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Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

nationalreview.com

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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#281

Post by taxicab »

Arthanos wrote: post #189
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #103

If I was a Twitter or Facebook investor, I have one question: What did you expect was going to happen? Honestly. Did nobody have the foresight at Facebook or Twitter to think that this wouldn't blow up? Did nobody think, just once, that this might invite regulatory action or be in news headlines? And if honestly nobody thought this might happen, I'd want the entire management and "safety" team replaced for having no…

This post has a very odd tone, as if a private company enforcing their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence of a private citizen is some unquestionable moral wrongdoing that's apparently going to blow up. Surprised to see this as at the top, on HN. National Review is a conservative wing-nut website trying to turn this non-story into fuel for their censorship culture war.

Not only that, but IMO context matters here. We are 20 days away from the election. People are standing in lines to vote as we speak.

If this was published at any other time (and the material for the story has apparently existed since December) the public and the professional media would have had time to scrutinize it, discuss its shortcomings, etc.

But, as Winston Churchill said "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." We can't do that and being complicit in spreading misinformation in the middle of an election is, I'm sure, still a strong memory that social media companies have from the 2016 election.

My guess as to how this will go is that it will take a week or two to authoritatively discredit the article, but by then, if left unchecked, the article will have already done its damage. The cynic in me says that the originators of the article already know that there isn't much truth here and that this is the point of releasing it while people are voting.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#282

Post by rhino369 »

donmcronald wrote: post #262
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of these points do you find persuasive?

Email headers would trivially prove if that was actually an email sent via gmail. The rest of the email account would do a lot to back up the claim it was actually his laptop.

Ok, but I've never seen the media ever publicly discuss document verification in a story.

Stories about Trump's tax returns don't include any sort of explanation about verification. They wouldn't even publish the documents in order to keep the source secret.

So I don't think its reasonable to assume the lack of easy confirmation means it is necessarily fake.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#283

Post by riffic »

Solvitieg wrote: post #255
riffic wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care about Twitter or Facebook to be honest. It's not the only game in town. I'd be more concerned if I bought server hosting from AWS, stood up a WordPress blog about my thoughts on capitalism, socialism, sports, and dogs, and Amazon decides to suspend my account due to my writings.

Even if you opt-out from Twitter, etc. Your political leaders and journalists are tuned in. Thus your life is still affected.

that's precisely why I think journalists and the public sector ought to put their money where their mouth is. Open web standards can be adopted today with the effect of turning any of these groups into their own Twitter. That particular genie is impossible to push back into its own bottle. They had better catch up or get left behind.

The audience will follow. Trust me, I know audiences move around. They've moved around so many times in recent history and since the conception of the Internet.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#284

Post by __blockcipher__ »

tzs wrote: post #273
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Twitter has one massive thing to lose: Section 230. Already, senators are taking this as the perfect reason to repeal or reform 230, and that would directly impact twitter. Remember how there were hearings about 230 just two weeks ago? Twitter just shot themselves and their arguments for 230 in the foot with this. Which again begs the question from an investor's point of view: What did you expect was going…

Repeal of section 230 would probably result in Twitter blocking a lot more things than they do now.

Which is why we need reform: 230 liability protection needs to be extended only to those entities that only remove illegal content and nothing else, period.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#285

Post by dsaavy »

dsaavy wrote: post #268
rmrfstar wrote: post #13

Robert Graham [1] pointed out that if the emails are authentic, they can be trivially verified via DKIM. That the email metadata was not released implies the emails are either inauthentic, or that the post did not contact someone with basic competence in computer forensics. Either possibility seriously undercuts the article's credibility. [1] https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1316407424648179717

Absolutely this can be trivially verified and needs to be. Release the emails if they're real so they can be verified. But also, isn't it the same thing with Trump's tax returns? All I've found so far is that the New York Times obtained copies, but they haven't actually released them to the public to be verified. If anyone can find the actual copies I'd like to see. We need to take all of the press releases about "le…

One thing that can be verified (as at least a unique release) after looking into the NY Post article more are the pictures they released. When I reverse image search them on Google and tineye, there are no other matches. This doesn't mean that they are necessarily real (they'd have to be verified as not being fakes), but they are certainly newly released.

A couple searches: https://tineye.com/search/85ed99ec3e5397597a1100ce7d54c0bf99... https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZiu3ByKtFe0xCIg4gz... (The Google one weirdly searches for fun when entering this URL)

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#286

Post by treeman79 »

ballenf wrote: post #270
Arthanos wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post has a very odd tone, as if a private company enforcing their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence of a private citizen is some unquestionable moral wrongdoing that's apparently going to blow up. Surprised to see this as at the top, on HN. National Review is a conservative wing-nut website trying to turn this non-story into fuel for their censorship culture war.

Been years since I read anything from National Review, so I was surprised to see them called a "conservative wing-nut website". Even the wikipedia entry for them seems to counter that assessment pretty strongly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review

Any agreement with conservative principles will get you labeled as a bunch of unpleasant things.

Balanced budget, smaller government, prolife, personal responsibility, self defense, belief in God.

Express support for any of these and you will be attacked.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#287

Post by googthrowaway42 »

spamizbad wrote: post #275

The interview with the repair shop owner is also reduces this story’s already dwindling credibility: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...

That's what it sounds like when you interview a normal human being at the center of something so politically sensitive and dealing with such high level corruption.

“When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.”

Entirely reasonable sentiment to express.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#288

Post by dang »

likeafox wrote: post #237
dang wrote: post #64

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/sohrabahmari/status/1316446749729398790 to an article with more information. If there's a more informative source, we can change it again. Edit: I've changed it from https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-pos... to what looks like it may be a more neutral source. Other users have supplied these related links: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-post-h…

I question if the National Review is really the best home for this story.

I also felt more comfortable with yahoo.com than with a politicized site like NR. The intention here is simply to be accurate and neutral to the extent possible.

But it's the same article, so it doesn't make sense to pretend that it comes from a different source, besides which the HN guidelines say "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

If there's a more neutral and accurate article we can change it again.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#289

Post by hotpockets »

hirundo wrote: post #54

There's a recurring argument on social media censorship that goes: "you wouldn't want the telephone company censoring phone conversations would you?" And the response is along the lines: "these are hardly private conversations, any tweet can go viral and be seen by millions". This story breaks that mold in that it involves social media censoring private conversations via DM. If you think that's OK for Twitter on its…

If it was a Nigerian 419 scam I wouldn't mind it.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#290

Post by throwaway0a5e »

lumost wrote: post #200
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #103

If I was a Twitter or Facebook investor, I have one question: What did you expect was going to happen? Honestly. Did nobody have the foresight at Facebook or Twitter to think that this wouldn't blow up? Did nobody think, just once, that this might invite regulatory action or be in news headlines? And if honestly nobody thought this might happen, I'd want the entire management and "safety" team replaced for having no…

Regulation of online media is all but inevitable. Historically all media sources were directly compared by individuals and groups. You used to get the paper from a news stand/paper boy and could glance at all the headlines in comparison to each other, your colleagues knew what the tabloids were running and what the different takes on the headlines were. In the radio and TV age, a small number of commentators were dir…

>History does not look kindly on governments that denied reality.

History also doesn't look kindly on governments that deprive (directly or via an intermediary party) people of free speech.

Walking the line between the two is like trying to fit a telephone pole through a keyhole.

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