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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#161

Post by sidibe »

Waterluvian wrote: post #97
Dig1t wrote: post #16

I'm a moderate, not a Democrat and not a Republican. I think people on the left have a blind spot here, that the more suppression they use, the more division they create, and the more moderates and people on the right grow to resent them. I would have identified as a Democrat on pretty much every issue, but this authoritarian suppression of speech and ideas has just pushed me away from that side completely. At this p…

From a country with five viable parties: this picking sides thing, or even being a “moderate” is just weird and kind of horrifying how normal the populace thinks it is. It’s not normal. People should be FREAKING OUT that their governmental system is in such bad shape. They’re too busy cheering for whichever tribe they’re in. All of politics being one dimensional is one of the biggest lies ever.

The difference between the multiparty countries and the USA is that in the USA the compromises needed to form a government are made before you do the final vote. In some ways I think that's better because the parties have to have a fuller and more realistic platform than in Europe where you can get a bunch of parties in power only caring about a few issues each and the tradeoffs aren't presented upfront

Re: The Twitter Files

#162

Post by michaelgrosner2 »

Dig1t wrote: post #94
michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None, because the government shouldn’t be interfering in speech.

The whole point of this is that government is already interfering in speech. This one specifically is pretty strong IMO (Biden team telling Twitter to manipulate speech): https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 Yes yes, someone has already said something about one of them being a dick pic, remove that one, whatever. But do you think they are ALL dick picks? This email is one out of many.

> This one specifically is pretty strong IMO

That was from October 2020. Biden was not in government then.

Re: The Twitter Files

#163

Post by anoonmoose »

rufusroflpunch wrote: post #136
Dig1t wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 Biden team asking Twitter to "handle" tweets they don't like. This rubs me the wrong way, nobody in government should be telling Twitter to remove speech.

I think it's a blatant first amendment violation. Twitter are acting as agents to state to silence individuals. The federal government cannot pick and choose who gets to speak.

Do you understand that if it is a First Amendment violation (which I don't think it is), the party with standing to sue over it would be Twitter, who has not claimed they were coerced/forced by the government and has not sued or announced intention to?

Re: The Twitter Files

#164

Post by hintymad »

An honest question: what if conservatives are in power? Can they or should they suppress truths like the left did? Wouldn't it "destroy democracy" as the left loved to say? I thought a fair political system protects all political parties. Or the left believe that they will always be in power?

Re: The Twitter Files

#165

Post by bilvar »

john-radio wrote: post #141
scifibestfi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter which side, because isn't the problem that the government is doing an end run around the 1st Amendment? If you don't think so now, you might in 2024. So it's time to care now.

> Isn't the problem that the government is doing an end run around the 1st Amendment? "The Biden team" was not the government in October 2020. (For that matter there is a "Biden team" right now that has no governmental capacity, that is, his re-election team, which is probably engaged in these same kind of activities with many platforms.) I have to wonder if these communications aren't just pretty normal? It might be…

So was it ok for the Nazis to beat people up before they were elected into power?

Re: The Twitter Files

#166

Post by dekhn »

imgabe wrote: post #122
dekhn wrote: post #66

It's still kind of odd to think that you can be an in-favor executive at a company, then somebody else can buy your company, fire you, and go back and read all your work emails (many of which would be extremely sensitive) and share it with journalists who then screenshot it and share it with the world on the same platform that employed you! This was always a possibility (and a probability- my friend was a lawyer who…

Nothing you write in a work email is private. Everyone knows this. Never write anything in an email that you wouldn’t want read in court.

That nothing in work email is private is well-known (not everyone knows this). That wasn't my point. I place "company looks at employee's email after a credible report of hacking/abuse/whatever" and "rich person purchases major tech platform and uses it to publicize ex-employees email to affect public opinions" in two different categories, especially given the ex-employee was a C-level officer handling some extremely complex and sensitive decisions.

Re: The Twitter Files

#167

Post by ryanbrunner »

Dig1t wrote: post #118
andreyk wrote: post #108

It does not seem like this really exposed any new information - Twitter publicly justified its actions as being about its hacked data policy back when this all happened ( https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-mat... ). All this shows is some internal disagreement as to whether that was the right call. By the way, Facebook also suppressed the news story citing its misinformation policy ( https://www…

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 Biden team asking Twitter to "handle" tweets they don't like. This rubs me the wrong way, nobody in government should be telling Twitter to remove speech.

"Handle" could be "take down tweets on request of the Biden team without review" or "handle this request by the Biden team by considering our current policies and making an independent decision".

Neither would be terribly surprising to me, although for sure the first is more damning. But Taibbi hasn't yet provided enough detail to know one way or another.

If it is just "prioritize this support request by a VIP" it's not particularly damning or even scandalous, I would assume that would be the case at any social media company.

Re: The Twitter Files

#168

Post by [deleted] »

Dig1t wrote: post #110
paulgb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a smoking gun here that points the blame to any officials representing the party, as opposed to bad decisions made by twitter employees on their own bias? I find the tweetstorm format to be not particularly coherent, and I haven’t followed the story closely enough to know who the actors are, but Ro Khanna (a Democrat) is one of the names I recognize and he seems to be against the censoring.

This one is pretty bad in my opinion: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 The government is not supposed to be censoring people's speech, however they are effectively doing just that using a layer of indirection.

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#169

Post by Dem_Boys »

noah_buddy wrote: post #146
Dem_Boys wrote: post #127

Most concerning thing here is that this proves political parties (including the white house[0]) have a direct line to Twitter[1] to get stuff they dislike removed. One would have to assume that there was also a direct line to other social medial platforms. It's so wild to have the slimy-ness of our American political system be revealed in yet another way. So in America you cannot say negative things about political l…

It’s blowing my mind to see people on Twitter reading the story and thinking this is an issue of whether or not Hunter Biden is a problem. This is clearly the much more pernicious issue that 1. social media companies are massively influencing the dissemination of information on an ad hoc basis informed by personal political whims and 2. even the leaders of these organizations are unable to rein in these influences.

Honest Question: If the white house contacts Twitter and asks for a tweet to be removed, is that a first amendment violation?

Re: The Twitter Files

#170

Post by purple_ferret »

Dem_Boys wrote: post #127

Most concerning thing here is that this proves political parties (including the white house[0]) have a direct line to Twitter[1] to get stuff they dislike removed. One would have to assume that there was also a direct line to other social medial platforms. It's so wild to have the slimy-ness of our American political system be revealed in yet another way. So in America you cannot say negative things about political l…

How is this surprising?

People get things resolved via Hacker News when people comment on CEO account comments (Stripe comes to mind).

Nearly every company probably has direct lines of access for resolutions for VIPs, politicians not excluded.

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