Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Twitter Files

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 1001 posts

Re: The Twitter Files

#541

Post by toofy »

cwkoss wrote: post #134
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.

Yeah, the rest of the thread was mostly uninteresting documentation of what everyone already knew. I want to know more about what 'handling' tweets means, whether all 'handle' requests were accepted or in which instances did twitter push back, etc.

i'd have to go back again and reread, but was the term "handle" used at all? i remember them asking to "review" some tweets and to measure them against the tos. i very easily could have missed them asking to "handle" it though...

i think those semantics matter, which is why i ask.

Re: The Twitter Files

#542

Post by calgarymicro »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #499
freejazz wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? You'd think it'd be obvious but so many people seem to be convinced that Twitter was the seat of wokeness and the moderation team sat on the throne. That there was a debate totally contradicts the characterization Matt is running for.

I don’t really see a debate. I see an email listing tweets from “the Biden team” and a response that it’s been taken care of. Must be very cool to be running for president and have a team with a direct censorship line to one of the biggest news proliferation websites in the world. Just lost a few tweets and BAM!

The tweets in question were naked images of Hunter Biden, which were against Twitter's TOS and would be illegal to circulate in California anyway under the state's revenge porn law. You can literally put the links into archive.org and see for yourself if you want. Taibbi's thread also makes clear that Trump's team had access to the same 'direct censorship line', and that some of their requests were honored too.

Re: The Twitter Files

#543

Post by somenameforme »

anonu wrote: post #155
Waterluvian wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a country with five viable parties: this picking sides thing, or even being a “moderate” is just weird and kind of horrifying how normal the populace thinks it is. It’s not normal. People should be FREAKING OUT that their governmental system is in such bad shape. They’re too busy cheering for whichever tribe they’re in. All of politics being one dimensional is one of the biggest lies ever.

A two party system works. I'm from a country with a 20+ party system and it's dysfunctional. In addition, you can't lump Democrats or Republicans in the USA in their respective boats. There's a hundred shades of grey within each party. But rallying behind one candidate versus a hundred in a primary makes for a better setup than anything else I've seen in other countries.

I don't really agree with you but you shouldn't be grayed out. The idea of a dysfunctional government sounds bad, but ironically that is precisely what the Founding Fathers endeavored to create. And it sounds absurd for all the reasons you're certainly aware of. Yet is the opposite desirable? In modern US politics, parties have become capable of enacting pretty substantial change on very narrow margins. This can be good in one manner of thought because "good" change can happen at an accelerated rate.

The problem is "good" is subjective. It was big news when the 2016 election was decided by as few as 78,000 votes, yet the 2020 election was now decided by as few as 45,000 votes [1]. The one thing everybody would agree on is that the country (and world) would look radically different today had the US election in 2020 gone differently.

And so we're living in a boat that keeps getting increasingly violently rocked back and forth, all based on who wins a coin flip. A bit of dysfunction to cool things (and people) down doesn't seem so bad.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/how-2020-...

Re: The Twitter Files

#544

Post by beaned »

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

They had the former white house press secretary suspended for simply mentioning the hunter biden laptop, was that against the ToS?

Re: The Twitter Files

#545

Post by gjsman-1000 »

andreyk wrote: post #108

It does not seem like this really exposed any new information - Twitter publicly justified its actions as being about its hacked data policy back when this all happened ( https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-mat... ). All this shows is some internal disagreement as to whether that was the right call. By the way, Facebook also suppressed the news story citing its misinformation policy ( https://www…

This is only Part One of several. Part Two comes out tomorrow.

Re: The Twitter Files

#548

Post by oxff »

andreyk wrote: post #108

It does not seem like this really exposed any new information - Twitter publicly justified its actions as being about its hacked data policy back when this all happened ( https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-mat... ). All this shows is some internal disagreement as to whether that was the right call. By the way, Facebook also suppressed the news story citing its misinformation policy ( https://www…

> It is not a big deal.

You would be literally fuming about how Fascists Are Hanging Democracy From The Rope if Biden and Trump was switched in this case. So would most "it is not a big deal it happened, but it would have been big deal if it didn't".

Friend-Enemy is all it is.

Re: The Twitter Files

#549

Post by Dudelander »

pyinstallwoes wrote: post #502
andreyk wrote: post #108

It does not seem like this really exposed any new information - Twitter publicly justified its actions as being about its hacked data policy back when this all happened ( https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-mat... ). All this shows is some internal disagreement as to whether that was the right call. By the way, Facebook also suppressed the news story citing its misinformation policy ( https://www…

It shows collusion with politicians to coordinate censorship.

Does it though? I don't think a campaign staff pointing out tweets that might violate the TOS counts as collusion. That's just a campaign interfacing with Twitter the same way everyone else does. If it was collusion, then every white house press briefing in history would be too. Which, sure, might be Chomsky's point of view, but I don't think anarchists need to be convinced that Joe Biden is bad.

Re: The Twitter Files

#550

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

mc32 wrote: post #523
pyinstallwoes wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shows collusion with politicians to coordinate censorship.

Wasn't that one of those things certain people deride as "conspiracy theories".

These days the difference between a conspiracy theory and accepted reality is 3-6 months.
Post reply on HN