Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Twitter Files, Part Six

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 965 posts

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#261

Post by jacquesm »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #240

The revelations I have read so far have been extremely underwhelming. Content moderation of any kind is hard. The easy cases don’t take up most of your time or energy. These emails read like people doing their best. Maybe my decision would have been different but maybe not.

And that's before you get into the hairy territory created by multiple jurisdictions, nations, pressure groups, grass roots organizations and so on. From personal experience: it is a minefield and it is impossible to satisfy everybody and to get everything right.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#262

Post by djur »

lettergram wrote: post #244
paulpauper wrote: post #7

3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary. 4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. How is this constant? This is just 1 request every 7 days . I figured it would be more. Also, it's called the FBI. Their job is to investigate federal matters, which includes content on socia…

In an earlier release they also mention regular meetings (weekly?). That was not the only guy being contacted by the FBI either. Regardless, while you may call this “underwhelming” it’s actually hard proof of illegal activity. The FBI cannot censor people, period. That’s fascism and illegal in the US, per multiple Supreme Court rulings. This effectively gives trump, et al a direct path to a lawsuit against the federa…

> The FBI cannot censor people, period. That’s fascism and illegal in the US

The FBI emailing Twitter to report possible violations of Twitter's terms of service is not censorship and it is not illegal.

> This effectively gives trump, et al a direct path to a lawsuit against the federal government

The FBI reported to Trump during the 2020 election cycle. It was headed by his own handpicked director, under the supervision of his own handpicked Attorney General.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#263

Post by jasonhansel »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #240

The revelations I have read so far have been extremely underwhelming. Content moderation of any kind is hard. The easy cases don’t take up most of your time or energy. These emails read like people doing their best. Maybe my decision would have been different but maybe not.

Tellingly, none of these journalists have actually released the full set of emails on which their conclusions are based.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#264

Post by djur »

starkd wrote: post #24
paulpauper wrote: post #7

3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary. 4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. How is this constant? This is just 1 request every 7 days . I figured it would be more. Also, it's called the FBI. Their job is to investigate federal matters, which includes content on socia…

The problem was that it was entirely biased to one side. They were actively looking to sway an election. Some were fairly innocuous small accounts. And they couldn't make exceptions for jokes or satire.

Taibbi's thread shows examples of the FBI reporting left-wing accounts for misinformation.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#265

Post by Apocryphon »

colordrops wrote: post #259
Apocryphon wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case reporting two dozen small fry accounts to moderator teams is very weak as far as censorship goes. They’re doing the same thing as everyone else who hits report on Twitter does, except cutting in line. But you can bet there are tens of thousands of businesses, especially Twitter’s advertisers, who have the same if not closer relations with Twitter and, if made displeased, could cause Twitter to censor you…

I don't see anything about being a "small fry" mattering when it comes to the law. It's pretty cut and dried. What the FBI is doing is unconstitutional and illegal. Why are you minimizing it? That they are doing it all is extremely alarming. It's like saying "the concentration camp only has 5 people, what's the big deal?" And why are you comparing them to private companies? Private companies are not covered by the sa…

What is the law that is being broken here, and how are punishments measured for its infraction? Is it based on amount of impact? Because if so, then asking moderation for a dozen or two accounts with limited reach is something that might carry a small amount of punishment, if any at all.

The first amendment is about the government making laws to infringe upon free speech. I see no laws being made here. So it is the government behaving exactly like a private company. Which may be problematic, but not unlawful.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#266

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#267

Post by briandear »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #236

There's an odd new risk for startups: someone buys your company and then releases all the internal documents with hostile intent. The Twitter stuff that's come out now has been pretty uninteresting, surprising and often basically telling a story of people doing the best job they could in difficult circumstances. But if you are at a small company consider what all could be acquired and used to defame your employees an…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#268

Post by djur »

colordrops wrote: post #259
Apocryphon wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case reporting two dozen small fry accounts to moderator teams is very weak as far as censorship goes. They’re doing the same thing as everyone else who hits report on Twitter does, except cutting in line. But you can bet there are tens of thousands of businesses, especially Twitter’s advertisers, who have the same if not closer relations with Twitter and, if made displeased, could cause Twitter to censor you…

I don't see anything about being a "small fry" mattering when it comes to the law. It's pretty cut and dried. What the FBI is doing is unconstitutional and illegal. Why are you minimizing it? That they are doing it all is extremely alarming. It's like saying "the concentration camp only has 5 people, what's the big deal?" And why are you comparing them to private companies? Private companies are not covered by the sa…

If the FBI was legally compelling or coercing Twitter into banning users, that would be unconstitutional. That is not what has been demonstrated here.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#269

Post by notacoward »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
jcranmer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the amount that a police department would try talking to a major social media platform? That's shockingly low to me.

Especially one the size of Twitter, if anything it seems so low that I think they missed whole raft of such communications.

Not only have they missed a lot, but what they have presented is laughably devoid of context. So a user tweeted "mostly jokes"? What about the exceptions? Ten jokes and a death threat is still a problem. What about the DMs? What about the follow rings, building up social capital (including with jokes) for the accounts that did much worse? What about steganography? It's not like these are obscure tactics in modern disinformation campaigns. They're standard tools of the trade.

It's absurdly easy for Musk and his cronies to cherry-pick which pieces of context they do or do not include, to make any user's behavior seem more benign or nefarious than it really was. Every time they reveal something, we should ask what they're leaving out. Anyone who fails to do so, whether they're a journalist or an HN commenter, is effectively doing Musk's dirty work for free.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#270

Post by colordrops »

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…

The problem is that there is this assumption that the FBI is working in good faith. There is a mountain of evidence that they have arbitrarily acted in the interests of the ruling class and not within the confines of the constitution.

Just look at COINTELPRO for the most egregious example.

Then there's Waco, Ruby Ridge, the campaign finance corruption, infiltration of latin American governments, and modern operations similar to COINTELPRO to take down various movements like occupy wall street.

They are a mafia, not some benign group that can be blindly trusted with secret carte blanche powers.

Post reply on HN