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The Twitter Files, Part Six

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Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#921

Post by bennies4grojnd »

roflyear wrote: post #895
bennies4grojnd wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a satire on USA Today naming Levine as one of their Women Of The Year. This isn't hate speech, just social commentary on organizations giving awards and accolades reserved for women to men who want to be women.

The right is incredibly fucked up today. See this article: https://unherd.com/thepost/was-the-fake-boobs-teacher-a-hoax...

Seems highly unlikely this is a satirical protest.

More probably it's just a man bringing his fetish to work and expecting everyone to comply, as is the zeitgeist of today.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#922

Post by api »

DoItToMe81 wrote: post #906
api wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

There was a larger plan:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/politics/washington-pipe-bomb...

It failed because the bombs were found and because Mike Pence defected or at least chickened out at the last minute.

That’s why they were chanting “hang Mike Pence” not “hang Nancy Pelosi.” What you saw was a rage filled riot in the wake of a failing coup attempt.

Had the bombs gone off and Pence stopped the count a state of emergency would have been declared. I’m not totally convinced of this part but I’ve read that they were expecting a bunch of radical left counter protestors and that the role of the mob was supposed to be to start a big street brawl with Antifa or whoever was supposed to show to help feed into the state of emergency ploy to suspend the election.

It was more elaborately planned than Hitler’s beer hall putsch which was a bunch of Nasis getting blasted at the bar and having a street brawl with police that ended in a very asymmetrical gun fight.

Luckily it probably will end here this time though since Trump is too old, Flynn and Bannon are too obviously kooky, and DeSantis doesn’t have it in him. He knows how to troll the woke for attention but I don’t get hard core fascist vibes from him. He will try to do a Viktor Orban but it won’t work here because America has courts and federalism, and he doesn’t have the balls to attempt a coup. Say what you will about Trump but he did have balls.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#923

Post by naasking »

acdha wrote: post #892
naasking wrote: post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This continues to be incorrect: their posts are visible to anyone on the internet and show up to their followers No, I don't know how many times I have to repeat this: if you use Twitter's search to try to find a delisted user on Twitter, you can't find them. Sometimes you can't even @ them. This fits the general definition of shadowbanning that the other poster provided, wherein their content cannot be found using…

> No, I don't know how many times I have to repeat this Your frustration stems from angrily telling people something is wrong based on your misunderstanding of a term. You’re welcome not to like the practice or lobby against it but you’re just signing up for frustration trying to get everyone to switch to your redefinition.

> You’re welcome not to like the practice or lobby against it but you’re just signing up for frustration trying to get everyone to switch to your redefinition.

It's not my redefinition, it's literally the definition the other poster provided which they discovered via Google, and the application of that definition matches how thousands of tech and laypeople are using it in this conversation, and how the media is covering it. But, you do you.

Finally, I'm not sure where your ability to surmise my emotional state based only on text comes from, but I think it needs some tuning.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#924

Post by paledot »

mikrotikker wrote: post #912
partiallypro wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 your…

People? Or sockpuppets? I'm quite suspicious of the large amount of anti Elon propaganda going around. Especially on this platform where comments are usually more measured. It just looks different to normal and it has my Spidey senses tingling.

Criticism is very different from propaganda.

I am a former Tesla fan and remain a SpaceX fan. I hold Tesla stock and I would buy SpaceX stock in a hot minute if I could. And I credit Musk in no small part with making both companies what they are today, the good and the bad, although not nearly as much as Musk credits Musk.

And yet with all of that, I still think he's gone off the deep end. I've voted against him as CEO in the past several shareholders' votes. Defending his recent actions and attitudes at this point is an increasingly untenable position.

If you want to stand in his corner, I suppose that's your choice, but being critical of him is the far more defensible position. Claiming that those who do are all sock puppets is frankly disingenuous.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#925

Post by candybar »

roenxi wrote: post #910
candybar wrote: post #903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Which is substantially less problematic that the sitting President threatening Twitter. Yet here we are.

> 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.

This is so far off the mark that it's hard to take you seriously. The Mueller report extensively documented Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2016 election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

> However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion

It didn't exonerate the Trump campaign either. It more or less said that it couldn't prove the collusion in large part due to extensive attempts by the President's attempt to torpedo the investigation. It describes these attempts at obstruction of justice, without specifically accusing him (or exonerating) because Mueller didn't think it would be fair even if he believes a crime occurred:

> The report describes ten episodes where Trump may have obstructed justice while president and one before he was elected, noting that he privately tried to "control the investigation". The report further states that Congress can decide whether Trump obstructed justice and take action accordingly, referencing impeachment

> Mueller's belief that it would be unfair to accuse the president of a crime even without charging him because he would have no opportunity to clear his name in court; furthermore it would undermine Trump's ability to govern and preempt impeachment

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#926

Post by candybar »

mikrotikker wrote: post #914
candybar wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, Republican politicians publicly complaining about social media moderation in threatening terms would be far more problematic than the FBI notifying Twitter of tweets that are in violation of their TOS. Yet I don't remember the "Free Speech" proponents doing anything but applauding these types of "informal coercion."

That's one of the falsiest equivalencies I ever did see

It's actually not equivalent - we're seeing a lot of accuasations here that the FBI "coerced" Twitter or that the FBI requests were "partisan" - there's actually no evidence in these files for these claims. On the other hand, there's plenty of public evidence that Republican politicians were trying to coerce Twitter to accomplish explicitly partisan aims. Yet here we are.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#927

Post by clifmo »

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…

"FBI has absolutely no right to try to get a private company to stop free speech."

Yes, yes they do.

"That viewpoint is very problematic and has a fundamental lack of understanding about how federal agencies coerce private companies to do their bidding."

What evidence of coercion is there?

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#928

Post by roflyear »

bennies4grojnd wrote: post #921
roflyear wrote: post #895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right is incredibly fucked up today. See this article: https://unherd.com/thepost/was-the-fake-boobs-teacher-a-hoax...

Seems highly unlikely this is a satirical protest. More probably it's just a man bringing his fetish to work and expecting everyone to comply, as is the zeitgeist of today.

Of course you say that, nevermind the evidence saying otherwise!

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#929

Post by llamaimperative »

simpleblend wrote: post #886
llamaimperative wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FBI: notoriously left wing Lol

The FBI is notoriously subversive, regardless of the political denomination.

And your evidence of subverting the right wing here is that they reported people to Twitter for posting incorrect polling locations/dates?

Yeah there’s plenty to critique of FBI, but this is a profoundly weak case.

Re: The Twitter Files, Part Six

#930

Post by MAGZine »

naasking wrote: post #737
MAGZine wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalism should present things in the correct context, and contextualize statements, situations, etc. If feels like you're accusing journalists of lying to push an agenda, which is, by definition, not journalism. Journalism is about informing. Not saying everyone does it perfectly, in the same way you can do bad science that is still technically science.

> Journalism should present things in the correct context, and contextualize statements, situations, etc. Even if we agree that that's what journalism should be, what is your assessment of how accurately this definition matches most high profile journalism today? How much context did the Covington kids get, or how much context did the rail workers who wanted to strike get? There are very clearly some contexts that ge…

I think contextualization is crucial.

If you spend time doing raw info dumps from one side of an argument, say the unions in the rail strike, you're not telling the whole story.

Telling the whole story is important to journalism. It's why you always see "X did not respond to a request for comment." They attempt to give the other side to speak.

Telling only one side of the story makes you a mouthpiece, not a journalist.

I didn't say journalism is without bias, but that's a completely separate topic. Let's try to keep this from turning into a "here's all of the things wrong with journalism and no solutions" rant thread.

You can be biased and also not attempt to push an agenda. The inverse is true, too.

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