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

The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 491 posts

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#161

Post by acdha »

andrekandre wrote: post #140
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

[flagged]

i wonder why they are cherry-picking and releasing things like this in a drop-drop fashion... shouldn't just release everything and let the media (and that includes fox et al) dig through it and report on it for us?

The problem is that so far there hasn’t been much of interest here. Having a few people tweet unsupported claims gets more traction because some people won’t read past the spin and it allows the more journalistic end of the right-wing media to talk about it without being directly criticized for the spin: Fox News can run a “people are saying” story rather than claiming it as an original story.

The story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was similar: if there’d been anything significant revealed the WSJ or Fox would have covered it directly. There wasn’t and Giuliani’s sloppy handling made it unreliable, so they didn’t want to put their reputations on the line.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#162

Post by brian-armstrong »

antiterra wrote: post #125
mef wrote: post #9

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…

Chances are, they probably really did violate the TOS. Or most of them did, at least. So then you, as the employee receiving it, probably do feel some real pressure to remove the tweets when the FBI has correctly pointed out that, yes, these tweets are against the site's terms of service. Many tweets likely are against TOS, but nobody would give them any real thought.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#163

Post by spamizbad »

pannSun wrote: post #112
mef wrote: post #9

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…

Did you miss [1]? The US govt. used its influence over Twitter to help sell its foreign policy (military interventions included) to the US and global audience. The only way you could not take issue with it, is if you're fine with govt. psyops/undisclosed propaganda. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111071

I mean we allowed the alphabet agencies to cooperate with social media companies to fight "ISIS propaganda." -- what did you think would happen?

Scorpion, frog, etc.

If we had stood up to them in 2013, drew a line in the sand and said "No, a bunch of poorly edited snuff films aren't going to cause a bunch of American teens to join an Islamic revolution" these relationships wouldn't exist.

By the way, we are currently trying to ban TikTok because of similar concerns about it rotting teens brains. Before we start frothing at the mouth in rage at some problematic app let's do a thought experiment and consider the future blowback from taking such extreme action.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#164

Post by Zpalmtree »

whatsu wrote: post #94
froggertoaster wrote: post #29

You can downplay this all you want - but remember: stuff like this is a microcosm of a larger issue. Sections of your government worked directly with Twitter to control what information you saw. Much bigger organizations - Facebook comes to mind - must be doing the same thing every.single.day. And no one finds this even a little bit alarming?

It is true that governments have always had an influence on how we live our lives, whether through traditional media like newspapers and television, or more modern platforms like social media. This is not a new phenomenon, but rather something that has always existed in society. However, with the proliferation of the internet and social media, it has become easier for governments to monitor and regulate online conten…

why is it distorted?

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#165

Post by philippejara »

robert_foss wrote: post #123
pannSun wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss [1]? The US govt. used its influence over Twitter to help sell its foreign policy (military interventions included) to the US and global audience. The only way you could not take issue with it, is if you're fine with govt. psyops/undisclosed propaganda. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111071

It used to be CIA and TV. Nothing new under the sun.

One would hope that after the patriot act, the bush jr wars, cablegate, the nsa leaks and so on just in the last 20 years people would desire to not keep the old habits, but I suppose all it took was one buffoon to take presidency and all that rolls back.

Truly a sad sight from those looking hopeful after the occupy movement and all the anti surveillance sentiment post-leaks.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#166

Post by lurquer »

acdha wrote: post #146
antiterra wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I could see a world where ‘see if it violates your own policies’ is a code for extortion with plausible deniability. 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…

The US is a limited govt.

No govt agency can do anything for which it isn’t explicitly authorized.

The FBI is not authorized to be ensuring private companies adhere to their policies.

If a agent is being paid — with taxpayer dollars - to check on Twitter and give it ‘advice’ on how to run itself, that agent is acting outside the scope of his authority.

It’s an abuse and misuse of power.

It doesn’t matter what the ‘greater good’ is. The FBI’s purpose isn’t to generally look out for the greater good. Rather, it’s to investigate federal crimes. There is no crime in telling people to ‘vote this Wednesday.’ There is no crime of ‘misinformation.’

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#167

Post by barbacoa »

Retric wrote: post #115
efitz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the meetings between the US government and Twitter were the influence campaign.

You can say that about basically any interaction between any government and social media including anti child porn or other law enforcement activity. The question is if the interaction is unacceptably not if it exists.

The FBI were sending Twitter lists of pro-Venezuela, pro-Russian, etc "bot" accounts. Were they really doing forensic analysis to determine they were run by foreign governments or were they just flagging account with opinions that ran against US foreign policy?

All the while the government was running their own fake bot propaganda accounts and having Twitter white-list them against their bot filters.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#168

Post by birken »

catiopatio wrote: post #151
whatsu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that governments have always had an influence on how we live our lives, whether through traditional media like newspapers and television, or more modern platforms like social media. This is not a new phenomenon, but rather something that has always existed in society. However, with the proliferation of the internet and social media, it has become easier for governments to monitor and regulate online conten…

I believe your comment represents speech that puts the well-being of society at serious risk, is harmful, and possibly even extremist. If I manage to convince 50.1% of the population of the same, should we be permitted to censor your speech, and enforce prior restraint on your future speech under penalty of law?

I'll go one further... if even 1 single person (the person who owns HN), decides that they don't like the content of that comment, then they should be free to delete/censor the comment on HN and ban the person in perpetuity from HN.

Your argument doesn't really make any sense because everybody here is talking about speech in the context of a walled garden owned by a company/person. That is a completely different situation than what you are alluding to. I can just as easily prevent the reverse question: I have a blog with a comment section, and somebody I don't know posts a horrific, rude and distasteful comment that I don't want associated with my blog post. Can the government force me to not delete that due to free speech, or do I have the power to moderate my blog however I want?

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#169

Post by jinpa_zangpo »

mef wrote: post #9

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…

When your boss tells you to do something, you can always say no, but you don't treat it as a mere suggestion. There's a power imbalance that makes it something more. You can't treat government communications with Twitter as mere suggestions. The government's power makes it more serious than that.

Re: The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

#170

Post by Ygg2 »

ajross wrote: post #136
Ygg2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> were straight up revenge porn. Citation needed. Even Wikipedia lists it as an abandoned laptop that was trawled for data. Trash as far as I know is legitimate object of search (e.g. police does it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

The smoking gun email in the "Part 1" Twitter Files thread from Taibbi was a request from the Biden Campaign to look at a list of otherwise-undescribed-and-since-removed tweets. This was strongly implied to be a request for censorship of the laptop story. Then someone found an archived copy of all but one of the tweets, and they all turned out to be pictures of Hunter Biden's penis.

> Then someone found an archived copy of all but one of the tweets, and they all turned out to be pictures of Hunter Biden's penis.

Yes, he left his images on laptop. That's not revenge porn, as far as I know.

> The smoking gun email in the "Part 1" Twitter Files

Don't quote me on that, but from my memory not only were links to Hunter deleted, but so were discussions of it from even reputable journalist. I think it was a Washington Post that discussed Hunter's laptop, and it got buried or deleted.

That's only Part 1.

They also marked Trump tweets as fake, even though they found some exonerating information and vice versa.

Plus the weekly meetings with FBI/OGA (alias for CIA), around misinformation spreading tweets, etc.

You basically have a government agency labeling stuff as misinformation for deranking/deletion. If that doesn't raise any First Amendment issues, I'm not sure what will? Capturing journalist and keeping them in horrible conditions? Water torture and organ transfer of said journalists?

Post reply on HN