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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#671

Post by cycomanic »

rufusroflpunch wrote: post #136
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.

I think it's a blatant first amendment violation. Twitter are acting as agents to state to silence individuals. The federal government cannot pick and choose who gets to speak.

So you are saying the Trump team asking (as documented in the twitter thread) for things to be taken down was a 1A violation? Because only the government can violate the 1A the Biden campaign wasn't the government.

Re: The Twitter Files

#672

Post by dazc »

mksreddy wrote: post #245

So we are surprised that political parties had direct lines with twitter? Are we also surprised that Elon gets invited to Apple HQ when he throws tantrums at Apple app review process? Try doing that as a small developer. Color me surprised.

Where did Elon deny this?

Re: The Twitter Files

#673

Post by cycomanic »

M4v3R wrote: post #572
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

The difference is also that, per the data that was linked in the thread, the Democrats had orders of magnitude more requests sent and honored than Republicans, because the former had more contacts at Twitter that were willing to take those requests.

> The difference is also that, per the data that was linked in the thread, the Democrats had orders of magnitude more requests sent and honored than Republicans, because the former had more contacts at Twitter that were willing to take those requests.

Hold on the second does not follow from the first. They might have send more request because they had a more savy social media team, they might have send more request because much more ToS violating content was posted about Biden.

If there is a massive difference in percentages of honored requests that could _maybe_ indicate bias (but that's still a bi maybe).

Re: The Twitter Files

#675

Post by abliefern »

M4v3R wrote: post #596
trentgreene wrote: post #566

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 t…

Honest answer (IANAL): it doesn’t have legal obligation to support all kinds of free speech. But in my opinion that’s because the governments fail to recognize these huge, influential social platforms for what they really are - utilities. They become pervasive and essential in lives of most people in the developed countries. And as such there should exist some checks and balances to make sure these platforms are not…

Even if it's a "utility" (whatever that really means in this case) the First Amendment still has nothing to do with it.

Re: The Twitter Files

#676

Post by robryan »

someNameIG wrote: post #655
sva_ wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, this 2-party system in the US really made some brains rot away, it seems.

We have close to 2 main parties here in Australia too, and I thought our politics could get bad, but Americans seem to take thing to the extreme.

The US just needs preferences and compulsory voting and it would probably be fine. Australian election this year had 32% of the vote outside the 2 main parties, in the US this is more like 2%.

Re: The Twitter Files

#677

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files

#678

Post by cycomanic »

remarkEon wrote: post #641
oxff wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The person you're responding to literally wrote that both campaigns requested tweets to be reviewed and for both parties twitter honoured the requests. So he actually knew about the opposite side doing the same thing and contrary to your assertion he is not outraged.

Re: The Twitter Files

#679

Post by ytpete »

woooooo wrote: post #474
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…

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.

What about, say, Cnn.com? Foxnews.com? Facebook? Do those parts of the Internet tend to carry politician communications fairly often too?

Re: The Twitter Files

#680

Post by robryan »

coredog64 wrote: post #375
lapcat wrote: post #189

The worst part of this censorship was the pure stupidity of trying to censor links to a website that was always available independently of Twitter and Facebook. If someone wanted to read the story, they could always go to the original source, the NY Post. It's just impossible to keep it a secret, and that's why the censorship attempt was an utter failure, predictably so. Failure was inevitable in this case. Twitter c…

There are two possibilities to consider Hunter Biden a legitimate election influence. The first is that he’s a human shit show and will be a distraction to his father. The second is that he’s leveraging his father’s political connections for a high paying, do nothing job. While the latter may be more damning, it’s also pretty common.

Even if he was, it is only going to turn the vote of someone looking for any reason to vote for Trump, given the whole Trump family was basically leveraging Trump being president for their own high paying/ high status positions.
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