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Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

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Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abusing power to get re-elected is not the same as abusing power to advantage one's son in their career. Again, both unsavory. "literally the same story"?

Pressuring a foreign leader to investigate potential corruption is not the same as pressuring a foreign leader to fire a prosecutor who is investigating corruption of which your family is directly involved.

> Pressuring a foreign leader to investigate potential corruption

Right, anti-corruption Trump. Just stealing classified documents, installing his kids (and fucking son-in-law) in the white house, spending a third of his presidency hosting events and bookings on his properties, blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt, Trump University, refusing to accept a peaceful transition of power...Ok. My time is being unfairly wasted here.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about if instead, we nationalize Facebook. The public square should not be owned by a private corporation. If that's not possible, yes: Facebook should be destroyed.

Nationalizing social media is a solution... It would never happen even though many problems with the current system would be solved. Freedom of Speech, 4th amendment rights, and it wouldnt necessarily have to be profitable so it defeats the current ad driven hate machine. Third party doctrine would no longer apply and so on. There is a precedent for it with USPS. When a national postal service was created it was done…

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Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#633
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FBI actively peddled misinformation wrongly calling it Russian-propoganda and/or censoring/suppressing it. No, they weren't wrong. This was a Russian propaganda op to amplify a non-story.

What part of the story was inaccurate?

The part that alleges the laptop and all the information on it are Hunter's. A laptop exists, yes, but it doesn't mean it's Hunter's or has his information. It also doesn't come close to implicating Joe Biden in any way.

All it does is show Hunter is a drug user and has a lot of sex. This was known already.

Even the guy who _found_ the laptop says it is likely disinformation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/now-warni...

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#634
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not considered a 4th amendment violation for a cop to ask to search your house without a warrant. It's only unconstitutional if you say "No" and they do it anyway. If the FBI talked to Facebook but there was no coercion, I'm not sure what the 1st amendment violation would be. Although it's still something worth being concerned about (e.g. what else is being censored by FB? What if there's unofficial coercion? Sh…

Yep the FBI should not be communicating with FB regarding what to suppress and not suppress --that would be outright "Censorship Office" kind of stuff, unless the information is regulated in some way (i.e. illegal doxxing, state secrets, etc)

They didn't do that here, though. Please read the article–the FBI talked to Facebook prior to Rudy's disinformation campaign around the laptop, and Facebook realized it (correctly) had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign, and chose not to amplify its reach (they didn't ban the story entirely).

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. Seeing how damaged Russia is due to mass misinformation, it is amazing to see how HN commenters think that misinformation is not a big threat. Propaganda works if you give it an even footing as real news.

You do realize that they used misinformation to bury a true story about the laptop right?

No, this is not what happened. The only true part of the story is that a laptop exists.

There is evidence that the hard drives were manipulated on it. There's no evidence Hunter put any of the data on the hard drive there. And beyond all that, nothing there shows Joe Biden did anything wrong.

Even the guy who _found_ the laptop doesn't think the information on it is necessarily legitimate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/now-warni...

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#636
post #610

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Yes he did hide the documents. Read the actual affidavit and the 20 month timeline https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/26/us/trump-sear... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/us/politics/trump-documen... It was not accident: Trump claims it's his right to keep his records and even publicly displayed some of them for prestige after demands for their return began. Some "accident"! It was not CYA: The National Ar…

> It was not CYA: The National Archives and DoJ spent 20 months exhausting all legal means to force the return of the documents to a safe facility. You're missing the point: the documents should never have left the White House in the first place. Whoever was supposed to check that screwed up. If they're going to throw the book at Trump for keeping them instead of giving them back, they should also be throwing the boo…

>You're missing the point: the documents should never have left the White House in the first place. Whoever was supposed to check that screwed up. If they're going to throw the book at Trump for keeping them instead of giving them back, they should also be throwing the book at whoever screwed up by letting them out of the White House in the first place. And the Biden administration should have some explaining to do about that. Is anyone asking them? Hollow laugh.

What? This is nonsense. Trump can pack and keep things. You honestly think some Secret Service agent is supposed to draw a weapon on the exiting President to force him to leave things behind? Get real. Trump can take what he wants, and he was very proud of what he took, and he publicly claims it is his belongings.

This blame-shifting and removing the agency of the previous President is outrageous. He's not a child, he knows what he did, and he's proud of it.

>I have no problem with prosecuting people who violate the law. What I have a problem with is extravagantly one-sided reporting, intended to further polarize the country for political gain. The sooner we the people realize that all politicians are crooks and all government is untrustworthy and all media is corrupt, and stop jumping on bandwagons just because someone says something we like without exercising any critical thinking, the better off we'll be.

This is exactly the kind of both-sides-ism that leads to exact kind of worst-of-all-time corruption like Trump. There is simply no comparison to those 4 years to any other President of any party.

The ill informed hide behind the cheap cynicism of "everyones bad". It takes intellectual bravery to learn, assess, and decide that maybe, just maybe, some things are worse than others.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing I can see in that NYT article that mentions those folder names and consequently that they were added in September 2020

My bad, it was the WP that did the verification and pointed out both the verifiability of the emails and obvious evidence of planted content https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-...

Even within that article it states that those folders were created after the story broke and the drive was in FBI custody.

That would indicate to me that someone in the FBI likely created folders to pull files into associated with those topics accidentally on the drive rather than on another storage location.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The television stations and newspapers back in the day absolutely maintained the Overton window and constructed narratives that supported the the ruling class. To call this "content curation" is ignorant at best. It's also ignorant at best to pass off "maintaining the Overton window" as being censorship. Whether you like it or not, there's a finite amount of airtime and an infinite amount of content that can be pre…

You are confused about what the Overton window describes. It's not "picking and choosing what to talk about due to limited airtime". Look it up.

> You are confused about what the Overton window describes. It's not "picking and choosing what to talk about due to limited airtime". Look it up.

Not really. Before trying to accuse anyone of being confused, please try your best to read what those you're replying to did said. Otherwise you're just adding noise to discussions.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#639
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

censor "to suppress or delete as objectionable" [1] You can't just make up definitions of words. Suppression is censorship. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censor

If I choose to not throw fuel on a fire, I'm not suppressing the fire. Similarly if I choose to not share gossip about something for which I have no first hand knowledge I am not suppressing it. Hence no censorship.

So you're doubling down on a definition of the word that you invented?

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#640
post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was not CYA: The National Archives and DoJ spent 20 months exhausting all legal means to force the return of the documents to a safe facility. You're missing the point: the documents should never have left the White House in the first place. Whoever was supposed to check that screwed up. If they're going to throw the book at Trump for keeping them instead of giving them back, they should also be throwing the boo…

>You're missing the point: the documents should never have left the White House in the first place. Whoever was supposed to check that screwed up. If they're going to throw the book at Trump for keeping them instead of giving them back, they should also be throwing the book at whoever screwed up by letting them out of the White House in the first place. And the Biden administration should have some explaining to do a…

> This is nonsense.

Why? There are laws about classified material, and they apply to former Presidents.

> Trump can pack and keep things...Trump can take what he wants

You're contradicting yourself. Either Trump violated laws or he didn't. Before you said he did. But here you're saying he didn't. Which is it? If he's in violation of the law now, then he was in violation of the law when he took the stuff in the first place, which means he can't "take what he wants".

What is supposed to happen is that anything the former President wants to take gets checked (not by the Secret Service, by the FBI or the White House staff's in-house security people who are responsible for classified material) to make sure it's not something that requires special handling, like, you know, classified material.

> There is simply no comparison to those 4 years to any other President of any party.

Your ignorance of history is appalling.

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