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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#321

Post by remarkEon »

Aeolun wrote: post #291
remarkEon wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every story is about Elon Musk's ego. This story is about political operatives influencing what social media companies allow on their platform.

Sounds more like political operatives helping police the platform because it’s in their best interest. You’d have to be hopelessly naive to think that twitter wasn’t already ridiculously left leaning without getting messages from political operatives. The change of owner simply inverted that?

"[H]elping" is certainly a gerund to use here.

I'm not sure what is meant by the "change of owner" comment, since I think everyone knew that Twitter was left leaning since forever.

Re: The Twitter Files

#322

Post by fishcrackers »

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 mean it's the verge, who cares?

Re: The Twitter Files

#323

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#324

Post by williamcotton »

Isn’t this was freedom looks like? We’ve got a hot mess of officials and other influential people trying to sway public opinion on a private platform that’s management is a hot mess of individual assumptions, bias and buck passing.

Comparatively the CCP is a well-oiled machine when it comes to censorship.

Re: The Twitter Files

#325

Post by rhaksw »

zzzeek wrote: post #293
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.

Funny story, Biden was not "in the government" at that time. You're thinking of Trump. That's who was president in 2020. Does it still rub you the wrong way that Trump was "the government" telling Twitter to remove speech?

I like all of these comments because they each contain a grain of truth.

Biden wasn't in office at the time of communications, yet was clearly a figure of influence in government.

"Handle" is an okay word to describe the scenario via an internet comment, yet also not a literal quote.

I wish we could get back to trusted parties coming to reasonable conclusions while citing sources. It seems we're stuck in a cycle of gaming SEO and piecemeal info via social media.

I guess us "citizen journalists" are learning just how challenging it can be to relate a story accurately and with minimal bias.

Re: The Twitter Files

#327

Post by llanowarelves »

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 "hacked data policy" mysteriously didn't apply to 100gb+ data dumps of competing social networks when it was politically expedient.

Re: The Twitter Files

#328

Post by jimbob45 »

lapcat wrote: post #297
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…

> So in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online?!?! I looked at the tweets mentioned by Taibbi in the Wayback Machine, and they didn't actually appear to be unflattering speech or even speech at all but rather photos. The first tweet, for example, was some explicit photos (which I assume would violate Twitter's rules whether or not they were of Hunter Biden).

My understanding was that those were examples and that he was implying that there were vastly more that had been requested and removed by both parties before those tweets. Did I misinterpret his tweet?

Re: The Twitter Files

#329

Post by rvz »

xqcgrek2 wrote: post #4
DevKoala wrote: post #2

Twitter definitely stopped feeling impartial in its treatment of information around 2012 or so. I guess it wasn't a conspiracy theory after all.

It was a conspiracy theory. And the theory has been shown to be true. The conspiracy was real.

Exactly. The same thing with the 'laptop from hell', hence why that was immediately removed at the time, because it was real.

Re: The Twitter Files

#330

Post by jtc331 »

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…

Going down this technical path doesn’t aid your case: it destroys your case.

This is because the Constitution only authorizes Congress to make any laws in the first place, so only Congress could be guilty of making a law impacting speech. Taking all of the document in the narrow sense you’re taking it would mean the executive branch couldn’t limit speech either because they couldn’t do 99.9% of the things they do today in the first place.

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