can be published on theirs. Twitter decided they did not want their platform used to spread what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda, but they in no way prevented the NY Po…

Content moderation is a form of censorship. Censorship isn't always bad. You can look up the history of the term if you want (hint: it shares the same origin as the term "census").

A closely related phenomenon to the pathological applications of censorship is the abuse and redefinition of language for political purposes like what you're doing.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#108

Post by platz »

timoth3y wrote: post #96

Many are confusing "censorship" with "content moderation". The difference is very important. Censorship is when you are prevented from publishing on your own platform. Content moderation is when a platform owner choses what can be published on theirs. Twitter decided they did not want their platform used to spread what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda, but they in no way prevented the NY Po…

> what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda

was it?

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#110

Post by nkurz »

dang wrote: post #84
nwienert wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even my post trying to discuss suppression of suppression articles, just got suppressed! How suppressing :( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889835

Users flagged it. That's usually what happened. Probably in this case it's because metadrama threads like that are a dime-a-dozen and never lead anywhere new - they just become generic hodgepodges.

> Probably in this case it's because metadrama threads like that are a dime-a-dozen and never lead anywhere new

I think that's unlikely. While it would be great to know why users flag the stories that they flag (feature request?) in this case I'd wager heavily that it was flagged by people who feel the underlying story is false and unworthy of public discussion, and not out of concern that the discussion would be boring.

Separately, I'll note that this story was submitted yesterday, quickly got to 38 votes and 7 comments, and then was flagged off as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881000. I vouched for it, which brought it back briefly, but then it was killed again.

Oddly, that version doesn't appear when one clicks on 'past', or with search terms for "taibbi" or "suppression". Any idea why this might be? Are flag killed stories always omitted from searches?

Edit: This post discussing the flagging of this story is flagged as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889835. Should it be? It seems like it raises reasonable issues. Vouching for it did nothing.

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