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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#231

Post by freejazz »

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…

>Okay well, this doesn't feel like a good faith discussion if we're resorting to technicalities like this.

Okay and you are assuming that Twitter would just take down the tweets, or that the tweets didn't violate Twitter's policies. Is it not okay for someone in the gov't to hit the report button?

Re: The Twitter Files

#232

Post by pessimizer »

raphlinus wrote: post #80
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…

> If Elon thinks this is some sort of big shock that will cause people to get excited.... I can't really see why. Of course people will get excited. If Elon were to flog a "Hunter Biden's laptop" story that turned out to be that its hard drive was 4500 RPM when the SKU was marketed as 5400, and that capacity was measured in gigabytes rather than gibibytes, people would still get excited. Facts have little to do with…

This isn't about any story that Elon Musk was flogging. It's about a true story that was published in a major tabloid about one of two presidential candidates on the eve of an election that every major media outlet colluded to suppress.

Minimizing it is condescending. Tainting it through associating it with Musk is as cynical as tainting it by associating it with mystery Russians.

Re: The Twitter Files

#233

Post by afavour »

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 more division they create, and the more moderates and people on the [opposite side] grow to resent them

This feels like a universal to me that applies to both parties.

And I’m sorry, “authoritarian suppression of speech and ideas” is pure propaganda. No mainstream left leaning politician is actually perusing such an idea, it’s a boogeyman created by the right and by the looks of things it’s working great.

Re: The Twitter Files

#234

Post by freejazz »

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.

What about Trump's team doing the exact same thing while he was in office?

Re: The Twitter Files

#236

Post by fzeroracer »

sasmithjr wrote: post #195
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…

What was the content of the "handled" tweets, though? I think that matters a lot. For example, the RealJamesWood tweet (from [0]) seems to be a leaked nude of Hunter; it was most likely (safe to say) posted non-consensually, and I don't really see a big difference between that kind of tweet and revenge porn. Having "stuff they dislike" removed would be one thing, but using the direct line at Twitter for reporting exp…

Not just that, but revenge porn is literally illegal in the state of California, where Twitter is HQ'd.

I'm getting increasingly annoyed by people pointing to those removed tweets as a smoking gun while being completely unaware that we know the contents of said tweet and said tweets can easily be interpreted as violating Twitter's ToS at minimum and actively violating California law at worst.

Re: The Twitter Files

#237

Post by freejazz »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #115
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…

The part where they removed tweets because they were asked to or banned accounts because they were asked to is a pretty big deal. And even though everyone knew they did that it wasn't in writing. It's kind of like the Snowden leaks, everyone who thought about the issues involved had a basic idea of what was going on but until it was out in the open people could just deny it.

Taibbi doesn't even say any of that

Re: The Twitter Files

#238

Post by stale2002 »

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.

This is a distinction with little difference.

They can just as much suppress speech, by using the implied threat of future government action.

And this is basically just as bad.

Re: The Twitter Files

#239

Post by roenxi »

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…

One of the curses of democracy is you have to form coalitions with other humans instead of ideals. At least in the US it is out in the open. Many countries have worse problems and bigger, more friendly smiles.

This is a good time to plug 3rd parties and candidates. Organised pressure to make the situation better is more important than winning elections - even if they don't get voted in they may force change for the better. At some point the best options amongst two evils is still too evil to tolerate.

Re: The Twitter Files

#240

Post by agripa2 »

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.

The Biden campaign is not the government.
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