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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

#411

Post by strangattractor »

A blind computer repair person just happens to get Hunter Biden's computer. He conveniently cannot ID the person but is able to search emails. Bill Barr with the resources of the US government seems unable to provide clear evidence of Joe Biden's breaking the law. Sound's plausible to me.

Freedom of speech is not Freedom to lie. The Constitution only states that Congress shall pass no law prohibiting free speech. Corporations can legally choose what is made available on there site. Fox News does it daily. Nobody seems upset about that.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#412

Post by vkou »

RhysU wrote: post #252
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…

> But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. Those private entities can censor in excess of the government. They are scarier.

All that a private entity can do is toss you off their platform.

If every single private website threw you, and your views off the internet tomorrow, you'd return to the age of tyranny and darkness... That ~every human being on earth lived in prior to ~1995. The horror!

In contrast, your government can kill or imprison you, if you say something it doesn't like - but for some strange reason, nerd culture spills gallons of ink on the thesis that private censorship is scarier.

This is a serious case of misplaced priorities.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#413

Post by unishark »

beagle3 wrote: post #244
yenwodyah wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at the same time, private companies cannot force you to use their services, or threaten you with violence or imprisonment if you refuse to follow their rules.

This is getting blurry as well, and though you are technically correct, one might have to sue or suffer damages for not following their rules: My children’s schools requires the use of Microsoft Teams From home (and associated TOS) for them to attend class. There is also a parent WhatsApp group for urgent messages to parents. And as of the pandemic, there is also mandatory Zoom classes. This is a public school. If I…

The millions of people locked up in prison would see it as more than a technicality. Personally I'm much more nervous about screwing up some details in following the govt's rules versus a private company.

Getting banned by Google/Facebook and losing all your data in the cloud is just the modern equivalent of losing everything when your hard drive dies. The way to mitigate this danger is the same.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#415

Post by Synaesthesia »

hackyhacky wrote: post #211
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 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…

They're unaccountable and significant centers of power (unaccountable to the public), yes maybe not with the power of the government, but approaching it. Is that the kind of rule we want?

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#416

Post by barumi »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #415
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…

They're unaccountable and significant centers of power (unaccountable to the public), yes maybe not with the power of the government, but approaching it. Is that the kind of rule we want?

> Is that the kind of rule we want?

It's the kind of rule you have since, well, ever.

Does anyone expect to force a private publisher such as the NY Post or even NY Times to publish content against the will of their editorial board just because you see fit?

This issue has absolutely zero to do with censorship. A random publisher not posting something is not censorship. It's literally the editorial board's job to decide which gets published and which is left out. Not posting false or deceitful information forced upon by third parties is also not censorship. Just because you have a personal view that is not aligned with an editorial board's mission statement that doesn't mean the editorial board is engaged in censorship.

This topic seems to boil down to some people wanting the benefits of abusing a publisher's reputation and readership to force-feed their own personal opinion on the public. Not being able to perform that kind of abuse is not censorship.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#417

Post by bzbarsky »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #255

If Twitter must publish all posts then doesn't it mean that New York Post must also publish all the letters that are sent to its "From the Readers" -page (assuming there is such)? Twitter is like a newspaper whose content comes only from its readers. It does not mean it has to publish everything. It does have a moral prerogative to not spread misinformation. Misinformation hurts the public. Twitter must make the deci…

Note that there is a difference between "publish all posts" and "deliver direct messages", and Twitter is blocking the latter as well, as far as I can tell.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#418

Post by barumi »

pseudo0 wrote: post #355
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…

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…

> According to the FBI[0] and the DNI[1], there is no evidence indicating that Hunter Biden's laptop is misinformation.

You're just saying that a misinformation campaign aiming at manipulating the US elections quite possibly according to the whims of a totalitarian regime that aims at undermining the US from the top might not have resorted to use totally false and made-up information.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#419

Post by barumi »

pseudo0 wrote: post #408
tt433 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's a false equivalency in the first place to put Hunter in some special bad place while the First Children reap the rewards of nepotism themselves. Misinformation doesn't need to be foreign, just good enough swill to distract some people from the important abuses of power.

Is anyone putting Hunter in some special bad place? We've had four years of virtually every newspaper in the country covering Trump's family, personal life, business dealings, taxes, etc. in exhaustive detail. I think everyone agrees that nepotism and misinformation are bad, so surely journalists should critically examine all allegations of misconduct, even when it affects their preferred candidate?

> We've had four years of virtually every newspaper in the country covering Trump's family, personal life, business dealings, taxes, etc. in exhaustive detail.

They've been covered by being members of Trump's executive body, not because their family ties.

Hell, you're talking about people who are features in Trump's reelection propaganda.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#420

Post by rayiner »

comex wrote: post #382
rayiner wrote: post #320

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. This would be a more credible assertion if the media hasn’t spent 3 years reporting totally random shit as “bombshells.” Taibbi, himself a left-leaning journalist (formerly at Rolling Stone) has catalogued these at length on his substack. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the…

> Taibbi, himself a left-leaning journalist (formerly at Rolling Stone) Yes, he's the type of 'left-leaning' person who described a book about white privilege as "Hitlerian race theory" and wokeness as "mak[ing] the Junior Anti-Sex League seem like Led Zeppelin" [2], and also described not only what you (and he) call 'Russiagate', but the Ukraine incident as well, as a "permanent coup" [3] where Democrats' conduct wa…

I didn’t post the WaPo link because it’s pay-walled. I’m not endorsing the Mercury News article. But the whole “obstruction” debate was really proof of how sideways the media coverage had gone. Obstruction without something else is a pretty bullshit charge: https://reason.com/2019/04/19/in-defense-of-trump-obstructin.... We were promised he was a Russian asset, and when that evaporated we had an excruciating technical debate about Mueller’s assumptions about whether he could indict for obstruction.

As to “White Fragility”—Taibbi’s language is colorful, but that book isn’t mainstream left: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizi.... (Podcast version: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-great-awokening/id....) Whereas Kendi’s “How to Be an Anti-Racist” is a book about public policy written in familiar liberal public policy language, “White Fragility” is a bizarre self-help book for white people who read Kendi’s book and didn’t understand it.

Also, while "Hitlerian race theory" is an appropriate description for someone who says white people should "strive to be less white." Picturing someone telling my half-white daughter that makes me think that Taibbi's description is on the nose.

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