The Twitter Files • Hacker News Board

Re: The Twitter Files

#201

Post by andsoitis » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

jacooper wrote: post #46

I don't follow or give attention to American politics, I don't live in America, and probably never will. But the Left bias in Social media is extremely concerning, its so apparent from the type of people who work in tech, especially in Silicon valley, that they have a Leftist bias, whether the Left or the Right are correct doesn’t matter. The issue is Social media in our time is it’s where a lot of people form opinio…

> In a family gathering the medium itself doesn’t influence the conversation, your family members do.

One perspective is that the medium IS the message.

Re: The Twitter Files

#202

Post by anoonmoose » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

Dig1t wrote: post #188

anoonmoose wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1- Biden wasn't in government, he was running for office. Private citizen at the time. 2- They weren't telling, they were asking, and if Twitter feels like they were told, they can sue the government for violating their First Amendment rights.

Okay well, this doesn't feel like a good faith discussion if we're resorting to technicalities like this. You are correct, technically Joe Biden was not a part of the government at the time that this email was sent. Do you honestly believe that this behavior is keeping with the spirit of the first amendment? His team, and the DNC (here's one that's very similar, except that its from the DNC instead of the Biden team…

I guess the main question is, are we having a legal or moral conversation? Because when you're discussing law- which I think is the vastly more important aspect here- these aren't technicalities. I don't believe there's a thing called "the spirit of the First Amendment". There's just the First Amendment, and how the courts have enforced it and are likely to continue enforcing it. I don't think it would be a 1A violation if he did it in office- in fact, Taibbi's thread says the Trump admin did the same thing, and I don't think that's a 1A violation (legally) either.

Re: The Twitter Files

#203

Post by acjohnson55 » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

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…

The irony of that statement is that we're talking about a private company deciding what is or isn't appropriate on its platform, not de jure censorship. It is not Twitter's responsibility to facilitate the Republicans' attempted October Surprise.

On the other hand, where Republicans have political power, they are using it restrict speech and rights, by law.

"Both sides" are not the same.

Re: The Twitter Files

#204

Post by textbookrental » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

Does twitter have a current transparency policy that would provide any reasonable evidence that this type of behavior has stopped?

Re: The Twitter Files

#205

Post by imgabe » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #166

imgabe wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They’re telling people the truth about how the decisions were made. Complaining that this “affects public opinion” and that the emails were “sensitive“ is just a fancy way of saying that what the public was previously told were lies.

Re: The Twitter Files

#206

Post by ryanbrunner » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #164

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?

During the period we're discussing the president was a Republican.

Re: The Twitter Files

#207

Post by mjmsmith » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #164

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?

No post body was provided.

Re: The Twitter Files

#208

Post by dotnet00 » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:18 AM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #32

Some people are probably going to call for legislation to address this twitter thread. What kinds of laws or regulations do you think could solve this?

Hopefully ones requiring this kind of transparency regarding moderation actions on platforms of sufficiently large size. A lot of concerns about bias would go away if platforms had to give proper reasoning/justification for moderation actions in more definite terms than the vague statements we're used to. It might be a bit much to expect that for every moderation action, so maybe something that balances the required detail against the visibility of the action.

For example, banning spambots should basically only need overall statistics on the bans, whereas bans/suspensions of news or public figures should require detailed insight into what happened. As a side effect it might force platforms to have some insight into automated bans instead of relying on people managing to stir up enough of a ruckus on another platform to get in touch with a human.

Re: The Twitter Files

#209

Post by taolegal » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:18 AM UTC

mikkergp wrote: post #73

taolegal wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Q-level talk It's disappointing how there's real stunningly outrageous stuff and you just brush it away under the umbrella of Q. Epstein was revealed to have an ungodly long list of elites from around the world visiting his island full of minors that were sexually abused and trafficked. Hollywood openly cooperated with Weinstein for decades only for it to all explode. All were liberal, metropolitan social circles t…

Pedophiles are bad period they’re a problem everywhere and it’s weird to try and make it partisan.

It's not a partisan idea that democrats control every sphere of culture.

Re: The Twitter Files

#210

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 03, 2022, 2:19 AM UTC

jacooper wrote: post #55

whateveracct wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it have been a bigger story exactly? My understanding is there wasn't any wrongdoing found (not to mention the chain of custody was a mess).

I didn't read the whole thing, but from the reactions of politicians in the Twitter files and some news writers, it looks like it was something worth paying attention to, surely more than the every day doom and gloom headlines. (As I said I am not an avid american politics follower, I would remove the "should've been a bigger story" line if that's an issue)

[deleted]