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The Twitter Files, Part Six

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Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#901
post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But aren’t they just flagging Tweets as potential violations of TOS? That sounds as tame as it could possibly be. The same option is open to me as an ordinary user.

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…

What do think the FBI does? They monitor threats. Just following media (social and traditional) is pretty mandatory first step in collecting intel. A lot of Jan 6 insurrections were organizing on digital platforms. Foreign adversaries are using it too.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#902
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, those fielded by agents would, given the distribution of online crime, fall all over the political spectrum, then and would not lean one way or the other? What crimes are vaccine sceptics guilty of? Given they had some sex crimes going on on the platform, where the mounds of those ToS review requests? In the examples, are they alleging the potential crime or just saying, hey, guys, it looks like these acc…

Pretty much. As for vaccine sceptics: there were a lot of people amplifying utter bullshit messages around that theme and arguably shutting those accounts down saved a bunch of lives. You may well disagree with that but in a fluid situation I can see why they did what they did. It does not deserve the beauty prize but since we're still learning how to deal with this social media thing where everybody has a megaphone…

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Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#903
post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any scenarios where it is acceptable for the President to threaten private companies to change their moderation policies to suit his needs? That's what Trump did repeatedly. There's a fundamental contradiction in the narrative presented in the Twitter Files, apparently we're supposed to believe that Twitter is this overwhelmingly liberal place where employees were highly biased against conservatives in thei…

> Are there any scenarios where it is acceptable for the President to threaten private companies to change their moderation policies to suit his needs? If he's asking for something completely reasonable that ~80+% of people think is a good idea, sure. The appropriate thing for Twitter to do would still probably be to ignore him. Giving Trump influence of Twitter's moderation policies is one of those obviously bad ide…

So the big scandal here isn't that the FBI is implicitly threatening Twitter in a way that raises 1st Amendment concerns, but rather that the FBI is using public funds to help a social media company do its job. This has nothing to do with free speech and there's also no evidence the FBI's actions were motivated by partisan concerns.

To me, it's rather clear that a bunch of people who are not particularly principled or have a strong understanding of the ethics or laws involved, but are prone to thinking that anyone working against their own agenda must be evil or nefarious in some ways, reverse-engineering their way into finding faults with how things more or less have always worked. This also isn't some nefarious hidden secret motivated by partisan concerns. Trump's own Director of FBI, Christopher Wray stated that Russia was attempting to interfere in the presidential election:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-security-idU...

> Russia is determined to interfere in U.S. elections despite sanctions and other efforts to deter such actions before the next presidential election in 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday.

And he specifically told the public what the FBI is doing about this:

https://time.com/5548544/russian-internet-trolls-strategies-...

> FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, said social media remains a primary avenue for foreign actors to influence U.S. elections, and the bureau is working with companies on the problem.

> “What has continued virtually unabated and just intensifies during the election cycles is this malign foreign influence campaign, especially using social media,” Wray said. “That continues, and we’re gearing up for it to continue and grow again for 2020.”

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#904
post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication of chipping in might mean an unwise alignment with Roth's PhD idea. His idea wasn't even "Grindr for teens". It was worse because he wasn't proposing a separate service. His idea was to update those sites to accommodate young people. Yoth wrote: "those services should consider offering toned-down content alongside adult fare." Even if we're charitable, Yoth's use of the word "alongside" was unfortunat…

Your assumption appears to be that gay teens are not already on the existing adult Grindr, lying about their age, and being forced to wade their way through some of the darkest, seediest corners of the Internet. I don’t know much about his proposed solution, I haven’t read his work, but judging by my own teenage use of Grindr (many years ago), a toned down, protected version of something gay teens were already going…

> "gay teens were already going to use"

We can't speak for all teens, gay or otherwise. They are not all the same mind. The degree of sexual activity and relationships among teens would range from zero to highly active. They are not all concentrated in the highly active segment.

"Grindr" services are commercial. Inherently promoting, advertising, "luring" target customers with a wide net. That would mean luring all segments of teenagers, if Roth's idea was realized. It's gross.

If some teens already use those services, parents and educators of the teens, and the services should do more to keep them away. Roth's "embrace" idea says more about his personal angle than consideration of teens in general and their families.

I see that Penn State removed access to Roth's paper. Nobody seemed to care. But it should be made available because free speech means we record bad ideas, discuss why they're bad, avoid them in future, or evolve them to better ideas.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#905
post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an example of someone being banned for being on the political right. Meghan Murphy is a left-wing feminist, she was banned for expressing gender critical views.

[flagged]

They are in almost every factor.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#906
post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism is when you're critical of federal agencies having a privileged relationship with the media to the point of weekly meetings to influence moderation policy? What?

Actual fascists attempted a coup on January 6th 2020. Taibbi is working to bolster their case by deliberately slanting and spinning this stuff. Here’s the blind spot I think a lot of people have, including perhaps Taibbi. It’s fine to hate things about the current system. It’s fine to be critical of the FBI or any other part of that system. But if you want to have a revolution, the first thing you have to get right i…

Sorry bro, entering a building without any greater plan and then leaving peacefully is not a "right wing coup" and Trump supporters are not Fascists, they're just a little odd. The fact that it isn't a coup and was not a coup is why its participants cannot be charged as such.

If you want to see a "fascist coup" plan, go look at Golden Dawn being busted with blueprints to parliament that indicated they were going to break down the walls with tanks.

What you're effectively saying here is that people should not be concerned about massive FBI overreach and should discard what he has covered elsewhere because 'orange man bad', when Trump barely factors into anything here. That's deranged, and it's not going to be taken seriously outside of your bubble.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#907
post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty routine that they get in contact with newspapers Nothing says they can't contact papers.

But they can't contact Twitter and express their opinions? The government routinely speaks to news papers about the government opinion on articles and how they are wrong. That's not censorship. Holding a figurative pistol to someones head and say "change this line" is censoring and supressing free speech.

Of course they can express their opinions. But it's not black and white.

The Twitter Files already has a statement from a Congressperson that Twitter's actions with the Hunter laptop will "result in a blood bath" during Congressional hearings.

If the 800 lb gorilla that is the US government is threatening a "blood bath", do you really have a choice when they ask for your "cooperation"?

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Orwellian does not just mean changing terms or using euphemisms. It is about terms that make the expression of undesirable thoughts actually impossible. Do any of the scare-quoted terms do this? I can't see any. Per [1]: "Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude…

In the context of authoritarian states and surveillance technology that definition matches. But this is specifically about language and jargon. Even if we decide that my definition is nonsense, it is clear that using terms like "escalation" internally isn't "a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda."

> Even if we decide that my definition is nonsense, it is clear that using terms like "escalation" internally isn't "a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda."

Sure, innocuous sounding words like "rendition" would never be reappropriated as code for something more sinister, right?

Seems to me that innocuous sounding jargon actually makes Orwellian doublethink much easier to swallow. Like a frog in a slowly heated pot of water, you get exposed to and acclimatize to progressively more problematic uses of power until you simultaneously believe that you are a patriot upholding citizen's rights while routinely violating them.

I'm not really sure why you think this process can't happen in a private company.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#910
post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any scenarios where it is acceptable for the President to threaten private companies to change their moderation policies to suit his needs? If he's asking for something completely reasonable that ~80+% of people think is a good idea, sure. The appropriate thing for Twitter to do would still probably be to ignore him. Giving Trump influence of Twitter's moderation policies is one of those obviously bad ide…

So the big scandal here isn't that the FBI is implicitly threatening Twitter in a way that raises 1st Amendment concerns, but rather that the FBI is using public funds to help a social media company do its job. This has nothing to do with free speech and there's also no evidence the FBI's actions were motivated by partisan concerns. To me, it's rather clear that a bunch of people who are not particularly principled o…

Well, the scandal here is the FBI were rolling in, giving Twitter a list of random bystanders with the expectation that they will be silenced. US Federal government agencies are specifically not supposed to do that.

All the stuff observing that the FBI is politically active (and has been pretty much since inception I suspect) is interesting but not really news. It is context for why they are supposed to avoid chummy relationships with Twitter's team of moderators.

> Trump's own Director of FBI, Christopher Wray stated that Russia was attempting to interfere in the presidential election

Yeah, but the Muller report came out around the time he said that and basically debunked the issue as a serious problem; raising the question of what exactly Wray was trying to stir up. He looks like part of the anti-Trump crowd that has been active in the FBI for the last few years.

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