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The Twitter Files, Part Six

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Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#671

Post by naasking »

emodendroket wrote: post #494
rayiner wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never been a big fan of Taibbi. But all the things you’re mentioning are characteristic of his journalistic style, which made him famous in his coverage of Wall Street back in 2008. It’s uncharitable and filtered through a fundamental distrust of moneyed corporations, but I’ve never heard it described as “unhinged.” And I’m not sure “unhinged” is an appropriate description. For example, while “internal lingo” ma…

The argument seems to be that what the FBI is doing is more or less analogous to you clicking the report button, which hardly makes you a shadowy figure controlling Twitter if they act on your report.

> The argument seems to be that what the FBI is doing is more or less analogous to you clicking the report button

Weekly meetings between the FBI and top Twitter executives is "akin to clicking the report button"? Name one other Twitter user that had this privilege. I think that's a pretty strong sign that you're trying to stretch this analogy too far.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#672

Post by dmak »

protastus wrote: post #319
NelsonMinar wrote: post #236

There's an odd new risk for startups: someone buys your company and then releases all the internal documents with hostile intent. The Twitter stuff that's come out now has been pretty uninteresting, surprising and often basically telling a story of people doing the best job they could in difficult circumstances. But if you are at a small company consider what all could be acquired and used to defame your employees an…

Corporate records and correspondence can be made public due to a lawsuit. So the risk of disclosure isn't new, and anyone should consider it whether they work at a startup or at a large company. Just another incentive to act with integrity and keep personal correspondence out of corporate systems.

Key phrase was "hostile intent".

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#673

Post by brightball »

angelbreakfree wrote: post #395

The wildest part of the Twitter files is the unhinged framing that they are presented under. 1. Anyone who has been in a tech company knows that there is internal lingo that refers to features we devs make. But it's presented as being an "Orwellian language" 2. Based on the emails he posts, the agencies give links to review based on tips they receive or their own intel and twitter then decides if it violates ToS or n…

The Orwellian aspect of this is that they went after people for saying things that were true and made up reasons to justify it.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#674

Post by jimmygrapes »

ABCLAW wrote: post #579
moralestapia wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once per week for three years is not constant to you? Weird.

Pop a few custodians worth of emails into Brainspace or any of the other tools to parse the information and you'll find that 300~ emails over 3 years is next to nothing (i'll double the number listed by Taibbi to be charitable). I'd expect that volume of contact in less than 2 days if there was a $100M construction project going on. And that's emails, not slack messages or other records. Just emails. Additionally an…

> I can tell you from my time doing social media threat monitoring that I'd monitor and alert organizations of maybe 10-15 people per month for things like threatening to blow up buildings followed with active attempts to recruit people to support those efforts. And that's for relatively niche, unpoliticized, institutions.

> If the FBI is only identifying and acting on 25 instances of active recruitment for crime on twitter per year, it doesn't indicate that they're strong-arming twitter. It means they're asleep at the wheel.

... or it could be they're not wanting to identify and act on their own entrapment (oops I mean sting) operations.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#676

Post by cactusplant7374 »

jacquesm wrote: post #81
diob wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till folks realize how much contact government agencies have with nearly every company (leaking stories, spin, etc.). It's weird that it's turned into some sort of naive left vs right issue. I'd be asking what the goal is, but apparently it's that. Point fingers, suggest no solutions beyond vote for us.

The goal seems to be to distract from Musk selling off Tesla at breakneck speed. Every time there is a big hoopla around Musk the first thing I do is check the stock price and sure enough it seems to be dropping like a stone in tandem with the news releases.

I think the goal is to drive engagement. Unfortunately for Musk the engagement will cost him more compute resources even though he's lost a lot of advertising revenue.

If Twitter had a proper functioning board doesn't everyone think they would have prevented him from driving away advertisers and then threatening them with lawsuits for not advertising? If I was an investor in Twitter I would be livid. It appears most investors take it in stride because they worship Musk.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#677

Post by survirtual »

jacquesm wrote: post #254
lapcat wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 250K+ registered users That's the relevant number. So Twitter is about 1000x larger than HN. From a surveillance standpoint, we're really only talking about commenters, on both sites.

True, but Twitter is mostly cat pictures, I think the average HN users could do a lot more damage to society than the average Twitter user.

Most technical people are not perceived a threat all because they do not pose any social damage. Tech threats can be handled in all kinds of passive or escalated to cruel and insane ways without any risk of public backlash.

Someone with 1mil+ followers is a whole other story. They have enough people watching their every move to cause problems if they are dealt with directly, so they need more attention for implicit handling over time, psychological and financial handling, etc. People with an audience can cause a lot of social, political, and ultimately financial damage to many entities just by some words. And in a world run by marketers, salespeople, lawyers, bankers, and politicians — this is the scariest threat imaginable.

Tech people can do a lot of technical damage but it is mostly just a thorn in the side of the machine. Even if they built something disruptive, an audience is needed for it to go anywhere, and most avenues for scaling anything disruptive are already tightly controlled / monitored by big tech.

I say this as what I believe the controlling authorities perspective is on the matter.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#678

Post by gardenhedge »

partiallypro wrote: post #582
angelbreakfree wrote: post #395

The wildest part of the Twitter files is the unhinged framing that they are presented under. 1. Anyone who has been in a tech company knows that there is internal lingo that refers to features we devs make. But it's presented as being an "Orwellian language" 2. Based on the emails he posts, the agencies give links to review based on tips they receive or their own intel and twitter then decides if it violates ToS or n…

That's all well and good, and I am not a fan of Elon's latest moves toward Twitter (banning some journalists and sources of freely available information on other platforms), but the FBI has absolutely no right to try to get a private company to stop free speech. That's a direct violation of the 1st Amendment. This is a story because the FBI has absolutely no business doing this. There is no "framing" in that, the FBI…

If there is information/data freely available on other platforms, why is it that Twitter also has to host that content? The accounts tracking people's movement were clearly troll accounts. Correct ban imo. Also correct to ban journalists for the same rules.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#679

Post by nverno »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #655
nverno wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me most about the FBI's behaviour here is that it is unnecessary. Do we really want the FBI manning a task force of 80+(according to Taibbi) agents to monitor social media threads, and if so, what's to stop that number from just growing and growing? I'd prefer to see the FBI acting in a passive role, here, rather than a proactive one. Meaning, they act more in response to people reporting social media be…

Social media products have been critical to the exponential growth of domestic terrorism and CSAM. So I definitely want the FBI being proactive on these platforms and to have a much, much, bigger team than 80. It should be 80 per state. People with poor information diets hear the FBI is involved with Twitter and immediately think it has something to do with red team blue team politics. These are the people the Twitte…

This is the same type of reasoning that gave us the Patriot Act/Homeland security etc., though. I'm sure there is some truth to it, I just hope people push back against giving the FBI, or whatever agency arises, free reign. Tilting in favor of extreme safety measures sounds pretty bad to me, but I guess this is largely a matter of personal risk tolerance.

Notably, none of the content the FBI was monitoring in this thread had anything to do with terrorism, but that fear is still guiding many people's responses.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#680

Post by FollowingTheDao »

beebmam wrote: post #596
partiallypro wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all well and good, and I am not a fan of Elon's latest moves toward Twitter (banning some journalists and sources of freely available information on other platforms), but the FBI has absolutely no right to try to get a private company to stop free speech. That's a direct violation of the 1st Amendment. This is a story because the FBI has absolutely no business doing this. There is no "framing" in that, the FBI…

Here's the 1st amendment for reference: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." How exactly does the FBI asking a private sector company to take down posts violate this amendment?

> How exactly does the FBI asking a private sector company to take down posts violate this amendment?

Imagine if the FBI came to your house and asked you to take down a sign in your front yard.

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