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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#471

Post by anonporridge »

wmf wrote: post #458
tbrownaw wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> although you can bump their appeal to the top of the queue or something.

How is that not directly helping people you know?

Re: The Twitter Files

#472

Post by dmix »

mbreese wrote: post #466
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…

How is having a direct line to Twitter the most disconcerting thing for you? Of course they have a direct line. I expect that all major political parties, the white house, various legislative committees, etc... would all have a direct line to communicate with Twitter. It's explicitly said that both major parties had these lines of communication, so it's hard to see a problem with the existence of back-channel methods…

How about neither have a direct line?

Trying to say censorship is fine as long as the current party in power also gets it like the last guy isn’t a persuasive argument.

You can’t abuse power you don’t have. We stopped letting monarchs control things via backroom dealings with their elite friends back in the 1700s for a good reason.

Creating a system with zero transparency that’s at the whims of whoever currently has power and influence is not a healthy way to build a system of governance.

Having a limited set of publicly defined powers + transparency is the only way to prevent abuse and biases. Neither an anarchist free-for-all nor a system directly controlled by elites and influence groups. Bias and power will always exist, all you can do is create systems that reduce those inherent risks in the most optimal way possible.

Re: The Twitter Files

#473

Post by stevebmark »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #445
romellem wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? I think it's a good thing that we're having a discussion on when the Whitehouse is applying pressure for tweets to be removed, and how nicely asking is or isn't pressure. I actually think that these actions were entirely legal. The Biden campaign and the Trump administration can and should be allowed to ask for posts to be reviewed. But I think we'd damn well take a close…

They did. The removed tweets were nude photos of Hunter Biden. But no one here bothered to verify that. This is all so stupid.

Re: The Twitter Files

#474

Post by woooooo »

archagon wrote: post #447
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…

I'm scratching my head here. It's quite a leap to go from: > political parties... have a direct line to Twitter to get stuff they dislike removed ...to: > in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online Twitter is not the internet. It's a tiny part of the internet. You can say whatever you want on many, many platforms. In fact, people can't stop talking about some of this stuff on HN and Redd…

It's a tiny part of the internet by volume. Dwarfed by breaking bad reruns.

It's the whole internet in terms of journalist and politician communications.

Re: The Twitter Files

#475

Post by ajross »

archagon wrote: post #447
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…

I'm scratching my head here. It's quite a leap to go from: > political parties... have a direct line to Twitter to get stuff they dislike removed ...to: > in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online Twitter is not the internet. It's a tiny part of the internet. You can say whatever you want on many, many platforms. In fact, people can't stop talking about some of this stuff on HN and Redd…

I'm on the same page. Frankly I was actually wiling to buy the argument that Twitter suppressed the story on direct orders from Biden himself, or whatever, and that such a level of coordination continued once he took office. It's... not unreasonable. Certainly Musk sold that as what the story was about.

But it's not there! All Taibbi has is some bland emails pointing out that the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets. That's it! Were they bad tweets? Was there salacious content censored? Did Twitter even remove them? We don't know! But Taibbi and Musk clearly want us to think this is bad, and most of the posters here seem to be on board.

Someone point me to the smoking gun here? Where's the actual censorship? Who said what that Biden managed to suppress? Where was the unfair moderation by Twitter?

I'm... a little stunned actually. This isn't just a non-story, it's almost a smear job.

Re: The Twitter Files

#476

Post by andrewguenther »

barbazoo wrote: post #177
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.

Not sure who the person is that posted this, is this legit? The format on most of those "emails" is just completely off and the grammar/spelling check underlining suggests that this is being viewed in an editor.

It's real. Or at least Elon says it is. He's been talking about this for days and retweeted the thread.

Re: The Twitter Files

#477

Post by anoonmoose »

archsurface wrote: post #399
anoonmoose wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1- Biden wasn't in government, he was running for office. Private citizen at the time. 2- They weren't telling, they were asking, and if Twitter feels like they were told, they can sue the government for violating their First Amendment rights.

When an authority asks, they're not really asking, they're telling.

Then Twitter should not only make that claim, but sue!

Re: The Twitter Files

#478

Post by kristopolous »

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 can be interpreted in good faith as well

What if there was, say a spy, that was being outted?

Government and politics has an interest here because statecraft has a need to veto things if they want to be effective.

Re: The Twitter Files

#479

Post by prawn »

sva_ wrote: post #178
idlewords wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment illustrates why it's a good idea to prune these kinds of stories from the homepage. No one learns anything new or surprising from discussing this stuff here, at this point we could have the same political nerdfight in our sleep.

> No one learns anything new or surprising from discussing this stuff here It was surprising to me to see that the various political parties are in direct contact with people at Twitter to remove stuff, and I consider myself fairly well informed.

I've run a forum for almost 20 years. There are reporting tools that most people use, but regular reporters (either a contentious personality or just a regular and conscientious user) often just contact me directly after the email address was revealed previously. Seems completely obvious that media reps from every political party would have some direct line or priority tool to report things. They have this with newspapers and TV networks as well. They plead their case or make a legal threat, or appeal on personal grounds.

As another "VIP contact" example, look at Musk supposedly directly contacting Kanye regarding his ban. The average user just sees a block screen. That seems fairly unremarkable to me.

Re: The Twitter Files

#480

Post by dd36 »

ajross wrote: post #475
archagon wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm scratching my head here. It's quite a leap to go from: > political parties... have a direct line to Twitter to get stuff they dislike removed ...to: > in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online Twitter is not the internet. It's a tiny part of the internet. You can say whatever you want on many, many platforms. In fact, people can't stop talking about some of this stuff on HN and Redd…

I'm on the same page. Frankly I was actually wiling to buy the argument that Twitter suppressed the story on direct orders from Biden himself, or whatever, and that such a level of coordination continued once he took office. It's... not unreasonable. Certainly Musk sold that as what the story was about. But it's not there! All Taibbi has is some bland emails pointing out that the Biden administration requested Twitte…

It’s the very type of behavior they claim the MSM engages in. And it’s not even well done.

Snippets of email conversations with the context removed. Why not share the whole email? If it’s this weak with this much context removal, the context must be pretty detrimental to the smear job.

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