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The Twitter Files, Part Six

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Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#531

Post by cloutchaser »

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.

Completely blocking the spread of a news story that could have a major effect on an election is not moderation.

Moderation is about moderating bad behaviour of individuals. Censorship is blocking entire topics from discussion.

If you think it's underwhelming, just think how you'd feel if it would have been revealed that Don Trump Jr was smoking crack with prostitutes, and twitter blocked the story from spreading. 10 days before an election. Like seriously, think about that. Would you be fine with that?

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#532

Post by [deleted] »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #280
Georgelemental wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the hypocrisy is the point. I am right wing, and I hear right-wing commentators say things like "for left-wing authoritarians, the hypocrisy is the point" all the time. Seriously, the article you linked sounds exactly like something I would read from "my" side, just with good guys and bad guys reversed.

I'd consider myself a centrist democrat (registered Democrat, vote mostly for Democrats, had a wonderful childhood in a very multicultural region of California, spent several years living in Berkeley CA, my sister who I'm close to works for her local Democrat party) and I've been surprised by the strong element of left-wing extremism on HN. The culture of the site has changed quite a bit in the past few years. It use…

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#533

Post by Gud »

eganist wrote: post #506
benmmurphy wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps it’s not a 1A issue when the FBI clamps down on a corporate platform, but it reminds me of how fascist states operate, not a democratic republic.

In the end the public political discourse needs to move away from corporate run forums. Not sure about Mastodon, but I’m hopeful future iterations of online forums will be more decentralized again.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#534

Post by Apocryphon »

philwelch wrote: post #525
benmmurphy wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if these people were not joking it is not clear that this is illegal. The statutes that try to prevent election misinformation likely violate the first amendment or they may not apply in these specific cases. The FBI should be prosecuting people so these statutes have a chance of being challenged in court and these people have a chance to defend themselves. Either that or twitter should have informed them that t…

> The statutes that try to prevent election misinformation Do such statutes even exist? I suspect the answer is no, and that the FBI is just engaging in extralegal, extrajudicial monkeyshines. > If this information was never leaked then the people effected by the FBI’s secret speech suppression may never have known and would never had a chance to contest it in court. From a certain point of view (which seems distress…

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca...

> Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime.

> Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting. This can include inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods, such as false information suggesting that one may vote by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction.

> Help defend the right to vote by reporting any suspected instances of voter suppression—especially those received through a private communication channel like texting—to your local FBI field office or at tips.fbi.gov.

Guess this is in their purview.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#535

Post by Apocryphon »

colordrops wrote: post #511
Apocryphon wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1400166091586932736

Evidence of them doing it is not an argument for it being the right thing to do.

Looks like the FBI has been public all this time about their ability to do that wrt elections:

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca...

> Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime.

> However, not all publicly available voting information is accurate, and some is deliberately designed to deceive you to keep you from voting.

Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting. This can include inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods, such as false information suggesting that one may vote by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction.

> Help defend the right to vote by reporting any suspected instances of voter suppression—especially those received through a private communication channel like texting—to your local FBI field office or at tips.fbi.gov.

So it sounds like they're actively doing this outside of Twitter or social media in general.

IANAL, but here's a Georgetown Law info sheet about how that works, and cites several federal law statues that are applicable:

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites...

And a Columbia Law paper that examines the issue in detail:

https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

And also this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34026228

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#537

Post by troad »

exodust wrote: post #444
jacquesm wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roth may well have an excellent case against Musk. I'd definitely chip in.

The implication of chipping in might mean an unwise alignment with Roth's PhD idea. His idea wasn't even "Grindr for teens". It was worse because he wasn't proposing a separate service. His idea was to update those sites to accommodate young people. Yoth wrote: "those services should consider offering toned-down content alongside adult fare." Even if we're charitable, Yoth's use of the word "alongside" was unfortunat…

Your assumption appears to be that gay teens are not already on the existing adult Grindr, lying about their age, and being forced to wade their way through some of the darkest, seediest corners of the Internet.

I don’t know much about his proposed solution, I haven’t read his work, but judging by my own teenage use of Grindr (many years ago), a toned down, protected version of something gay teens were already going to use seems like a net gain for their safety and sanity.

I doubt anything like it would ever be legally possible, though. There’s just no amount of moderating that would keep a teen Grindr safe and PG-13. If even one thing slips through - and it would - it’s not hard to picture the media coverage. No sane company is touching this idea with a ten foot pole.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#539

Post by Apocryphon »

refurb wrote: post #519
benmmurphy wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Precisely. 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…

The FBI already does this IRL even pre-Twitter, and no one batted an eye.

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca...

> Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime.

> Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting. This can include inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods, such as false information suggesting that one may vote by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction.

If that debate club guy was spreading voter misinformation, the FBI would come by and investigate him, too.

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