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The Twitter Files, Part Six

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Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#701

Post by exceptione »

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…

Your mistake is that you confuse deliberate misinformation campaigns with free speech. I assume you are not in the know, because --strangely-- the very alarming research results do hardly leave academia.

Let met assure you that in St. Petersburg they are working hard and those in Moscow don't complain about the price of steering elections. I invite you to look up the cost of a MiG vs some click farms, alt right bots and blogs.

When I say weapons, you think about rockets. The advantage of the Kremlin is they can use weapons you don't recognize as such. You are even pleading to give them free reign to overthrow democracy.

The fact that the government has to plead with an american corporate to not let other nations fuck things up even more than where you are collectively now, might give you a second thought.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#702

Post by [deleted] »

petesergeant wrote: post #695
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…

> 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? They have a limited budget. If the FBI reckons their mission is best accomplished this way, who are we to second-guess it?

[deleted]

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#703

Post by SilverBirch »

rayiner wrote: post #453
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…

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…

I think the biggest thing that chafes at people is that Taibbi is meant to be uncharitable and distrustful of big corporations. But he's not. He's charitable and trustful of the current management of Twitter. It's the exact opposite of speaking truth to power. The old twitter was a set of weak, fragmented, individuals doing their best and getting absolutely excoriated for it constantly. Now the company is run by the richest man on earth beholden to no one, and he faces literally no skepticism from Taibbi (although it looks like Weiss is about to break).

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#704

Post by solarpunk »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #517
andrei_says_ wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of what he says, his actions show he controls speech. What he said, says, or will say, doesn’t matter. Twitter is a global platform ideal for steering public sentiment, opinion, and influencing political outcomes. https://youtu.be/RII0eBszJJ4

Steered into global sustainable energy and humans into planetary species by a tyrant!

The man who was just forced to buy a 44B company, and is liquidating shares in his self-driving car company to pay twitters rent, and is now beholden to weird Saudi financiers who bailed him out, is certainly not steering lol.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#705

Post by notacoward »

emmelaich wrote: post #647
beebmam wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penumbra_(law)

Oh, you mean the doctrine that is openly vilified by the "originalist" majority of the US Supreme Court? Not that consistency is their strong point or anything, but maybe that's not the authoritative answer you thought it was.

FWIW, to appease the cowardly-downvote brigade, I personally believe the concept of a penumbra is valid and important. But the world doesn't always bend to my will. Merely invoking the concept without considering current context is weak because it won't convince anyone of anything. If you want to make an argument based on that, you'll have to put in a bit more effort than just pasting a link.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#706

Post by Marazan »

naasking wrote: post #669
Marazan wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very well understood definition for shadowbanning - only the poster can see their own posts. What Twitter did was not shadowbanning - other people could see the posts. Pretending it is shadowbanning is bad faith arguing of the worst kind.

> There is a very well understood definition for shadowbanning - only the poster can see their own posts. Except that's not how most people understand the term. Terminology is defined by its usage, so if you're in the minority of how this term is used, you've lost. We already had this debate about hacker/cracker over 20 years ago. Hacker is still here, so get used to the broader meaning of shadowbanning.

Let me google that for you:

https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+shadowban&oq=defin...

verb: shadowban - block (a user) from a social media site or online forum without their knowledge, typically by making their posts and comments no longer visible to other users.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#707

Post by cactusplant7374 »

pannSun wrote: post #691
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the FBI has absolutely no right to try to get a private company to stop free speech. Do you believe freedom of speech applies to foreign governments? https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/160385966043116748...

From that thread: Some were domestic takedowns of, say, QAnon accounts So it was not limited to foreign government operations (or to QAnon, since it is phrased as a mere example).

The government suggests something and the person making the decision at Twitter agrees with it or doesn't. But the government isn't compelling Twitter to do anything.

People are ghost banned for poor language and insults. You have to imagine that Twitter is generally not very permissive based on how they treat average users. Many of the #NAFO folks are shadow banned.

This whole spectacle seems like a giant straw man in the making. The people that ran Twitter set it up based on their own belief of what is acceptable and there is nothing wrong with that.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#708

Post by rayiner »

SilverBirch wrote: post #703
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…

I think the biggest thing that chafes at people is that Taibbi is meant to be uncharitable and distrustful of big corporations. But he's not. He's charitable and trustful of the current management of Twitter. It's the exact opposite of speaking truth to power. The old twitter was a set of weak, fragmented, individuals doing their best and getting absolutely excoriated for it constantly. Now the company is run by the…

Musk has been at the helm of Twitter for five minutes and has done nothing of consequence. The previous management played a major role in US politics for years. It had a major impact on a U.S. presidency and suppressed true information that could have significantly impacted a Presidential information. Taibbi is entirely correct to focus on what happened before and not on Musk’s mean tweets.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#709

Post by treebeard901 »

tomohawk wrote: post #682
beebmam wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

1: The 14th amendment significantly expanded the reach of constitutional protections, primarily to require all government to comply. 2: Did Congress pass a law authorizing the FBI to snoop on social media and use private companies to censor speach? No? Then by what authority was the FBI doing this? The root of the FBIs authority is in law passed by Congress.

The FBIs authority like many other law enforcement agencies is unfortunately only based on what they are caught doing. Now this is more complicated than it seems because for the longest time, decades, they never even fired an agent for any reason.

There is no real oversight at an investigation or agent level since the FBI does not police itself. Few other agencies have the ability to review the FBI and the DOJ often fails to do this as well, they are all part of the same family.

Congress has oversight but that is more of an institutional oversight and not down to the agents themselves.

And it's basically a fact that all law enforcement is slow or almost never holds itself accountable for anything. This is even more true with a quasi international intelligence agency that the FBI has become.

The FBI has always had a unique role in the U.S., and it is disturbing to see corruption hiding behind the political division.

The left historically had many problems with the FBI. The history there is clear. The FBI had historically been a conservative type of institution and was often well regarded by the right. This seems to have flipped lately and I wish people could put all of that to the side and take a rational view of information released even in the Twitter files and things like the MLK Tapes podcast.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#710

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

rhaksw wrote: post #485
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…

> 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" The fact that you need different internal descriptors should be a red flag. All kinds of phrases get used like selective invisibility, visibility filtering, ranking, visible to self, reducing, deboosting, or disguising a gag. Each is a form of censorship,…

> The fact that you need different internal descriptors should be a red flag

It can be, and you're zeroing on sense where vague lingo like "enhanced interrogation" replaces plain "torture".

But that's a stretch. Every profession develops their own lingo over time. They're called "term of art" (1)

An example is when one sysadmin asks another to "bounce the box" - these words have specific meanings which are opaque to outsiders, but are brief and precise to insiders.

This "internal lingo" developing is normal, inevitable, even necessary, and not in any way a "red flag".

If the admins of twitter had several different terms instead of calling them all the same thing then ... maybe they just needed to be brief and precise, to distinguish between them, in order to do the job effectively? You're trying to invent a problem where there is none.

1 )

https://www.yourdictionary.com/term-of-art

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/term%20of%20art

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/term_of_art

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