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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#481

Post by Renaud »

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?

Sex workers agree to posting these pictures (at least we hope they do).

Are you arguing that it would be ok to post intimate pictures of you or someone in your family, or anybody, basically, without them explicitly agreeing to?

Are you seriously saying that a repair shop could take your personal data and publish it online as they wished because they just got access to your laptop (however they got it)?

In what world does a laptop repair shop has terms of services that would explicitly allow that?

Re: The Twitter Files

#482

Post by Akronymus »

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…

https://nypost.com/2022/08/26/2020-election-outcome-would-di...

A very quick search led me to that.

Re: The Twitter Files

#483

Post by kristopolous »

purple_ferret wrote: post #170
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 this surprising? People get things resolved via Hacker News when people comment on CEO account comments (Stripe comes to mind). Nearly every company probably has direct lines of access for resolutions for VIPs, politicians not excluded.

I had a really interesting and probably too speculative article about Terry Davis over 10 years ago and it got pulled from Reddit and HN after hitting the front page of both within a minute or so of each other. They had been on both front pages for a few hours and then bam, wiped from both.

Nobody reached out to me but I think even a statistician skeptic would have to entertain the idea that there's some "red phone" style back channel between them mods that occasionally is triggered.

I pulled the article and replaced it with a description of what happened because out of sincerity I felt compelled to follow in whatever footsteps those were. I never got an explanation about it.

Kind of a pity. I had been working on a book on tech and mental health but I abandoned it. Seems like it's an obvious topic these days

Re: The Twitter Files

#484

Post by mmastrac »

newZWhoDis wrote: post #381
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

Quoted post unavailable.

If they refused to handle Tony's problem, what happened? If twitter refused to handle the problem, what happens?

The analogy falls flat.

Re: The Twitter Files

#485

Post by chrismcb »

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…

The smoking gun is "the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets." I don't think that is something the government, outside of maybe a court order through the judicial branch should be doing. Ever. It doesn't matter what is in the tweets it whether or not they were taken down.

Re: The Twitter Files

#486

Post by justsomeadvice0 »

tl;dr:

1. important entities like American government administrators and political candidates can report Twitter ToS violation for review via a dedicated line with a fast expected turnaround

2. the Biden laptop story was treated as misinformation for 24 hours before being corrected

The 11th tweet supposes to "release the kraken" here:

> This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.

TBH I would be happy to see an argument for this. As always I am left disappointed. The thread continues on to contradict this point by showing a number of Republicans complaining via exactly such contacts. In 24 hours the situation is corrected.

In any case if you know how campaigns work, #1 is not shocking at all - I'd assume at a minimum the safety teams for each candidate have and use direct lines to Twitter's moderators. No evidence is shown that submitting things for review equates to an expectation on either side of an order being carried out (by the non-governing Biden team, nonetheless). Finally I don't think this is the best evidence of an imbalance - the situation was corrected and reversed...

This does seem to be peak American politics "leap to any conclusions your reality supports". We cannot make arguments in good faith any more, because we do not agree on or even look at the facts on their merits, but rather just assume the "other side" is an idiot. So, big letdown. I'll wait for thread #2, maybe we will see more tangible evidence.

Re: The Twitter Files

#488

Post by irishloop »

Am I the only one who thinks its pretty fucked up of the business owner to be like, "oh, Hunter Biden left his laptop here? Might as well... give it to the New York Post"

Like wtf?

Re: The Twitter Files

#489

Post by kspacewalk2 »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #443
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 these meddlesome Tweets?"

"Here, this violates your TOS. Do something".

Re: The Twitter Files

#490

Post by raydev »

stale2002 wrote: post #238
avemg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should please you to hear that the Biden team was not the government at the time.

This is a distinction with little difference. They can just as much suppress speech, by using the implied threat of future government action. And this is basically just as bad.

> implied threat of future government action

Can you point to the emails/comms where this was implied?

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