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

251–260 of 491 posts

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

#251

Post by XorNot »

root_axis wrote: post #219
antiterra wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I've seen this hypothetical raised a lot but I don't find it very compelling. If the post isn't in violation of twitter's TOS then twitter has strong legal…

It's also an anthromorphization fallacy argument. "Twitter" is a company, not a private individual.

If the FBI contacts "Twitter" then they're not talking to any one individual, in fact there's no requirement that be the same person at all.

So Twitter cannot be threatened or threatened with implied threats - it's a limited liability corporation, there's no individual who can be overly inconvenienced or have any emotional reaction to the request.

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

#252

Post by acdha »

transcriptase wrote: post #214
acdha wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooperation here means that they were enforcing their existing terms of service. That’s very different from legal compulsion.

Why are 3 letter agencies paying Twitter to moderate their own site?

They aren’t moderating the site. The FBI was reporting things they felt were under the purview of their election security mandate but they weren’t generally pursuing TOS violations.

If you’re referring to the administrative costs, those were a separate issue where U.S. law allows payment for the cost of complying with court ordered 2703(d) requests:

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/20/no-the-fbi-is-not-paying...

Nothing in these dumps suggests that those requests are being abused.

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

#253

Post by lovich »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #229
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]

They were not doxxing, and the suspensions were not originally 12 hours. I know Elon started off his Twitter leadership with trying to rewrite history[1][2], but that doesn’t mean you should accept it just because he continues the manipulative behavior

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/elon-musk-deletes-tweet-wit...

[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/15868716916862238...

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

#254

Post by fallingknife »

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.

"It's a private company and can do what it wants"

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

#255

Post by NickNameNick »

Ygg2 wrote: post #170
ajross wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smoking gun email in the "Part 1" Twitter Files thread from Taibbi was a request from the Biden Campaign to look at a list of otherwise-undescribed-and-since-removed tweets. This was strongly implied to be a request for censorship of the laptop story. Then someone found an archived copy of all but one of the tweets, and they all turned out to be pictures of Hunter Biden's penis.

> Then someone found an archived copy of all but one of the tweets, and they all turned out to be pictures of Hunter Biden's penis. Yes, he left his images on laptop. That's not revenge porn, as far as I know. > The smoking gun email in the "Part 1" Twitter Files Don't quote me on that, but from my memory not only were links to Hunter deleted, but so were discussions of it from even reputable journalist. I think it w…

Re-distributing intimate material without the subjects permission is pretty much the definition of revenge porn.

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

#256

Post by ggreer »

themagician wrote: post #36
potatototoo99 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the important thing here is the lack of judicial oversight. There used to be needed a court order to request things from companies, so someone would actually weight in the evidence and legality of it. Now it's just someone from a secret agency shutting down news stories about laptops because it makes one political candidate look bad.

Requests are different from demands. It’s not like the FBI tells Twitter to take something down under threat of violence. They say just ask and Twitter agrees, sometimes, because they are on the same page.

If the FBI requests something, and you ignore or refuse them, they will find a way to make your life unpleasant. Remember, this organization has a long history of human rights abuses and illegal actions. They even tried to blackmail MLK.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–King_suicide_letter

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

#257

Post by dukeofdoom »

lovich wrote: post #235
dukeofdoom wrote: post #210

[flagged]

> The two people Kyle Rittenhouse shot, both had extensive criminal records. That's kind of amazing, that criminals would be such dedicated civil rights protestors. Simpler explanation is that FBI sent informants, or agent provocateurs. “People protesting against the government were criminals as defined by the government they were protesting against. It unbelievable that anyone who is a criminal could be involved in…

Joseph Don Rosenbaum, was imprisoned and made to register as a sex offender involved the molestation and rape of five separate boys.

Yes, I'm skeptical that he was there because he was a civil rights advocate.

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

#258

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

cloutchaser wrote: post #236
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 wonder if you’d have an issue with it if these organisations leaned mostly republican. When this last happened in the 1960s and 70s, when it was the left that was anti establishment, and didn’t want the Vietnam war, or didn’t want Christian orthodoxy imposed on society, the left was obsessed with free speech and being anti government organisations. Suddenly no one can think beyond their own party and as long as the…

> People really need to think longer term.

Asking too much.

In the past couple months, HN users went from “it’s a private company they can do what they want” when Twitter was a public company working with the FBI to enact specific user censorship…

to “OMG Elon banned a handful of journalists, freeze peach was a lie!” when it was a suspension for 12 hours.

Where are all those “it’s a private company they can do what they like” folks now? I haven’t seen that posted recently.

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

#259

Post by bbbbb5 »

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…

>I could see a world where ‘see if it violates your own policies’ is a code for extortion with plausible deniability.

That's not the world we live in. If you reply with "Blow me", the FBI will do nothing.

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

#260

Post by cactusplant7374 »

trentnix wrote: post #54

I have to say I’m astonished at the casual dismissal of the blatant lies of the previous Twitter regime, their clear election manipulation, and the governments involvement in drawing attention to utterly trivial social media activity. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks the governments attention on small, inconsequential accounts was all a backstop to justify the narratives they were feeding to the press about Russi…

> their clear election manipulation

I’m confused here. I only see Republicans trying to manipulate elections with unsubstantiated voter fraud claims.

Post reply on HN