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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#211

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

partiallypro wrote: post #125
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…

> But there is no clear evidence that they explicitly favored one party You don't even need this "Twitter Files" thread to know that there is plenty of evidence; I don't really see how you can say with any such confidence that Twitter's policies have been even handed.

This seems like a kind of question where people are going to come to different conclusions based on what echo chamber they are part of (because news of different instances of policy enforcement are going to be promoted by different groups). You could try to get a handle on the objective truth through a quantitative analysis. Otherwise, we’re all just claiming our priors are obviously the truth.

Re: The Twitter Files

#212

Post by andrew_ »

bilvar wrote: post #165
john-radio wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The discussion could do without this tangent.

Re: The Twitter Files

#213

Post by freejazz »

bilvar wrote: post #165
john-radio wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The prohibition on beating people up isn't limited to state actors. In fact, some might point out it's the opposite!

Re: The Twitter Files

#214

Post by copenja »

avemg wrote: post #131
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.

It should please you to hear that the Biden team was not the government at the time.

Was he not a US Senator?

Re: The Twitter Files

#215

Post by Bilal_io »

chroma wrote: post #172
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…

Because of laws passed after the Enron scandal, publicly traded companies are required to retain internal communications for long periods of time. So if you're going to blame anyone for this, blame the government. Also the owners of Twitter knew that Musk would have access to these messages. That was priced into the deal. Executives and managers at publicly traded companies are very aware of information retention pol…

> Twitter and the US government collude

I see everyone saying this while ignoring the timeline. This happened before the 2020 elections. Biden was not president back then.

Re: The Twitter Files

#216

Post by pulvinar »

folkrav wrote: post #76
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 whole idea that there are "sides" to be had is IMHO extremely sad in the first place. This whole bipartisan system bullshit is causing so much damage, and its been going on since at least the 70s.

That's an odd take on US history-- it certainly wasn't all roses before the 70s, what with political sides getting people blacklisted, killed, or even starting a civil war.

Re: The Twitter Files

#217

Post by Dem_Boys »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #179
Dem_Boys wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If we take the most innocent sounding version of this, where the White House points out that a tweet is in violation of Twitter's stated policies and asks for those policies to be applied, I think it's pretty clearly not. Of course those requests can and will be made in a biased manner, and it's naive to assume that the nature of the request isn't going to influence how Twitter responds to it, but it's definitely a m…

This is a good point!

The wording probably matters too. The Biden team asked Twitter to "review" certain tweets instead of "remove" certain tweets. So technically they're not suppressing speech explicitly but implicitly we (and twitter employees) all know what they mean by "review".

Re: The Twitter Files

#218

Post by anoonmoose »

Dem_Boys wrote: post #169
noah_buddy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No! And if it was, the party with standing to sue would be Twitter themselves, who has not said they're doing this.

Re: The Twitter Files

#219

Post by andrew_ »

avemg wrote: post #131
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.

It should please you to hear that the Biden team was not the government at the time.

The Biden Team had the entire DNC behind them, which also means a vast majority of sitting Democrats. I'm confused by the effort to separate Biden's election team from the appendages of the government that were aligned by party and committee.

Re: The Twitter Files

#220

Post by freejazz »

nkozyra wrote: post #88
mikkergp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . If Elon thinks this is some sort of big shock that will cause people to get excited.... I can't really see why. I don’t think he does, I think he can literally see engagement falling in the days after a stunt and he’s trying to keep it up. Matt seemed to imply there would be another thread following this one so buckle up

This does seem to be the play. There is a story here! Politicians having direct access to social networks to suppress narratives they don't like is interesting. But 1) I don't think it's surprising and 2) it appears it was not politically motivated at least in a bipartisan sense. A story but one delivered with the kind of panache to drive traffic.

> There is a story here! Politicians having direct access to social networks to suppress narratives they don't like is interesting.

That's not even remotely news. This came out years ago. Still, your characterization is a bit ridiculous.

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