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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#281

Post by mikeyouse »

paulgb wrote: post #227
Dig1t wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Joe Biden wasn’t “the government” yet, look at the date. I wish we knew what these tweets actually were. If it was suppressing a news story, that’s bad. If it’s asking for death threats to be removed, that’s not bad. (Matt himself acknowledges that both parties had tweets taken down, his evidence for bias is apparently that Twitter employees donated more to democrats https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/159882893239597…

Many of the removed tweets flagged by Bidens team were literally nude pictures of Hunter Biden.

Re: The Twitter Files

#282

Post by Dig1t »

mikece wrote: post #241
Dem_Boys wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest Question: If the white house contacts Twitter and asks for a tweet to be removed, is that a first amendment violation?

No. The 1st Amendment is a restriction on the Legislative branch: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Congress passed no laws in this regard. Whether or not this was illegal activit…

I'm not a lawyer, I don't know much about the technicalities of these things.

But by this reasoning it sounds like the president could just create an executive order limiting free speech and that would be just fine? Is the president really aloud to create an executive order saying "anyone with red hair is no longer aloud to speak in public" (obviously silly example)?

Re: The Twitter Files

#283

Post by [deleted] »

noah_buddy wrote: post #146
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…

It’s blowing my mind to see people on Twitter reading the story and thinking this is an issue of whether or not Hunter Biden is a problem. This is clearly the much more pernicious issue that 1. social media companies are massively influencing the dissemination of information on an ad hoc basis informed by personal political whims and 2. even the leaders of these organizations are unable to rein in these influences.

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#284

Post by lamontcg »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Twitter Files

#285

Post by chroma »

agripa2 wrote: post #240
Dig1t wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So if in 2016 the Trump campaign had done the same thing, you'd be fine with the response, "The Trump campaign is not the government."?

Re: The Twitter Files

#286

Post by alsodumb »

mrcwinn wrote: post #271

It's pretty odd that the Verge and Platformer have had wall to wall coverage of every moment of Twitter the past few weeks, including live-tweeting content sourced from (perhaps appropriately) disgruntled ex-employees. And yet here, silence so far. It goes to show what we already knew. Every media outlet (or blogger, or influencer) has an audience, caters to that audience, grows that audience, monetizes that audience…

I think Platformer essentially has a 'get clicks by hating Elon/showing Twitter under Elon' approach these days.

I mean it makes sense, the tweets where they mention Elon or sources from Twitter have waaaay more interaction than any other articles they wrote. Like orders of magnitude different.

I personally don't like them. 90% of the things they said about Twitter never happened and not a single word from them about that. Oh and Platformer is kinda ex-Verge people so there's that.

Re: The Twitter Files

#287

Post by [deleted] »

chroma wrote: post #252
Bilal_io wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter and the US government collude I see everyone saying this while ignoring the timeline. This happened before the 2020 elections. Biden was not president back then.

Biden himself wasn't an elected official at the time, but many others were. One of Taibbi's tweets shows an email from the DNC requesting that certain tweets be censored.

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#288

Post by jdkee »

agripa2 wrote: post #240
Dig1t wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But Biden was likely to be elected, members of his staff appointed to government positions and staff at Twitter likely understood that.

Re: The Twitter Files

#289

Post by remarkEon »

freejazz wrote: post #265
ecommerceguy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Both of these things are bad, yes?

If Twitter was doing all of this at the behest of the Biden Campaign, does that not count as some kind of in-kind donation?

If Twitter was doing all of this at the behest of Trump's executive direction, does that not count as some kind of 1A violation?

Re: The Twitter Files

#290

Post by imgabe »

Bilal_io wrote: post #215
chroma wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of laws passed after the Enron scandal, publicly traded companies are required to retain internal communications for long periods of time. So if you're going to blame anyone for this, blame the government. Also the owners of Twitter knew that Musk would have access to these messages. That was priced into the deal. Executives and managers at publicly traded companies are very aware of information retention pol…

> Twitter and the US government collude I see everyone saying this while ignoring the timeline. This happened before the 2020 elections. Biden was not president back then.

Ah yes, Biden the former vice president and 40 year career politician was a political naïf who had no influence whatsoever because he was not in office at the time. Of course.
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