Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#631

Post by munk-a » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

sam_goody wrote: post #536

munk-a wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "common person" is honestly pretty depressing. The common person primarily votes based solely on a historical allegiance to a political party (be it individually formed or inherited) with about 75% of America essentially being unmovable D or R safe votes. Censorship is a hard question and I think we do need to have better laws promoting free access to material (even "libelous" material) but this is also an area w…

RealClearPolitics makes a point of presenting articles on both sides of the spectrum and has grown tremendously. I am cautiously optimistic that there are a lot, lot, lot of people (like myself) that are interested in trying to balance their views, and make a point of reading both sides - especially when a headline is sensational. I don't think Google news is as balanced as RCP, but it sure beats just reading CNN or…

I think RealClearPolitics is a great example of solid reporting - I avoided it (along with the intercept and 538 which is weirdly now sort of a news site) in the example above since I'm not certain how sustainable they are in the long run - they may exist because the internet being here means some pretty nice balanced news sources are eventually bound to appear... but corporations have a way of eating media sources that don't say nice things about them. I do really hope that RCP and a lot of the other independent media (even the highly left-slanted ones like TYT) manage to survive and thrive - but I think aggregated news is a thing that has value and I think that maybe highly opinionated commentary of news (like you'd see on twitter/facebook) also has value since it allows for more room for advocacy of ideas.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#632

Post by ZeteticElench » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

secondcoming wrote: post #533

ZeteticElench wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Paul "Mac" Isaac is not even remotely trustworthy and nothing about the story is plausible. According to a Daily Beast interview, Isaac “switched back and forth” between saying that he contacted the FBI and saying the FBI contacted him. He also claimed that the FBI asked him for help in accessing the drive, though he didn’t indicate that the drive was encrypted or protected in any way. There’s are several huge m…

He got to keep the laptop when Biden never returned to collect it (didn't pay for the work done). He found fishy stuff on it and turned it over to the FBI not after making copies of the hard drives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYzCwiURwwQ

I thought people on hacker news would be smarter.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#633

Post by h0l0cube » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #527

quacked wrote: post #6

The Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven, but more and more often, it seems that they release primary sources of information (especially videos) much earlier than other news outlets will, if the other news outlets do so at all. There have been multiple times when I've seen an insane video of something happening spreading around Twitter or WorldStar or some other "raw video" agg…

Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven It doesn't matter. This strawman is presented every time this topic comes up. It's not about the quality of the Post's journalism. It's about whether Twitter should restrict it. I've been reading the Post off and on for the last 40 years, and you are correct that it is a rag. But it is a newspaper. A newspaper with a better reputation for re…

>> Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven

> It doesn't matter. This strawman is presented every time this topic comes up.

I can't ignore the irony here that you complain about straw-manning of the OP by cherry-picking the only negative comment in spite of the 99% of commentary in favor.

Edit: I also can't ignore that the plaint of pervasive "echo chamber hyperbole" is juxtaposed with statements like these:

> This strawman is presented every time this topic comes up.

> This is literacy 101.

> 99.9% of the Post criticism I see on HN is from people who have never lived in New York. Never actually read the Post, or any other newspaper.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#634

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

dionian wrote: post #627

Spooky23 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Post was the newspaper with the good sports page and sport betting odds when I was growing up. The paper version pretty much is just that today. Online, it’s a different spin looking for a similar audience. Instead of cranky Jets fans, it’s targeting blue collar conservatives. The quality is much lower imo — they run native content that looks like Taboola.

So? I don't want Twitter deciding what I can and can't read.

Fortunately, Twitter hasn’t taken down www.nypost.com.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#635

Post by NeverFade » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

millstone wrote: post #626

NeverFade wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NYP would have showed how they verified the information then twitter would have let them spread the info. Did Twitter or Facebook ever ask The Atlantic to "show them how they verified the information" about Trump calling war heroes "losers" and "suckers"? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-a... That story was based on 100% anonymous sourced. Unverified, unverifiable by definition. People who…

Journalists have an obligation to protect their sources, which prevents many stories from being independently verified. However they can be verified by other news outlets, who have their own sources. The "losers and suckers" story was independently verified by NYT, WaPo, and AP. But the NYPost has not been verified by anyone, nor they did seek verification, nor did they even ask Biden for comment, because they know t…

The NYP story was blocked by Twitter and Facebook immediately upon publication. Why wasn't the "losers and suckers" story likewise blocked until it was verified?

Both stories had no external verification upon publication. One was blocked immediately. The other never was.

> The "losers and suckers" story was independently verified by NYT, WaPo, and AP.

One can't "independently" verify a story based purely on anonymous sources. Can you link these alleged verifications?

> But the NYPost has not been verified by anyone, nor they did seek verification, nor did they even ask Biden for comment, because they know the story is bullshit.

Not true. The NYP story cited sources, and these sources have seen been verified, for example by the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

Your comment that they never asked Biden to comment is likewise untrue. This would be plainly ridiculous: all we'd need to know if a story is true is to see if they asked for a comment from the subject. In fact, plenty of untrue stories ask for these comments. Why wouldn't they? Do they want to make it obvious they are false?

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#636

Post by ethanwillis » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

hotpockets wrote: post #613

ethanwillis wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're downvoted because it wasn't hacked information.

My point is that that is not the reason for the account suspension. Twitter's policy is very clear and equally enforced! Here is a short video from a reporter that got a suspension for posting private info in a news article, and had to delete the post before getting unsuspended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loylqtvKAbU It would seem to make this case very clear. Right?

A who with 800 views versus the new york times. It's really not as clear as you want it to be. Now, at the same time I think the NYT should be able to publish this.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1310336685574680578?lang=...

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#637

Post by ericb » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

NeverFade wrote: post #614

ericb wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By contrast, the NYP actually did explain how they got the emails: from a laptop dropped off and signed for by Hunter Biden himself at a PC repair shop. Yes, from a man who happens to be legally blind and can't verify who dropped it off. What are the priors on that? Turning up a week before the election? The was supposed to be a professional servicing a machine, he violated his clients privacy for his own purposes,…

> Yes, from a man who happens to be legally blind and can't verify who dropped it off. Still more verifiable sources than the Atlantic and NYT stories, which were based on zero verifiable sources. > Turning up a week before the election? The Atlantic and NYT stories were also published very recently, also a few weeks before the election. > The was supposed to be a professional servicing a machine, he violated his cli…

I mean, on the face of it, Trump's taxes leaking seems likely, almost inevitable, and surprising it hadn't happened sooner. He has no shortage of people who have seen his taxes, and no shortage of disgruntled folks. Whereas a conveniently placed laptop just left somewhere with incriminating emails seems to test credulity. The laptop seems like a foreign psyop, the taxes seems like something everyone thought inevitable, and that he told us he was going to do himself.

There's a reason that sources remain anonymous, and I'm not sure I see an equivalency here. Look at what happened to Lt. Colonel Vindman. It seems like having a standard of "you must lose your livelihood to alert the world to something" might be a good way to keep all sorts of secrets bottled up, to everyone's detriment.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#638

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

core-questions wrote: post #610

heavyset_go wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even being accepted by the Republican Party as simply the law of the land and not a subject for discussion any more This is the GOP party platform for 2016 & 2020: > Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in this platform…

> This is the GOP party platform for 2016 & 2020: Surely you understand the difference between things written in a policy platform and things actually done in practice. There is no GOP rep who is out there stirring anything up on reversing this and despite the words "urging its reversal" there is not and will likely not ever be any action in this direction. I can't really imagine someone following American politics f…

I once heard some good advice that I'm going to repeat: when someone tells you who they are, you should listen. The GOP is telling us who they are with their party platform.

Anyway, I hear what you're saying a lot, and yet:

- The GOP enables Texas social workers to refuse LGBTQ clients[1]

- The Trump administration allows doctors to discriminate against LGBTQ people[2]

- The Trump administration allows taxpayer-funded adoption agencies to turn away LGBTQ parents[3][4]

- The Trump administration targets homeless trans people[5]

But most importantly, and directly to your point:

- In October of this year, conservative Supreme Court justices chose to speak out against Obergefell[6] at length, for four whole pages, while deciding not to hear another case[7]

[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/14/texas-social-workers...

[2] https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/24/21234532/trump-admi...

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trump-admin-s-adopti...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avgFhrHqBWM

[5] https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/7/2/21311179/trump-hud-r...

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/us/politics/thomas-alito-...

[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-c...

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#639

Post by hotpockets » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

ethanwillis wrote: post #636

hotpockets wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that that is not the reason for the account suspension. Twitter's policy is very clear and equally enforced! Here is a short video from a reporter that got a suspension for posting private info in a news article, and had to delete the post before getting unsuspended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loylqtvKAbU It would seem to make this case very clear. Right?

A who with 800 views versus the new york times. It's really not as clear as you want it to be. Now, at the same time I think the NYT should be able to publish this. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1310336685574680578?lang=...

The amount of someone's taxes isn't listed in Twitter's privacy policy. Whereas, phone numbers and email addresses are explicityly listed. The policy also makes clear its most important logic:

"Our primary aim is to protect individuals from coming to physical harm as a result of their information being shared ..."

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#640

Post by TheBigSalad » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 2:11 AM UTC

koolba wrote: post #346

mantap wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that fake news websites (websites that intentionally post falsehoods to drive traffic) should be allowed to post on social media with impunity? How is that workable? Many people cannot distinguish fake news from legitimate sources of information. Increasing noise (disinformation) is just as damaging to free speech as decreasing the signal (censorship).

> Do you think that fake news websites (websites that intentionally post falsehoods to drive traffic) should be allowed to post on social media with impunity? Unless it's directly inciting violence, yes. > How is that workable? Many people cannot distinguish fake news from legitimate sources of information. The track record of restricting information from people because you feel like you're smarter than they are is n…

I feel like freedom of speech is about opinions and freedom to criticize. Not freedom to poison society with fake information passed off as real. Why would our founding fathers... Or anyone, want that?