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The Twitter Files, Part Six

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Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One trans woman being a scumbag piece of trash A) Doesn't make her not a woman B) Doesn't make all trans people scumbags. I understand the position of the lesbian woman in that story - she is justified in anger, hate and fear, as sad as it is to say. You're allowed to not be attracted to someone, and trans individuals have to accept that sometimes relationships may not work out as a result of their being trans - it's…

You've missed the point, this about people not being permitted to say the truth, per this ideology. Even a rape victim isn't allowed to say that a man raped her, despite him forcing his penis inside of her. Is she supposed to pretend that this is a "woman's penis" or something? That was an extreme example used to illustrate. The other examples elsewhere in this thread include a man taking an accolade that would usual…

Again, biology does not equal gender.

The reason that I responded to your previous post was the importance of this extreme example.

Trans men are men. Trans women are women.

The research supports this.

Scumbags are scumbags, regardless of gender or trans status. Some of the people you listed are scumbags, and one was a woman receiving an award for women.

If you're going to dissolve into whataboutisms, we're done here.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nothing posted on some companies website is governed by free speech or the USA’s 1st amendment. The Terms Of Service apply and typically a user has agreed to those by simply participating on the site. This includes account bans, blocking content, etc. the company can do whatever it pleases, if it benefits them to listen to a gov’t agency request then they might do it. Its comical that people believe Musk is promoting…

Just responding to one part of this, if that's cool.

I think what the comment above is saying is that it's not about whether or not speech on Twitter is protected. It's that the government isn't supposed to act to restrict speech in any manner that doesn't cross the lines he listed.

If I'm remembering correctly, there was a big court case because Trump was hiding critical responses to his tweets on Twitter. The judge ruled that Trump violated the 1st amendment even though Twitter is a private company ("private property"?).

This is because the 1st amendment not only protects speech, it restricts government attempts to control speech (or at least that's the argument that would be made).

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#873
post #858
post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to exactly where the government twisted arms? What Taibi published showed the opposite.

We learned before Taibbi's scoop that Twitter disallowed sharing of the story including in DMs. Blocking content in DMs was supposedly only used for illicit underage material until that story. Facebook's Zuck outright admitted in plain English that they got contacted by the government (maybe FBI, can't remember) so they buried the story. This is not my opinion or guessing. We know this to be absolute fact.

> We learned before Taibbi's scoop that Twitter disallowed sharing of the story including in DMs. Blocking content in DMs was supposedly only used for illicit underage material until that story

You might not have been aware of that but it was common knowledge years before. During the hours when that story was blocked using the same mechanism they used for other hacked materials like you might have seen if some celebrity’s nudes had been leaked. Within a day that was removed for the NY Post news story since they were individually taking down the tweets with the actual nudes.

> This is not my opinion or guessing. We know this to be absolute fact.

What we know as absolute fact is that you’re getting your information from people who carefully lie to you, and you didn’t verify the source. It sounds like you’re referring to Zuckerberg’s interview with Rogan, where he said this:

“The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'."

That’s important because what he said doesn’t support that narrative:

Rogan: “Did [the FBI] specifically say you need to be on guard about that story?”

Zuckerberg: “No, I don’t remember if it was that specifically, but it basically fit the pattern.”

https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/mark-zuckerberg-criticizes-twi...

Now, this is all off topic from the “Twitter Files” but again it’s important to remember that the mythology around conservative oppression is being used to distract from the real point that the laptop story failed to have the impact Giuliani & Trump wanted was because there wasn’t much of substance there and the evidence was tainted by sloppy handling. They’re trying to market it as a tale of censorship because they know that it wasn’t effective as a scandal.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've missed the point, this about people not being permitted to say the truth, per this ideology. Even a rape victim isn't allowed to say that a man raped her, despite him forcing his penis inside of her. Is she supposed to pretend that this is a "woman's penis" or something? That was an extreme example used to illustrate. The other examples elsewhere in this thread include a man taking an accolade that would usual…

Again, biology does not equal gender. The reason that I responded to your previous post was the importance of this extreme example. Trans men are men. Trans women are women. The research supports this. Scumbags are scumbags, regardless of gender or trans status. Some of the people you listed are scumbags, and one was a woman receiving an award for women. If you're going to dissolve into whataboutisms, we're done here…

> Trans men are men. Trans women are women.

This is an ideological belief. We can also accurately describe them as women who want to be men, and men who want to be women.

Of the three examples we're discussing:

* one raped a woman using his penis - this is what men do, not women

* one tried to get women to touch his male genitals - again, the behavior of a man

* one received an accolade as if he's a woman - but spent most of his life making a highly successful career as a man, using his male privilege to its fullest extent

Can you see why people may prefer to refer to these three as men, not women?

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your point is?

Clearly if you read the context, that emmelaich's invocation of the "penumbra" doctrine to suggest that the first amendment covers Twitter's actions is weak. It does not, even when there's a connection to reports from a government agency. There are other arguments for why Twitter's actions were wrong, perhaps even that it's a first-amendment issue, but that one just doesn't work in the context of how the constitution…

Actually, I just thought it was a useful concept for anyone arguing about the literal meaning of the constitution. Wasn't especially arguing for either side.

Though having the FBI and Twitter policy people being in such close communication must be eyebrow raising at least. And it a little bizarre honestly.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nothing posted on some companies website is governed by free speech or the USA’s 1st amendment. The Terms Of Service apply and typically a user has agreed to those by simply participating on the site. This includes account bans, blocking content, etc. the company can do whatever it pleases, if it benefits them to listen to a gov’t agency request then they might do it. Its comical that people believe Musk is promoting…

I never said Twitter was protected by the 1st Amendment, that specifically is about government. I said once government (which is limited by the 1st) intervenes to try to get a company to stop free speech, that's an affront to the 1st Amendment. It's coercion. Do you really think governments don't try to kill speech and ideas through coercion? Do you really see no problem with that?

I have no idea why people like yourself try to twist the argument. Also, there is a thing like "principles" which aren't encoded into law but are encoded into society and makes it work quite well, which includes free speech. So, I can believe a platform should have the maximum amount of free speech possible...and that is not the same as saying it has or needs 1st Amendment protections.

For the amount of backlash HN gives to private companies for harvesting private data and handing it over to government...there are SUPRISING amounts of people here defending the government in coercing on this. Baffling.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Okay, let's take all you said as unassailable - shouldn't this whole thing be called the FBI files, and not the Twitter files? I'm inclined to think that anything that went from the FBI to Twitter went through Twitter's Legal Department, and at least one person signed off—which, given the rebuffs of more public attempts, seems like anything signed off on was done in good faith. So in my mind the problem isn't Twitter…

> I'm inclined to think that anything that went from the FBI to Twitter went through Twitter's Legal Department

Why would your theory about this be at all relevant when we have direct evidence (original emails, etc.) that the opposite is true, that there was no intermediation or oversight by Twitter legal in takedown requests?

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've invented your own "common understanding" They don't prevent people seeing tweets of anyone. If you follow soneone you see their tweets, if you dont follow them but gonto their profile you see their tweets. Tweets are universally publically viewable. The policies they use are not secret. Trying to start a conversation about their secret shadowbanning policy is a dead end as the policy is not shadow banning and…

And still you persist. Go read the definition you provided again. Then read my immediate reply where I pointed out they delisted people from search. That is literally a case where Twitter was "making their posts and comments no longer visible to other users" and they did so "without their knowledge". That is shadowbanning by your own definition, and each ban was not disclosed and thus done in secret, because that's w…

> That is literally a case where Twitter was "making their posts and comments no longer visible to other users" and they did so "without their knowledge".

This continues to be incorrect: their posts are visible to anyone on the internet and show up to their followers. The only thing twitter is not doing is having their algorithm highlight them to people who weren’t following them or participating in a conversation with them. That doesn’t fit any common definition of shadow-banning.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#879
post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter can always say no to the feds I can also say no to the feds if they ask me to assassinate someone but it doesn’t mean they aren’t breaking a law by asking me. Would be a crazy constitutional loophole if the govt simply needs to ask citizens to censor each other (1a), steal their neighbors guns (2a), tell husbands to prevent their wives from voting (19a), etc. If these censorship request were about bomb thre…

> If these censorship request were about bomb threats or something that’s one thing, but they are mostly just spicy political takes. There’s some selection bias here — the tweets we see in the thread are the ones twitter didn’t remove and the accounts twitter didn’t ban. Twitter surely has the deleted tweets around somewhere, but it doesn’t seem to have been provided to the twitter files reporters. https://twitter.co…

Twitter’s data model stores Tweets as a stream of records. When you delete a tweet, it stores another record which consumers are required to honor saying that the first record’s ID was deleted.

Twitter’s internal tools still have all of that data. In most cases the Internet Archive also does, too, which is how people have confirmed that, for example, the tweets in the famous “handled” email were nudes in violation of the non-consensual policy with no overriding news value.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#880
post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individuals accounts cannot always be categorized in one of two ways. There was a consistent attempt to counter any ideas that ran counter to a certain narrative.

You are contradicting yourself. “The problem was that it was entirely one way.”

Entirely one way in the sense that they were out to re-inforce a narrative.
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