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Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

bbc.com

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Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#461

Post by giardini »

whimsicalism wrote: post #412
Fauntleroy wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "unchecked misinformation" alternative hasn't really been working out so well either, for what it's worth.

I'm pro-management of information on platforms but anti-this sort of management for these purposes. Public health misinformation, sure. News articles? Hm. I think it is stupid to not vote for Biden over something like this. But, I also don't think the articles I've seen "debunking" the NYPost article have been very compelling.

whimsicalism says >"I think it is stupid to not vote for Biden over something like this. "

IMO Biden's likely to pass away before he's elected and so I think it foolish to vote for him. He looks like a dead man walking - a paper cutout that Democrats move from one empty rally to another.

BTW who becomes the Democratic party nominee should Biden

a) die or fall very seriously ill before the election?

b) die on the eve of the election (i.e., halfway through the voting, when some votes have already been cast for the deceased)?

c) die after the election but before he's sworn in as President?

I see Biden's health as extremely precarious.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#462

Post by 8note »

appleflaxen wrote: post #289
prudhvis wrote: post #223

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

What twitter does has nothing to do with the NY Posts' free speech. Just as NYP is free to say whatever they want, Twitter is free to silence it on their platform . Freedom of speech and the first amendment is to restrain the federal government from prohibiting speech. That is the hill to die on, as it protects twitter's right to do what it wants to do with its platform. An orthogonal issue is social platform monopol…

They should also be taking responsibility for copyright infringement in that case, which to my understanding is what the section 230 changes are?

If twitter wants to defer to users being responsible for their speech, the users should be having the rights to post what they want.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#463

Post by ars »

Gerardo1 wrote: post #227
centimeter wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter adopted this policy because they know that progressives are more likely to be compromised by leaked information

...are you suggesting that progressives have more "dirty laundry" than conservatives in general? Or that conservatives are more likely to dox people?

> ...are you suggesting that progressives have more "dirty laundry" than conservatives in general?

In general yes, that is true. Or said another way: Progressives say different things internally and externally, far more often than Conservative's do.

Usually when Conservatives' emails are hacked there is nothing in them that people don't already know.

Note: I'm not making any judgement on the content of what they say, just the difference between what they say internally vs. externally.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#464

Post by javagram »

SaintGhurka wrote: post #414
nobody9999 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How does this constitute hacking? IIUC, the idea is that the whole thing was a setup from start to finish: 1. Burisma emails were hacked; 2. Hunter Biden's iCloud account was hacked; 3. They bought a Mac, dumped a bunch of the hacked photos, along with some real hacked emails and some forged ones; 4. Sent someone over to the computer shop with the frame up on the laptop already in place; 5. Either the store owner wa…

That seems like an extraordinarily risky undertaking. You would certainly be found out and face real consequences. Remember the guy got the FBI involved, which would make the whole operation a federal crime.

Look up the Skripal poisoning. Russian agents have operated in NATO countries before to do stuff like this.

That said, the “hack” theory is pretty weak, I believe it mainly relies on a coincidence that Burisma was hacked last year https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hacke...

However, the computer shop guy claims the laptop was dropped off in early 2019 and this article says the Russians hacked Burisma in November 2019. The email PDFs themselves provided by the NY Post are dated September 2019, so stuff doesn’t add up here.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#465

Post by ProcNetDev »

WorkingDead wrote: post #385
CivBase wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading through these HN comments, it is amazing to me how many people have already concluded the NY Post story is either obviously true or false. But I agree with the gist of your point. Social media platforms should stop pretending to be unbiased disinformation watchmen. It's their platform and they don't have to justify squat. If people want free speech, they can go somewhere else. On that note, I really do think…

The go somewhere else thing doesnt end well. If half the country has to recreate their own social networks, web hosting, payment processing, banking, and even retail locations you end up with two separate societies competing for the same physical space and thats not going to end well for anyone. This is the very thing we should be trying the hardest to avoid but we are already moving down this road.

Half the country isn't going to out looking for conspiracy theory garbage. They just want to see pictures of their grandkids. But if you expose them to the conspiracies they can get drawn in.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#466

Post by krimeo »

seneca wrote: post #330
rebolek wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in late 70's in Czechoslovakia so I remember the communist regime with its propaganda. I'm all for free speech but when I see propaganda I want to smash it with a steel tube which probably makes me pro-censorship. I still want to believe in the ideals of Internet as I've encountered it back in 1994 but that would require ideal people and we're not ideal. So some rules are needed.

And what would happen if the communists you hate so much were the ones deciding what gets censored?

Just like the communists have always been doing.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#467

Post by [deleted] »

SaintGhurka wrote: post #414
nobody9999 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How does this constitute hacking? IIUC, the idea is that the whole thing was a setup from start to finish: 1. Burisma emails were hacked; 2. Hunter Biden's iCloud account was hacked; 3. They bought a Mac, dumped a bunch of the hacked photos, along with some real hacked emails and some forged ones; 4. Sent someone over to the computer shop with the frame up on the laptop already in place; 5. Either the store owner wa…

That seems like an extraordinarily risky undertaking. You would certainly be found out and face real consequences. Remember the guy got the FBI involved, which would make the whole operation a federal crime.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#468

Post by blix »

sailingparrot wrote: post #343
hartator wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe free amplification is terrible It's exactly what they were saying at the invention of the printing press. Amplification becoming too cheap. Maybe being on the side of censorship is always being on the wrong side of history no matter the issue. Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"?

How exactly is press free amplification? How do I get my random opinion broadcasted to a newspaper audience? I would probably have to write an opinion column and send it to the journal, then they would read it, and decide whether or not they want to publish it. If it's the NYT for example, you can be sure that no matter how well written your piece is, they will never publish something that pushes the theory that COVI…

"Free amplicfication" isn't about absolute lack of cost, it's about cost relative to older mechanisms. The printing press allowed information to spread much faster and more cheaply than having a monk write it by hand. It also allowed ideas that were not monk-approved to appear in print. When it first came out people were pretty upset about the incorrect ideas that propogated as a result.

Eventually people with power figured out how to mostly control the printing press and so created the heavily gate-kept institutions you describe. The transitions our society is facing now echo these past struggles.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#469

Post by strathmeyer »

swalsh wrote: post #334
meroes wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So HN can't remove posts either because that violates free speech? I grew up on the internet too and forum bans were always a thing. You haven't convinced me this is different.

The president doesn't make major annoucements using HN. The fact is, Twitter has taken on a different role.

Telling Twitter what to say violates their free speech.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#470

Post by ars »

sailingparrot wrote: post #264
prudhvis wrote: post #223

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

New technologies brought new challenges. There was no social network in the 2000s and before. No retweet button, no "curated" timeline that showed you what you "like". YouTube did not try to push more videos like the ones you watched previously until the mid 2010s. Free speech does not have the same meaning as before. Before it just meant that you could say whatever you wanted. Now people use it implicitly to mean th…

> but also that they are entitled to have their thoughts broadcasted at large using the amplification mechanisms I mentioned above.

Twitter is blocking this story in Direct Messages (equivalent to a private email). How is that amplification?

Also, Twitter could de-prioritize tweets with the link on a global feed, while still showing them to people who follow the specific person.

And that too is not amplification - you asked to see messages from that person, you should be able to see them.

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