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The Twitter Files, Part Six

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Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#211

Post by Brendinooo »

jacquesm wrote: post #193
Brendinooo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there’s no easy answer to the question, but how can you be sure we’re not in “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest” territory here?

Because we can all read? All these installments have done is confirm over-and-over again that this was pretty much the normal and expected kind of interaction.

I can read too, what do you mean when you say that?

I’m not sure how institutions can say “no” to the FBI without feeling fear of retribution, nor do I want the FBI putting pressure on corporations to be something that’s “normal and expected”.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#212

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #76
simpleblend wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, enlighten me. How is this anything but the Government doing an end run around 1A?

It's a request, not an order, it's the FBI, not congress passing a law. I'm the former owner/operator of ww.com, in its day a pretty large video streaming community, think 'twitch' but many years earlier. We had fairly regular contact with the police to ensure that our members were operating within the law, and some of them repeatedly decided to test where the line was. As responsible operator of a large web property…

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#213

Post by jacquesm »

hackerlight wrote: post #205
leoh wrote: post #53

Learned basically nothing here. So the FBI helped Twitter with content moderation? Who gives a crap.

It's bad that it wasn't transparent to the public. I don't like the idea of the government actively playing a role in moderating content that isn't illegal unless it's transparent and there's oversight by voters. Twitter as a private company can moderate content as it sees fit. But the government is supposed to be constrained by the First Amendment. And here, they technically are, because they're not forcing Twitter…

Can you outline a scheme that would satisfy your needs for transparency while at the same time not result in compromising active investigations, tipping off the perps that they are under surveillance and so on? Because I don't see a practical way to achieve that ideal that would still work.

Having been on the receiving end of such requests I was pretty happy all of them were made in a confidential manner, it saved everybody a ton of headaches and reduce the amount of grip the various miscreants had on our community. Doing that in the open would have caused massive issues, some of these people were downright dangerous and others simply needed help, keeping their data and our interaction around that data confidential was - in my opinion - a good thing all around.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#214

Post by jacksonkmarley »

So far this whole Twitter Files thing seems underwhelming, but not exactly a "nothing burger". I feel like it's a good thing that they got published, but the details aren't big news, more like a whole bunch of mildly unsatisfactory situations that probably should be addressed by people directly involved.

For example FBI trawling through social media and flagging accounts for review doesn't seem like a strict constitutional violation unless you can prove some coercion; but it does seem like a questionable use of the FBI to be doing content moderation for Twitter absent a criminal investigation.

Maybe this sort of stuff (i.e. government/law enforcement communications with social media companies) should be automatically in the public domain if it isn't part of a criminal investigation.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#215

Post by hackerlight »

jacquesm wrote: post #213
hackerlight wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad that it wasn't transparent to the public. I don't like the idea of the government actively playing a role in moderating content that isn't illegal unless it's transparent and there's oversight by voters. Twitter as a private company can moderate content as it sees fit. But the government is supposed to be constrained by the First Amendment. And here, they technically are, because they're not forcing Twitter…

Can you outline a scheme that would satisfy your needs for transparency while at the same time not result in compromising active investigations, tipping off the perps that they are under surveillance and so on? Because I don't see a practical way to achieve that ideal that would still work. Having been on the receiving end of such requests I was pretty happy all of them were made in a confidential manner, it saved ev…

At least give us a retrospective 2 years later on the accounts that were requested to be taken down and why. There are ways around this dilemma.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#216

Post by kodyo »

Apocryphon wrote: post #203
kodyo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you under the impression that the FBI was acting on behalf of Trump during his presidency?

He was the commander in chief. Who do you believe the FBI is acting on behalf of if not his handpicked successor to Comey?

The FBI acts on behalf of the state, and the FBI. Trump picked an FBI guy to run the FBI. I don't know why he did it, either.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#217

Post by lapcat »

jacquesm wrote: post #127
lapcat wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This goes for any large web property where people congregate to communicate. Yes, for example Facebook and TikTok. > HN is no different in that respect. Well, Twitter has over 200 million users. I believe that HN is much much smaller. HN also tends to be more anonymous.

HN is a lot larger than you probably think and YC has an excellent legal department and even if I do not know for sure that there has been contact between LE and HN/YC about this forum given the fact that we are looking at a decade+ of operation and many millions of interactions, including threats of bodily harm and other nonsense I would expect the chances of there having been such interaction to be better than even…

> HN is a lot larger than you probably think

I'd be interested to know the user number.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#218

Post by simpleblend »

biohacker85 wrote: post #181
simpleblend wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very convenient that one side of the asile is always in a position to define what hate speech is. Neat trick, but it doesn't work anymore.

You have to give credit to whomever came up with it, its a cheap but effective linguistic kill shot. No doubt it was engineered to be divisive, and whomever is wielding it is unlikely to be reasoned with.

Exactly

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#219

Post by Apocryphon »

jacksonkmarley wrote: post #214

So far this whole Twitter Files thing seems underwhelming, but not exactly a "nothing burger". I feel like it's a good thing that they got published, but the details aren't big news, more like a whole bunch of mildly unsatisfactory situations that probably should be addressed by people directly involved. For example FBI trawling through social media and flagging accounts for review doesn't seem like a strict constitu…

A moderate, and reasonable position. I would definitely agree that this sort of stuff should be readily available for review, not requiring FOIA requests.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#220

Post by jacquesm »

Brendinooo wrote: post #211
jacquesm wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we can all read? All these installments have done is confirm over-and-over again that this was pretty much the normal and expected kind of interaction.

I can read too, what do you mean when you say that? I’m not sure how institutions can say “no” to the FBI without feeling fear of retribution, nor do I want the FBI putting pressure on corporations to be something that’s “normal and expected”.

Twitter said 'no' to the feds on multiple occasions (as was pointed out upthread) and you can bet that if they had received an illegal request they would have balked at it.

I'm sure there was some give-and-take but on the whole what I've seen so far is absolutely par for the course, if you were to look into Facebook, Google, Microsoft and any of the ISPs and email providers you would find the exact same thing.

Both Twitter and the FBI were pretty open about the FBI having limited access to Twitters' firehose and that there was constant interaction between the two parties. You can add to that that if you were to look at this internationally and at the state level that such contacts can be expected to exist as well. Any assumption to the contrary is hopelessly naive.

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