311–320 of 491 posts
These agencies have already seen massive scope creep in the past couple decades. Seeing the FBI doing moderation for social media companies is a step too far and it's high time for the alphabet agencies to get pared down
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The First Amendment: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. It's since been expanded through court cases to extend from congress to every government entity including local ones. The go…
This doesn't mean the government can't make requests to private companies, including the press.
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and hopefully he'll get prosecuted for it if it is really the case, but that didn't stop even european leaders from saying the ban was a mistake and concerning[0]. [0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/problemat...
Your link doesn’t make any sense. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung Germany has laws against incitement. > 2] "incitement of popular hatred", "incitement of the masses", or "instigation of the people", is a concept in German criminal law that refers to incitement to hatred against segments of the population and refers to calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them, including assaults against th…
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’ve been trying to read these Twitter files threads thoughtfully I stopped after the first one. If there’s any meat to be found then the last vestiges of respectable right-wing media will amplify it. Until the WSJ posts anything more than “This Is Sort Of Bad! But We Already Reported It In Full Last Year!” then there’s no point subjecting yourself to it.
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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.
> proclaim [their] opponents a danger to democracy Hmm, now where have I heard that recently?
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…
Sounds like "hey, review it and find any half-assed reason to ban it according to your TOS" to me.
Loose and wide reaching TOS makes it hard for bad actors to get around it, but it also makes it easy for moderators to remove anything they don't want while hiding behind TOS
> Should the requests be public unless part of an active investigation, or is that sort of thing too easily gamed?
All moderation should be, and with exact violation breached, not generic "it broke something in our TOS", else there is zero accountability. I'd also say that unless it is outright illegal or abhorrent the original should also be viewable so there can be no doubt the moderation is legit. People will save the spicy tweets to archive or screenshot it anyway so there is no real point completely hiding it.
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Yes, this website full of brain dead right wingers.
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The Hunter Biden laptop story was real. The FBI knew it was real. The FBI lied to corporations like Twitter to stop accounts from legitimate publications from reporting on it right before an election where it certainly could have impacted the outcome. Twitter went even further and prevented people from exchanging the story with each other in DMs. I honestly don't see how you could be comfortable with this, unless you…
Revenge porn is not a “real story” Figures like Rudy Giuliani had direct and personal access to the laptop and yet what bombshell evidence do we have today? This story is so damning that the tweets people on the right keep spreading are literally just revenge porn. Some “real story”.
Thats the only actually serious thing uncovered by the laptop
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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…
And everytime I see a slippery slope argument about law enforcement sneaking into quiet corners of private enterprise, I like to remind people that local police shoot people pretty frequently.
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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…
It's not an abuse of power unless the FBI threatens repercussions. It seems like Twitter was more or less happy to oblige. I don't see what the hubbub is about.