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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#641

Post by remarkEon »

oxff wrote: post #548
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.

It's weird to think about.

If you switched the characters here, we all know that this would be the biggest story ever about social media. "Trump Campaign coordinates with Twitter to rig the election" would be the headlines. 2016 really and truly broke so many people's brains.

Re: The Twitter Files

#642

Post by [deleted] »

zzzeek wrote: post #293
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.

Funny story, Biden was not "in the government" at that time. You're thinking of Trump. That's who was president in 2020. Does it still rub you the wrong way that Trump was "the government" telling Twitter to remove speech?

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#643

Post by chrismcb »

Dem_Boys wrote: post #169
noah_buddy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s blowing my mind to see people on Twitter reading the story and thinking this is an issue of whether or not Hunter Biden is a problem. 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 and 2. even the leaders of these organizations are unable to rein in these influences.

Honest Question: If the white house contacts Twitter and asks for a tweet to be removed, is that a first amendment violation?

Not exactly. Technically the first amendment says "Congress shall not.." and of course over the years this has come to mean government.

But I think it is wrong for the white house to do anything that gifts the impropriety of restricting speech.

Re: The Twitter Files

#644

Post by [deleted] »

M4v3R wrote: post #577
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #335

I’m surprised by the outrage here. The proliferation of information is always subject to tampering - from news outlets picking headlines to social feeds oriented around engagement. Literally 100% of the flow of information is being shaped by interested parties, from the beginning to the end. (If you had told me that powerful people/organizations could not get tweets removed, I would have been surprised; based on my e…

> Literally 100% of the flow of information is being shaped by interested parties Honest question: would you be similarly dismissive if it turned out that it’s secretly mostly the right who “shapes the flow of information” in order to influence public’s opinion and has already used that power during the past election cycles? Remember - we’re not talking about some minor news outlet here. We are talking about social m…

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#645

Post by alfiedotwtf »

People are surprised that the White House has a line to Twitter, yet nobody bats an eyelid when you had the former president have a daily call-in with Fox and Friends to set the talking points of the day and to "correct" any "fake news" live on air.

Re: The Twitter Files

#646

Post by cma »

rhaksw wrote: post #404
MBCook wrote: post #393

There is another way to look at this. So Elon posted today he would drop important inside info about the Hunter Biden story the right wing loves so much. And they seemed thrilled and are now debating the “new” info. That’s an interesting turn from yesterday when that same group was pissed at him for going back on his free speech/no censorship claims when he kicked Kanye off. How surprisingly lucky for him he did some…

> 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.

Biden wasn't in government at the time, though they did say the Trump admin was working with Twitter on removing stuff as well if that's what you meant.

Taibbi also revealed:

"34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it's a "tipping point," complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.”"

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598839971451838465

And on that one posts a screenshot that it was a "tipping point" for Republicans. Meaning they didn't like a moderation action (a curation decision: part of free speech unless Twitter is a gov't utility or something, the government doesn't tell newspapers who they have to publish in the opinion section) and were going to use government threats of regulation to punish it.

Re: The Twitter Files

#647

Post by cryptonector »

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…

The most concerning thing here is that the FBI was having meetings with Twitter during the campaign, and they weren't about child porn.

Re: The Twitter Files

#648

Post by killdozer »

fzeroracer wrote: post #236
sasmithjr wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the content of the "handled" tweets, though? I think that matters a lot. For example, the RealJamesWood tweet (from [0]) seems to be a leaked nude of Hunter; it was most likely (safe to say) posted non-consensually, and I don't really see a big difference between that kind of tweet and revenge porn. Having "stuff they dislike" removed would be one thing, but using the direct line at Twitter for reporting exp…

Not just that, but revenge porn is literally illegal in the state of California, where Twitter is HQ'd. I'm getting increasingly annoyed by people pointing to those removed tweets as a smoking gun while being completely unaware that we know the contents of said tweet and said tweets can easily be interpreted as violating Twitter's ToS at minimum and actively violating California law at worst.

They're clearly not acting in good faith and you should stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Re: The Twitter Files

#649

Post by cryptonector »

jmyeet wrote: post #263
Dig1t wrote: post #16

I'm a moderate, not a Democrat and not a Republican. I think people on the left have a blind spot here, that the more suppression they use, the more division they create, and the more moderates and people on the right grow to resent them. I would have identified as a Democrat on pretty much every issue, but this authoritarian suppression of speech and ideas has just pushed me away from that side completely. At this p…

> I'm a moderate The Overton window in the US stems from center-right (Democrats) to extreme-right (Republicans) so if you're in the middle of that you're firmly a conservative. Don't believe me? Example: we've got the ongoing threat of a strike tby rail workers who want paid sick leave . They currently have no paid sick leave. Calling in sick will come off their vacation days. It may even get them disciplined and fi…

> Don't believe me? Example: we've got the ongoing threat of a strike tby rail workers who want paid sick leave. They currently have no paid sick leave. Calling in sick will come off their vacation days. It may even get them disciplined and fired. They asked for 15 paid sick days. Some in Congress wanted to compromise and give them 7 days.

The current Administration is the one forcing rail workers to accept a deal that doesn't give them what they want and forces them not to strike.

Re: The Twitter Files

#650

Post by favorited »

TbobbyZ wrote: post #625
_8j50 wrote: post #610

Why is this propaganda bullshit on the front page. I gotta ask about moderation on HN here. This is literally moderation, "the twitter files" my ass. They pretext political contributions and falsley connect legitimate moderation to that. Of course they should have blocked that story and still should. Oh, but get this, it's their platform they get to do what they want. They are not an impartial government agency. In t…

Users are sick of the bias social media companies have.

Yeah, one of the many reasons I deleted my Facebook account (which I'd had since they required an .edu email address to sign up) was because all of their engagement and clickbait was pushing far-Right content.

Maybe it's gotten better over the last 2 years, but in 2020 the top-10 pages by engagement were consistently Dan Bongino, Fox News, Breitbart, Ben Shapiro, and various unofficial Trump fan accounts.

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