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

381–390 of 491 posts

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

#381

Post by NickNameNick »

Ygg2 wrote: post #323
NickNameNick wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-distributing intimate material without the subjects permission is pretty much the definition of revenge porn.

> In late 2020, a controversy emerged involving data from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that was abandoned at a Delaware computer shop.[1] The data was subsequently shared with the FBI, Republican operatives, and later the press.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers... That's a very strange definition of revenge porn. It was made inadvertently by Hunter Biden, it wasn't used for blackm…

dictionary.com:

"revenge porn - noun - revealing or sexually explicit images or videos of a person posted on the internet, typically by a former sexual partner, without the consent of the subject and in order to cause them distress or embarrassment."

It's not a question of who took the photos. It's a question of whether the people sharing them had the permission of the subject to share them.

While Blackmail may be a component of some revenge porn, it's not required by this or other definitions.

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

#382

Post by d23 »

philippejara wrote: post #216
SyzygistSix wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree he’s stayed the same, but what was revealed was not some deeply held value system beyond contrarianism for contrarianism and attention’s sake. There was a fascistic attempt to overthrow the government, and the best I can surmise is that Greenwald took the side of the overthrowers because any other journalist with eyes and even the slightest care for truth could see what happened. So he chose to take the path that could let him feel like a smart guy going against the crowd. He’s a hipster journalist unconcerned with the truth.

Keep in mind, this is a guy who has been thrown out of not one but two news organizations, one of which he founded! The level of narcissism and self-obsession that takes must be astounding.

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

#383

Post by d23 »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #199
SyzygistSix wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I’ll engage rather than downvoting. Something always struck me as odd about Assange, and while we can debate whether conspiring with the Russians in hack and leak operations against the US is a departure from their prior behavior, I think it’s unfair to pretend Americans suddenly had a huge value shift in not being okay with that.

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

#384

Post by d23 »

acdha wrote: post #287
trentnix wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We don’t shadow ban”

Clearly true – as shown by the Twitter they followed their stated policies, as explained in the public interviews they did back in 2018. https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/twitter-will-start-hidi... Bari Weiss tried to misrepresent what shadow banning means but especially here I’d expect people to be familiar with what the term means.

I really hope this gets through to the person you’re responding to. This stuff isn’t hard to find. It feels like every time they make one of these threads it’s so full of misrepresentations that they might as well be spitting in the faces of their supporters.

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

#385

Post by acdha »

zosima wrote: post #379
acdha wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s possible but you’d expect to see some sign of it: internal emails or messages, legal advice, etc. when those threats were made or guidelines from the legal department about what things the regular trust and safety people can’t ignore. What’s telling is that Musk’s people can’t find anything like that. If this was happening you’d think there’d be at least one example where someone is saying they have to yank so…

No, you wouldn't expect anything like that at all. Nobody passing kindergarten would write down something so blatantly illegal.

First, you’d think the same thing about almost any crime but there’s a long history of that happening.

More importantly, however, as I explained you’d see the presence of that policy even if they managed to keep the conspiracy perfectly. There’d have been cases where something didn’t meet the rules for being banned but someone overruled them to do it anyway, unexplained policy changes following a private meeting, someone setting out hard lines for the moderators, etc. Twitter had a ton of people doing moderation and there’s no way you get that many people to work on a daily basis without stated policies or someone accidentally saying something they knew, or that not a single one of them wouldn’t have gone public or talked to Musk.

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

#386

Post by Ygg2 »

NickNameNick wrote: post #381
Ygg2 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In late 2020, a controversy emerged involving data from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that was abandoned at a Delaware computer shop.[1] The data was subsequently shared with the FBI, Republican operatives, and later the press.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers... That's a very strange definition of revenge porn. It was made inadvertently by Hunter Biden, it wasn't used for blackm…

dictionary.com: "revenge porn - noun - revealing or sexually explicit images or videos of a person posted on the internet, typically by a former sexual partner, without the consent of the subject and in order to cause them distress or embarrassment." It's not a question of who took the photos. It's a question of whether the people sharing them had the permission of the subject to share them. While Blackmail may be a…

Ok, but say a public figure is involved in a scummy situation, and left their laptop detailing their shady dealings (along some naked pictures) at repair shop and forgot about it, but a journalist managed to get docs from said laptop including naked pictures, does it invalidate the whole cotnent of laptop as revenge porn?

By point is, having naked pictures on your laptop don't make docs and other stuff found as revenge porn.

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

#387

Post by clucas »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #258
cloutchaser wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you’d have an issue with it if these organisations leaned mostly republican. When this last happened in the 1960s and 70s, when it was the left that was anti establishment, and didn’t want the Vietnam war, or didn’t want Christian orthodoxy imposed on society, the left was obsessed with free speech and being anti government organisations. Suddenly no one can think beyond their own party and as long as the…

> People really need to think longer term. Asking too much. In the past couple months, HN users went from “it’s a private company they can do what they want” when Twitter was a public company working with the FBI to enact specific user censorship… to “OMG Elon banned a handful of journalists, freeze peach was a lie!” when it was a suspension for 12 hours. Where are all those “it’s a private company they can do what t…

I'm one of those people. I think Elon can ban whomever he wants, for any reason he wants. I didn't see anyone arguing otherwise though, so I didn't have much to say.

Edited to add: I am a little curious why the free speech absolutists weren't up in arms about those bans though. Hmm.

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

#388

Post by bbbbb5 »

wrycoder wrote: post #373
bbbbb5 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Congress is obviously a completely different entity than the FBI. If the Congress wants to force companies work with the FBI, they have the absolute power to do so.

It's not obvious. The Beltway networks are in place.

The thing about this kind of vague insinuations is that they're impossible to refute, but not necessarily impossible to show examples of. Do you have any?

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

#389

Post by cactusplant7374 »

acdha wrote: post #287
trentnix wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We don’t shadow ban”

Clearly true – as shown by the Twitter they followed their stated policies, as explained in the public interviews they did back in 2018. https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/twitter-will-start-hidi... Bari Weiss tried to misrepresent what shadow banning means but especially here I’d expect people to be familiar with what the term means.

Is there a theme here where Musk & co are trying to redefine what words mean to poison debate?

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

#390

Post by belltaco »

Ygg2 wrote: post #386
NickNameNick wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dictionary.com: "revenge porn - noun - revealing or sexually explicit images or videos of a person posted on the internet, typically by a former sexual partner, without the consent of the subject and in order to cause them distress or embarrassment." It's not a question of who took the photos. It's a question of whether the people sharing them had the permission of the subject to share them. While Blackmail may be a…

Ok, but say a public figure is involved in a scummy situation, and left their laptop detailing their shady dealings (along some naked pictures) at repair shop and forgot about it, but a journalist managed to get docs from said laptop including naked pictures, does it invalidate the whole cotnent of laptop as revenge porn? By point is, having naked pictures on your laptop don't make docs and other stuff found as reven…

You're misunderstanding the thread. So let me lay it out.

The Biden campaign in 2020(they were not in power, Trump admin was) sent a list of tweets to Twitter asking them to take a look alleging that they violated Twitter's rules on revenge porn. Twitter took down those tweets. Matt Taibibi implied this was government/Twitter censorship, and the right wing went ape shit over it. People found the archived versions of those tweets, mainly from politician Republican influencers, and they were nothing except pictures of Hunter's penis. Nothing to do with his business dealings or emails on his laptop that were leaked.

The Republican operatives who privately received the leaked laptop contents didn't even blur the private parts. Are they revenge porn? Arguably. Was this an example of government censorship, or censorship of political discourse? No. The Trump Whitehouse was also reporting problematic tweets to Twitter contacts for potential violation of Twitter terms. Nobody is claiming the Biden laptop business dealings, emails etc. were revenge porn.

Post reply on HN