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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

#351

Post by darkerside »

mshroyer wrote: post #331
hackyhacky wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not suppressing the article because it's wrong, but because it's pretty obviously intentionally planted misinformation disguised as news. Twitter has a choice: either they can suppress it; or they can be pawns of whatever bad actors are creating this disinformation. It's a hard choice, and clearly it's a struggle that as a society we have to deal with. Right now, creating and distributing disinformation is ea…

> because it's pretty obviously intentionally planted misinformation disguised as news "misinformation" implies it's false. What's the evidence for this? I'm as skeptical as anyone about the actual provenance of the information, but to my understanding, nobody in the Biden campaign has so far denied the material's legitimacy.

I think the question is, what is the information? The story seems like spaghetti, thrown at the wall to convey a sense of corruption, with no disprovable claims being made.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#352

Post by mshroyer »

darkerside wrote: post #351
mshroyer wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's pretty obviously intentionally planted misinformation disguised as news "misinformation" implies it's false. What's the evidence for this? I'm as skeptical as anyone about the actual provenance of the information, but to my understanding, nobody in the Biden campaign has so far denied the material's legitimacy.

I think the question is, what is the information? The story seems like spaghetti, thrown at the wall to convey a sense of corruption, with no disprovable claims being made.

I personally think the information is a big nothingburger. But that's quite a different thing from saying it's misinformation.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#353

Post by kkarakk »

diego_moita wrote: post #263

The only "scandal" here is that Russians and Republicans are once more trying to recreate the "leaked emails" hitjob that worked so well against Hilary Clinton. This is classic F.U.D.[1], just 2 weeks before election. If the media gives credibility for this kind of cheap hack, what morals do they have to criticize QAnon? If they want to have credibility then they should act responsibly. It is not censorship because i…

tbh the people who are gullible enough to believe this would believe anything. if it's not hunter biden, then it's creepy joe, if it's not creepy joe it's something else. the republican trump smear circus never ends.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#354

Post by darkerside »

reificator wrote: post #154
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will now normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and small Slippery slope is a falacy , just like "correlation proves causation", to pick one HN somehow likes. Was there any doubt of their technical ability to delete and otherwise change content on their network in every which way? No, of course not. Was there any doubt that it would be legal? None whatsoever... Nothing has changed, except one…

> Slippery slope is a falacy, just like "correlation proves causation", to pick one HN somehow likes. I've seen too many "if this happens then that will be next" come true to write every use off just because your 9th grade teacher said it was fallacious. For instance the U.S. legal system leans very heavily on the concept of "precedent". Slippery slopes are baked into the system. I don't think you can just pull out t…

It's a logical fallacy, meaning the statements don't logically follow. That doesn't mean there isn't a heavy implication, which there often is.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#355

Post by pseudo0 »

hackyhacky wrote: post #151
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…

They're not suppressing the article because it's wrong, but because it's pretty obviously intentionally planted misinformation disguised as news. Twitter has a choice: either they can suppress it; or they can be pawns of whatever bad actors are creating this disinformation. It's a hard choice, and clearly it's a struggle that as a society we have to deal with. Right now, creating and distributing disinformation is ea…

According to the FBI[0] and the DNI[1], there is no evidence indicating that Hunter Biden's laptop is misinformation. Given that some of the emails have been independently verified by their recipients who have made statements on the record[2], and Joe Biden's campaign still has not disputed the emails' authenticity, the vast majority of the evidence points towards this material being authentic.

The media and big tech companies crying "Russian misinformation!" when politically convenient is just going to further reduce trust in our institutions, and make the population more susceptible to real state-sponsored disinformation efforts.

[0] - https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fbi-tells-congress-it-ha...

[1] - https://news.yahoo.com/dni-ratcliffe-hunter-biden-emails-134...

[2] - https://nypost.com/2020/10/22/hunter-biz-partner-confirms-e-...

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#356

Post by ed25519FUUU »

rantwasp wrote: post #330
chmod600 wrote: post #323

Was anyone besides me surprised that huge payouts to your family creating massive conflicts of interest are normal? And even acceptable for someone running for office? In a private company, if you don't disclose such conflicts and recuse yourself from related decisions, you'd be fired immediately. (Though perhaps I'm wrong here if I was wrong about politicians.)

it depends. as a low level foot soldier definitely. the higher in rank you are the greater the odds that you can actually get away with it w/o being held accountable

Isn’t it usually the other way around? People at the top are all in it together, so they look after one another if just for self preservation. Instead they blame it on a rogue employee (or child).

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#357

Post by darkerside »

ben509 wrote: post #333
ketamine__ wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NY Post doesn't own the copyright to the photos it is publishing. Imagine if someone stole your laptop and published all your photos. I hope someone can step in and do to the Post what Peter Thiel did to Gawker.

Hunter Biden left his laptop at the repair shop and never paid for the repairs. After waiting the legally required 90 days, the repair shop became the rightful owner of the laptop and its contents. Once they owned those photos, they had every right to publish them or do whatever they wanted. The least the press could ask VP Biden would be, "will you pledge that your son will not be involved in any sensitive discussio…

The answer would be, of course, are you fucking crazy? And that would be the end of it.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#358

Post by nl »

joejohnson wrote: post #71
akvadrako wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have meaning in terms of "liberal media" vs "left media" though, at least how the poster you replied to was using the term. It doesn't do any good to introduce jargon to people who are unfamiliar with it without defining your terms.

There is absolutely a distinction between liberal media (the NY Times, MSNBC, etc) and left media (Jacobin, Democracy Now!, Current Affairs, etc) and this distinction is made by Taibbi. Your ignorance on the subject is not shared by everyone.

This distinction is neither as clear nor as absolute as you appear to believe.

Classical liberalism[1] is an economic stance somewhat similar to the economic views of libertarianism in the US. This is distinct from social liberalism which is what "liberal" commonly means in the US, which mostly overlaps with what could be called "progressive politics".

"Classical Liberalism" is confusing in the modern context, so it is rarely used execpt by people trying to confuse people (eg, right wing commentators who claim to be "classical liberals"). The biggest exception to this is the (right-wing, conservative) Liberal party in Australia, which was founded on the ideas of "Classical Liberalism"

There's also "liberal" in the "liberal democracy" sense. This is where multiple parties contend for power under known, written down rules.[2]

And then there is "left-[wing]". Left wing can refer to a social view, where it is used as a close-synonym for social liberalism or progressivism. Or it can refer to an economic view, which is much more context (and country) specific.

In the context of US politics the Democratic party is the most left-wing major party in both an economic and social sense.

In terms of media sources, the NY Times is definitely a proponent of "liberal democracy", but in a social and economic sense it is fairly centerist (despite the claims to the contrary by populist).

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

[2] https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/l/Libera...

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#359

Post by chmod600 »

rantwasp wrote: post #330
chmod600 wrote: post #323

Was anyone besides me surprised that huge payouts to your family creating massive conflicts of interest are normal? And even acceptable for someone running for office? In a private company, if you don't disclose such conflicts and recuse yourself from related decisions, you'd be fired immediately. (Though perhaps I'm wrong here if I was wrong about politicians.)

it depends. as a low level foot soldier definitely. the higher in rank you are the greater the odds that you can actually get away with it w/o being held accountable

With other politicians there was always a lot of smoke, some investigations that go nowhere, and then it's dropped without really finding a fire. That's traditionally what I thought "without being held accountable" meant.

Now, we see the fire in plain sight, and the media is saying it's all fine and normal. That's a new level of "without being held accountable".

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#360

Post by jakelazaroff »

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #348
jakelazaroff wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Advertisements posted by bots are not written by human beings acting in good faith in the pursuit of truth.

So if Twitter didn't believe that the New York Post article was written by people acting in "good faith in the pursuit of truth", it's okay to censor?

The intentions of the speaker and the value of their speech are subjective. It's fine to argue that we should be okay with censoring some thing you don't like. But at least acknowledge that you're not making an appeal to "the principle of freedom of speech" — you're just arguing for others to adopt your own boundaries of what's acceptable.

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