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

191–200 of 491 posts

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

#191

Post by barbacoa »

philippejara wrote: post #165
robert_foss wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Endless war, domestic surveillance, expanding government power.

The modern left has become the neo-conservatives.

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

#192

Post by joshuamorton »

oprah wrote: post #154
joshuamorton wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it helps that it isn't front page news. It's completely reasonable to disagree about the scale of a story. Most people disagree with you and shellenberger that this is important. What place do you have to demand that we interpret things the same way you do?

"most people" cannot disagree with them about the story's importance, because "most people" haven't heard about the it thanks to the suppression campaign. That's the whole issue you are trying to downplay.

So I'm confused, is any tweet that isn't reposted on the front page of the nyt "suppressed" now?

Those who have seen the story think it's not worth publishing. One of the points of news/media is to vet stories and exercise good judgement and editorial choice about what is worth publishing and what isn't.

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

#193

Post by [deleted] »

rc_subreme wrote: post #25

Americans are living in a world with a land war in Europe with an old foe on one side, and the increasing pressure exerted on Asian trade and policy partners by a Pacific rim empire we've not seen eye to eye with in the past 100 years. I'd like to see more effort expended on spying and undermining our rivals than ourselves. But such large diplomatic/economic/(hopefully cold)military projects require long term thinkin…

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by philippejara »

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…

>In short, the collective well-being of humanity should always be a top priority, and this includes moderating harmful or extremist content on the internet.

Who defines what is harmful or extremist in the government? Sounds like you either get in the good graces of the "intelligence community" or you are now harmful, as shown pretty clearly with the hordes of "intelligence community" people calling the biden laptop(whatever it had, its content is irrelevant) russian propaganda[0], while even the DOJ and FBI says it isn't[1]. And of course those officials making the stink are contracted by the news agencies to talk about it where journalists will just blindly accept whatever they're given.

The "intelligence community" isn't your friend(neither are the proper agencies but I digress), it never was if you're not an us citizen and it probably stopped being if you are after the patriot act.

[0]:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-...

[1]: https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-doj-fbi-confirm-hunt...

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

#195

Post by colpabar »

barnabee wrote: post #118
quacked wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A well-armed and informed populace governing itself" is a pipe dream by indigenous uncontacted people and certain very intelligent dissenters. The majority of "civilized" people in the world are very happy to live in an authoritarian information-sanitized nation so long as the people in power cater to their own in-group.

I’d like to think this site of all places might be populated with very intermittent dissenters willing to be or at least support activists trying to change that, with the internet and technology as their tool. It’s always jarring to discover the extent to which it’s not.

I've realized this recently too, and I'm trying to just ignore/flag everything even remotely political that gets posted here. If you disagree with the idea that information control is something the government has no business of doing, you're in the minority here. The response to the twitter files was the slap in the face I needed to finally understand that.

After all, it's a blog for a VC fund. I'd say a lot of people here are building things that do much worse than what the twitter files exposed.

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

#196

Post by pannSun »

colpabar wrote: post #174
robert_foss wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I really don't get this response. Cops treating black people horribly is also "nothing new under the sun". Does that make it ok? Has everyone just given up on the idea of reigning in these federal agencies?

I didn't read that response as a defense. It sounded more like the opposite.

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

#197

Post by acdha »

lurquer wrote: post #166
acdha wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ‘gr…

Which specific actions do you think the FBI took which aren’t part of their mandate? Please link to the sources for those claims.

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

#198

Post by zmgsabst »

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…

I would argue that selectively recommending political comments which may be censored has a chilling effect on political speech — and therefore is illegal.

I also think it’s interesting how many people I know who “protested” things like COINTELPRO, but cheer this.

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

#199

Post by MarkPNeyer »

SyzygistSix wrote: post #158
stefan_ wrote: post #5

Can't wait for Matt to hit the motherlode: Elon banning journalists out of personal spite, making a poll to unban them but underhandedly demanding they delete their (never rule-breaking) tweets. Just a few more searches and he will hit it for sure! Unless his handlers demand he ignore that, of course.

What on earth happened to Matt Tiabbi and Glenn Greenwald? Does a certain amount of exposure to news and conspiracy break people at a certain point? I occasionally worry that they didn't change but that I did.

At what point did Wikileaks become the bad guys?

Was this a change in their behavior, or a change in American political attitudes towards the role of journalism?

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

#200

Post by nverno »

Eisenstein wrote: post #188
nverno wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> current average level of comfort with government involvement It really all comes down to this- it's largely a matter of personal comfort/risk tolerance. Personally, I'd be happy to see entire agencies wiped out, the CIA and the NSA obliterated, the FBI cut back to where it was in the 60s or so, preferably focused on mob/cartel activity and the like. The CIA should never have been separated out from the military and…

The FBI in the 60s was inflitrating and disrupting civil rights groups.

Right, just another example of many mistakes made by these agencies since their inception. I do think there is legitimate need for some form of FBI, though.
Post reply on HN