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The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

#681

Post by oceanplexian »

freejazz wrote: post #295
rufusroflpunch wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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." To be clear, first amendment doesn't say the gov't shouldn't (let alone can't) ask you to do (or not do) something. It states that the legislativ…

The text doesn’t just say make no law but also prohibiting the free exercise thereof. If the government makes some kind of implicit threat, for example that regulators might not look at a private company the same way if it doesn’t choose to comply with a request to censor someone, that’s clearly an infringement. The legislature doesn’t need to specifically pass a law banning speech for the actions of the government to be unconstitutional.

Re: The Twitter Files

#682

Post by throwaway5959 »

mikaeluman wrote: post #616

It is to Elon's credit that this comes to light. My trust in twitter was gone back in 2018. The covid situation and the election certainly did not help. Here we get to see the unhealthy intermingling of political agents with a supposed social media platform. The end result of that has been detrimental to users, free speech and public debate. I always thought Elon was "too much", but his handling of Twitter is absolut…

So now that Twitter is run by right wing guys you can trust it again. Hilarious the hypocrisy.

Re: The Twitter Files

#683

Post by geocar »

Dig1t wrote: post #118
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…

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.

> 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.

Nonsense.

First of all, "government" is not an "in" or an "out". They represent their constituency; those are people, and in this case, they are the representatives of the workers at twitter (judging by the donations).

Secondly: Twitter is not "speech" but a newspaper that prints nothing but personals[1]. All day long. The owners make a decision every day to keep printing that newspaper with everything that's in it[2].

With that firmly in mind, let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, the people working at that newspaper saw the people working at another newspaper do something to their estimation illegal and unethical[3], and decided to use the tool at their disposal to stop it. And management backed them. It happens.

Then a rich person who thought to their estimation it wasn't, bought the newspaper and set policy that the people working at the newspaper were not allowed to use their estimation of legality or ethics.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_advertisement

[2]: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/1...

[3]: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/388/130/

Re: The Twitter Files

#684

Post by jpgvm »

hsn915 wrote: post #667
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Sorry to break it to you but there isn't any Leftists in America.

Just the Center Right (Democrats) and the straight up crazy Far Right (GOP).

This is plain as day from anyone outside of America and only seems to be lost on the Americans themselves.

Re: The Twitter Files

#685

Post by croes »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #442
Aeolun wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in a way Elon taking over is good. At least it’s abundantly clear the whole platform is run based on his personal whims now.

Say what you want about his handling of Kanye, at the very least it was transparent as fuck. He practically livetweeted his whims

That's because Kanye is a celebrity and Musk knows him.

In the daily business there is much less transparency.

Just look at the accounts that got suspended since Musk's takeover.

Re: The Twitter Files

#686

Post by astrange »

geocar wrote: post #683
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.

> 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. Nonsense. First of all, "government" is not an "in" or an "out". They represent their constituency; those are people, and in this case, they are the representatives of the workers at twitter (judging by the donations). Secondly: Twitter is not "speech" but a news…

> Secondly: Twitter is not "speech" but a newspaper that prints nothing but personals[1]. All day long. The owners make a decision every day to keep printing that newspaper with everything that's in it[2].

Third, that wasn't the government because Biden wasn't president at the time. Presidential campaigns are not the government.

…And fourth, all the posts they reported were Hunter's nudes, meaning the posts they were getting taken down were likely illegal already (under revenge porn laws) and certainly against ToS.

Re: The Twitter Files

#687

Post by ytpete »

chrisco255 wrote: post #433
fzeroracer wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The case in point was the removal and censorship of the NY Post's story on the laptop, which was incredibly relevant to the Presidential election. It revealed Hunter as a degenerate crackhead, and an unqualified man-child who benefited directly from his father's position as Vice President to get a powerful, paid position on the Burisma Board of Directors, a favor for which he committed "10% to the big guy" (among oth…

There's an important distinction here. It seems there were some tweets the Biden campaign raised with contacts at Twitter - they contained porn, and were rightly taken down.

Then there was a NY Post story blocked by Twitter - that move is much harder to defend, but crucially it seems Twitter took it upon themselves to remove that story, with no evidence presented that the Biden campaign had anything to do with it.

A lot of the debate here seems to be conflating those two things.

Re: The Twitter Files

#688

Post by googlryas »

sasmithjr wrote: post #195
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…

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…

That's one tweet. What about the tweet by the spokeswoman suspended for referencing a NY Post article?

Re: The Twitter Files

#689

Post by rpmisms »

roenxi wrote: post #239
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…

One of the curses of democracy is you have to form coalitions with other humans instead of ideals. At least in the US it is out in the open. Many countries have worse problems and bigger, more friendly smiles. This is a good time to plug 3rd parties and candidates. Organised pressure to make the situation better is more important than winning elections - even if they don't get voted in they may force change for the b…

Pedantic reminder that the US is not a democracy, and representing it as one is missing the point of the US. We are a constitutional republic, because democratic decisions need reigning in.

Re: The Twitter Files

#690

Post by jpgvm »

lapcat wrote: post #250
mikkergp wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your point is the point as to why it’s not hubris! they weren’t trying to censor anything, they were just trying to follow their own moderation policies. This I think is why the censorship story is such a non issue, because Twitter is not an exclusive source of this information.

> they weren’t trying to censor anything, they were just trying to follow their own moderation policies. Well, it seems more like they were trying to apply their moderation policies to another website, which isn't the same as applying their moderation policies to their own website. Anyway, moderation is censorship. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying that's what it is.

Did they? Where did they try to get NY Post to take the original article down?
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