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

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

#211

Post by hermitdev »

jimbob45 wrote: post #155
monsecchris wrote: post #13

The people trying to minimise every intelligence agency working with every tech company on behalf of the Democratic Party are the same people calling this a dangerous far right conspiracy theory not long ago.

I thought Musk and co did a decent job showing that both the Democrats and the Republicans both had access to the tools of censorship and used them at regular intervals. This should have been a nice time for everyone to come together against tool misuse - if everyone is guilty, then there is no need to pass judgement. Instead both sides are blaming one another (justifiably) while ignoring their own misuse (unjustifia…

It really doesn't matter that it was either Democrats, Republicans or both. It's that it was happening at all. The government should not be inserting itself into censoring speech of any kind, especially the sort they don't agree with. We have constitutional protections against this. It's bad, no matter which political party directed it.

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

#212

Post by ummonk »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #162
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…

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.

Yeah, and some of the tweets reported by the FBI didn't violate TOS and were allowed to stand by Twitter.

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

#213

Post by nverno »

DaftDank wrote: post #206
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…

Doesn't the NSA represent a huge portion of our signals intelligence capabilities as a country? How would that role be filled otherwise? Wouldn't the best people to do many of those new jobs still be the people who used to work at the (now defunct) NSA?

I may be terribly naive, but I just don't feel any safer b/c the NSA exists. I also don't believe this country has been under any serious threats since the NSA was created, from which it protected us.

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

#214

Post by transcriptase »

acdha wrote: post #107
kyrra wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies should cooperate when compelled so by law, not just cause. This gets into the space where many here knock Chinese companies as they are regularly directed partially by the CCP. The real question is, when does laws that apply only to the government, like the first amendment, start applying to private companies when the private companies are being directed by the government?

Cooperation here means that they were enforcing their existing terms of service. That’s very different from legal compulsion.

Why are 3 letter agencies paying Twitter to moderate their own site?

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

#215

Post by coredog64 »

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…

The FBI was highlighting obvious parody accounts and accounts with double digit followers for the “crime” of the tired old joke of “(other party) votes on Wednesday”.

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

#216

Post by philippejara »

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.

Greenwald stuck to his guns as he always did when his audience decided that they'd rather embrace the overbearing/surveillance state as long as the court jester didn't win the election again, that's how I see it at least. I'd like to give a less flippant answer but I honestly can't see any difference in his views now and back then, both in US coverage and Brazil's coverage.

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

#217

Post by lovich »

colpabar wrote: post #195
barnabee wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

You don’t like that people aren’t as open minded as you’d like, so you flipped on your values and now try to flag anything you disagree with(i.e. political content)?

Am I misinterpreting your comment?

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

#218

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

elurg wrote: post #47
themagician wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. What are the intelligence agencies supposed to do if not exactly what is being “revealed”? Are they not allowed to talk to private companies or citizens? If it was being revealed that they were making demands and forcing companies to do things that would be a serious issue. Instead they are asking, nicely, and even paying them for their time and work.

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. The government should be prohibited from making such requests. It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story the FBI outright lied in order to make web platforms censor the story.

>The government should be prohibited from making such requests.

They are. The first amendment forbids the government from interfering with the press. They're ignoring it and hoping people don't know this fact. The fact that other media outlets aren't pointing this out, means they're all part of the same fascist tribe as the FBI.

Remember, fascism is the union of state and corporate power according to Mussolini's ghost writer. And it's what we're seeing here. The FBI and big tech being on the same side.

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

#219

Post by root_axis »

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…

> 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.

I've seen this hypothetical raised a lot but I don't find it very compelling. If the post isn't in violation of twitter's TOS then twitter has strong legal protections to deny the request and both sides understand this. Without evidence that the FBI actually pressured twitter to take down non-violating content after it was deemed ok, I don't see the issue.

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

#220

Post by [deleted] »

quacked wrote: post #67
elurg wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people completely agree with heavy-handed information control.

"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.

[deleted]
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