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”The FBI is not authorized to be ensuring private companies adhere to their policies.” This is not their goal. It is part of their method.
But not, in the way that it has been done, a legally sanctioned part of their method.
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The WSJ is hardly right wing.
WSJ owner also owns Fox and NYPost. So, definitely, traceably, conspicuously right wing.
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?
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I fail to see how having a law against incitement in germany - that doesn't even sound like would apply to jan 6th if it was done there- makes the article of merkel and several other EU leaders condemning twitter's action not make any sense.
It appears Merkel did not intervene in this case of incitement to violence. https://www-welt-de.translate.goog/vermischtes/article231416...
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…
While this is true, it is not necessary for twitter to resist requests from the government in order for this kind of contact to be effective state censorship. Twitter has seemed to be eager to do whatever the government says. Why wouldn't they be? It's a favor that the government owes them now, and additionally, they were charging the government for their time. It's a completely profitable interaction. With media consolidation, there are only a few dozen people who ultimately own all western media, and they got that way through good relationships with governments.
The real troubling question is why the FBI has a department of 80 people combing through tweets and tweeting in order to push or suppress policy. Thinking of Twitter as the victim entirely misses the point.
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Ok, this is fine, but that means we have to classify Twitter as press , with all of the responsibilities as a publisher that this entails.
There is no such thing as a "press" classification in the US with respect to the first amendment. The press has the same rights as everyone else.
They aren’t treated like press, but they need to be.
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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?
I don't have much ready to hand - and it may be hard to come up with hard proof.
There is Greenwald[0] and the infamous Homeland Security Disinformation Best Practices and Safeguards Subcommittee - here are the bios[1]. Note how interlinked these people are. They don't need to document their interactions, because they basically think alike and know what to do without specific instructions. The FBI acts as the primary point of contact from the letter agencies, as per the title if the article we are discussing. The Beltway revolving door takes care of the rest of the interactions, including providing experts to the media, so the rest of the Beltway can just listen and act.
[0] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congress-escalates-pressure...
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/HSAC%20Disin... [pdf]
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> 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…
>Where are all those “it’s a private company they can do what they like” folks now? I haven’t seen that posted recently. Those people were responding to arguments that social media platforms banning people, moderating content or even presenting content under an algorithmic feed were violations of the First Amendment, Section 230 and freedom of speech, by pointing out that all of these actions are allowed by the afore…
I don’t see how suspending a few journalists for 12 hours and being directly able to point to their existing TOS is the same thing.
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WSJ owner also owns Fox and NYPost. So, definitely, traceably, conspicuously right wing.
Except if you actually compare the three, you'll see that the WSJ is quite a bit to the left on its news pages, and somewhat left of them on its editorial pages. The quality is a lot higher, of course.
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"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.
Thanks to dang I do find HN to be much more balanced on most viewpoints than the majority of sites. I can't recall a time here where I have been disgusted with someone's comment like I have on Arstechnica reading comments wishing death to Trump supporters or the unvaccinated.