I don't buy Jack Dorsey's innocence here. Something's off about that subplot.
The Twitter Files
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: The Twitter Files
#702tl;dr: 1. important entities like American government administrators and political candidates can report Twitter ToS violation for review via a dedicated line with a fast expected turnaround 2. the Biden laptop story was treated as misinformation for 24 hours before being corrected The 11th tweet supposes to "release the kraken" here: > This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is…
> TBH I would be happy to see an argument for this. As always I am left disappointed. It is (was) reality. Have you met average big-tech non-coder?
Here are the parts of the statement I am disappointed with, to clarify, emphasis mine:
> *This system wasn't balanced.* It was based on contacts. ... there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.
I can certainly agree with the fact that 90+% of Big Tech employees vote Democrat (I'm not sure what "non-coder" has to do with it). 100% true.
I have worked at large corporations for a long time, so I know a second fact: corporate employees do not make any controversial decisions you will hear about as an outsider. At best we get to present feedback to our boss.
Here we see an employee making such a decision by themself; now let's make an assumption and say this was done to promote their leftist agenda. Within 24 hours, the decision is overridden and it is made clear who the real agenda-setters are at most Big Tech. I'll give you a hint: it's not the employees, and it was only 2% Jack.
Re: The Twitter Files
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man, this 2-party system in the US really made some brains rot away, it seems.
My country has a defacto two party system. It's pretty poo but stateside these guys take it to another level. We're all human, we probably agree on far more than we disagree on. Let's all be a little kinder to each other
> Let's all be a little kinder to each other
from what I’ve noticed in the states (and other places) it’s much easier making money when everyone’s mean.
Re: The Twitter Files
#704Why 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…
Compared to a couple of years back there are a lot more clearly right-leaning, neither well-read nor well-informed voices on HN. This is not the first thread with a very questionable hivemind leading the conversation.
Re: The Twitter Files
#705It 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…
These policies were always a pretext. The two major social networks blocking the same story at the same time citing different policies that are obviously inconsistently applied (did Twitter block the story about Trump's leaked tax returns? Did facebook block Biden when he claimed that covid would be gone once everyone was vaccinated?). These emails show twitter executives puzzled by the application of those policies.…
> citing different policies that are obviously inconsistently applied
Here's a better example: the Canadian trucker protests. GiveSendGo was hacked, and the names of people who had donated to the protests were made public - and Twitter had no problem with those "hacked materials" being shared on its platform.
I'd think that if there was ever a reason to block the publication of hacked materials, it would be to prevent private individuals from being doxxed, not to protect the political interests of the worlds' most powerful people.
(People, please don't reply to tell me why you didn't like the Canadian truckers' political views, it's not relevant.)
Re: The Twitter Files
#706Earlier 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.
> 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…
At least there's competition in legacy media. If one newspaper buries a story because of naked political bias, you might still read about it in other newspapers. If Twitter decides you're not allowed to read something, where else can you go?
They say if you don't like it you can just start your own Twitter - but when Parler tried to do exactly that, Big Tech colluded to destroy it.
Re: The Twitter Files
#707> 8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” [1]
A rules-based world. A gigantic joke, more likely, hopefully people have started to realise what it's all about, slowly but surely.
Re: The Twitter Files
#708Earlier 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.
> This rubs me the wrong way, nobody in government should be telling Twitter to remove speech. Uh... Biden wasn't in government. It's so weird seeing all the posters in this thread arguing simultaneously that The Real Problem here is government control over the media and citing as evidence the fact that Twitter bent to the whims of someone not in government . I mean, why is government control such a big deal when pri…
The real hilarious thing to me scrolling this sometime later is everyone is focused on Biden when the thread says the Trump team were doing the same thing and he was the President at the time! But crickets over that much stronger claim that it could be a first amendment violation.
Are people just being partisan or easily manipulated here?
Re: The Twitter Files
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No...? When the Hunter Biden thing was happening, I could hardly find a social media corner where people weren't obnoxiously talking about it.
You read HN; you're not a normal person. 95% of everyone you know didn't hear about the Hunter Biden thing at the time, and most of them probably still don't know about it.
Re: The Twitter Files
#710Earlier 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.
Did you read your own source? The Biden team never asked Twitter staff to “handle” anything. They forwarded tweets that [violated twitter’s ToS][1], a Twitter staff member forwarded them for review, and at that point the reviewer said they “handled these.” That’s what content moderation is supposed to do! [1]: https://twitter.com/parkebench/status/1598841731763810304
Did you? They also censored a NYT article