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

221–230 of 491 posts

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

#221

Post by ummonk »

spamizbad wrote: post #163
pannSun wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss [1]? The US govt. used its influence over Twitter to help sell its foreign policy (military interventions included) to the US and global audience. The only way you could not take issue with it, is if you're fine with govt. psyops/undisclosed propaganda. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111071

I mean we allowed the alphabet agencies to cooperate with social media companies to fight "ISIS propaganda." -- what did you think would happen? Scorpion, frog, etc. If we had stood up to them in 2013, drew a line in the sand and said "No, a bunch of poorly edited snuff films aren't going to cause a bunch of American teens to join an Islamic revolution" these relationships wouldn't exist. By the way, we are currently…

It is simply a fact that ISIS did successfully radicalize and recruit western teenagers via the internet.

What if anything the government should do to prevent such recruitment is a matter of debate, but you shouldn't pretend such recruitment didn't happen.

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

#222

Post by yehudalouis »

I prefer the old, anti-establishment left. Now the left is just comprised of journalists defending three letter agencies while calling the right "bootlickers."

I don't like the idea of any three letter agency having any communication with a company like Twitter unless it is for a specific investigation.

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

#223

Post by pyuser583 »

antiterra wrote: post #125
mef wrote: post #9

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…

The process by which Trump was pushed off is concerning.

It seems internal employee activism played a large role. That’s not good.

While Twitter has a right as a private company to moderate based on internal popularity, it doesn’t build confidence.

It seemed the professional moderators were saying “Trump is pushing the limits, but not crossing them” - the other employees were lobbying to get him banned.

And they won.

The message is, if you want to run for office on a controversial platform, make sure you have supporters among the rank and file at Twitter, FB, Reddit, etc, The parts about the FBI are less concerning.

Good content moderation creates a firewall between (say) the software development team and the moderation team. While Twitter had such a wall, it didn’t withstand pressure.

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

#224

Post by PartiallyTyped »

coredog64 wrote: post #215
mef wrote: post #9

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…

The FBI was highlighting obvious parody accounts and accounts with double digit followers for the “crime” of the tired old joke of “(other party) votes on Wednesday”.

The whole parody thing a-la Carl Tuckerson "nobody seriously believes this" while manufacturing outrage that many people believe in and results in stochastic terrorism needs to stop.

How many massacres[1] are necessary before people take things like that a bit more seriously? Is it until somebody they know gets murdered?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_right-wing_terrorist_a...

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

#225

Post by lovich »

monsecchris wrote: post #13

The people trying to minimise every intelligence agency working with every tech company on behalf of the Democratic Party are the same people calling this a dangerous far right conspiracy theory not long ago.

>… on behalf of the Democratic Party…

This persecution complex the Republicans have promulgated is amazing with how widely believed it is. The republicans have controlled the reigns of power repeatedly over the past few decades and for a greater number of elections than you’d anticipate looking at the popular vote. The timeline the Twitter files is talking about was explicitly during Republican control and not something like a month after the elections where bureaucratic momentum might have still been in play but years after they had taken the executive and legislature. The FBI head was 2-3 years into his job after being placed by a Republican president at this point.

How are they possibly working as an arm of the Democratic Party?

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

#226

Post by fallingknife »

spamizbad wrote: post #163
pannSun wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss [1]? The US govt. used its influence over Twitter to help sell its foreign policy (military interventions included) to the US and global audience. The only way you could not take issue with it, is if you're fine with govt. psyops/undisclosed propaganda. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111071

I mean we allowed the alphabet agencies to cooperate with social media companies to fight "ISIS propaganda." -- what did you think would happen? Scorpion, frog, etc. If we had stood up to them in 2013, drew a line in the sand and said "No, a bunch of poorly edited snuff films aren't going to cause a bunch of American teens to join an Islamic revolution" these relationships wouldn't exist. By the way, we are currently…

No one is talking about banning TikTok because it's rotting anyone's brain. They are talking about it because it gives the CCP direct access to data on millions of US citizens.

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

#227

Post by stefan_ »

Ygg2 wrote: post #124
stefan_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh yes, all those tweets the FBI reported that Matt forgot to tell you were straight up revenge porn. I really wonder why they were deleted! If only he could have found out using, like, the Web Archive, as many others did afterwards. (It was the Trump government FBI, by the way. In case your timeline is a bit mixed up?)

> were straight up revenge porn. Citation needed. Even Wikipedia lists it as an abandoned laptop that was trawled for data. Trash as far as I know is legitimate object of search (e.g. police does it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

> Revenge porn is the distribution of sexually explicit images or videos of individuals without their consent

I don't know man, you could have just googled that yourself.

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

#229

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

stefan_ wrote: post #5

Can't wait for Matt to hit the motherlode: Elon banning journalists out of personal spite, making a poll to unban them but underhandedly demanding they delete their (never rule-breaking) tweets. Just a few more searches and he will hit it for sure! Unless his handlers demand he ignore that, of course.

[flagged]

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

#230

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

SyzygistSix wrote: post #158
stefan_ wrote: post #5

Can't wait for Matt to hit the motherlode: Elon banning journalists out of personal spite, making a poll to unban them but underhandedly demanding they delete their (never rule-breaking) tweets. Just a few more searches and he will hit it for sure! Unless his handlers demand he ignore that, of course.

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.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN