Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

taibbi.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 596 posts

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#181

Post by floatingatoll »

zests wrote: post #172
zachware wrote: post #138

I'm definitely not one closed off to this story, I think it's important. That said I think "we" tend to forget that platforms like Twitter are private companies, we don't really have a "right" to post anything to them. Now if the government had ordered this moderation, that's where the idea of rights and first amendment comes into play. If we're not happy about the moderation we don't have to use the moderating platf…

I do not think anyone is confused about whether or not the bill of rights applies to private companies. Free speech is an idea that can be extended to all types of speech.

Comments exist on many prior HN discussions of Twitter and Facebook that demonstrate confusion around whether the bill of rights applies to private companies or not.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#182

Post by Thorrez »

zachware wrote: post #138

I'm definitely not one closed off to this story, I think it's important. That said I think "we" tend to forget that platforms like Twitter are private companies, we don't really have a "right" to post anything to them. Now if the government had ordered this moderation, that's where the idea of rights and first amendment comes into play. If we're not happy about the moderation we don't have to use the moderating platf…

> we don't really have a "right" to post anything to them.

The article never talks about rights. The article is about journalistic failures.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#183

Post by kodah »

zachware wrote: post #138

I'm definitely not one closed off to this story, I think it's important. That said I think "we" tend to forget that platforms like Twitter are private companies, we don't really have a "right" to post anything to them. Now if the government had ordered this moderation, that's where the idea of rights and first amendment comes into play. If we're not happy about the moderation we don't have to use the moderating platf…

The problem here is something new, as Matt points out.

Law enforcement, tech companies, and the news media are operating under on some type of cooperating agreement which is not transparent to users or the creators of content. In normal human society you know the binds that bond, this is a reasonable expectation, and an expectation that even been challenged in the law. As the law infinitely expands, who am I (as a commoner) to know what I did wrong? Do I have the opportunity to change? Do I have the opportunity to face my accusers in a forum?

Our rights, and the framework they reside in, are far too outdated for this sort of problem. The leaders we have in both business and government are too cowardly, weak, or self-interested to directly address the McCarthy-esque patterns that are beginning to emerge that seem to be opportunistically aligned to further narratives.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#184

Post by salawat »

cortesoft wrote: post #136
TeMPOraL wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this would make censorship a form of free speech. We've reach a contradiction, so there must be an error in the chain of reasoning. My money is on "content moderation is a form of free speech" being wrong.

My money is on content moderation being censorship. If content moderation is censorship, then you are arguing that if I ask you to say something out loud and you don't say it, you are censoring me.

No. You are censoring the other by attempting to compel their speech. Their speech is no longer free.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#185

Post by [deleted] »

23B1 wrote: post #175
mmsmatt wrote: post #152

This has got to be Taibbi click-baiting pro-Trump subscribers. He buries his admission that Trump's Biden/Burisma narrative is a lie so deep in the piece, you really have to trudge through a lot of hand-wringing drivel to find it. You can read 90% of this piece thinking that Taibbi is clearly sympathetic to the Republican narrative, and he gives no indication otherwise!

I read the whole article, though.

[deleted]

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#186

Post by kodah »

mmsmatt wrote: post #152

This has got to be Taibbi click-baiting pro-Trump subscribers. He buries his admission that Trump's Biden/Burisma narrative is a lie so deep in the piece, you really have to trudge through a lot of hand-wringing drivel to find it. You can read 90% of this piece thinking that Taibbi is clearly sympathetic to the Republican narrative, and he gives no indication otherwise!

I didn't get that vibe at all. To me Taibbi sounds like someone like me: a resident of the Democratic party who is willing to criticize the ends as well as the means of both parties. This sort of conviction is not looked upon very highly by our "free" society.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#187

Post by googthrowaway42 »

hackyhacky wrote: post #179
googthrowaway42 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting this idea that 3 laptops were dropped off to this repair company? There was one laptop. The repair shop is in Delaware, where Joe Biden was a senator for many decades and where the Bidens have held various political positions for many decades. I suspect that you really don't understand the story that well. That is understandable considering the insane amount of gaslighting, misinformation, and c…

My apologies: one laptop, three hard drives. My point stands. He had been a senator in Delaware, but no longer lived there at the time. Why would he travel across the country to visit a repair shop in the middle of nowhere with a conveniently blind owner and conveniently erased camera footage. There is no universe in which this story is plausible. Before accusing me of not understanding the story, please take a momen…

They made copies of the hard drive in the laptop? As a software engineer I can assure you that that it is very easy to make copies of a hard drive and I expect that a computer repair guy would know how.

> He had been a senator in Delaware, but no longer lived there at the time.

The Bidens have multiple houses in Delaware. There are many pictures leaked from Hunter's laptop that have Delaware in the geocode. If you want to be weird about it you can go look up the Biden family's social media accounts (still up) and see pictures of them at their houses in Delaware.

It really sounds like you just don't want to believe this. Very cult like behavior.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#188

Post by hackyhacky »

kodah wrote: post #183
zachware wrote: post #138

I'm definitely not one closed off to this story, I think it's important. That said I think "we" tend to forget that platforms like Twitter are private companies, we don't really have a "right" to post anything to them. Now if the government had ordered this moderation, that's where the idea of rights and first amendment comes into play. If we're not happy about the moderation we don't have to use the moderating platf…

The problem here is something new, as Matt points out. Law enforcement, tech companies, and the news media are operating under on some type of cooperating agreement which is not transparent to users or the creators of content. In normal human society you know the binds that bond, this is a reasonable expectation, and an expectation that even been challenged in the law. As the law infinitely expands, who am I (as a co…

If your point is that the originators of the Biden story are shocked and confused that it's being suppressed in an opaque tech cooperating agreement, they shouldn't be: the story is being suppressed because it's at best illegally obtained data, and at worst deliberately falsified; and in either case, it's now being used by bad actors in an attempt to manipulate the results of the election. There's no mystery here: Twitter is being very clear about why this story is blocked.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#189

Post by chroem- »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #173
chroem- wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now if the government had ordered this moderation, that's where the idea of rights and first amendment comes into play. That may be the latest popular interpretation of the bill of rights, but it is absolutely not in the original spirit of its authors. They were defined as "inalienable rights" granted to all people. In other words, your essential human rights to free expression don't get waived depending on who the…

There is no “offending party”. Freedom of speech means speech cannot be compulsory. What would be contrary to the “original spirit” would be forcing Twitter and Facebook to amplify speech they don’t want to.

Your implication is that Twitter and Facebook are human beings, and I think a majority of people would contest that idea.

What I am saying is that the authors of the bill of rights did not intend for a person's human rights to go away the moment they are persecuted by an entity other than the United States federal government.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#190

Post by darkerside »

beaner wrote: post #97
darkerside wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but you must not be familiar with the Post. It's a sensationalist tabloid. The reason they don't publish retractions is NOT because of the airtight integrity of their reporting.

Your comment contains no information about the veracity of the content in question. It's a straight-up ad hominem.

Correct, it is ad hominem, which is appropriate in a discussion about the respectability of a journalist institution, which this is.
Post reply on HN