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

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#581

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

nearbuy wrote: post #474

bgentry wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the content of the leaks was fake, which we have no evidence to indicate and none of the key actors have really claimed (as opposed to the story about how they were obtained), it would still be legal to publish it because the public officials involved mean it has a clear public interest. There’s the possibility of civil damages if it amounts to defamation, but that’s quite a standard to reach. Such damages wo…

> the public officials involved mean it has a clear public interest. It's clear only to you. You cannot normally legally publish hacked or stolen photos of celebrities. The personal, intimate, or family photos of Hunter Biden almost certainly do not meet the bar for public interest. Twitter is not liable here. But as a private company they're allowed to have a policy against linking to hacked or stolen material on th…

> It's clear only to you.

Really? Who would be the judge of that? The suppression itself is hard evidence to the contrary.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#582

Post by beagle3 » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

unishark wrote: post #578

beagle3 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s an account that’s not tied to anything important, sure; But if it’s tied to a bank account, credit card, utility bill etc, it’s often not as easy to “just make a new account”. You’ll likely need to fax a copy of your id to a fraud department who’ll take their time. A friend of mine has been unable to convince a credit agency to reset their password as they are out of the country and cannot fulfill the request…

Fair enough, extend the "call them" category to also mean signatures occasionally required by mail. I have had to do that, say with certain rarely-used financial situations. Though not banks, who are very accommodating in my experience (even the notoriously evil ones). First class mail is working internationally, by the way, to almost every country. Unless they're in Yemen or something perhaps. Keep in mind we were c…

Said credit agency has sent a physical notice (by first class mail) to the address they have listed, except it is out of date. It's an authentication catch-22, which is easily solvable for anyone inside the country (and would have been easily solvable for that person in their normal course of life without corona). Not yet kafka level, but the it does bring his name to mind.

And, yes, a government agency would cause the same issues. The thing is, government is (supposedly) accountable to the people, but GoogFaceSoft is accountable to their shareholders. The incentives do not align -- but many of the powers (and abuses of power) do.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#583

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 10:39 AM UTC

davvolun wrote: post #527

thu2111 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are alarmed by these moves because they represent a wider trend in which the left increasingly does not recognise the right as politically legitimate, i.e. they do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist. Tech firm activist censorship is merely one visible (or not so visible) aspect of this. But it's not the only aspect. The very same sorts of people with the very same views are also in government…

> People are alarmed by these moves because they represent a wider trend in which the left increasingly does not recognise the right as politically legitimate, i.e. they do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist. Those two things aren't remotely the same. The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question when they participate in direct voter suppression, gerrymandering, continually lose popular…

I think you need to re-read your own post.

you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist."

You literally start by saying:

The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question

Perhaps you're using an odd definition of legitimate, but generally for a political movement to be recognised as legitimate means it is allowed to take part in the political process, to be supported by people without suppression and so on. Terrorist groups are not politically legitimate, political parties with voters are. It gets tricky in the unusual cases where political parties and terror groups become closely related, as was seen with Sinn Fein and the IRA.

You yourself are now arguing that maybe the right isn't legitimate because of a bog-standard list of leftist talking points, none of which are obvious or uncontroversial, for example what you call "voter suppression" is more obviously interpreted as enforcing existing laws that define who can vote; calling this "suppression" implies that no such laws do or should exist. But nobody is arguing that, are they?

But you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist."

This thread is literally about Twitter shutting down a conservative newspaper that has reported news relevant to an election in which conservatives are competing. The NY Post and the story it reported no longer exists on Twitter. How much clearer a piece of evidence do you want?

And again - hold a mirror up and look at the reflection. Your post ends by saying that I should not be given "equal footing in debate" i.e. that people with those views should be (debate-wise) wiped out, not allowed to exist at all. You are the embodiment of what I'm talking about.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#584

Post by davvolun » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #583

davvolun wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are alarmed by these moves because they represent a wider trend in which the left increasingly does not recognise the right as politically legitimate, i.e. they do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist. Those two things aren't remotely the same. The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question when they participate in direct voter suppression, gerrymandering, continually lose popular…

I think you need to re-read your own post. you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist." You literally start by saying: The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question Perhaps you're using an odd definition of legitimate, but generally for a political movement to be recognised as legitimate means it is allowed to take part in the po…

"not allowed to exist at all" doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. Nothing you have said bears any more discussion.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#585

Post by darkerside » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

beaner wrote: post #575

darkerside wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 you…

You're really not. How can you call the lack of a retraction a lack of accountability, when there is no evidence that a retraction is necessary?

I'm the absence of a specific story, we are estimating based on our assumptions about how many retractions your "average" paper would make. Knowing what I do about incentives, any paper without rigorous principles of going to tend to issue fewer retractions. It's time consuming, doesn't drive revenue, personally embarrassing for people. It actually takes a lot of journalistic integrity to issue any retractions at all (how many have you personally published to a large audience?).

It's fairly clear to me that the burden of proof lies with the extraordinary claim that the NY Post is even close to the level of journalistic rigor as the NY Times, let alone so far surpasses it that they issue fewer retractions because of the accuracy of their reporting.

You're asking me to prove water is wet. You're showing me a dog in a trench coat and telling me it's an accomplished neurosurgeon. Have you ever even read the Post or the Times? Have you lived in NY, and are familiar with either publication? I'm pretty sure I'm done arguing because you've presented nothing of substance on your side, besides the claim that I have not provided logical evidence, which is correct, but I reject that burden. Feel free to offer any information of value you might have.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#586

Post by CapricornNoble » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

davvolun wrote: post #555

CapricornNoble wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>But you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist." At least one very recent example: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/12/keith-olber...

Keith Olbermann, currently hosting on the mainstream news channel of YouTube (/s) after being evicted from actual mainstream news, is the opposite of strong evidence. Further: > "The hate he has triggered, the Pandora’s box he has opened, they will not be so easily destroyed,” he said. “So, let us brace ourselves. The task is twofold: the terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ba…

His YT channel is small....but he has ~1M Twitter followers. Put in context, that's 2x the followers of TYT's Cenk Uygur, 4x as many as Jimmy Diore, and just a few hundred k short of Steven Crowder. That is not indicative of a "marginalized" voice IMO, and your only defense of his position boils down to "Hey he's not advocating for genocide, just mass incarceration of our political opponents." That strikes me as a tone-deaf position to take on a social media site where hand-wringing over the fate of the Uighurs in China is so en vogue...

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#587

Post by davvolun » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

CapricornNoble wrote: post #586

davvolun wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keith Olbermann, currently hosting on the mainstream news channel of YouTube (/s) after being evicted from actual mainstream news, is the opposite of strong evidence. Further: > "The hate he has triggered, the Pandora’s box he has opened, they will not be so easily destroyed,” he said. “So, let us brace ourselves. The task is twofold: the terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ba…

His YT channel is small....but he has ~1M Twitter followers. Put in context, that's 2x the followers of TYT's Cenk Uygur, 4x as many as Jimmy Diore, and just a few hundred k short of Steven Crowder. That is not indicative of a "marginalized" voice IMO, and your only defense of his position boils down to "Hey he's not advocating for genocide, just mass incarceration of our political opponents." That strikes me as a to…

Unless you have better evidence than Keith Olbermann to back your statement, I think we're done here. I'm not going to go back and forth about Twitter followers as a valid metric for gauging public opinion on genocide...

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#588

Post by thu2111 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 12:26 PM UTC

davvolun wrote: post #584

thu2111 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to re-read your own post. you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist." You literally start by saying: The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question Perhaps you're using an odd definition of legitimate, but generally for a political movement to be recognised as legitimate means it is allowed to take part in the po…

"not allowed to exist at all" doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. Nothing you have said bears any more discussion.

It's the other way around.

By "not allowed to exist" I don't mean literally executed in a mass genocide of half the voting population. Using such an interpretation is very bad faith, assuming that's what you're getting at.

I mean not allowed to be visible, to play any part in the public sphere, not allowed to "exist" in the sense of mattering to the structures of power in a country. Being forced to be invisible, forgotten, erased from the written and spoken record. And with that far more rational interpretation you can hopefully see that your views definitely qualify.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#589

Post by davvolun » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #588

davvolun wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not allowed to exist at all" doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. Nothing you have said bears any more discussion.

It's the other way around. By "not allowed to exist" I don't mean literally executed in a mass genocide of half the voting population. Using such an interpretation is very bad faith, assuming that's what you're getting at. I mean not allowed to be visible, to play any part in the public sphere, not allowed to "exist" in the sense of mattering to the structures of power in a country. Being forced to be invisible, forg…

I'm not going to go back and forth with a "yes, it is" "no, it isn't" exchange with you, but "not allowed to exist" is VERY clearly different from "not allowed to be visible" -- the thing that you specifically wrote to clarify what you meant.

Using the interpretation of THE THING YOU ACTUALLY WROTE is not "very bad faith" -- IT'S THE THING YOU ACTUALLY WROTE.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#590

Post by beaner » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #585

beaner wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're really not. How can you call the lack of a retraction a lack of accountability, when there is no evidence that a retraction is necessary?

I'm the absence of a specific story, we are estimating based on our assumptions about how many retractions your "average" paper would make. Knowing what I do about incentives, any paper without rigorous principles of going to tend to issue fewer retractions. It's time consuming, doesn't drive revenue, personally embarrassing for people. It actually takes a lot of journalistic integrity to issue any retractions at all…

I think you're the pot calling the kettle black, I'm sorry. We are not estimating anything about average retractions about papers. We're talking about a specific story.

As it stands, there is no evidence that the specific story requires retractions.

You ask for evidence. The evidence is the laptop, and the text messages, and the emails. If you disagree that these things are evidence, the burden of disproof is now on you. That's how it works.

And so far, there have not even been as much as basic denials by the Bidens.

Yes, I have lived in NYC for several years, and I still read the Times more than the Post. But this is, once again, meaningless criteria.

You keep trying to make it about the paper, when the discussion is about this specific story.

And you're wrong.