Making Twitter look as bad and evil as possible sure is an interesting strategy.
Seems to be going great so far, truly galaxy-brain tier marketing.
The Twitter Files, Part Six
811–820 of 965 posts
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#812Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca... > Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime. > Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or pl…
In that case I’m with benmmurphy: they should be enforcing the law by actually prosecuting people in court (or, to be pedantic, performing arrests and investigations to support a prosecution by a US Attorney), not engaging in extrajudicial monkeyshines.
I agree with the spirit of this, but the point is this neither extrajudicial nor monkeyshines, nor out of the ordinary, which means this entire discussion has been bamboozled by business as usual, while more interesting controversies have been neglected.
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#813Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just want to say that fascism is bigger than Nazism, butt agree that Taibi is probably a regular conservative making himself useful to Elon.
This thread is about the FBI, aka the actual jackboots, compelling private companies extralegally in order to shift democratic narratives. And you're saying it's conservative to be opposed to that? I understand it lined up with the liberal side regarding the election but that doesn't make Taibbi (or myself) a conservative for opposing it. Distrusting the FBI ought to be a liberal value.
I'm a leftist and not a liberal. I recognize that the FBI is a largely unrestrained organization that's responsible for a lot of evil, including the assassination of civil rights figures.
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#814Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would expect the FBI to be able to tell whether or not that joke is criminal behavior within their legal jurisdiction.
You seem to have some incredibly strong opinions on how you think national security is supposed to work while not seeming to understand even the basic functionality of the role and remit of the FBI. It’s ok to just say you don’t know sometimes.
The basic functionality of the role and remit of the FBI does not entail helping Twitter enforce its terms of service. They’re supposed to be a law enforcement agency that performs criminal investigations to support federal prosecutors, not a secret police force that engages in extrajudicial measures against political dissidents, though I suppose Fred Hampton and Martin Luther King would have something to say about the latter.
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#815Earlier quoted context omitted.
And?
Well clearly the FBI don't find the Taliban bad enough for some reasons...
Or… it turns out that the FBI has specific mandates and they include things like “counter election disinformation” and it doesn’t include things like “report every bad guy on Twitter.”
This is only confusing starting from your own incorrect premise.
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#816Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're describing small c conservatism, actually being conservative about change. It's a valid point of view and at least debatable. Even the most progressive person is conservative about some things. The GP's comment is describing the capital C Conservatism brand. It's subsumed the idea about being politically conservative and combined it with an astounding mix of racism, bigotry, and in many cases outright fascism.…
"Capital X" means there's an official party with that name. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Capital X tries to distinguish the political label from the the adjective:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_S...
Vs
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#817Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trying to appeal with the “future elections” angle is amusing. Many on that “winning side” blame FBI interference for losing in 2016. So you would think your appeal would carry weight, yet it doesn’t. One wonders why?
No, they blame the former head of the FBI Comey for announcing that he's not going to prosecute Clinton for her carelessness with her emails, and then sort of reversing himself days ahead of the election. Maybe Clinton bears some blame here for being so careless with her classified emails in the first place? Comey was in an impossible situation and bound to get criticized no matter what he did. This was not the insti…
Clinton’s loss can be blamed on a multitude of reasons, not least a failure to campaign in the relevant Rust Belt and Midwest states where she lost. Be that as it may, there is a running narrative in her party that the FBI’s actions under Comey, when it comes to the timing of the investigation and how the announcements regarding it were delivered, contributed to her loss.
At any rate, I am just pointing out the humorous irony involved in appealing to that party to watch the FBI lest “they might lose a future election”… they already believe themselves the losers of one because of FBI involvement!
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#818Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously these reports are given more priority but who's going to just ignore FBI reports?
i'd probably just do whatever the fbi wanted so as to save myself a possible hassle. which is the point: the fbi can fuck with me. to say, "well, the fbi is just reporting stuff" ignores that the fbi has power. power is something people seem to have an odd tendency to ignore.
So what is the revelation here, or what does it suggest we should do?
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#819Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people not exercising their rights is entirely distinct from people not having been educated on them. The Bill of Rights is surely a required item on every single curriculum in the country. I, having paid attention in high school, am aware that I have no obligation to comply with arbitrary LEO requests, and certainly not those pertaining to the content of speech. Yes, they did talk of their own volition . As the…
The problem is not the rights of Twitter employees, it's the right of the people banned...
What? They have no “rights” to use Twitter. This is also not even remotely controversial.
Or put another way: the government cannot coerce Twitter or any other platform to carry someone else’s speech.
Note however the government is free to ask Twitter to carry people’s speech, as Trump did almost daily for 4+ years whining about so and so getting banned or de-boosted etc.
Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six
#820Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that case I’m with benmmurphy: they should be enforcing the law by actually prosecuting people in court (or, to be pedantic, performing arrests and investigations to support a prosecution by a US Attorney), not engaging in extrajudicial monkeyshines.
I agree with the spirit of this, but the point is this neither extrajudicial nor monkeyshines, nor out of the ordinary, which means this entire discussion has been bamboozled by business as usual, while more interesting controversies have been neglected.
For the past couple of years, the defense of Twitter’s aggressive moderation has been that Twitter is a private company and that the First Amendment only stops the government from censoring speech. Now we know that Twitter was doing this, in part, at the behest of a government agency. If this isn’t “out of the ordinary” it’s only because of the FBI’s well-established reputation for doing far worse things.