511–520 of 965 posts
The wildest part of the Twitter files is the unhinged framing that they are presented under. 1. Anyone who has been in a tech company knows that there is internal lingo that refers to features we devs make. But it's presented as being an "Orwellian language" 2. Based on the emails he posts, the agencies give links to review based on tips they receive or their own intel and twitter then decides if it violates ToS or n…
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Which is why they’re flagging people making jokes about elections on Twitter, obviously.
Poe's Law. No one can tell your dumbass joke saying the election is on a Wednesday is a joke. Especially when it's right next to a bot account from eastern Europe that said the same thing.
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They need to spice it up somehow, the evidence by itself won't do the trick.
I think the goal is to anchor the discourse around "the gov is censoring speech" and let high-rank politicians talk about it openly, since now they are backed by undeniable facts. A few weeks ago anyone auggesting the gov is censoring twitter would be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. Now anyone who says the opposite will be seen as a fool or a shill. The goal has been achieved, in other words.
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Also I think the idea is to try and attract conservatives from other apps e.g. TruthSocial. Good idea in theory except that many of those users aren't as well-behaved so to speak. And so the overall quality of the discourse has noticeably dropped since Musk took over.
I replied to a tweet that referenced Musk and Tesla, and simply mentioned that I sold my Tesla shares at the beginning of this week (and made a loss) because I didn't want any association with Musk any more. The replies I got from Musk fans were shockingly (maybe not so shockingly) vile. Turns out Musk sold his Tesla shares at the same time as I did — I wonder how those people replying to me would square that with th…
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OK but at the same time Elon is proposing “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach”. Which is basically the same thing, no?
Regardless of what he says, his actions show he controls speech. What he said, says, or will say, doesn’t matter. Twitter is a global platform ideal for steering public sentiment, opinion, and influencing political outcomes. https://youtu.be/RII0eBszJJ4
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It is very clearly an improper purpose. The FBI is trying to suppress 1A protected speech by reporting the tweets. The FBI is not allowed to suppress 1A protected speech. Imagine there was a button that would delete a Tweet and anyone could press it. Just because anyone could press the button would not make it legal for the FBI to press it.
> It is very clearly an improper purpose. The FBI is trying to suppress 1A protected speech by reporting the tweets. The FBI is not allowed to suppress 1A protected speech. Imagine there was a button that would delete a Tweet and anyone could press it. Just because anyone could press the button would not make it legal for the FBI to press it. I keep seeing this, and I'm confused every time I see it, because speech on…
Ummm… yes it is when the speech is being suppressed by the government?
That’s kinda the entire point of the 1st amendment.
The courts have ruled that the government asking a private party to censor is no different than the government censoring itself.
The wildest part of the Twitter files is the unhinged framing that they are presented under. 1. Anyone who has been in a tech company knows that there is internal lingo that refers to features we devs make. But it's presented as being an "Orwellian language" 2. Based on the emails he posts, the agencies give links to review based on tips they receive or their own intel and twitter then decides if it violates ToS or n…
The Tweets the FBI were asking to be removed were speech protected under the first amendment. It is very likely that this is unconstitutional but at a minimum this violates a strong norm in the US that the State does not interfere with people’s speech. When it comes to twitter a court had previously found that Trump could not even block people from his personal Twitter account (a final ruling was never made because t…
There is no issue with the FBI investigating crimes using the Twitter platform. I would hope that Twitter tells the FBI to “come back with a warrant” if they want non-public information.
But the FBI flagging content for removal. Including “disinformation”?
That goes well beyond the remit of the FBI and violates numerous norms of law enforcement influence over public speech.
A good analogy would be a debate club being held in a private bar and the police coming by and saying "yeah, that guy you invited to debate, you think you can "handle" that for us?".
It’s frankly shocking how many people on HN are like “meh…what’s the big deal?”
The wildest part of the Twitter files is the unhinged framing that they are presented under. 1. Anyone who has been in a tech company knows that there is internal lingo that refers to features we devs make. But it's presented as being an "Orwellian language" 2. Based on the emails he posts, the agencies give links to review based on tips they receive or their own intel and twitter then decides if it violates ToS or n…
This is an extension of the whole “Three Felonies a Day” idea: it’s likely any prolific account will violate Twitter Terms of Service at some point, so you can target almost anyone by looking hard enough.
And Twitter is likely to look harder at reports from the FBI than your average user, therefore the FBI has more influence over who they can silence. Maybe they’re abusing it, maybe they’re not, either way it feels improper at best.