If you’re on the right this is proof that Twitter is out of control and stole the election from Trump. If you’re on the left these are boring internal emails discussing what to do about hacked laptop information released at an optimal moment to smear a presidential candidate because of things done by his son. I’m more inclined to believe number 2 but then I would be wouldn’t I. I don’t really think there’s something weird going on here but I’m guessing the same stuff will happen the other way at the next election now Twitter is controlled by someone in a right wing filter bubble.
The Twitter Files
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Re: The Twitter Files
#732Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Twitter and the US government collude I see everyone saying this while ignoring the timeline. This happened before the 2020 elections. Biden was not president back then.
These actions effectively installed Biden as president. There was a poll where an easily-sufficient percentage of respondents said they would have changed their vote if the laptop story hadn’t been suppressed. Someone can probably find it.
Nobody with any realistic sense of reality gives a single shit about Hunter Biden and whatever the hell he did with his life.
People voted Trump out because he utterly gutted our country, even when handed layup after layup. Knock it off with this "Biden was installed" shit, jesus christ.
Re: The Twitter Files
#733Yeah, so? It's THEIR website. It doesn't have to be fair.
Why are all these brand new people to the internet trying to tell websites they have to allow things that they don't want? As much as I hate censorship, the fact is it's THEIR website and they can do whatever they want with it. I don't have to go there. I can make my own website if I don't like a particular site.
As a user of the internet since 1995, I don't find anything in these "twitter files" interesting. Now Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden's books on NSA surveillance on the internet? I find those much more interesting and much more serious than this swill.
Re: The Twitter Files
#734Most 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…
This impacts the perennial argument that these companies are private organizations and the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to them. As it turns out, their censorship regimes are government sponsored censorship.
Re: The Twitter Files
#735There is another way to look at this. So Elon posted today he would drop important inside info about the Hunter Biden story the right wing loves so much. And they seemed thrilled and are now debating the “new” info. That’s an interesting turn from yesterday when that same group was pissed at him for going back on his free speech/no censorship claims when he kicked Kanye off. How surprisingly lucky for him he did some…
It's not the same group of people.
You are talking about the loud minority, but majority of people think that what Kanye said is horrible (as a half jewish European I have felt enough of what happened with my own family to make sure that I do everything in my power to make sure it is not happening again).
At the same time corruption has to be fought with transparency, that's where freedom of speech gets important for all of us.
Re: The Twitter Files
#736Yeah, so? It's THEIR website. It doesn't have to be fair. Why are all these brand new people to the internet trying to tell websites they have to allow things that they don't want? As much as I hate censorship, the fact is it's THEIR website and they can do whatever they want with it. I don't have to go there. I can make my own website if I don't like a particular site. As a user of the internet since 1995, I don't f…
But it’s not “their” site, because the censorship decisions were being made by the government and Twitter was acting on behalf of these congressmen, etc. Thus Twitter’s actions were subject to the 1st Amendment. Congress cannot launder their illegal activities through an intermediary. The intermediary becomes a government actor.
Re: The Twitter Files
#737Most 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…
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.
While I applaud added clarity in all things, I wonder if there is anything unique about social media here at all? Is there obvious reason to think that the dynamic between, the, say, NYT and the Gov works or has ever worked any differently -- or have we simply been less aware of what went on in the past?
Re: The Twitter Files
#738Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
what's super fun now is watching one mod try to run twitter without any written policies whatsoever.
Imagine paying 44 billion buckaroos to become a mod.
Re: The Twitter Files
#739Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> If one newspaper buries a story because of naked political bias, you might still read about it in other newspapers.
Might is doing a LOT of work in that statement. You know as well as I do stories get buried all over.
> If Twitter decides you're not allowed to read something, where else can you go?
Twitter is insignificant compared to Facebook, YouTube, Fox, CNN, and other global news outlets controlled by a handful of billionaires.
The much more important question is where do you go when THEY bury a story.
Re: The Twitter Files
#740Why 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.
(It exploded over COVID, from my perspective)
The other somewhat unspoken bit about Hacker News in recent years is that it shifted from "people who want to build cool things" to "people who want to complain about everything".
It's pretty much every thread now, from politics to Rust to... throw a stone, it's the same tone and tired mindset. The HN I remember from years ago was tons of founders and people who actually wanted to do something interesting.