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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#451

Post by MacsHeadroom »

starkd wrote: post #119
warning26 wrote: post #62

It's kind of interesting in the sense that reading internal emails is always kind of interesting...but otherwise, nothing here seems particularly shocking or groundbreaking. The only real revelation here seems to be that there existed some internal debate whether or not blocking the story was a good idea, which seems...kind of obvious? I'd be more surprised if there wasn't internal debate.

The story is in how anxious they were to fit it into a hacked material case. Because there was no other existing mechanism in which to do it. (They claimed it in the emails Taibbi referenced.) They admit it was not tenable, because first amendment issues were specifically raised by Rep. Mo Khanna.

It wasn't tenable because the hacked materials policy is for doxing not journalism. Many of the biggest stories broken by NYT and WaPo over the decades have come from hacked/leaked materials. The policy was never meant to prevent these kinds of stories.

Re: The Twitter Files

#453

Post by dr_jack »

billjings wrote: post #419
Aeolun wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in a way Elon taking over is good. At least it’s abundantly clear the whole platform is run based on his personal whims now.

It could be, sure. But people are playing influence games with Elon, too.

By all the people with more money...

Re: The Twitter Files

#454

Post by toofy »

do we think politicians don’t have direct lines to oil companies?

do we think politicians don’t have direct lines to religious leaders?

do we think high profile government officials aren’t in contact with industry leaders in all different kinds of industries?

do we think these things aren’t abused constantly in both directions?

kanye, who is running for president in 2024 — just in the past week has posted swastikas, done multiple interviews attacking jewish people, and praised hitler — he was posting direct text messages between him and elon (the owner of twitter) just yesterday.

this is nothing new. this isn’t even shocking. this is entirely business as usual in the US.

we need a separation of money and politics just like we have a separation of church and state and _both_ of them need to be enforced with bare sharp teeth.

Re: The Twitter Files

#455

Post by jbarciauskas »

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…

Sorry so which part of Biden or Trump asking for Twitter to review content that is against its own policies isn't free speech?

Re: The Twitter Files

#456

Post by [deleted] »

romellem wrote: post #296
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.

Did you read your own source? The Biden team never asked Twitter staff to “handle” anything. They forwarded tweets that [violated twitter’s ToS][1], a Twitter staff member forwarded them for review, and at that point the reviewer said they “handled these.” That’s what content moderation is supposed to do! [1]: https://twitter.com/parkebench/status/1598841731763810304

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#457

Post by darth_avocado »

rdbell wrote: post #394
darth_avocado wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we going to pretend the same lines don’t exist to old school television channels, newspapers and radio stations?

I think a distinction should be made between abusing position & relationships to spin a narrative vs abusing position and relationships to silence individuals. Both are slimy and abusive but the latter is a violation of constitutional rights.

Again, constitutional rights guarantee very limited protection, and the application is very situational.

Re: The Twitter Files

#458

Post by wmf »

tbrownaw wrote: post #294
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…

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656 > It [the system] was based on contacts. This reminds me of past "you have to know an employee to get you ban fixed" discussions about not-Twitter here. I'm now wondering about a general - as in not specific to any one company - "favors for friends" culture at the brand-name tech places, over what I guess would be called a "rule of law" culture.

Apparently Meta has an explicit policy that you cannot help anyone you personally know, although you can bump their appeal to the top of the queue or something.

Re: The Twitter Files

#459

Post by newZWhoDis »

lapcat wrote: post #428
newZWhoDis wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just impossible to keep it a secret, and that's why the censorship attempt was an utter failure Context matters. They didn’t fail to hide the story, that wasn’t the goal. They succeeded in their goal of preventing the story from harming their candidate a few days before the election. This is everything the left says they care about, a mega corp colluding with powerful connected political interests to determine…

> They succeeded in their goal of preventing the story from harming their candidate a few days before the election. Did they? Of course Joe Biden was elected, but there's no evidence that this was the cause. I said "I haven't heard a good argument of why Hunter Biden should have been a crucial factor in deciding how to vote in 2020, when there were a ton of other vastly more important issues." And I still haven't hea…

> but there's no evidence that this was the cause.

“Prove our massive illegal censorship campaign was effective!”

You can not in good faith argue that this was acceptable.

This is obvious because your only argument at this point is that sure it was wrong, but it didn’t work.

That’s not going to save everyone on these email lists from prison.

Re: The Twitter Files

#460

Post by jbarciauskas »

chrisco255 wrote: post #411
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.

Quoted post unavailable.

They exercised their free speech rights on their platform.
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