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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#561

Post by fattire »

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…

Here is an account of the whole laptop decision on Kara Swisher's podcast from the perspective of Twitter's former safety chief Yoel Roth.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-twitters-former-sa...

Re: The Twitter Files

#562

Post by sanderjd »

Dig1t wrote: post #94
michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None, because the government shouldn’t be interfering in speech.

The whole point of this is that government is already interfering in speech. This one specifically is pretty strong IMO (Biden team telling Twitter to manipulate speech): https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 Yes yes, someone has already said something about one of them being a dick pic, remove that one, whatever. But do you think they are ALL dick picks? This email is one out of many.

The point being made by the commenter you replied to, which I think you missed, is that if the government passed a law preventing one private entity (a political campaign) from emailing another private entity (a business), that would be government interference in speech.

Re: The Twitter Files

#563

Post by rhaksw »

sanderjd wrote: post #557
rhaksw wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like nothing more than a big redirection to get people to move on from the last story. I find government comms with social media to be interesting. Do you not? I'm not sure if there's a bombshell there or not. I believe all public servants since Nixon understand about their actions being reviewable. Not that they shouldn't be able to have private conversations, of course. That's a whole 'nother issue.

What "government comms" were exposed here, specifically? The specific claims seem to be about comms with private, albeit political, entities.

I found the Ro Khanna one interesting,

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598838041371516929

"Exposed" is your word, not mine.

Also, Biden's been a lifelong politician. I guess we disagree that his team's comms during candidacy were not "governmental" in nature.

Re: The Twitter Files

#564

Post by mulnz »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #550
mc32 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Didn’t take long for this post to bring new folks in off the woodwork.

Re: The Twitter Files

#565

Post by cormacrelf »

zaroth wrote: post #555
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.

The point isn’t that Twitter felt compelled. Isn’t the point that Twitter happily complied, and even made up reasons to censor the stuff they thought was the most damaging “in order to prevent another 2016”.

The point is that if you don’t like that, take it up with twitter. Framing it as government forcibly censoring twitter is just straight up untrue.

Insofar as the Biden campaign is concerned, it is impossible to violate 1A when you are not imbued with government power. There is no such thing as a private citizen compelling Twitter to take something down, the only possible thing you can be doing is requesting. Both campaigns did this so feel free to draw your own conclusions as to whether the Trump campaign did something wrong, but I will point you to the word “campaign” and note that a campaign is also a private party, so pretty unlikely.

Re: The Twitter Files

#566

Post by trentgreene »

Could someone explain to me how twitter has any legal obligation to provide a platform supporting all types of 1A protected content? Doesn’t that violate the owner of twitters 1A rights?

If I owned a message board, and started deleting users post at random, or because of personal taste, would that be a 1A violation? I may or may not be an asshole, but it’s my message board.

There are other parallels I can draw, but these are honest questions.

Re: The Twitter Files

#567

Post by degobah »

oxff wrote: post #558
degobah wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did the Biden campaign do that the Trump White House did not? "In 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored." The difference is that the Trump White House was the executive office of the federal govt making requests, while Biden was a private citizen. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598828932395978752

This is quite obviously about substantial influence on election news cycle; and of course pointing the finger at the other side is already contained in the friend-enemy distinction.

You are more scandalized about the campaign of a private citizen emailing Twitter to ask that dick pics of his son remove, than about the White House emailing Twitter to have tweets removed?

Re: The Twitter Files

#568

Post by toofy »

noncoml wrote: post #533
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…

Does anyone really believe that the government and the political parties don’t have direct lines to Twitter, FB, Google, CNN, FoxNews etc etc?

i think the government has direct lines to many industry leaders. im pretty sure it's commonplace for officials to regularly communicate with e.g., oil executives or religious leaders.

we've known about the business world having direct lines to governmental agencies for decades.

many have been screaming at the tops of their lungs for decades to remove these communication lines between religious leaders/industries and the government.

to add some very relevant context to this, we just saw texts between elon and kanye yesterday. kanye is running for president in 2024. all week long has been doing interviews attacking jewish people, praising hitler, and posting swastikas. again, elon has been texting directly with him as recently as yesterday.

this communication between political figures and industry seems to be entirely commonplace. is it right? i don't personally think so. i think its problematic as hell. but the problem is significantly larger than twitter. significantly larger. religions, extractive industries, transportation companies, etc.. etc... etc...

while some may personally have a problem with it, i'll believe elon thinks its a problem when he ceases communication with all political figures, including for business related reasons.

Re: The Twitter Files

#569

Post by [deleted] »

parrellel wrote: post #373

Well, that was a giant pile of sensationalized nothing. Again. I suppose the bigger point to note is, along with all the other right wing internet celebrities Elon's been talking to we get to see Taibbi's silliness boosted. Next up Greenwald explaining how Russians are truly quite nice.

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#570

Post by zaroth »

bavell wrote: post #337
grecy wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is clearly the much more pernicious issue that 1. social media companies are massively influencing the dissemination of information on an ad hoc basis informed by personal political whims Of course mainstream TV and print "news" has been doing this for decades, but for some strange reason people assume they're somehow "better". I personally think it's great all this is coming out, because it shows how dangerou…

Agreed, I'm not surprised at all but I'm glad it's in the open.

The problem isn’t doing it per say. The problem is that they lied and basically gaslighted everyone as to the reason they censored the post. It was a total fabrication and they knew it.
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