Do we get to read the actual files? Or do we only get them mediated to us by Matt Taibbi's summary + some redacted screenshots?
The Twitter Files
261–270 of 1001 posts
Re: The Twitter Files
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Lots of people talking about ToS as if it's applied consistently and without bias. Let's assume that the oft-storied "pee tapes" were real, published by a mainstream news outlet and posted to Twitter. Would those same individuals regurgitating ToS violations agree that should receive the same treatment, or would they have been complicit in spreading it as far and wide as possible?
The situation is clouded by the extreme bias of the employees at Twitter. They seemed to believe they were applying the ToS consistently and fairly despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
It was interesting when they banned Trump that they cited "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." as a notable incitement of violence. Someone who can put that up and think of it as a serious interpretation is not working from the same reality as most people.
EDIT It is hard to find, here is the link to the reasoning. It is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of the Twitter executives: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
Re: The Twitter Files
#263I'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…
> I'm a moderate
The Overton window in the US stems from center-right (Democrats) to extreme-right (Republicans) so if you're in the middle of that you're firmly a conservative.
Don't believe me? Example: we've got the ongoing threat of a strike tby rail workers who want paid sick leave. They currently have no paid sick leave. Calling in sick will come off their vacation days. It may even get them disciplined and fired. They asked for 15 paid sick days. Some in Congress wanted to compromise and give them 7 days.
Over the last few years the rail companies have furloughed ~30% of their staff to the point where covering sick staff is a real problem. They've so far made $20 billion on profits this year. The excess profits have routinely been used in share buybacks and dividends.
Biden, who claims to be pro-labor, has sided with the rail companies in directing Congress to use an old law to rob these workers of their right to industrial action and mandate a contract. With no paid sick leave.
How can anyone with a straight face in good faith argue there is any leftist power in politics when Democrats side with capital and routinely go out of their way to eviscerate labor and the progressive elements of their party?
> I think people on the left have a blind spot here
So you've made two false premises here:
1. There are peeople on the left in politics. As I noted above, this is a falsehood; and
2. The "left" is a monolith and wanted to suppress the Hunter Biden story. This is right-wing propaganda because conservatives treat Trump like a cult leader who is above the law.
Speaking as a leftist (FWIW), I don't care about Hunter Biden. Throw in jail. Hilary too. I don't think Twitter should've blocked the NY Post story but ultimately it's a nothing burger because there's nothing of substance on this laptop. If there was it would've been passed on to law enforcement instead of being passed raround right-wing operatives (to the point of destroying any chain of custody) in an effort to smear the administration and nothing came of it, which is why they just fell back to the old playbook of pedo allegations.
> ... people on the right grow to resent them
People on the right already call people on the left groomers, pedos and criminals.
> ... this authoritarian suppression of speech
What suppression? Everyone knows about this story. The only "suppression" (which, again, I personally disagree with) is you couldn't share a link to one post on one site (Twitter). to believe this is "authoritarian suppression" belies successful right-wing propaganda.
> ... both sides ...
Bothsidesing American politics does nothing more than show how normalized right-wing ideas have become (and how far right the Overton window has swung). You have the former president espousing QAnon conspiracies, election denialism at every level of government and white supremacy (which is a core tenet of the Republican Party and America's founding and history) spilling over to where the likes of Kanye are saying the quiet part out loud, Elon Musk tweeted (then retracted) a conspiracy about Paul Pelosi and his attacker and the #1 "news" program in US openly pushing Nazi propaganda (ie Tucker Carlson and the Great Replacement Theory).
Bothsidesing this doesn't make one enlightened or "above the fray".
Re: The Twitter Files
#264I 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…
If you think it's the Twitter's moderation team who's responsible for "to control and influence the conversation itself" on Twitter, I got bad news for you.
Political conversation on twitter is driven by:
1) loud extremists on all sides of the political spectrum
2) domestic and foreign agents working to destabilize society for their gain
3) bots amplifying all of the above
Regular people, the majority of them with bland moderate opinions, are largely absent from all of that, yet somehow we all pretend that Twitter and other such platforms are representative of the population. I mean, if we weren't pretending, there would be very little reason to pay attention to it, yet here we are.
There are two types of platforms that (somewhat!) managed to escape the trap of extremism:
1) Those owned and controlled by billionaires for their own gain (state funded channels, major private news channels, local news stations, etc.)
2) Platforms that are too small / too niche / not used by people for sharing political opinions (niche forums, most people's email, etc.)
I am yet to see any solutions for this.
Everyone's pumping Mastodon as if it can solve extremism / spam / bots. It can't, the extremists, special interests, and their bots will just follow you there... if Mastodon ever becomes big enough to drive political discourse that is. And if it won't, then it's no different from the myriad of niche forums we already have – those are great, but utterly irrelevant to the problems we face with platforms like Twitter.
Neither will government-enforced censorship improve the situation. If you disagree, let's wait until is in power, then implement this change. . Yeah, that's what I thought.
Re: The Twitter Files
#265Earlier 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.
Party officials were directly emailing twitter executives, the executives specifically mentioned the "Biden Team", Ro Khanna wasn't necessarily against censoring the story she was upset that Twitter shut down the Trump admin's press secretary account for dm'ing the NY Post Story and that Republicans on the Hill were rightfully so making a big deal out of that. Blatant, let me repeat in caps, BLATANT partisan censorin…
Weird how you say it was blatant partisan censorship but ignore that the Trump administration did the same exact thing while they were actually in the executive branch. It's almost like there is something blatantly partisan here going on, but it's not the "censorship"
Re: The Twitter Files
#266I'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.
It's very common on the left to demand suppression of "hate speech".
Of course, that commonly ends up mostly meaning "speech I hate".
Re: The Twitter Files
#267Most 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…
"One would have to assume" Have some perspective man or woman, you're acting like we're supposed to treat you like some babe in the woods and pretend this is genuinely shocking to you? Please. Yes, powerful governments influence actors within their nations. We get it. Let's all feign surprise for a few hours online. But that's not what bothers me. The most frustrating thing is that your perspective fails to acknowled…
How can you care about the NSA leaks when there are murders happening on the streets?!!
Equally nonsensical point.
Re: The Twitter Files
#268Earlier 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…
It doesn't seem that different from the more typical "rich person (or company) sues major tech platform, employee emails become public record as part of the lawsuit and are publicized to affect public opinion". Though it is amusing that both sides are the same company in this case.
Re: The Twitter Files
#269> Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
This is grandiose sounding rubbish.
The moment when I experienced real-time global conversation was when I compiled an IRC client on a Unix box in maybe 1992 or 1993, joined some channel, and it turned out the person chatting with me there was in Australia.
In between that and Twitter (as well as before), there were instant messengers and public chatrooms and what have you. Services like AOL and CompuServe.
Re: The Twitter Files
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
"One would have to assume" Have some perspective man or woman, you're acting like we're supposed to treat you like some babe in the woods and pretend this is genuinely shocking to you? Please. Yes, powerful governments influence actors within their nations. We get it. Let's all feign surprise for a few hours online. But that's not what bothers me. The most frustrating thing is that your perspective fails to acknowled…
How can you care about the NSA leaks when there are murders happening on the streets?!! Equally nonsensical point.
That's comparing two different issues. I'm talking about long-term trends regarding the same issue, and how people fail to acknowledge the trendline and instead cherry pick recent examples, usually relating to political opponents, and then present the example without relevant historical or transnational context.