141–150 of 491 posts
I think it's pretty reasonable to worry about a system of punishment (depriving someone of the right to use a communication platform) administered by the government, which doesn't obey the normal rules of justice: 1) right to see evidence 2) right to confront your accuser 3) right to judgement by a jury of your peers. OFC there is a role for private info and possibly preventing malicious, foreign government manipulat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I understand the FBI knew that the Hunter Biden story was real but encouraged everybody else to believe that it was a Russian hoax. Doesn't this count as lying? It's not just lying, it's explicit disinformation with an electoral goal. This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective. I hate Trump's guts bu…
Can you cite any of those claims? What’s been established in public and e.g. Zuckerberg’s interview was that they warned companies to be wary about another repeat of election interference, but nobody is saying that the FBI told them to kill this story. > This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective This is imagi…
I didn’t notice the author, almost took this in good faith, then I got to this banger: > After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles these people are delusional
Ah the old ad hominem argument.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
It is hard to generalize one off concepts like fascism in my opion.
I’ve been trying to read these Twitter files threads thoughtfully, and maybe it’s just a sign of the current average level of comfort with government involvement with social media platforms, but I’m generally not seeing much issue with the stuff being revealed. the worst thing about this particular thread seems like the govt agencies talking to Twitter about foreign influence are overreaching a bit (eg asking them to…
I am someone who didn’t see anything seriously objectionable in the Twitter files, but I do think it raised some questions worth thinking about. If the FBI messages you and says ‘hey… review this content and see if it’s violating your own policies,’ is that inherently an innocent request? I could see a world where ‘see if it violates your own policies’ is a code for extortion with plausible deniability. Could anythin…
This is possible but I would expect people to look for evidence of it before presenting it as a fact. Something like that would show up in internal communications either directly or as people talking like they didn’t really have a choice, or as a trend of tweets being taken down for reasons which don’t seem warranted when you look at them. The closest we’ve seen to that were things like the guy who was telling Republicans to vote on Wednesday, which is clearly a dumb joke but also something most people aren’t going to shed tears about when made a couple days beforehand.
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> The distinction between the government "asking nicely" and "making demands" is not strong enough. In theory could Twitter could have resisted but the costs would have been quite high. Really? Companies do this all of the time. For example, how many billions did Apple lose for resisting the FBI’s requests with the San Bernardino shooter? > It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story the FBI outright lie…
As far as I understand the FBI knew that the Hunter Biden story was real but encouraged everybody else to believe that it was a Russian hoax. Doesn't this count as lying? It's not just lying, it's explicit disinformation with an electoral goal. This went so far that major web platforms blocked all forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. It was highly effective. I hate Trump's guts bu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe instead of just repeating that we should re-read them, you should point out exactly what is so aggrevating, and where in the files you're referring to? Simply repeating things is a propaganda and brainwashing technique.
jumping in here, but what makes me worried is a strong power being used without proper controls, auditing, and system design. From a system perspective it looks like the US Gov had elevated access to ban people, and had opportunity and reason to misuse it. The initial rationale for the US Gov already admits this as a legit reason to ban foreign agents - "undue power/misleading influence". I hold that same view, but a…
If a tweet didn't violate Twitter's terms, it's been shown the Twitter team wouldn't remove that tweet despite being flagged by the govt
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I think the important thing here is the lack of judicial oversight. There used to be needed a court order to request things from companies, so someone would actually weight in the evidence and legality of it. Now it's just someone from a secret agency shutting down news stories about laptops because it makes one political candidate look bad.
There has never been need to have judicial oversight when making a request , the FBI can send a request to Twitter just the same as they can ask you to come in for an interview. You're free to refuse.
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I’m fine with the government shutting down anti-democratic movements. I’m not fine with anti-democratic governments shutting down legitimate discussion that looks bad on them, or serving a foreign power. These are not the same thing.
Then all it will take to lose your democracy is for a dictator to proclaim his opponents a danger to democracy. Maybe using a Reichstag fire. You can't fight evil with evil, or fight undemocratic tyrants with undemocratic measures. Introducing vulnerabilities into your democratic system is a double edged sword.
The reason we would usually go for the fullest amount of protection for speech was precisely because most of those issues are not simply a matter of "these people are democratic and those aren't".