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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#341

Post by remarkEon »

myko wrote: post #314
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…

> If you truly believe that there's no clear evidence, then I don't know what to tell you. Taibbi shows emails where Twitter and the US government collude to censor true information that people wanted to read. That is a big deal. in this case the government was run by donald trump, and the censorship was to remove stolen revenge porn

One of the results of the restrictive reporting on that subject, and the self-censorship by journalists on the topic at the time the story broke, is that people think it was only about "stolen revenge porn".

Re: The Twitter Files

#342

Post by belltaco »

pacoWebConsult wrote: post #332
afavour wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe all three are pornographic in nature. So while it’s still notable that the Biden team reached out manually to report them it does seem all the tweets were in violation of Twitter policy and fair game for removal.

Twitter is used by sex workers all the time for pornographic images. What specifically about them violates the rules? Is it the fact that the person did not intend on those images being released? Do they have a claim if those images were no longer their property given the terms of service of the repair shop where the laptop was abandoned?

>California legislators passed a revenge porn law making it a crime for anyone to post online photos or videos of someone's intimate body parts without consent. The revenge porn law is defined under California Penal Code 647(J)(4) and often considered a type of nonconsensual pornography.

https://www.cronisraelsandstark.com/revenge-porn-california-...

Twitter HQ is in California.

>Is it the fact that the person did not intend on those images being released? Do they have a claim if those images were no longer their property given the terms of service of the repair shop where the laptop was abandoned?

I can understand the repair shop owning the hardware and being able to wipe the data and resell it. But do those terms also give the repair shop the right to login to bank accounts via saved passwords and transfer money? Or use the SSNs to apply for loans? Where is the line drawn?

If your company HR's data including your SSN and bank account numbers were on a laptop they abandoned at a repair shop, does the repair shop get to post them on their website?

Re: The Twitter Files

#343

Post by stefan_ »

voldacar wrote: post #261

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?

Oh, it's even better than that. Taibbi shows you emails of some DNC person reporting tweets, but neglects to show you the actual tweets in question: Chinese Spam Bots and revenge porn.

Truly the smoking gun. The irony is the misdirection worked, people in this thread are frothing at their mouths unable to tell who even was in government in 2020.

Re: The Twitter Files

#344

Post by newZWhoDis »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Twitter Files

#345

Post by StanislavPetrov »

mikkergp wrote: post #229
lapcat wrote: post #189

The worst part of this censorship was the pure stupidity of trying to censor links to a website that was always available independently of Twitter and Facebook. If someone wanted to read the story, they could always go to the original source, the NY Post. It's just impossible to keep it a secret, and that's why the censorship attempt was an utter failure, predictably so. Failure was inevitable in this case. Twitter c…

But your point is the point as to why it’s not hubris! they weren’t trying to censor anything, they were just trying to follow their own moderation policies. This I think is why the censorship story is such a non issue, because Twitter is not an exclusive source of this information.

When moderation policies (or laws) are subjectively and arbitrarily enforced based on the identity of the party being persecuted, it ceases to be a policy and is simply another tool used to bludgeon those who are disfavored. It was a big story in September of 2020 when the NYT published Trump's hacked/leaked tax returns - a story that did not receive the Hunter Biden treatment, but was amplified all across Twitter. How can anyone who is even reasonably impartial and reasonably intelligent argue that Twitter was merely neutrally enforcing moderation policies in the Hunter Biden situation when it took the polar opposite stance when it came to Trump?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-tru...

Indeed, numerous articles written explicitly from hacked sources (unlike the Biden laptop, which was only [faslely] rumored to be "hacked") were published and advertised on Twitter. These articles were never suppressed. How can it be argued Twitter was merely neutrally enforcing their policy when the only articles suppressed were clearly done to benefit their preferred political partisans?

https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1598855600083177472

Personally I am (and have never been) neither a Republican or a Trump supporter, but what I (and many other like me) am is someone who supports free speech, open discourse and rational thinking. This is only part 1 of the "Twitter files", with many more revelations to come, and it is already incredibly damning. It is stunning to me that so many otherwise intelligent people do not see the problem with big tech colluding with government officials and intelligence agencies to brazenly attempt to distort and censor public discourse - especially right before an election. The ability of people to willfully delude themselves is astounding.

Re: The Twitter Files

#346

Post by nkozyra »

freejazz wrote: post #220
nkozyra wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does seem to be the play. There is a story here! Politicians having direct access to social networks to suppress narratives they don't like is interesting. But 1) I don't think it's surprising and 2) it appears it was not politically motivated at least in a bipartisan sense. A story but one delivered with the kind of panache to drive traffic.

> There is a story here! Politicians having direct access to social networks to suppress narratives they don't like is interesting. That's not even remotely news. This came out years ago. Still, your characterization is a bit ridiculous.

In what sense is my "characterization" ridiculous? Should we not take Taiibis tweets at face value? That's exactly what he says.

Re: The Twitter Files

#347

Post by dehrmann »

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…

It doesn't look good that a lot of credible media outlets had to walk back their stances on the Hnuter Biden laptop and lab-origin covid. Both proved to be plausible enough that they never should have been censored or suppressed.

Re: The Twitter Files

#348

Post by etchalon »

The most interesting thing to me, reading the story, and the materials provided, is that you do not see a nefarious, explicitly partisan, ruthless campaign to censor information with the specific and stated goal of influencing an election. This is what we are constantly told MUST be happening behind the scenes.

Instead, what you see is a lot of people, acting in good faith, trying to make decisions and appease a lot divergent concerns in the middle of a developing story. With a lot of internal disagreement and debate.

I know Tailbi has said there are "bigger revelations to come", but so far, this is utterly banal internal policy coordination and decision making.

Re: The Twitter Files

#349

Post by ozmodiar »

perfecthjrjth wrote: post #304
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…

This is a very important point. While the US is ready to preach its values and tries to implement its values across the world, at home these parties colludes with companies to suppress what it does not like. However, in other countries, US tells them to NOT suppress.

I'm going to need a bigger smoking gun than nicely asking for revenge porn to be removed before putting the USA on the level of Russia or China. If this is the worst they've got then things are a lot less corrupt in the USA than I was expecting.

Re: The Twitter Files

#350

Post by rhaksw »

lapcat wrote: post #189

The worst part of this censorship was the pure stupidity of trying to censor links to a website that was always available independently of Twitter and Facebook. If someone wanted to read the story, they could always go to the original source, the NY Post. It's just impossible to keep it a secret, and that's why the censorship attempt was an utter failure, predictably so. Failure was inevitable in this case. Twitter c…

NY Post is an established source that still needs to refresh its audience. So it's a little of both: dumb and concerning.

Lesser-known domains will indeed suffer from draconian moderation policies of today's largest social media sites. Case in point, my domain appears to be shadowbanned. This Tweet [1] only appears when directly linked. It does not appear beneath its parent [2] for anyone but me. That leads me to believe that tweets mentioning my .win domain [3] are all shadowbanned. I don't know for sure what's going on. I know it wasn't the parent author's action that hid my content because Twitter is auditable for when that happens.

[1] https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1594103021407195136

[2] https://twitter.com/TheFIREorg/status/1594078057895063553

[3] https://cantsayanything.win/2022-10-transparent-moderation/

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