Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story • Hacker News Board

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#341

Post by skinkestek » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:02 AM UTC

crocodiletears wrote: post #240

hackyhacky wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that it's out of "political expedience" that sites are blocking links to probable foreign disinformation? Or is it out of a moral interest in not being pawns of the bad actors who stand behind it? This kind of disinformation is dangerous, and we are vulnerable to it precisely because we value freedom of speech. That doesn't mean that we're morally obligated to value all speech equally. Obviously f…

Journalists and commentators are the ones acting out of political expediency. The platforms themselves are a mixed bag, occasionaly banning content that represents legitimate disinformation, but often suppressing information that's contextually true, or conflicts with an existing broader social narrative which the moderator required to inspect the content has bought into. The human moderators are often inconsistent.…

> that a Chinese billionaire had slipped Juliani a hard drive containing information that might be incriminating to Biden's

Questions: why would the Chinese do that? Or do you mean a Chinese billionaire did it without the involvement of the government? Or do you think their recommendation of Biden is a calculated move to get people to vote for Trump?

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#342

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

The actual story is the election of a monstrous moron to a post where his actions can materially negatively effect the future survival of civilization as we know it.

His reelection would be likely to be the end of democracy as we know it as he corrupts the entire apparatus of government on which undoing the damage he has done depends.

Unable to win fairly we have seen unprecedented voter suppression and an entirely expected smear campaign.

Faced with a situation where this smear campaign endangers our nation and its people fighting it isn't scandalous it is noble.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#343

Post by darkerside » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

beaner wrote: post #201

darkerside wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a clever shift from discussing the respectability of the reporting at hand, to discussing the respectability of the reporting institution. Your claim that a failure to issue retractions is an admission of failure in accountability is true - when the reporting needs retractions. So far, there's no evidence that the reporting does.

> The NYPost has issued much fewer retractions than NYT and CNN, yet, Twitter does not attack those institutions.

Yes, I claim the reason is a lack of accountability. You claim the reason is impeccability of reporting. I think the reputation and style of reporting is relevant to deciding which of those factors is more relevant. You're free to disagree with that.

But please don't call it a clever shift. I'm having your conversation here.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#344

Post by darkerside » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

rootsudo wrote: post #24

darkerside wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A sign of respect, but the NYpost was never given that option and immediately went into suppression, and it did not turn out to be false information. Meanwhile, CNN and NYTIMES post content and retract it in higher amounts, and they never were surpressed, locked out of their account or even had twitter force to fix "itself" by now agreeing that they'd "wouldn't" remove content but now just "flag it." That, is not res…

What exactly is the information that was reported? Is there an actual claim in here, or is it just an information dump, so that someone can point to it and say, "just look at all the corruption" without actually making any disprovable claims?

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#345

Post by timoth3y » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #107

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.

> Content moderation is a form of censorship.

It's really not. Not legally or in the common use of the word.

If I kick an abusive troll off my message board that is moderation. If a judge orders someone not to use a computer for two years, that is censorship.

To conflate the two is to make the term "censorship" almost meaningless. Platforms all over the web filter spam, pornography, abusive behavior, off-topic posts, etc all the time. It's not censorship.

Similarly, if Twitter was legally forbidden from marking tweets with their fact-checking tags, that would be censorship.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#346

Post by nl » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #226

hackyhacky wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect Swartz a lot, and he makes many good points. But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, about an article that was published and is freely, legally available online to anyone with a web browser. You can disagree with Twitter's editorial choices, but…

The lines get blurry when there is a revolving door between Silicon Valley tech companies and DC. Recent example from the banning of Bret Weinstein from Facebook: https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1319451084859953154?... This is a Facebook communications person responding with an official reply to this incident. She describes herself as "Facebook comms, formerly @TheDemocrats and @SpeakerPelosi". This is an exa…

And Joel Kaplan, head of Facebook Public Policy was one of the people involved in the "Brooks Brother Riot"[1] that shutdown the recount of the 2000 election and took over from Karl Rove in the GW Bush Whitehouse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#347

Post by harpiaharpyja » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:09 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #342

The actual story is the election of a monstrous moron to a post where his actions can materially negatively effect the future survival of civilization as we know it. His reelection would be likely to be the end of democracy as we know it as he corrupts the entire apparatus of government on which undoing the damage he has done depends. Unable to win fairly we have seen unprecedented voter suppression and an entirely e…

Right, so you scapegoat your opponents so everything evil becomes justifiable.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#348

Post by googthrowaway42 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #316

abnry wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the one is an obvious expression of carnal desires and greed while the other is at least ostensibly about ideology and truth.

The whole point of “freedom of speech” is that there should be no value judgment that determines whether or not something is acceptable to say.

To accept the legitimacy of the principle of freedom of speech is to make a value judgement. If you want some pure criteria you can use to make content moderation decisions, then the purest criteria is no content moderation at all.

You can remove obvious spam (e.g. viagra advertisements posted by bots) and still adhere to principles of free speech. Advertisements posted by bots are not written by human beings acting in good faith in the pursuit of truth. And I mean that very broadly. Even trolling can be done in good faith.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#349

Post by hackyhacky » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

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.

If you're going to obstinately insist that the NY Post is serious journalism, just because they happen to publish an unfounded accusation that you happen to like, maybe you should investigate the history of the publication.

Wikipedia [1] for example cites several sources critical of the paper's veracity. Here [2]'s an article citing employees of the NY Post complaining about the flimsiness of the reporting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/new-york-post-inside...

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#350

Post by 0x262d » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #243

mrfusion wrote: post #191

> Both the government and private companies can censor stuff. But private companies are a little bit scarier. They have no constitution to answer to. They’re not elected. They have no constituents or voters. All of the protections we’ve built up to protect against government tyranny don’t exist for corporate tyranny. - Aaron Swartz

I guess. It’s pretty obvious who the Post answers to. Companies ultimately have shareholders and customers they are accountable to. Even fairly awful companies like Facebook have to meet some minimal standard of conduct to keep advertisers on the platform.

unfortunately what those shareholders want is the highest possible overall profit extraction from the areas they operate at any cost, which is anti-social and bad.