[HN Gopher] The FBI was the primary link between the intelligenc...
___________________________________________________________________
The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and
Twitter
Author : tomohawk
Score : 168 points
Date : 2022-12-25 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (threadreaderapp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (threadreaderapp.com)
| hellfish wrote:
| This whole issue revolves around how comfortable people are with
| DC sticking its nose in social media
|
| These agencies have already seen massive scope creep in the past
| couple decades. Seeing the FBI doing moderation _for_ social
| media companies is a step too far and it 's high time for the
| alphabet agencies to get pared down
| mef wrote:
| I've been trying to read these Twitter files threads
| thoughtfully, and maybe it's just a sign of the current average
| level of comfort with government involvement with social media
| platforms, but I'm generally not seeing much issue with the stuff
| being revealed.
|
| the worst thing about this particular thread seems like the govt
| agencies talking to Twitter about foreign influence are
| overreaching a bit (eg asking them to look at Russian oligarchs'
| troll farms for promoting anti-Ukrainian spam).
|
| but I don't see a problem with the FBI/CIA/etc having regular
| discussions with Twitter about potential threats, influence
| campaigns, etc.
| pannSun wrote:
| Did you miss [1]? The US govt. used its influence over Twitter
| to help sell its foreign policy (military interventions
| included) to the US and global audience. The only way you could
| not take issue with it, is if you're fine with govt.
| psyops/undisclosed propaganda.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111071
| spamizbad wrote:
| I mean we allowed the alphabet agencies to cooperate with
| social media companies to fight "ISIS propaganda." -- what
| did you think would happen?
|
| Scorpion, frog, etc.
|
| If we had stood up to them in 2013, drew a line in the sand
| and said "No, a bunch of poorly edited snuff films aren't
| going to cause a bunch of American teens to join an Islamic
| revolution" these relationships wouldn't exist.
|
| By the way, we are currently trying to ban TikTok because of
| similar concerns about it rotting teens brains. Before we
| start frothing at the mouth in rage at some problematic app
| let's do a thought experiment and consider the future
| blowback from taking such extreme action.
| ummonk wrote:
| It is simply a fact that ISIS did successfully radicalize
| and recruit western teenagers via the internet.
|
| What if anything the government should do to prevent such
| recruitment is a matter of debate, but you shouldn't
| pretend such recruitment didn't happen.
| spamizbad wrote:
| > It is simply a fact that ISIS did successfully
| radicalize and recruit western teenagers via the
| internet.
|
| At no meaningful scale. If some dumbass wants to throw
| their life away in a foreign country we obviously should
| use all legal means to discourage that but part of being
| a liberal democracy means you do in fact have to give
| people enough freedom (rope) to hang themselves.
| thrashh wrote:
| Just like how a bunch of random people paid for flight
| school classes with cash... oh wait, that ended in 9/11
|
| No one knows what is gonna be credible, but damned if you
| do and damned if you don't
| fallingknife wrote:
| No one is talking about banning TikTok because it's rotting
| anyone's brain. They are talking about it because it gives
| the CCP direct access to data on millions of US citizens.
| hellfish wrote:
| > I mean we allowed the alphabet agencies to cooperate with
| social media companies to fight "ISIS propaganda." -- what
| did you think would happen?
|
| I remember thinking earlier, it's kind of odd that
| teenagers "running off to join ISIS" was a widespread
| problem. In hindsight the shills probably blew that whole
| thing out of proportion to justify more agency scope creep
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > these relationships wouldn't exist.
|
| The government has been involved with the data broker
| industry since well before the dotcom era. That is the
| underpinning of all current day surveillance capitalism.
| It's an intelligence resource they will never overlook.
| robert_foss wrote:
| It used to be CIA and TV. Nothing new under the sun.
| philippejara wrote:
| One would hope that after the patriot act, the bush jr
| wars, cablegate, the nsa leaks and so on just in the last
| 20 years people would desire to not keep the old habits,
| but I suppose all it took was one buffoon to take
| presidency and all that rolls back.
|
| Truly a sad sight from those looking hopeful after the
| occupy movement and all the anti surveillance sentiment
| post-leaks.
| barbacoa wrote:
| Endless war, domestic surveillance, expanding government
| power.
|
| The modern left has become the neo-conservatives.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| All of that is still happening in the populist movement,
| both left (Russell Brand, Jimmy Dore, etc) and right (Joe
| Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Robert Barnes, etc.). The
| populist movement which has been gaining traction through
| new media and new organizations outside of traditional
| parties.
|
| Also, the "Woke" psyop used to destroy Occupy Wall St has
| now destroyed corporate America with ESG and Woke media
| scandals. As usual, the CIA and friends are bad at
| managing blowback.
| colpabar wrote:
| I really don't get this response. Cops treating black
| people horribly is also "nothing new under the sun". Does
| that make it ok? Has everyone just given up on the idea of
| reigning in these federal agencies?
| pannSun wrote:
| I didn't read that response as a defense. It sounded more
| like the opposite.
| beej71 wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand what punishment needs to be
| handed out, here. The government asked Twitter to keep some
| of their fake propaganda accounts online and Twitter did.
| What laws have been violated?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I am a strong supporter of the intelligence community when
| it is focused on its correct mission of nation-state
| hostiles, real terrorists like Bin Ladin &
| international/federal criminals, but I think the government
| overstepped the line in multiple ways that favored partisan
| political campaigns and certain parties. Though I believe
| firmly that these institutions are vital to our success as
| a nation, I also think they can be internally weaponized
| against specific groups, and that is going on currently.
|
| It is pretty clear that these are Hatch Act violations
| which is about preventing your tax dollars being put to use
| as a part of partisan political campaigns, which is what
| happened.
|
| Civilian "unempowered" agencies fall under the Less
| Restricted Hatch Act category, and certain Agencies like
| the IC, fall under a more stringent part of this, the
| Further Restricted category, see [1]
|
| Some of these IC members in the Further Restricted Category
| were prompting BigTech censorship, or, running defense for
| the "Laptop from Hell" story, similar to some of the things
| they did back in the 60s when they were involved with
| unlawful activities regarding Civil Rights and Civil
| Liberties campaigns.
|
| I'd argue in favor of:
|
| (1) Strengthening the Hatch Act
|
| (2) Handling Constitutional violations by the IC under the
| Hatch Act
|
| (3) Prosecutions of the Hatch Act under existing Law
|
| (4) Clearance revocations
|
| (5) Removal of Section 230 protections for BigTech when
| acting as an agent of govt censorship
|
| (6) Budget cuts / Budget reformations for some select
| Federal Agencies, FBI being foremost
|
| (7) Forced retirement / exit from federal service of those
| involved in these behaviors.
|
| (8) Debarring of contractors involved in some of these
| heinious activities
|
| (9) Strengthening Federal Acquisition Regulation
|
| (10) Diffusion of Federal Agencies HQs throughout the
| United States to prevent centralization in overly partisan
| areas
|
| (11) Applying Diversity & Inclusion to political parties
| and other important characteristics of job seekers
|
| (12) Adding restrictions or longer "Cooling Off Periods"
| for the revolving doors between IC, Congress, BigTech,
| Lobbyists, and the Consultant Class.
|
| [1] https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct-Federal.aspx
| pannSun wrote:
| We are discussing whether the event is notable, not if it
| is legal. And as someone not from the US, I care more about
| making people aware that Twitter collaborates with the US
| to help spread their govt. propaganda (in the same way I
| would want them to know if the doctor they're discussing
| smoking with is employed by the tobacco industry), than
| whether Twitter complies with laws written by that same
| government.
|
| I.e. claiming no laws were violated (hypothetically) is as
| much a defense of Twitter as claiming TikTok hasn't broken
| Chinese law.
| beej71 wrote:
| People should definitely know. For any government and
| public-facing system, that government will use that
| public-facing system to achieve its ends.
|
| Sometimes this is asking that system to print a PSA.
| Sometimes this is asking that system to maintain
| propaganda accounts.
|
| This definitely exists, and I'm not sure why people think
| it wouldn't.
|
| We can complain, but the real remedy is to put laws in
| place if this is something we really care about.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| The First Amendment:
|
| > _Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
| of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
| the Government for a redress of grievances._
|
| It's since been expanded through court cases to extend from
| congress to every government entity including local ones.
|
| The government is constitutionally forbidden from meddling
| with the press, even through private entities via the 14th
| amendment. The FBI and CIA meddled with twitter. The
| particulars aren't relevant. They're expressly forbidden
| from doing what they did.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This isn't true asking for your post to be removed
| doesn't violate your rights. It would if requests were
| accompanied by legal threats. Twitter is the one removing
| content and with every right to do so.
| beej71 wrote:
| This doesn't mean the government can't make requests to
| private companies, including the press.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Government "requests" are usually treated as directives,
| since it's well understood that they have many seemingly
| unrelated ways to make life difficult for a company and
| its officers.
| hellfish wrote:
| Good idea, it's high time this practice gets banned
| spamizbad wrote:
| I feel like if someone made a bunch of threats on Twitter and
| then followed through with them people would be completely
| outraged why the FBI didn't stop them.
|
| Anyway it's interesting we are having this debate TODAY when
| after 9/11 and a decade later the adroit use of social media by
| ISIL the alphabet agencies were crawling all over the internet.
| Pandora's box was opened years ago.
| mushbino wrote:
| If you look at most mass shootings you'll find articles
| saying the suspect was "known to the FBI." For some reason
| they rarely stop them ahead of time. The Whitmer kidnapping
| is a recent example. Well, I guess they started AND stopped
| it in that case.
| XorNot wrote:
| That's because most mass shootings have no crime committed
| until the suspect opens fire.
| landemva wrote:
| > people would be completely outraged why the FBI didn't stop
| them.
|
| I doubt people would make FBI change for the better.
|
| Suspicions of people paying cash at flight schools and not
| seeming to want an airline career was reported to FBI several
| times before 9/11. FBI filed it.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-was-warned-about-flight-
| sch...
| [deleted]
| coredog64 wrote:
| The FBI was highlighting obvious parody accounts and accounts
| with double digit followers for the "crime" of the tired old
| joke of "(other party) votes on Wednesday".
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| The whole parody thing a-la Carl Tuckerson "nobody seriously
| believes this" while manufacturing outrage that many people
| believe in and results in stochastic terrorism needs to stop.
|
| How many massacres[1] are necessary before people take things
| like that a bit more seriously? Is it until somebody they
| know gets murdered?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_right-
| wing_terrorist_a...
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| I mean the parody account being referenced here
| (@madandpissedoff) was one that pretended to be the WWE
| wrestler undertaker and almost exclusively tweeted denials
| about shitting his own pants at the mall. I'm not sure it
| was really leading toward a massacre (unless you count what
| happened to that mall bathroom stall.)
| cyberphobe wrote:
| Yeah, these people are just desperately trying to generate
| outrage over nothing. It's really really dumb. No need to give
| them too much thought
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Banning DMs talking about true events seems like something
| reasonable to be outraged about.
| acdha wrote:
| It happened for a few hours when the story was flagged as
| hacked materials (just like they'd do for, say, someone's
| non-consensual nudes). Twitter did that on their own and
| removed it shortly later after their internal discussion
| agreed that it wasn't a violation (they took down the
| tweets reposting actual nudes, not the media coverage).
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Sorry, wasn't NY Post suspended on Twitter for almost two
| weeks?
|
| The impact wasn't just for a few hours and the final
| acknowledgement of validity of those files came long
| after the election.
|
| This is textbook gaslighting.0
| acdha wrote:
| I was referring specifically to the URL block we were
| talking about. They used their existing system for hacked
| material until confirming that it was not appropriate:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/technology/twitter-
| new-yo...
| asynchronous wrote:
| I feel like the memory of democracy nowadays is exactly
| 18 hours long.
| counttheforks wrote:
| HN bans any and all DMs. Outraged yet?
| asynchronous wrote:
| [flagged]
| runjake wrote:
| Please enlighten us.
|
| I have no agenda or allegiances.
|
| I tried reading them closely. I see some new stuff that is
| of mild concern given our post-Snowden world, but I am also
| not able to see the great outrage.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You are acting contrarian with no evidence, no discussion
| of any particular component of the revealed data, nothing
| specific even to debate regarding the original comment. Yet
| the conspiracy is the downplaying of it!
|
| I've seen a lot of hyperbole about the twitter files that,
| when I read it for myself, is not nearly what was claimed
| by the hyperbolist. For example, someone said "The FBI
| bribed Twitter with $3.4M to remove content!" - I looked
| into it, and the FBI compensated Twitter for work done over
| time to research and then take action on suspicious
| accounts. Now, that may be shady to work with the FBI on
| takedowns without a warrant or court order. But do I call
| that a bribe? Not really.
|
| I am open to discussing what is wrong and suspicious in the
| files, but there is quite a correlation between "people
| raising hell about the Twitter files" and "people who have
| no problem with hate speech or adversary nation-state
| propaganda on social networks".
|
| For example, I believe that actions taken by social
| networks (or any organization ever) on behalf of the
| government should be documented and released to the public
| after some period of time, even on the order of years. If
| the government believes a twitter account, facebook account
| or email address is a threat to national security, it
| should be documented. If the account is not a singular
| "threat" but is known to the IC to be a nation-state troll,
| that should be documented as the reason. I'm not convinced
| it should happen over email.
|
| That said, I acknowledge that nation-state trolling and
| disinformation campaigns absolutely exist on Twitter and
| elsewhere, and need dealt with.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| [flagged]
| TylerLives wrote:
| It's a display of power. "Yeah, we're censoring you, so
| what? Everyone knew this already, and it's a good thing".
| I'm not sure what the people who decided to publish this
| were expecting. Who knows though, maybe in the long run
| it will have some consequences.
| andsoitis wrote:
| What is good summary that point to the core of the issue as
| revealed by these "leaks"?
| cyberphobe wrote:
| What am I missing then?
| lawn wrote:
| Maybe instead of just repeating that we should re-read
| them, you should point out exactly what is so aggrevating,
| and where in the files you're referring to?
|
| Simply repeating things is a propaganda and brainwashing
| technique.
| epivosism wrote:
| jumping in here, but what makes me worried is a strong
| power being used without proper controls, auditing, and
| system design.
|
| From a system perspective it looks like the US Gov had
| elevated access to ban people, and had opportunity and
| reason to misuse it.
|
| The initial rationale for the US Gov already admits this
| as a legit reason to ban foreign agents - "undue
| power/misleading influence". I hold that same view, but
| also consider that malicious elements in the US
| Government are also something to worry about, so I'd like
| their own power to shape the discussion to be limited and
| tracked, too.
| Jarwain wrote:
| It really doesn't look like the US Gov had unilateral
| access to ban people. Just to flag accounts for
| consideration by Twitter, differing from what normal
| users can do only in that the flag comes from a "trusted"
| source and moderation is expedited.
|
| If a tweet didn't violate Twitter's terms, it's been
| shown the Twitter team wouldn't remove that tweet despite
| being flagged by the govt
| lawn wrote:
| If you read the files, it does not say that the US Gov
| can just ban people. What they did is flag people, and
| then Twitter reviews the requests.
|
| I'm much more worried about the current state of affairs
| where a single deranged person (Elon) can arbitrarily
| issue bans on a whim.
| [deleted]
| antiterra wrote:
| I am someone who didn't see anything seriously objectionable in
| the Twitter files, but I do think it raised some questions
| worth thinking about.
|
| If the FBI messages you and says 'hey... review this content
| and see if it's violating your own policies,' is that
| inherently an innocent request? I could see a world where 'see
| if it violates your own policies' is a code for extortion with
| plausible deniability.
|
| Could anything be done to reduce the ability of a large
| organization to extort an online platform into censoring
| content that complies with their guidelines? Should the
| requests be public unless part of an active investigation, or
| is that sort of thing too easily gamed?
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| Chances are, they probably really did violate the TOS. Or
| most of them did, at least. So then you, as the employee
| receiving it, probably do feel some real pressure to remove
| the tweets when the FBI has correctly pointed out that, yes,
| these tweets are against the site's terms of service. Many
| tweets likely _are_ against TOS, but nobody would give them
| any real thought.
| ummonk wrote:
| Yeah, and some of the tweets reported by the FBI didn't
| violate TOS and were allowed to stand by Twitter.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _If the FBI messages you and says 'hey... review this
| content and see if it's violating your own policies,' is that
| inherently an innocent request? I could see a world where
| 'see if it violates your own policies' is a code for
| extortion with plausible deniability._
|
| I've seen this hypothetical raised a lot but I don't find it
| very compelling. If the post isn't in violation of twitter's
| TOS then twitter has strong legal protections to deny the
| request and both sides understand this. Without evidence that
| the FBI actually pressured twitter to take down non-violating
| content after it was deemed ok, I don't see the issue.
| philippejara wrote:
| I'm not going to claim to be an american law expert, but
| when the agencies can just say "nope" to evidence against
| them in said court of law, it becomes hard to claim strong
| legal protections. I may be wrong and misunderstanding the
| law, but it does seem like that. And as a shot in the dark
| here I doubt it got any better after the patriot act.
|
| "Joseph P. Nacchio (born June 22, 1949 in Brooklyn, New
| York) is an American executive... Nacchio was convicted of
| insider trading during his time heading Qwest. He claimed
| in court, with documentation, that his was the only company
| to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass
| surveillance demanded by the NSA which began prior to the
| 11 September 2001 attacks.[1]
|
| He was convicted of 19 counts of insider trading in Qwest
| stock on April 19, 2007[2] - charges his defense team
| claimed were U.S. government retaliation for his refusal to
| give customer data to the National Security Agency in
| February, 2001.[3] This defense was not admissible in court
| because the U.S. Department of Justice filed an in limine
| motion,[4] which is often used in national security cases,
| to exclude information which may reveal state secrets.
| Information from the Classified Information Procedures Act
| hearings in Nacchio's case was likewise ruled
| inadmissible.[5] " [0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
| bbbbb5 wrote:
| The government proved insider trading.
|
| >I'm not going to claim to be an american law expert, but
| when the agencies can just say "nope" to evidence against
| them in said court of law, it becomes hard to claim
| strong legal protections. I may be wrong and
| misunderstanding the law, but it does seem like that. And
| as a shot in the dark here I doubt it got any better
| after the patriot act.
|
| This is nonsense. In your example the court said "nope"
| to the defendant trying to push a conspiracy theory which
| could not possibly have exonerated him.
|
| Here's a decent read on the Nacchio case without weird
| conspiracy theory bullshit
| https://truthonthemarket.com/2008/03/31/some-thoughts-on-
| the...
| philippejara wrote:
| is it a conspiracy theory because they said it was? you
| don't know and neither do I, it does sound like he
| thought that asking the NSA for what he has a right to
| ask for, a warrant to give up data, wouldn't impact his
| chances of renewing government contracts, but it seems it
| did and they were dropped and the stock plummeted. Could
| be the other way around and he expected it and did commit
| fraud, I don't know and won't pretend to not be biased
| against the NSA, but the retaliation from them is pretty
| convenient in either case. The concept of being able to
| exclude evidence just because "natsec might be at risk"
| is also absurd to me, instead of taking the trial to a
| judge with clearance or something.
|
| The uncertainty of the sentence aside we can zoom out and
| see that asking to follow legal processes that every
| single one of those companies should be following in the
| first place can very well cause retaliation from the NSA,
| so all else aside invoking legal protections sure does
| seem to be bad for companies.
| bbbbb5 wrote:
| It's a conspiracy theory because Nacchio was actually
| guilty of insider trading regardless of what the NSA may
| have done.
|
| From the court decision which you didn't bother to read:
|
| >Even if the classified information were presented and
| established what he said it would, it could not exonerate
| Mr. Nacchio as he claims. Essentially, Mr. Nacchio argued
| that undisclosed positive information can be used as a
| defense to a charge of trading on undisclosed negative
| information. We disagree. ... If an insider trades on the
| basis of his perception of the net effect of two bits of
| material undisclosed information, he has violated the law
| in two respects, not none.
| XorNot wrote:
| It's also an anthromorphization fallacy argument. "Twitter"
| is a company, not a private individual.
|
| If the FBI contacts "Twitter" then they're not talking to
| any one individual, in fact there's no requirement that be
| the same person at all.
|
| So Twitter cannot be threatened or threatened with implied
| threats - it's a limited liability corporation, there's no
| individual who can be overly inconvenienced or have any
| emotional reaction to the request.
| mypastself wrote:
| Threats of regulations or hefty fines can definitely
| inconvenience the company's owners, who have a stake in
| the company's future.
|
| And importantly, if the individuals using the platform
| are (hypothetically) being silenced by government
| agencies levelling threats against the company unless it
| complies, this could be seen as tantamount to censorship.
| XorNot wrote:
| The imagery you and others are trying to invoke is one of
| burly men in black suits turning up on your doorstep at
| the family home.
|
| Twitter doesn't have that. The employee handling the
| request doesn't own Twitter. If something happens to
| Twitter it doesn't happen to them except in a very
| abstract way (and the person who did fire them was Elon
| Musk in the end).
|
| Governments absolutely have a means to intimidate company
| owners: it's subpoenaing them to testify before Congress.
| Not emailing a mid-level content moderation supervisor
| who has no way to directly talk to the board of
| executives or shareholders.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| You are very naive. Of course the FBI could target an
| individual at the company to do their bidding if they
| wanted. Hell, even law enforcement does similar stuff
| chasing drug dealers. In such cases the govt has no
| regard for the individuals safety or financial well
| being.
|
| At the corporate level its also threatening because of
| the actions the govt could take against the corporation.
| Look at all Musks companies now undergoing heavy auditing
| since he messed with the FBIs twitter.
|
| You have to be naive and only see the happy path and
| think the govt always has your best interests in mind to
| think otherwise.
| antiterra wrote:
| You really think an AG or similar can't have a little
| brunch with a C level executive resulting in a mandate on
| operational guidelines in response?
| XorNot wrote:
| Yes, I absolutely think that. Because how the heck are
| you going to keep that going as a company wide mandate?
| Where's the directives that things are now this way?
| Where's the weirdly timed corporate memorandums?
|
| _Corporations are not people_ : you can't "tell" a
| corporation to do something, because the people who make
| it up are a mercurial, constantly varying group. Even if
| the owners know something, the employees don't: training
| materials have to be updated, policies modified etc. You
| can't "imply" a threat to a corporation, because how do
| you "imply" the threat to all the people who have to
| actually implement the desired action? How do you replace
| staff who are not in on "the implication"? You can't:
| somewhere and somehow you would have to have internal
| emails, training and onboarding materials.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The process by which Trump was pushed off is concerning.
|
| It seems internal employee activism played a large role.
| That's not good.
|
| While Twitter has a right as a private company to moderate
| based on internal popularity, it doesn't build confidence.
|
| It seemed the professional moderators were saying "Trump is
| pushing the limits, but not crossing them" - the other
| employees were lobbying to get him banned.
|
| And they won.
|
| The message is, if you want to run for office on a
| controversial platform, make sure you have supporters among
| the rank and file at Twitter, FB, Reddit, etc, The parts
| about the FBI are less concerning.
|
| Good content moderation creates a firewall between (say) the
| software development team and the moderation team. While
| Twitter had such a wall, it didn't withstand pressure.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| > The process by which Trump was pushed off is concerning.
|
| Trump tried to destroy our democracy. I'm not being
| hyperbolic. The evidence is all there and all from Trump's
| mouth.
| monetus wrote:
| > _tried to destroy our democracy_
|
| He is still trying; that fact hangs over these
| conversations like Damocles' sword.
| philippejara wrote:
| and hopefully he'll get prosecuted for it if it is really
| the case, but that didn't stop even _european_ leaders
| from saying the ban was a mistake and concerning[0].
|
| [0]:https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/pr
| oblemat...
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Your link doesn't make any sense.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
|
| Germany has laws against incitement.
|
| > 2] "incitement of popular hatred", "incitement of the
| masses", or "instigation of the people", is a concept in
| German criminal law that refers to incitement to hatred
| against segments of the population and refers to calls
| for violent or arbitrary measures against them, including
| assaults against the human dignity of others by
| insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of
| the population.
| philippejara wrote:
| I fail to see how having a law against incitement in
| germany - that doesn't even _sound_ like would apply to
| jan 6th if it was done there- makes the article of merkel
| and several other EU leaders condemning twitter 's action
| not make any sense.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| It appears Merkel did not intervene in this case of
| incitement to violence.
|
| https://www-welt-
| de.translate.goog/vermischtes/article231416...
| mikrotikker wrote:
| False, you are most definitely being hyperbolic.
| ultrablack wrote:
| By censoring data, so did Twitter.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Destroying democracy isn't against Twitters rules.
|
| The Taliban destroyed a democracy. They have Twitter
| accounts.
|
| The leader of Egypt destroyed a democracy. He has a
| Twitter account.
|
| The leaders of Myanmar don't seem to have Twitter
| accounts, but they outlawed Twitter.
|
| I doubt these people have supporters inside Twitter, but
| I doubt there's any Resistance either.
| ilyt wrote:
| >If the FBI messages you and says 'hey... review this content
| and see if it's violating your own policies,' is that
| inherently an innocent request? I could see a world where
| 'see if it violates your own policies' is a code for
| extortion with plausible deniability.
|
| Sounds like "hey, review it and find any half-assed reason to
| ban it according to your TOS" to me.
|
| Loose and wide reaching TOS makes it hard for bad actors to
| get around it, but it also makes it easy for moderators to
| remove anything they don't want while hiding behind TOS
|
| > Should the requests be public unless part of an active
| investigation, or is that sort of thing too easily gamed?
|
| All moderation should be, and with exact violation breached,
| not generic "it broke _something_ in our TOS ", else there is
| zero accountability. I'd also say that unless it is outright
| illegal or abhorrent the original should also be viewable so
| there can be no doubt the moderation is legit. People will
| save the spicy tweets to archive or screenshot it _anyway_ so
| there is no real point completely hiding it.
| Romanulus wrote:
| [dead]
| acdha wrote:
| > I could see a world where 'see if it violates your own
| policies' is a code for extortion with plausible deniability.
|
| This is possible but I would expect people to look for
| evidence of it before presenting it as a fact. Something like
| that would show up in internal communications either directly
| or as people talking like they didn't really have a choice,
| or as a trend of tweets being taken down for reasons which
| don't seem warranted when you look at them. The closest we've
| seen to that were things like the guy who was telling
| Republicans to vote on Wednesday, which is clearly a dumb
| joke but also something most people aren't going to shed
| tears about when made a couple days beforehand.
| lurquer wrote:
| The US is a limited govt.
|
| No govt agency can do anything for which it isn't
| explicitly authorized.
|
| The FBI is not authorized to be ensuring private companies
| adhere to their policies.
|
| If a agent is being paid -- with taxpayer dollars - to
| check on Twitter and give it 'advice' on how to run itself,
| that agent is acting outside the scope of his authority.
|
| It's an abuse and misuse of power.
|
| It doesn't matter what the 'greater good' is. The FBI's
| purpose isn't to generally look out for the greater good.
| Rather, it's to investigate federal crimes. There is no
| crime in telling people to 'vote this Wednesday.' There is
| no crime of 'misinformation.'
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You have constructed a theory of how government works
| from whole cloth having nothing whatsoever to do with
| reality. Limited government means what powers not
| explicitly granted to government belong to the people.
| This is to say government can only acquire new powers via
| legislation or amendment of the constitution it doesn't
| mean that they are for forbidden from acting beyond the
| most limited mandate you imagine. No law is therein
| broken because you feel it's out of scope because the
| limitation is your invention.
| [deleted]
| Eisenstein wrote:
| So, cops are not allowed to do welfare checks because
| there is no crime of 'dying alone in your house' and
| there is no explicit authorization for police to enforce
| wellbeing? Don't be adsurd.
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Under the above theory, Federal agents shouldnt.
| Local/state police have that power (the general police
| power) Not the federal government.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I would like the FBI to stop school shooters, would-be
| terrorists, and foreign influence campaigns.
|
| If Elon Musk's Twitter refuses to help and as a result
| people die, I want Elon Musk held responsible.
| RobLach wrote:
| It's not an abuse of power unless the FBI threatens
| repercussions.
|
| It seems like Twitter was more or less happy to oblige.
|
| I don't see what the hubbub is about.
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| [dead]
| ilyt wrote:
| For all we know it could be "you can play nicely and
| remove it when we tell you to "look into it", or we will
| look further into your company"
| acdha wrote:
| That's possible but you'd expect to see some sign of it:
| internal emails or messages, legal advice, etc. when
| those threats were made or guidelines from the legal
| department about what things the regular trust and safety
| people can't ignore.
|
| What's telling is that Musk's people can't find anything
| like that. If this was happening you'd think there'd be
| at least one example where someone is saying they have to
| yank something even though it's not in violation of the
| rules. Instead, what we see is bending over backwards to
| keep people like Trump or Raichik from having the rules
| applied to them, with no mention of government pressure
| to yank them.
| krapp wrote:
| That's passing into "ignore your lying eyes and read
| between the lines" territory, which isn't an argument
| from evidence but an argument from political ideology.
| zosima wrote:
| Just reaching out in the name of FBI, tacitly threatens
| repercussions. The government can certainly make life
| difficult for the most law-abiding company or citizen if
| you get on the wrong side of it. And everyone knows this.
| acdha wrote:
| Which specific actions do you think the FBI took which
| aren't part of their mandate? Please link to the sources
| for those claims.
| prawn wrote:
| _"The FBI is not authorized to be ensuring private
| companies adhere to their policies."_
|
| This is not their goal. It is part of their method.
| zosima wrote:
| But not, in the way that it has been done, a legally
| sanctioned part of their method.
| tootie wrote:
| It's the slightest whiff of a hint of abuse or intimidation
| but there's no evidence to suggest they ever even
| threatened retribution for non-compliance. US intelligence
| agencies have gone after media a handful of times but the
| courts have been appropriately skeptical of their claims.
|
| And everytime I see a slippery slope argument about law
| enforcement sneaking into quiet corners of private
| enterprise, I like to remind people that local police shoot
| people pretty frequently.
| acdha wrote:
| > I see a slippery slope argument about law enforcement
| sneaking into quiet corners of private enterprise, I like
| to remind people that local police shoot people pretty
| frequently.
|
| Indeed - from the perspective of civil liberties there
| are many issues which seem more pressing.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I would argue that selectively recommending political
| comments which may be censored has a chilling effect on
| political speech -- and therefore is illegal.
|
| I also think it's interesting how many people I know who
| "protested" things like COINTELPRO, but cheer this.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Did they do that though? Selectively recommend political
| comments?
| bbbbb5 wrote:
| >I could see a world where 'see if it violates your own
| policies' is a code for extortion with plausible deniability.
|
| That's not the world we live in. If you reply with "Blow me",
| the FBI will do nothing.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| Correct the FBI may do nothing.
|
| The IRS however might just suddenly out of nowhere complete
| coincidence want to crawl into all your accounts, and
| financial records and tax filings.
| wrycoder wrote:
| You think.
|
| Senator Markey: "Fix your companies or Congress will."
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/senator-ed-markey-
| tell...
| bbbbb5 wrote:
| The Congress is obviously a completely different entity
| than the FBI.
|
| If the Congress wants to force companies work with the
| FBI, they have the absolute power to do so.
| weaksauce wrote:
| https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/foreign-.
| ..
|
| they aren't exactly quiet about it.
|
| > Private sector partnerships: The FBI considers strategic
| engagement with U.S. technology companies, including threat
| indicator sharing, to be important in combating foreign
| influence actors.
| jinpa_zangpo wrote:
| When your boss tells you to do something, you can always say
| no, but you don't treat it as a mere suggestion. There's a
| power imbalance that makes it something more. You can't treat
| government communications with Twitter as mere suggestions. The
| government's power makes it more serious than that.
| counttheforks wrote:
| [flagged]
| nverno wrote:
| > current average level of comfort with government involvement
|
| It really all comes down to this- it's largely a matter of
| personal comfort/risk tolerance. Personally, I'd be happy to
| see entire agencies wiped out, the CIA and the NSA obliterated,
| the FBI cut back to where it was in the 60s or so, preferably
| focused on mob/cartel activity and the like. The CIA should
| never have been separated out from the military and given so
| much free reign. From my point of view, the CIA's history is
| just a series of catastrophic mistakes. There's arguments to
| made on both sides, but no objectively clear right or wrong
| choice.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| The FBI in the 60s was inflitrating and disrupting civil
| rights groups.
| nverno wrote:
| Right, just another example of many mistakes made by these
| agencies since their inception. I do think there is
| legitimate need for some form of FBI, though.
| DaftDank wrote:
| Doesn't the NSA represent a huge portion of our signals
| intelligence capabilities as a country? How would that role
| be filled otherwise? Wouldn't the best people to do many of
| those new jobs still be the people who used to work at the
| (now defunct) NSA?
| nverno wrote:
| I may be terribly naive, but I just don't feel any safer
| b/c the NSA exists. I also don't believe this country has
| been under any serious threats since the NSA was created,
| from which it protected us.
| ilyt wrote:
| The internal security is doing fine without NSA and when
| their biggest "achievement" was making everyone less secure
| via encryption backdoors you gotta wonder about purpose of
| existence.
|
| Private industries seem to do just fine when it comes to
| security and nearly none of the progress in security is due
| to NSA, unless you count "looking real hard whether NSA
| didn't try to backdoor new security primitive" as progress
| petesergeant wrote:
| > I've been trying to read these Twitter files threads
| thoughtfully
|
| I stopped after the first one. If there's any meat to be found
| then the last vestiges of respectable right-wing media will
| amplify it. Until the WSJ posts anything more than "This Is
| Sort Of Bad! But We Already Reported It In Full Last Year!"
| then there's no point subjecting yourself to it.
| wrycoder wrote:
| The WSJ is hardly right wing.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| [flagged]
| asynchronous wrote:
| Heaven forbid you be critical of politically motivated
| federal collaboration with private industry.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| Except no one's really doing that, they're just
| generating outrage bait to prop up a retarded
| billionaire's obviously nonsense claim that Twitter, a
| huge company, is (or was) secretly staffed exclusively by
| the far left. All evidence that has come out has shown
| not that, so they're trying to come up with something
| else to be outraged about. FBI asking Twitter to stop
| criminals seems entirely unsurprisingly.
| akira2501 wrote:
| [flagged]
| thereare5lights wrote:
| Revenge porn is not a "real story"
|
| Figures like Rudy Giuliani had direct and personal access to
| the laptop and yet what bombshell evidence do we have today?
|
| This story is so damning that the tweets people on the right
| keep spreading are literally just revenge porn.
|
| Some "real story".
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| The "real story" from the laptop had notjing to do with any
| pictures but rather emails that were recovered describing
| payments that were to be made to Joe Buden via Hunter as a
| bag man.
|
| Thats the only actually serious thing uncovered by the
| laptop
| ajross wrote:
| > The FBI lied to [...] Twitter to stop [...] reporting on
| [The Hunder Biden laptop story]
|
| OK, that's the takeaway that Taibbi and Musk wants us to
| absorb. But... can you link to the _actual_ spot in the
| (sigh) "Twitter Files" that actually shows this? Because
| like the grandparent poster did and reported, I looked for
| it. And it's not there.
|
| There's a bunch of mid-level bland communication that if you
| squint might be understood as a bunch of underlings carrying
| out orders in pursuit of that. Or it might just be a bunch of
| folks trying in good faith not to push a suspect story at a
| sensitive time.
|
| There is _absolutely no evidence_ of the kind of conspiracy
| you allege here. It 's just not there. Which given the
| sourcing (the CEO is directing the investigation!) means it
| probably doesn't exist within Twitter. It's just not there.
| Where's the meat here?
| stefan_ wrote:
| Ahh yes, all those tweets the FBI reported that Matt forgot
| to tell you were straight up revenge porn. I really wonder
| why they were deleted! If only he could have found out using,
| like, the Web Archive, as many others did afterwards.
|
| (It was the Trump government FBI, by the way. In case your
| timeline is a bit mixed up?)
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > were straight up revenge porn.
|
| Citation needed. Even Wikipedia lists it as an abandoned
| laptop that was trawled for data. Trash as far as I know is
| legitimate object of search (e.g. police does it).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controver
| s...
| stefan_ wrote:
| > Revenge porn is the distribution of sexually explicit
| images or videos of individuals without their consent
|
| I don't know man, you could have just googled that
| yourself.
| ajross wrote:
| The smoking gun email in the "Part 1" Twitter Files
| thread from Taibbi was a request from the Biden Campaign
| to look at a list of otherwise-undescribed-and-since-
| removed tweets. This was strongly implied to be a request
| for censorship of the laptop story.
|
| Then someone found an archived copy of all but one of the
| tweets, and they all turned out to be pictures of Hunter
| Biden's penis.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > Then someone found an archived copy of all but one of
| the tweets, and they all turned out to be pictures of
| Hunter Biden's penis.
|
| Yes, he left his images on laptop. That's not revenge
| porn, as far as I know.
|
| > The smoking gun email in the "Part 1" Twitter Files
|
| Don't quote me on that, but from my memory not only were
| links to Hunter deleted, but so were discussions of it
| from even reputable journalist. I think it was a
| Washington Post that discussed Hunter's laptop, and it
| got buried or deleted.
|
| That's only Part 1.
|
| They also marked Trump tweets as fake, even though they
| found some exonerating information and vice versa.
|
| Plus the weekly meetings with FBI/OGA (alias for CIA),
| around misinformation spreading tweets, etc.
|
| You basically have a government agency labeling stuff as
| misinformation for deranking/deletion. If that doesn't
| raise any First Amendment issues, I'm not sure what will?
| Capturing journalist and keeping them in horrible
| conditions? Water torture and organ transfer of said
| journalists?
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Re-distributing intimate material without the subjects
| permission is pretty much the definition of revenge porn.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > In late 2020, a controversy emerged involving data from
| a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that was abandoned at
| a Delaware computer shop.[1] The data was subsequently
| shared with the FBI, Republican operatives, and later the
| press.[2]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controv
| ers...
|
| That's a very strange definition of revenge porn. It was
| made inadvertently by Hunter Biden, it wasn't used for
| blackmail and it is related to a bulk of other
| interesting email.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Well.. they also exposed his foreign business dealings.
|
| I'm anti-government, no matter who happens to be in charge
| at the moment. The president at the time does not matter,
| the relationship between a federal agency and a private
| business does... particularly if it is on going.
|
| You people are very quick to muddy the waters here.
|
| I honestly can't believe this post was flagged. This site
| is often not interested in an honest conversation. I'm not
| sure why I try.
| creato wrote:
| > You people are very quick to muddy the waters here.
|
| Funny, I'd say it was people that can't seem to cite any
| evidence without dick pics that are "muddying the
| waters".
|
| I've read these twitter files posts from Taibbi and
| Weiss. It's all insinuations based on contact between
| government agencies and twitter. The actual content being
| discussed is not interesting.
|
| The biggest red flag this is all raising for me is why
| FBI agents are sitting around searching for small time
| election misinformation like talking about voting a day
| late. Is there nothing higher priority to work on? And
| how has twitter not automated finding such basic
| misinformation?
| Jarwain wrote:
| Mismatch in incentives and priority? My impression is
| that the FBI only has a team or two dedicated to these
| searches. However, it is much closer to their mandate to
| keep an eye out on election misinformation and otherwise
| "protect our democracy"
| [deleted]
| turtleyacht wrote:
| Even if flagged, isn't that just a -1? I've seen grey
| posts return to dark after an upvote before.
| flagsrule wrote:
| Well it's dead now and it was a very reasonable post.
| This site is full of bias.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| I wonder if you'd have an issue with it if these organisations
| leaned mostly republican.
|
| When this last happened in the 1960s and 70s, when it was the
| left that was anti establishment, and didn't want the Vietnam
| war, or didn't want Christian orthodoxy imposed on society, the
| left was obsessed with free speech and being anti government
| organisations.
|
| Suddenly no one can think beyond their own party and as long as
| these organizations interfering with speech are on their side,
| it's fine.
|
| People really need to think longer term. It only takes one very
| determined president or one sided congress and senate to
| completely change these organisations.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Exactly. This is why history repeats itself, people never
| learn, everyone is on their own cults/tribes and the ends
| justify the means
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > People really need to think longer term.
|
| Asking too much.
|
| In the past couple months, HN users went from "it's a private
| company they can do what they want" when Twitter was a public
| company working with the FBI to enact specific user
| censorship...
|
| to "OMG Elon banned a handful of journalists, freeze peach
| was a lie!" when it was a suspension for 12 hours.
|
| Where are all those "it's a private company they can do what
| they like" folks now? I haven't seen that posted recently.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Ok. It's a private company and they can do what they like.
| And we can point out the hypocrisy.
| mushbino wrote:
| This is an example of the FBI pushing a specific narrative, is
| it not?
| icare_1er wrote:
| [flagged]
| epivosism wrote:
| >I don't see a problem with the FBI/CIA/etc having regular
| discussions with Twitter about potential threats, influence
| campaign
|
| Agree with this; there really are threats out there, and the
| manipulation techniques they use are sophisticated.
|
| The problem I have was that the system was developed in secret,
| didn't really seem to be guarded very carefully from misuse,
| and was administered by highly politicized leadership at
| Twitter.
| smitty1e wrote:
| We pay fat piles of taxes for the government to secure liberty.
|
| The idea that that government is "managing" that liberty is
| Constitutionally murky. The "private property" fig leaf is
| scant comfort.
| complex_exp wrote:
| Uh, no, private property is subjogated to national interest.
| Personal freedom is subjogated to national interest (you may
| be conscripted). In all countries. The only way for things
| not to fall into a terrible state of affairs (like in Russia
| or Iran) is for the civil society to perform political acts,
| like engage in honest journalism, activism and critical
| thinking. And even then freedom and security are not
| guaranteed.
|
| Thinking that you can be a free-from-all libertarian is like
| being a house cat that does not comprehend the system that
| keeps him alive. It is only because the system works that you
| can enjoy personal freedoms.
|
| Russians have fully outsourced their both internal politics
| (resulting in for example the absolutely atrocious state of
| the courts of law) and foreign politics (mobilization! yay,
| go die in a trench!) to the tzar and look how that turned
| out. They also paid taxes and generally speaking accepted the
| offered social contract, but didn't monitor the situation and
| react to transgressions.
| hellfish wrote:
| > Thinking that you can be a free-from-all libertarian is
| like being a house cat that does not comprehend the system
| that keeps him alive.
|
| So because the government does something (THANK GOD), we
| all need to advocate for more government?
| complex_exp wrote:
| [dead]
| theCrowing wrote:
| It's called Moral Panic.
| efitz wrote:
| Except the meetings between the US government and Twitter
| _were_ the influence campaign.
| Retric wrote:
| You can say that about basically any interaction between any
| government and social media including anti child porn or
| other law enforcement activity. The question is if the
| interaction is unacceptably not if it exists.
| barbacoa wrote:
| The FBI were sending Twitter lists of pro-Venezuela, pro-
| Russian, etc "bot" accounts. Were they really doing
| forensic analysis to determine they were run by foreign
| governments or were they just flagging account with
| opinions that ran against US foreign policy?
|
| All the while the government was running their own fake bot
| propaganda accounts and having Twitter white-list them
| against their bot filters.
| merpnderp wrote:
| The FBI/CIA was censoring rando Americans for stupid jokes and
| everything in between that and real journalists covering real
| stories that the FBI didn't want ran. It was bad.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| We're seriously still doing this?
| https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/12/the-core-argume...
| cyberphobe wrote:
| Yes, this website full of brain dead right wingers.
| joshmn wrote:
| I'm not sure brain-dead is accurate because that would mean
| unwittingness.
| fallingknife wrote:
| A website by and for people in one of the most left leaning
| industries based mostly in the most left leaning area of the
| country is full of right wingers?
| mhoad wrote:
| I'd actually argue that the idea that the US tech ecosystem
| is almost exclusively ultra left leaning is the myth here.
| You've just presented that as some kind of a fact which is
| in stark contrast to thousands of threads filled with
| comments demonstrating the opposite.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Judging by the companies I've worked at and the people I
| know, it clearly is. This is biased towards the sv part
| of the industry, which is the largest concentration,
| though. It is also backed up by the data of who employees
| of large tech companies contribute to, which is
| overwhelmingly democrats.
| mhoad wrote:
| I don't think you seem to have any kind of understanding
| of what "ultra left leaning" means in this context.
|
| You're just repeating Fox News headlines here and
| pretending that it's some black and white issue once
| again in spite of the overwhelming evidence in this very
| thread showing that not to be the case.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I think you greatly underestimate the hardcore
| "libertarian" ideology that runs through tech-bro culture.
| nathias wrote:
| I'm not from US, so I don't know if there are some provision I'm
| not familiar with, but how is this not just treason? Aren't
| government agencies just organizing censorship under the guise of
| a platform's internal moderation?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Treason against the United States, shall consist only in
| levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies,
| giving them Aid and Comfort.
|
| That's the Constitutional definition of treason in the United
| States.
|
| Who's levying war against the United States here?
| retinaros wrote:
| for most americans it is not treason if the governement is
| siding with their political views.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Treason? No. Flagrant violation of the 1st amendment? Yes.
|
| > Aren't government agencies just organizing censorship under
| the guise of a platform's internal moderation?
|
| Yes. They literally flagged pro-Cuban/Russian etc accounts they
| wanted banned. And asked had - for years - pro-war accounts
| that twitter boosted for them. That in violation of twitter's
| own policies they didn't flag as state run.
|
| It's literal fascism in the original sense of the word. And the
| American left is making excuses for it because it's their side.
| mhoad wrote:
| I hope Santa got you a dictionary for Christmas because you
| seem to be using a lot of words there a lot more confidently
| than you should be.
| fashism wrote:
| [dead]
| monsecchris wrote:
| The people trying to minimise every intelligence agency working
| with every tech company on behalf of the Democratic Party are the
| same people calling this a dangerous far right conspiracy theory
| not long ago.
| phphphphp wrote:
| If any party was responsible for this FBI behaviour, surely it
| would be the party that was in power at the time? The
| Republican party were in control in 2020.
| slenocchio wrote:
| Not necessarily. The FBI doesn't change much from
| administration to administration, no?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Trump dismissed the FBI Director and picked the new one in
| 2017. That's a fairly significant change.
| retinaros wrote:
| so? the history of mankind is built on people picking
| other people thinking they will do X while they will use
| all their force to do Y.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Which is why the admirals of the Imperial Japanese Navy
| refused to attack Pearl Harbor when ordered to do
| so...right?
|
| The ones who do Y instead of X are often pretty
| interesting. But that's partly because they're pretty
| rare.
| retinaros wrote:
| putin was picked because they thought they could easily
| control this little spy...
|
| as for pearl harbor. I know americans love to say they
| attacked for no reason... but that is just not true. what
| triggered it was the US embargo on oil. it seems history
| repeats itself btw...
| hermitdev wrote:
| The oil embargo was in response to Japanese Imperialism
| in the Pacific, having already conquered a fair amount of
| territory. It wasn't just out of the blue with Japan
| sitting there behaving themselves.
| [deleted]
| phphphphp wrote:
| Donald Trump _famously_ had huge influence over the FBI
| (and more broadly, the justice department). He fired James
| Comey because he did not achieve Trump 's desired political
| aims:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_James_Comey
| hermitdev wrote:
| The president merely has control of the heads of
| departments. They don't have control over the rank and
| file. It is notoriously hard to get rid of non-elected
| government officials...
| [deleted]
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Not to mention the only party from which FBI directors have
| ever been appointed. It is not a culturally
| liberal/progressive federal agency in the slightest.
| Fellshard wrote:
| FBI has disjointed itself from the administrative branch
| entirely, having become more of a party apparatus by all
| available evidence. It will require reform from the inside by
| those operatives whose conscience remains intact.
| akiselev wrote:
| The FBI? The party that tried to blackmail MLK into killing
| himself? That FBI?
| Fellshard wrote:
| Institutions drift in loyalty and direction, but
| corruption and lack of accountability fester regardless.
| Is it difficult to believe that it continues to abuse its
| power, and will ally itself with whichever party endorses
| that abuse?
| machina_ex_deus wrote:
| Schrodinger's conspiracy: in superposition of being a dangerous
| conspiracy theory and well known fact everyone knew and nothing
| interesting.
|
| Of course, the status of a Schrodinger's conspiracy is only
| known when the truth is revealed and the conspiracy is
| measured.
|
| When the truth becomes known, it is retconned to have always
| been known.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| "This isn't happening." => "It's happening and it's actually
| good." Also seems popular lately.
| lovich wrote:
| >... on behalf of the Democratic Party...
|
| This persecution complex the Republicans have promulgated is
| amazing with how widely believed it is. The republicans have
| controlled the reigns of power repeatedly over the past few
| decades and for a greater number of elections than you'd
| anticipate looking at the popular vote. The timeline the
| Twitter files is talking about was explicitly during Republican
| control and not something like a month after the elections
| where bureaucratic momentum might have still been in play but
| years after they had taken the executive and legislature. The
| FBI head was 2-3 years into his job after being placed by a
| Republican president at this point.
|
| How are they possibly working as an arm of the Democratic
| Party?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I'd describe this more as the weaponization of the
| Establishment Uniparty against any rivals, whether they be
| populists, anti-war Left, or even the more communist Left.
|
| Pretty much everyone that does not support the establishment
| line is a target.
|
| This is why Biden is inch an Establishment soldier as George
| H.W. Bush was, despite their relatively minor policy
| differences.
| lovich wrote:
| What does anything you just posted have to do with the
| parent comment talking about intelligence agencies working
| with every tech company on behalf of the Democrats.
|
| Singling out Democrats doesn't imply "Uniparty". And this
| was the "outsider's"(Trump's) FBI attempting to get Twitter
| to censor things. How is that the "uniparty" working
| against populists like Trump?
| Avshalom wrote:
| Everything the FBI did here was under republican leadership.
| It's the fucking FBI, it's a fundamentally right wing
| organization that has always and will always be so.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > In District of Columbia County, DC 92.1% of the people
| voted Democrat
|
| Washington DC is overwhelmingly a Democrat bastion, so,
| regardless of the political appointee SESers, the rank and
| file that live around DC are likely to have a specific
| political leaning.
|
| Feel free to fact check this.
|
| https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-
| was...
| themagician wrote:
| Not really. What are the intelligence agencies supposed to do
| if not exactly what is being "revealed"? Are they not allowed
| to talk to private companies or citizens?
|
| If it was being revealed that they were making demands and
| forcing companies to do things that would be a serious issue.
| Instead they are asking, nicely, and even paying them for their
| time and work.
| asynchronous wrote:
| [flagged]
| andsoitis wrote:
| > these are Russian disinfo
|
| And is that the case of those accounts? Do we have access
| to what 5ose accounts have propagated?
| acdha wrote:
| Can you cite a source? Be specific.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > "these are Russian disinfo, eradicate them"
|
| The actual wording, of course, was this sort of thing:
|
| "FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts
| which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter's
| Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed
| appropriate within Twitter policy..."
| (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-employees-notified-
| twit...)
| Fellshard wrote:
| If the FBI sends such an email, there is a tacit threat
| of criminal liability.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's really not how criminal liability works.
| Fellshard wrote:
| De facto more than de jour, given how the FBI has been
| operating.
| elurg wrote:
| The distinction between the government "asking nicely" and
| "making demands" is not strong enough. In theory could
| Twitter could have resisted but the costs would have been
| quite high.
|
| The government should be prohibited from making such
| requests.
|
| It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story the
| FBI outright lied in order to make web platforms censor the
| story.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _The government should be prohibited from making such
| requests._
|
| They are. The first amendment forbids the government from
| interfering with the press. They're ignoring it and hoping
| people don't know this fact. The fact that other media
| outlets aren't pointing this out, means they're all part of
| the same fascist tribe as the FBI.
|
| Remember, fascism is the union of state and corporate power
| according to Mussolini's ghost writer. And it's what we're
| seeing here. The FBI and big tech being on the same side.
| acdha wrote:
| > The distinction between the government "asking nicely"
| and "making demands" is not strong enough. In theory could
| Twitter could have resisted but the costs would have been
| quite high.
|
| Really? Companies do this all of the time. For example, how
| many billions did Apple lose for resisting the FBI's
| requests with the San Bernardino shooter?
|
| > It's also apparent that regarding the Hunter Biden story
| the FBI outright lied in order to make web platforms censor
| the story.
|
| Can you be specific about this? The "Twitter Files" and all
| extent accounts say the opposite - and that was the best
| the right-wing media could find - and if you're thinking
| about Zuckerberg's interview, he specifically said the FBI
| did not make a request in this case.
| elurg wrote:
| As far as I understand the FBI knew that the Hunter Biden
| story was real but encouraged everybody else to believe
| that it was a Russian hoax. Doesn't this count as lying?
| It's not just lying, it's explicit disinformation with an
| electoral goal.
|
| This went so far that major web platforms blocked all
| forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a
| conspiracy theory. It was highly effective.
|
| I hate Trump's guts but it's important to acknowledge the
| enormous amount of effort that went into covering up the
| behavior of Biden's son.
| acdha wrote:
| Can you cite any of those claims? What's been established
| in public and e.g. Zuckerberg's interview was that they
| warned companies to be wary about another repeat of
| election interference, but nobody is saying that the FBI
| told them to kill this story.
|
| > This went so far that major web platforms blocked all
| forms of disagreement and the public dismissed it as a
| conspiracy theory. It was highly effective
|
| This is imaginary: I'm not even sure why you're lying
| about something we all remember, especially since nothing
| in the laptop data was even substantial even if was all
| true.
| fragmede wrote:
| Can we ever _really_ be sure there weren 't emails from
| Hillary Clinton that were deleted.
| acdha wrote:
| This is really off-topic, but while we can't prove that
| she never sent an email we can look at the lack of
| evidence of this happening and conclude it's unlikely.
| For example, the Republicans had years to find evidence
| of someone receiving or mentioning an email which wasn't
| turned over but found nothing. That tells us that anyone
| confidently claiming that it happened is lying because
| there's a 0% chance that they'd have suppressed that
| evidence for the entire Trump administration.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Just to clarify, what part of the hunter Biden story was
| "real"? The hunter Biden story can mean everything from
| "a laptop was found with hunters nudes, and it's
| discovery was probably influenced by Russian state
| assets" to "hunters laptop contains proof of misdealings
| my the president".
|
| As far as I can tell, the first is more or less true and
| the second isn't.
| nkurz wrote:
| I agree that the way the laptop was claimed to be found
| sounds incredibly suspicious, but I don't know of any
| current evidence that the laptop's "discovery was
| probably influenced by Russian state assets". When you
| say "the first is more or less true", are you including
| this part? If so, can you point to evidence linking the
| find to Russia?
|
| For the second part, I'd also agree that the laptop does
| not contain clear evidence of wrongdoing by the
| president. It contains a lot more than just nude photos
| of Hunter, though. It's real in the sense that everything
| on the laptop is believed to be authentic. It offers
| insight of Hunter's business dealings, and I think hints
| that contrary to the president's claims, he was at least
| aware of some of the details of those dealings. As such,
| I think it's reasonable for people to want to inspect the
| contents and reach their own conclusion as to what it
| implies, rather than being prevented from doing so.
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The distinction between the government "asking nicely"
| and "making demands" is not strong enough.
|
| A democratic government is usually forbiden fron "asking
| nicely". So the difference is that one of those exists, the
| other doesn't.
| decremental wrote:
| [flagged]
| quacked wrote:
| The middle step is "it's not a big deal/it doesn't affect
| you"
| HideousKojima wrote:
| The final stage is always "Yes, $GovernmentAgency did
| actually do $BadThing, and that's a good thing (TM)"
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I thought Musk and co did a decent job showing that both the
| Democrats and the Republicans both had access to the tools of
| censorship and used them at regular intervals. This should have
| been a nice time for everyone to come together against tool
| misuse - if everyone is guilty, then there is no need to pass
| judgement. Instead both sides are blaming one another
| (justifiably) while ignoring their own misuse (unjustifiably).
| hermitdev wrote:
| It really doesn't matter that it was either Democrats,
| Republicans or _both_. It 's that it was happening at all.
| The government should not be inserting itself into censoring
| speech of any kind, especially the sort they don't agree
| with. We have constitutional protections against this. It's
| bad, no matter which political party directed it.
| mynameishere wrote:
| People have a curious inability to imagine "What if the other
| side was doing this?" If the FBI was regulating content on
| Twitter (and god knows where else) in order to swing the
| election towards Trump, it would be 24/7/365 outrage from
| liberals for years.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| [dead]
| yehudalouis wrote:
| I prefer the old, anti-establishment left. Now the left is just
| comprised of journalists defending three letter agencies while
| calling the right "bootlickers."
|
| I don't like the idea of any three letter agency having any
| communication with a company like Twitter unless it is for a
| specific investigation.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| I still remember how I said the government is telling social
| media websites and most of faang to censor things like 2 years
| ago and got downvoted here, it was so obvious a child would see
| it but somehow most people here blocked that part of their brain
| so they don't get labeled as a "conspiracy theorist".
|
| We kept running that propaganda about freedom and how
| authoritarian regimes are evil so much that I for one believed it
| and thought everyone shared the belief, then saw people ARGUING
| against free speech and other things I thought were solved
| problems in first world countries.
|
| The US for example is a country that invaded another country for
| oil and sold it to its people as a war for freedom, and called
| Iraqis who fought back terrorists, and now calls Ukrainians who
| fight back heroes, oh and both the US and the UK made fun of us
| for not joining their invasion (France).
|
| In my opinion, all types of ideas should be allowed to battle
| freely and trust that this will drive us forwards, we do it with
| marketing, everything is allowed to the point people don't even
| know if they're buying things because they want to or because
| they're controlled into doing it, just do it with ideas as well,
| let everyone present their case online and offline and let the
| opposition argue against it logically or emotionally or whatever,
| people know what's best for them it's the first principle of a
| democracy, as soon as you start saying well X-speech will make
| people do terrible things which are bad for them so we should ban
| it you stop being a democracy in my opinion.
| epivosism wrote:
| I think it's pretty reasonable to worry about a system of
| punishment (depriving someone of the right to use a communication
| platform) administered by the government, which doesn't obey the
| normal rules of justice: 1) right to see evidence 2) right to
| confront your accuser 3) right to judgement by a jury of your
| peers.
|
| OFC there is a role for private info and possibly preventing
| malicious, foreign government manipulation attacks on us - but
| the power is so strong and so easily misused that we need better
| checks on it.
|
| Don't forget the NYT and most lefty thought leaders were onboard
| with the 2nd Iraq war based on phony evidence.
| counttheforks wrote:
| The EU Digital Services Act will partially solve this.
| tosc wrote:
| So every troll and bot farm should be able to have each tweet
| judged by a jury?
| epivosism wrote:
| Definitely not.
|
| I'm more looking for a gesture towards respecting our values,
| and a more open negotiation process for developing safe use
| for this kind of powerful control system. The fact that the
| administrators of the process on the twitter side were quite
| polarized politically makes people doubt its fairness, as
| does the fact that it was mostly done in secret.
|
| i.e. it was more of a China-style "the state doesn't like you
| and bad things will happen to you and your family" style of
| punishment where you don't know what has actually happened
| (limitation of tweet reach, weird glitches in your tweet's
| spread with no acknowledgement) than a clear "you are charged
| with X and have received this penalty Y for time Z."
| tosc wrote:
| Why not just stop using Twitter? Who cares whether the FBI
| has its thumb on the scales or if it's Elon Musk and his
| friends?
|
| "The world's digital town square" is a _marketing slogan_ ,
| and nothing more. If you instead accept that is simply just
| another way to sell eyeballs to advertisers, it's easier to
| understand.
|
| If we do need a digital town square, someone needs to build
| one. If it needs to have free speech protections, then _the
| government_ needs to run it because they are the only ones
| who are restrained by the 2nd amendment.
| [deleted]
| asynchronous wrote:
| How about we settle for at least some decent evidence of
| wrongdoing before eradication by the three letter agency
| army?
|
| The examples given in these leaks showcase accounts getting
| banned simply for the opinion they hold, LACKING any other
| indicators like account origin, IP logins, email domain
| registration, etc.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Would a tag that says "USINT suspects this post/account may
| be part of a foreign intelligence/disinfo campaign" be a
| good compromise?
|
| I'm not arrogant enough (surprisingly) to think I am not
| vulnerable to disinformation and yet I'm also uncomfortable
| with unilateral censorship.
| hermitdev wrote:
| I'm not going to touch bot farm, but the problem with
| labeling someone a troll and thus is that is subjective and
| not clearly defined. There's a level of intent behind being a
| troll vs being thought of as a troll.
|
| Here, in the USA, we do have the right to freedoms of speech,
| press and association. These freedoms cannot be encroached on
| by the government without due process, and yes, that means it
| would need to go in front of a jury. It's on the government
| to prove that a law was broken before they can intervene with
| otherwise lawful speech. It's not up to a government
| bureaucrat to decide.
|
| Just because you disagree with someone does not a troll make.
|
| My problem with modern discourse is we've lost the ability to
| disagree with people without resorting to labeling and name
| calling. And that we think we need the government to protect
| us from things we may find distasteful or offensive. Because
| matters of taste are individual and subjective.
| tosc wrote:
| Ok, this is fine, but that means we have to classify
| Twitter as _press_ , with all of the responsibilities as a
| publisher that this entails.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| [flagged]
| asakusaa wrote:
| [dead]
| poszlem wrote:
| I am still baffled by the radio silence about any of that in the
| mainstream media. My prediction is that this, the Rittenhouse
| trial coverage, and the attempts to shut down the discussion
| about the lab Leak theory are going to be viewed in a few years
| the same way as the mainstream media's complicity and collusion
| with the government before the Iraq war.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| A few weeks ago over Thanksgiving, I found out that my aunt
| believes Rittenhouse killed "several black people". She doesn't
| live under a rock per-se, she keeps herself steeped in TV news
| (so she may as well be under a rock.)
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| This is a common post on Reddit along with them still falsely
| claiming he "went across state lines with a gun".
|
| These people did not watch the trial, and have no idea what
| they are talking about. But are certain that they do...
| ChatGPT levels of certainty... hmm, might be on to something
| there.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > radio silence about and of that in the mainstream media
|
| Do any of these help? site:washingtonpost.com
| "twitter files" site:cnn.com "twitter files"
| site:foxnews.com "twitter files"
| poszlem wrote:
| No, they don't. https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/16
| 051281807503196...
| petesergeant wrote:
| Ah, so the "mainstream media" "radio silence" here for an
| American politics story is in-fact complaining that on a
| specific date, it wasn't front-page news in ... the UK?
| poszlem wrote:
| Can you show me when it made front page in the US media?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I mean it helps that it isn't front page news. It's
| completely reasonable to disagree about the scale of a
| story. Most people disagree with you and shellenberger
| that this is important. What place do you have to
| _demand_ that we interpret things the same way you do?
| oprah wrote:
| "most people" cannot disagree with them about the story's
| importance, because "most people" haven't heard about the
| it thanks to the suppression campaign. That's the whole
| issue you are trying to downplay.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| So I'm confused, is any tweet that isn't reposted on the
| front page of the nyt "suppressed" now?
|
| Those who have seen the story think it's not worth
| publishing. One of the points of news/media is to vet
| stories and exercise good judgement and editorial choice
| about what is worth publishing and what isn't.
| wl wrote:
| Sure, the Rittenhouse coverage and how people responded to it
| was terrible. People saw what they wanted to see, regardless of
| the facts. But the whole situation was ammunition for the
| culture war and not really a matter of public concern more
| generally, unlike the Iraq war.
| elurg wrote:
| The argument that "it's not censorship if a private company does
| it" was always weak.
|
| What these revelations show is that a lot of so-called moderation
| was done at the explicit direction of government employees. How
| do you defend this? "it's not censorship if the private company
| willingly complies with government requests"? A refusal by
| twitter would have had quite high costs for the company.
|
| The cooperation between private companies and government censors
| is so deep that this is barely distinguishable from direct
| censorship.
| goostavos wrote:
| >How do you defend this?
|
| From this thread, it seems by just going "pfft... no big deal."
|
| As long as there's a layer of abstraction ("I didn't kill him.
| The bullets and the fall did") and it's applying to speech we
| generally don't care for (misinformation, "hate speech",
| etc..), then I guess we're cool with it?
|
| It's tough not to be cynical at times. A decade after PRISM,
| the government controlling speech indirectly via "polite
| suggestions" mostly just fills me with similar feelings of "no
| big deal." Not because it isn't, but because it's expected.
| asynchronous wrote:
| The fact that comments such as yours are getting downvoted
| straight to the bottom tells me that people simply aren't
| willing to see the implication this has to whatever illusion of
| freedom the American people still possess.
| truthisworse wrote:
| The truth is much worse. This didnt only happen a twitter,
| its happening at every major online space including here.
|
| The inability for hn commenters to speak forthright and
| integrity and principles shows the rot tgat exists here. Hn
| is largely controlled and nothing they dont want people to
| see is allowed. Accounts are shadow banned, ips are range
| banned, individuals here are tracked and not allowed Accounts
| or voices here. This comment not even allowed because of
| selective rules to ensure the truth is not seen. You cannot
| debate people here in good faith. HN is a moral cesspool.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community
| and Twitter
|
| Being the primary domestic component of the intelligence
| community is overtly part of the FBI role, so that would be
| expected to be true with any domestic actor in the place of
| "Twitter".
|
| Similarly, "major international public and private communication
| platform with a history of being used to recruit and organize
| insurrections and other acts of violence, execute international
| influence operations, single out targets for violent reprisals,
| etc., attracts lots of attention from intelligence,
| counterintelligence, and law enforcement agencies, of which the
| FBI is the lead federal domestic agency for all three purposes"
| is... not surprising.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Are they supposed to be helping the CIA get around their
| mandate not to interfere domestically?
|
| https://nitter.moomoo.me/mtaibbi/status/1606701405443874816#...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Are they supposed to be helping the CIA get around their
| mandate not to interfere domestically?
|
| In that domestic in intelligence/counterintelligence is the
| FBIs job, and that they are expected to do it as part of and
| in close coordination with other parts of the intelligence
| community including the CIA, yes, but its not getting around
| anything since its exactly the way things are supposed to
| work.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| indeed; cf https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence
| bparsons wrote:
| People on the right are just now figuring out the connections
| between Silicon Valley and the security state?
| machina_ex_deus wrote:
| If you don't see anything wrong with the government forcing
| censorship on controversial political questions, such as whether
| elections are safe and fair, just imagine your own reaction if
| after the 2016 election, Trump's FBI would be monitoring Twitter
| for any information about Cambridge Analytica / Russia's
| interference, labeling them as misinformation and censoring and
| banning everyone mentioning them.
|
| If your values only apply when they fit your wanted outcome, they
| aren't values they are pathetic excuses.
|
| By the way, this opens the door to all the other agencies of the
| world outside US to demand same kind of access. Including
| European. Maybe China wants it too.
|
| And for the record, I think Elon banning Elon Jet and journalists
| is wrong too. But there are too many people who only care about
| the censorship when it hurts them, and cheer for it when it suits
| them.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| I'm fine with the government shutting down anti-democratic
| movements. I'm not fine with anti-democratic governments
| shutting down legitimate discussion that looks bad on them, or
| serving a foreign power. These are not the same thing.
| machina_ex_deus wrote:
| Then all it will take to lose your democracy is for a
| dictator to proclaim his opponents a danger to democracy.
| Maybe using a Reichstag fire. You can't fight evil with evil,
| or fight undemocratic tyrants with undemocratic measures.
| Introducing vulnerabilities into your democratic system is a
| double edged sword.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| > all it will take to lose your democracy is for a dictator
| to proclaim his opponents a danger to democracy.
|
| This is true, but your framing of it as something that
| could be stopped if... something? is absurd
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > proclaim [their] opponents a danger to democracy
|
| Hmm, now where have I heard that recently?
| cyberphobe wrote:
| Fortunately we can use our brains to think and realize
| that while both sides are calling the other a danger to
| democracy, only one of them made a concerted effort to
| overturn the results of an election (an overtly anti-
| democratic act)
| oprah wrote:
| Exactly. What does anti-democratic mean? A brief reminder
| that North Korea's full name is Democratic People's
| Republic of Korea and East Germany was German Democratic
| Republic.
|
| The reason we would usually go for the fullest amount of
| protection for speech was precisely because most of those
| issues are not simply a matter of "these people are
| democratic and those aren't".
| acdha wrote:
| > If you don't see anything wrong with the government forcing
| censorship on controversial political questions
|
| Nobody is saying that it wouldn't be a problem. The debate is
| whether the Twitter Files shows anything of the sort, and
| begging the question like that calls into question whether
| you're actually interested in a honest discussion.
| machina_ex_deus wrote:
| Is that the debate? Because I think it's pretty settled the
| files show extensive collaboration of the FBI and Twitter on
| controversial topics, it shows many instances of twits
| censored by a request from the FBI. Am I moving the debate
| position or are you? Did you even read them? Many comments
| here accept the existing evidence as something normal. I
| disagree strongly.
| acdha wrote:
| I read them, and I know that what I saw was the FBI
| reporting TOS violations. Can you provide a link to a tweet
| which you believe was censored but was not in fact a TOS
| violation?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| First you said it was forced censorship, now you are
| stating it was extensive collaboration. Do you see that
| those are not the same?
|
| Which of the removed tweets shows the FBI was acting in
| obvious bad faith? I just don't see it.
| asynchronous wrote:
| [flagged]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You should probably briefly skim the Wikipedia article on the
| Gestapo.
| poszlem wrote:
| It's unsettling to see how lacking in ethical principles some
| people are. If you truly believe that you would not care if a
| highly Republican-leaning social media company was
| collaborating with the government to suppress content from
| Democratic creators, then I can understand your perspective.
| However, it's likely that this situation would be viewed
| differently if the roles were reversed.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I do get bored of the evidently weak character and hypocrisy.
| rc_subreme wrote:
| Americans are living in a world with a land war in Europe with an
| old foe on one side, and the increasing pressure exerted on Asian
| trade and policy partners by a Pacific rim empire we've not seen
| eye to eye with in the past 100 years.
|
| I'd like to see more effort expended on spying and undermining
| our rivals than ourselves. But such large
| diplomatic/economic/(hopefully cold)military projects require
| long term thinking we're poor at. Its so much easier to just
| fight the latest culture war against domestic weirdos and
| malcontents.
|
| Every time we have one of these internal thought-purity checks,
| it sows discord in an already discordant country made of too many
| different races religions and regional cultures to ever work if
| we're going to try and weaponize our own governmental security
| apparatus against each other, vying for control on the airwaves
| and at the polls, just so we can stick it to our domestic rivals
| for a few years.
|
| The cowboy and the indian are both Americans.
| PKop wrote:
| >an already discordant country made of too many different races
| religions and regional cultures to ever work
|
| Diversity is our strength.
| [deleted]
| froggertoaster wrote:
| You can downplay this all you want - but remember: stuff like
| this is a microcosm of a larger issue.
|
| Sections of your government worked directly with Twitter to
| control what information you saw.
|
| Much bigger organizations - Facebook comes to mind - must be
| doing the same thing every.single.day. And no one finds this even
| a little bit alarming?
| elurg wrote:
| A lot of people completely agree with heavy-handed information
| control.
| quacked wrote:
| "A well-armed and informed populace governing itself" is a
| pipe dream by indigenous uncontacted people and certain very
| intelligent dissenters. The majority of "civilized" people in
| the world are very happy to live in an authoritarian
| information-sanitized nation so long as the people in power
| cater to their own in-group.
| [deleted]
| barnabee wrote:
| I'd like to think this site of all places might be
| populated with very intermittent dissenters willing to be
| or at least support activists trying to change that, with
| the internet and technology as their tool.
|
| It's always jarring to discover the extent to which it's
| not.
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| Bitcoin is people striving for financial self
| sovereignty.
|
| "Crypto" is a bunch of people trying to get rich using
| some cool new technology they nobody understands.
|
| See how much bigger the second is than the first.
| dale_glass wrote:
| That vision of bitcoin died somewhere around 2017, back
| when blocks filled, commerce ground to a halt and nobody
| in charge thought this was a problem.
|
| Because the people that were in control already figured
| that what they wanted to use the system for is to buy low
| and sell high for huge profits, and so it didn't matter
| if the network didn't perform well for regular commerce.
| You don't need a lot of TPS if your ideal scenario is to
| ever make two.
| quacked wrote:
| The reason Bitcoin got so large so quickly is the same
| reason that "Crypto" got large so quickly. The majority
| of people who "invest" in Bitcoin aren't trying to figure
| out a way to trade goods and services in a way that
| undermines the Federal Reserve and the IRS, they're
| trying to increase their holdings in USD in order to
| better participate in the existing economy.
| barnabee wrote:
| Meh. People will try to get rich off anything-- crypto,
| the internet, SMS scams, every type of physical business,
| legit or otherwise.
|
| As a hacker I want to find out what else we can do with
| it. What surprising things can we build?
|
| What if we could use some kind of blockchain tech to
| incentivise people to do great things despite what you've
| seen so far? (Some people _really_ are trying to do
| that.)
|
| What if we can help activists all over the world with Tor
| and end to end encryption?
|
| What if the internet can give a voice to people who never
| had one?
|
| What if we can find a better way than copyright to
| compensate people for their creations with restricting
| sharing and reuse?
|
| What if we can build and online encyclopaedia many orders
| of magnitude grander in scope than anything that's gone
| before?
|
| Let someone else worry about what the grifters are doing
| to screw us this time.
|
| Let's see the hackers hack.
| colpabar wrote:
| I've realized this recently too, and I'm trying to just
| ignore/flag everything even remotely political that gets
| posted here. If you disagree with the idea that
| information control is something the government has no
| business of doing, you're in the minority here. The
| response to the twitter files was the slap in the face I
| needed to finally understand that.
|
| After all, it's a blog for a VC fund. I'd say a lot of
| people here are building things that do much worse than
| what the twitter files exposed.
| lovich wrote:
| You don't like that people aren't as open minded as you'd
| like, so you flipped on your values and now try to flag
| anything you disagree with(i.e. political content)?
|
| Am I misinterpreting your comment?
| colpabar wrote:
| I think dang kinda just looks the other way because he
| knows people want to talk politics, but it's literally
| the first thing in the "off topic" section of the
| guidelines.
|
| > What to Submit
|
| > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
| interesting. That includes more than hacking and
| startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
| answer might be: anything that gratifies one's
| intellectual curiosity.
|
| > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or
| sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new
| phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute
| animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's
| probably off-topic.
|
| The exception clause is "unless they're evidence of some
| interesting new phenomenon, but according to all the top
| comments on the twitter files threads, "this is nothing
| new".
|
| So yeah, you are misinterpreting my comment. I've just
| realized what HN is meant to be, or at least what dang
| wants it to be. I think he's an _excellent_ mod, and I
| respect the guidelines. I want to come here and see cool
| nerd stuff like "can you play minecraft inside doom
| inside minecraft" and as soon as I see something
| political it puts me in a bad mood. And yes, if you
| scroll my comment history, you will see that I post
| mostly in political threads. But I have learned my lesson
| - this place isn't for that. There's no revolution to be
| started here, given the userbase is mostly financially
| well-off tech bros who benefit from the status quo. Just
| like me!
| lovich wrote:
| >> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or
| sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new
| phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute
| animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's
| probably off-topic.
|
| >The exception clause is "unless they're evidence of some
| interesting new phenomenon, but according to all the top
| comments on the twitter files threads, "this is nothing
| new".
|
| You said you were flagging all of political content and
| then brought it back to Twitter files specifically to
| justify it not hitting the exception clause.
|
| For me the Twitter files content themselves aren't
| interesting, but the effect of the what seems like
| obviously non interesting content getting so many people
| up in arms just because a billionaire is claiming it's
| bad is an interesting new phenomenon.
|
| I understand this type of content might put you in a bad
| mood, but given that you weren't flagging the content
| until you felt
|
| > The response to the twitter files was the slap in the
| face I needed to finally understand that.
|
| Kinda feels like you're trying to engage in the same type
| of censorship that bothers you.
| colpabar wrote:
| > Kinda feels like you're trying to engage in the same
| type of censorship that bothers you.
|
| No, because that isn't censorship. I'm participating in
| community moderation to the extent that this website
| enables me. It wouldn't be censorship for the owner of a
| facebook page about cooking to remove posts not about
| cooking, and it isn't censorship for posts not about
| "hacker news" on a website called hacker news. One type
| of censorship that does bother me is shady government
| agencies that have done horrible things in the past
| working with massive social media platforms to influence
| public discourse. But that's pretty political, and this
| isn't the place for it.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
| interesting
|
| I would say that government agencies trying to stop me
| from seeing information that it doesn't like is something
| most good hackers would find interesting.
| colpabar wrote:
| I did too! But like I said, the majority of HN does not.
| We love our LEOs here.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| The age of cypherpunks is dead, we live in the age of the
| "programmer who blindly believes the same thing everyone
| at his company believes and thinks he's right because
| he's intelligent because he's a programmer".
|
| And the scary thing is, this came out of nowhere, one day
| everyone online is for freedom and freespeech, the next
| day everyone became against it, it's the same thing for
| Elon Musk, it's crazy how popular he was online and how
| everyone loved him, he didn't do anything bad between
| then and now (except insult a couple people here and
| there and other asshole things we have all done in the
| past) but went from "invented X" to "merely invested in
| X", and from "genius" to "idiot", etc.
|
| The people who said _they_ couldn 't tame the internet
| were as wrong as those who said the same thing about
| crypto.
| bell-cot wrote:
| And a whole lot more people don't want to think too hard -
| especially about complex & unhappy stuff, where they can't
| just wait 'till the end of the movie for "happily ever
| after", nor ask their doctor for the latest pill to fix it.
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| [dead]
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Exactly. What if I WANT to be tricked by a Russian
| disinformation campaign? What if I just want a juicy story that
| justifies my biases and I have no regard for the truth at all?
|
| Is there a Mastodon server that straight up admits that it may
| include Russian disinformation and is primarily for
| entertainment purposes rather than factual discussion?
|
| edit: Or a mix of both true news items and disinformation! See
| if you can tell which is which!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is there a Mastodon server that straight up admits that it
| may include Russian disinformation and is primarily for
| entertainment purposes rather than factual discussion?
|
| It doesn't quite _admit_ it, and its a fork, but Truth Social
| may be close enough.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| Reading your comment felt like that hearing Anakin saying he
| knows what's best for the people better than they do.
|
| As soon as you start assuming you know more than the people
| and that you have a right to censor the information they can
| access because it's bad for them, you become a tyrant.
|
| Am I the only one who finds this rotten?
|
| I want to read disinformation, tell me the sky is green I
| don't care, I can stitch stories together and arrive to a
| conclusion myself, false things (won't use that
| "(d/m)isinformation" media clickbait word) don't make sense,
| real things do, sure there are false things that do sound
| correct, but trust the people to make the difference, have
| your experts argue against falsehoods, let the people hear
| those arguments, if your expert's arguments disprove X or Y
| the people will not believe it, if the Russian experts
| disprove your arguments, then they're right and you're the
| one spreading falsehoods...
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I don't like censorship but I also know that I am not
| unbiased/intelligent/non-human enough to not fall for
| disinformation. And so will anyone, if they are honest
| about it. Not every time but we will fall for it. And
| foreign operations like that should not have the freedom to
| be conducted on US soil and in US media.
|
| I think labels that say who has determined something is
| disinformation, produced by whom, and why they have labeled
| it thus might be a better solution.
| zosima wrote:
| But you seem to suffer from some kind of delusion that
| government is somehow less biased and more intelligent,
| and free of human faults than you?
|
| What in all of human history, would make you think that?
| eternalban wrote:
| This buck stops with congress. Be alarmed if you want but make
| sure you address the actual root cause.
|
| In our system of governance, it is the responsibility of
| Congress to hold the executive accountable. All these agencies
| are part of the Executive arm of the United States of America.
| If there is over-reach by secretive agencies of the Executive,
| it is the duty and responsibility of congressional members,
| representatives of the public, to be rigorous in the exercise
| of their duty and hold them accountable.
|
| https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/artifact/senator...
|
| [p.s. Support archive.org .. ^ is archived below]
|
| _" Allegations of domestic spying by the Central Intelligence
| Agency (CIA) surfaced in the 1970s, triggering public demand
| for an investigation of federal surveillance operations. In
| 1975 the Senate established the Select Committee to Study
| Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence
| Activities, headed by Senator Frank Church of Idaho. The Church
| Committee's reports exposed abuses and led to legislation
| governing domestic and foreign surveillance--most notably, the
| Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. House and Senate
| permanent select committees established at that time now
| oversee U.S. intelligence.
|
| The critical question before the committee was to determine how
| the fundamental liberties of the people can be maintained in
| the course of the Government's effort to protect their
| security."_
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20180227204516/https://www.visit...
|
| --
|
| I'll admit I never read the Church Committee report before, but
| it's actually shocking in the sense that an official report
| from the Senate of the United States would today be read almost
| as a 'radical' position, which itself is a telling reflection
| of the changes that have occurred in the past 47 years:
|
| _" Our investigation has confirmed that warning. We have seen
| segments of our Government, in their attitudes and action,
| adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy, and occasionally
| reminiscent of the tactics of totalitarian regimes. We have
| seen a consistent pattern in which programs initiated with
| limited goals, such as preventing criminal violence or
| identifying foreign spies, were expanded to what witnesses
| characterized as "vacuum cleaners"," sweeping in information
| about lawful activities of American citizens."_
|
| The Church Committee Report: "INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND THE
| RIGHTS OF AMERICANS - Final Report - 1976"
|
| https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1976Churchcommittee.pdf
| whatsu wrote:
| It is true that governments have always had an influence on how
| we live our lives, whether through traditional media like
| newspapers and television, or more modern platforms like social
| media. This is not a new phenomenon, but rather something that
| has always existed in society. However, with the proliferation
| of the internet and social media, it has become easier for
| governments to monitor and regulate online content, and this
| has led to increased scrutiny and debate about the role of
| government in moderating online speech.
|
| The United States has a distorted view of free speech, as some
| people believe that it should be absolute and without any
| limitations. However, it is important to recognize that the
| collective good and well-being of society should always be a
| priority, and that includes protecting against harmful or
| extremist ideas that could cause harm to others. While it is
| important to protect individuals' right to express themselves
| freely, it is also important to ensure that this freedom is not
| used to spread hateful or harmful messages. In short, the
| collective well-being of humanity should always be a top
| priority, and this includes moderating harmful or extremist
| content on the internet.
| shitlord wrote:
| > However, it is important to recognize that the collective
| good and well-being of society should always be a priority,
| and that includes protecting against harmful or extremist
| ideas that could cause harm to others.
|
| As an American, I disagree. We are a sovereign country, and
| people from other countries don't have any say in how we
| conduct ourselves. It doesn't whether it's online or offline.
|
| American Nazis and Tankies have the first amendment right to
| spread their dumb ideas. If they want to make their own
| websites, that's fine with me. The government should mind its
| own business unless there are actual crimes taking place.
|
| The rest of the world doesn't have to like it. It's just the
| way it's going to be.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| why is it distorted?
| [deleted]
| none_to_remain wrote:
| [flagged]
| hellfish wrote:
| [flagged]
| philippejara wrote:
| >In short, the collective well-being of humanity should
| always be a top priority, and this includes moderating
| harmful or extremist content on the internet.
|
| Who defines what is harmful or extremist in the government?
| Sounds like you either get in the good graces of the
| "intelligence community" or you are now harmful, as shown
| pretty clearly with the hordes of "intelligence community"
| people calling the biden laptop(whatever it had, its content
| is irrelevant) russian propaganda[0], while even the DOJ and
| FBI says it isn't[1]. And of course those officials making
| the stink are contracted by the news agencies to talk about
| it where journalists will just blindly accept whatever
| they're given.
|
| The "intelligence community" isn't your friend(neither are
| the proper agencies but I digress), it never was if you're
| not an us citizen and it probably stopped being if you are
| after the patriot act.
|
| [0]:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-
| story-...
|
| [1]: https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-doj-fbi-confirm-
| hunt...
| Mezzie wrote:
| > Who defines what is harmful or extremist in the
| government?
|
| An additional related question: Are they even _capable_ of
| undertaking this task? Our current government officials and
| bureaucrats don 't understand enough about how the Internet
| works to _effectively_ police it. And more fundamentally,
| can a government act quickly enough to outwit how quickly
| the Internet adapts to roadblocks? Governments need to have
| policies, procedures, go through chains of command, etc. A
| lot of Internet culture, on the other hand, is driven by
| random people doing random things. If a topic is forbidden,
| instead of policing that topic, the government then has to
| police the 50 ways to get around the block as well as guess
| which one will take root.
|
| It's similar to trying to win a war against guerrilla
| insurgents. The high level of organization of a government
| to some degree works _against_ them.
| KurvaKing wrote:
| [dead]
| zosima wrote:
| The government should simply have no hand in determining what
| information is presented or not presented to anyone, except
| within the bounds of explicit legal mandate to do so.
|
| That this sort of under-the-table cooperation between three
| letter agencies and information companies has been allowed to
| exist and develop is completely outrageous. It should not be
| put into perspective, but stopped, right here, right now.
|
| Once that is done, a discussion can be had about where it
| makes sense to create legislation to curtail various
| behaviors and content that are disturbing to social order.
| The current list of offenses is fairly comprehensive and
| includes things such as violent threats, child porn and
| terrorism recruitment, and any addition has to be well-
| motivated.
|
| But as long as the cooperation with three-letter agencies
| happens outside a legal framework, the only proper response,
| as far as I can see, is pure outrage.
| catiopatio wrote:
| I believe your comment represents speech that puts the well-
| being of society at serious risk, is harmful, and possibly
| even extremist.
|
| If I manage to convince 50.1% of the population of the same,
| should we be permitted to censor your speech, and enforce
| prior restraint on your future speech under penalty of law?
| birken wrote:
| I'll go one further... if even 1 single person (the person
| who owns HN), decides that they don't like the content of
| that comment, then they should be free to delete/censor the
| comment on HN and ban the person in perpetuity from HN.
|
| Your argument doesn't really make any sense because
| everybody here is talking about speech in the context of a
| walled garden owned by a company/person. That is a
| completely different situation than what you are alluding
| to. I can just as easily prevent the reverse question: I
| have a blog with a comment section, and somebody I don't
| know posts a horrific, rude and distasteful comment that I
| don't want associated with my blog post. Can the government
| force me to not delete that due to free speech, or do I
| have the power to moderate my blog however I want?
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >Your argument doesn't really make any sense because
| everybody here is talking about speech in the context of
| a walled garden owned by a company/person.
|
| Did you read GP? If they were talking about comapnies and
| not governments, it certainly was not made clear:
|
| >However, with the proliferation of the internet and
| social media, it has become easier for governments to
| monitor and regulate online content, and this has led to
| increased scrutiny and debate about the role of
| government in moderating online speech.
|
| >[...]In short, the collective well-being of humanity
| should always be a top priority, and this includes
| moderating harmful or extremist content on the internet.
|
| Where was GP talking about companies?
| birken wrote:
| > Where was GP talking about companies?
|
| The initial comment says government has always used their
| influence through "newspapers", "television" and "social
| media", all of which have historically been non-
| government entities who take the government's input and
| decide if they want to follow it or not. There are
| obviously major historical cases in which private
| companies have defied what the government wanted them to
| do (NYT v Sullivan, NYT vs US, etc), but I'm sure there
| are countless examples throughout Twitter's history of
| the government asking for something and then not getting
| it, but I assume that isn't something those instances are
| not being highlighted that much as they don't fit the
| narrative.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Of course we find it concerning, and we'd want to look closely
| at it to see if it crosses legal or ethical lines. I don't
| currently see any line-crossing, but I guess it's good to have
| the discussion.
|
| The problem with this "Twitter Files" reporting is that it's
| not making the situation any clearer. If anything it feels like
| these journalists are being used to do PR work for Twitter's
| new owner in order to promote the idea that Something Really
| Bad Happened Here, but this advocacy makes it much harder to
| see the real picture.
| LeonTheremin wrote:
| The FBI will continue to be a victim of "conspiracy theories"
| because the FBI refuses to properly investigate the claims of
| civilians victims of electromagnetic weaponry (Havana Syndrome,
| etc), so the true criminals behind that will keep propagating the
| lie that the government (FBI included) are responsible.
| hejaodbsidndbd wrote:
| [dead]
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Still nothing of any interest found? Biggest bombshell so far was
| a .pizza email domain.
|
| And does this mean Twitter has stopped cooperating with the feds
| since Elon took over? I would have assumed that would cause more
| fuss if true.
|
| Or is it just cheap QAnon baiting hypocrisy?
| transcriptase wrote:
| [flagged]
| asynchronous wrote:
| More like +50 social credit score.
| therouwboat wrote:
| Elon probably increases cooperation when he realises that you
| can charge FBI for digging user info.
| andrekandre wrote:
| i wonder why they are cherry-picking and releasing things like
| this in a drop-drop fashion... shouldn't just release
| everything and let the media (and that includes fox et al) dig
| through it and report on it for us?
| acdha wrote:
| The problem is that so far there hasn't been much of interest
| here. Having a few people tweet unsupported claims gets more
| traction because some people won't read past the spin and it
| allows the more journalistic end of the right-wing media to
| talk about it without being directly criticized for the spin:
| Fox News can run a "people are saying" story rather than
| claiming it as an original story.
|
| The story about Hunter Biden's laptop was similar: if there'd
| been anything significant revealed the WSJ or Fox would have
| covered it directly. There wasn't and Giuliani's sloppy
| handling made it unreliable, so they didn't want to put their
| reputations on the line.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Can't wait for Matt to hit the motherlode: Elon banning
| journalists out of personal spite, making a poll to unban them
| but underhandedly demanding they delete their (never rule-
| breaking) tweets.
|
| Just a few more searches and he will hit it for sure! Unless his
| handlers demand he ignore that, of course.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| What on earth happened to Matt Tiabbi and Glenn Greenwald? Does
| a certain amount of exposure to news and conspiracy break
| people at a certain point? I occasionally worry that they
| didn't change but that I did.
| philippejara wrote:
| Greenwald stuck to his guns as he always did when his
| audience decided that they'd rather embrace the
| overbearing/surveillance state as long as the court jester
| didn't win the election again, that's how I see it at least.
| I'd like to give a less flippant answer but I honestly can't
| see any difference in his views now and back then, both in US
| coverage and Brazil's coverage.
| acdha wrote:
| I think it's a combination of never having been as good as we
| might've liked (Taibbi's stories from when he was working for
| The eXile suggest where this came from) and valuing being
| contrary to the establishment more than being right (Matt
| Yglesias is another good example of that). That can give them
| a big hit when the establishment is wrong (Iraq, whether
| bankers should be punished in 2008) but it sets them up for
| failure when it's not (Trump), and since they have made their
| careers on that it's extra hard to reconsider since that
| means acknowledging that their defining instinct led them
| astray.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| They still have integrity. That's seen as a flaw among
| partisan corporate media stooges who will dismiss any
| behavior if it benefits their party. Greenwald rants about
| this problem constantly.
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| At what point did Wikileaks become the bad guys?
|
| Was this a change in their behavior, or a change in American
| political attitudes towards the role of journalism?
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| [flagged]
| lovich wrote:
| They were not doxxing, and the suspensions were not
| originally 12 hours. I know Elon started off his Twitter
| leadership with trying to rewrite history[1][2], but that
| doesn't mean you should accept it just because he continues
| the manipulative behavior
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/elon-musk-deletes-tweet-
| wit...
|
| [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/15868716916862
| 238...
| nakefews wrote:
| [dead]
| fallingknife wrote:
| "It's a private company and can do what it wants"
| mypastself wrote:
| Why would petty personal vendettas be placed in the same
| category as specific requests made by a nation-state's
| intelligence agencies?
| martythemaniak wrote:
| It's like the boy who cried wolf, except the wolf never comes.
| But we should keep an open mind, perhaps part 27 will be the
| bombshell.
| themagician wrote:
| BREAKING: tech companies usually cooperate with law enforcement
| and government when requested. Data shows they are more than
| 100 times more likely to continue to respond to requests when
| paid.
| kyrra wrote:
| Companies should cooperate when compelled so by law, not just
| cause. This gets into the space where many here knock Chinese
| companies as they are regularly directed partially by the
| CCP.
|
| The real question is, when does laws that apply only to the
| government, like the first amendment, start applying to
| private companies when the private companies are being
| directed by the government?
| themagician wrote:
| Companies should cooperate when they want to, and tell the
| government to !@#$ off when they don't want to.
|
| Twitter, for me, is a great example of free speech. The
| government asks them to do things apparently all the time.
| Sometimes they do it, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they
| even have a discussion about it internally. That is
| INCREDIBLE.
|
| Ultimately, Twitter became the primary communications
| vehicle of the President of the United States. They !@#$ing
| ban him. Power move. I'm sure many demands were made by all
| sorts of agencies to reinstate Trump's account and they
| said, "No. !$@# off." You want to talk about China and the
| CCP? Well, here's a concrete example of something that, had
| it happened in China with Weibo, you know would have gotten
| dozens of people "disappeared". But Twitter did it with
| zero recourse from the government. As the kids say these
| day, "Based."
|
| Greatest example of free speech in action my life time.
| acdha wrote:
| Cooperation here means that they were enforcing their
| existing terms of service. That's very different from legal
| compulsion.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Why are 3 letter agencies paying Twitter to moderate
| their own site?
| acdha wrote:
| They aren't moderating the site. The FBI was reporting
| things they felt were under the purview of their election
| security mandate but they weren't generally pursuing TOS
| violations.
|
| If you're referring to the administrative costs, those
| were a separate issue where U.S. law allows payment for
| the cost of complying with court ordered 2703(d)
| requests:
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/20/no-the-fbi-is-not-
| paying...
|
| Nothing in these dumps suggests that those requests are
| being abused.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| I think the important thing here is the lack of judicial
| oversight. There used to be needed a court order to request
| things from companies, so someone would actually weight in
| the evidence and legality of it.
|
| Now it's just someone from a secret agency shutting down news
| stories about laptops because it makes one political
| candidate look bad.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| There has never been need to have judicial oversight when
| making a _request_ , the FBI can send a request to Twitter
| just the same as they can ask you to come in for an
| interview. You're free to refuse.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye no. I would certainly worry alot more if FBI sent me
| an angry letter compared to say Pizza Hut? You always
| have an implied threat when a government agency is
| involved.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Sure, but you also don't have a team of lawyers who know
| how to deal with the government. Twitter does (or, well,
| did).
| nickthegreek wrote:
| You can see the letters. They weren't angry.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| While I agree with the premise of your statement, remember
| that: 1) A court order is only required for a subpoena to
| request information that the service provider isn't already
| voluntarily providing. It has been common pratice for
| decades where telecoms and now social media works together
| with federal entities outside of a legal action. And this
| was not limited to trap/trace. 2) It's never so specific to
| be about protecting an individual candidate. It's about the
| foreign interference, and if that interference backs a
| specific candidate and attacks their rivals, then it will
| look like they're trying to protect the rivals. But at the
| end of the day it they have to trace it back to the foreign
| influence campaign if they're going to do anything with it.
| If Twitter jumps the gun and suspends or bans someone
| they're trying to work backwards from before having
| evidence its unfortunate but I blame that on Twitter not
| having stricter standards about such a partnership.
| themagician wrote:
| Requests are different from demands. It's not like the FBI
| tells Twitter to take something down under threat of
| violence. They say just ask and Twitter agrees, sometimes,
| because they are on the same page.
| ggreer wrote:
| If the FBI requests something, and you ignore or refuse
| them, they will find a way to make your life unpleasant.
| Remember, this organization has a long history of human
| rights abuses and illegal actions. They even tried to
| blackmail MLK.[1]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI-King_suicide_letter
| jasmer wrote:
| Any public media entity represents enormous power - and by
| definition will involve agencies of all kinds from all over.
|
| Foreign actors will absolutely leverage the situation to the
| maximum extent possible and this is a fact irrespective of claims
| made by CIA/FBI to justify their existence.
|
| Even the Canadian government has finally admitted publicly that
| the Chinese government is doing 'full court press' inside the
| country including having literal Chinese Police Stations hidden
| within Canada. It's perverse.
|
| And of course, that's just the 'big actor' issue - there are
| legitimately a lot of small time bad people using these systems.
| Like they would any other.
|
| We should expect the government to do it's job - meaning that the
| 'story' should be about 'where the lines are' not 'that they
| exist'.
|
| Judicial oversight, proportionality, proper procedure, some
| mechanism for public oversight, lawfulness ... those are the
| issues.
|
| I'm glad for this bit of transparency because it probably helps
| us to parse the system a bit to see what's what ... but I suggest
| that we ought to be vigilant about the nuances, not the ideology.
| Putin and Xi will forevermore attempt to dust things up, and the
| CIA/FBI are known to overstep their bounds ... but there's a
| legit reason those agencies exist so we probably should focus on
| a way to make it work in a way that preserves freedom,
| lawfulness, basic civic virtues and common sense.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Maybe I'm dating myself...but how different is this, really, from
| stuff that was routine back in the days of J Edgar Hoover (FBI
| Director, 1935-1972)? Other than "with computers and the
| internet" instead of "with paper files and typewriters"?
|
| Idealistic youthful utopianism, techno- or otherwise, does not
| change human nature. And ignorance of history is a really poor
| recipe for long-term success.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I don't find it incredible that Russia and China conduct
| disinformation campaigns via social media, regarding our
| elections and all manner of things. The accusation that they
| have used social media to inflame groups on both sides of the
| political divide in the US seems credible to me.
|
| However I'm not okay with unilateral censorship as a response
| necessarily. But I'd be okay with a tag on postings and
| accounts maybe. I'm not sure what the solution is, despite
| concerns over both foreign influence and domestic censorship.
|
| For now, if an item seems to demonize Americans or Westerners
| on the right OR the left, I try to be very skeptical.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is
| the merger of state and corporate power."
| rightbyte wrote:
| The only actual fascists in Italy were way more heavy on
| government power than the idealistic goal of unions and
| cooperations, though.
|
| It is hard to generalize one off concepts like fascism in my
| opion.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Just think about it. The two people Kyle Rittenhouse shot, both
| had extensive criminal records. That's kind of amazing, that
| criminals would be such dedicated civil rights protestors.
| Simpler explanation is that FBI sent informants, or agent
| provocateurs. Similar case with the J6 riots. FBI recruited
| criminals, with threats and/or borderline extortion and sent them
| in. Logical conclusion was FBI was involved with all the riots!
| The way brownshirts were involved in protests in 1930s Germany,
| and Communists had their own intelligence agencies that would
| send in provocateurs.
|
| Here's my summary of what happened, as an outside observer. Not
| an American.
|
| FBI was censoring Americans on Twitter in favour of their
| preferred candidate, because at the core, there were people in
| both parties that wanted a confrontation with Russia. Trump was
| too friendly. Bernie was too whacky for even them. Biden was
| pushed forward. (Amazing turn around to win his own party). The
| laptop, and whatever else they have on him, was probably seen
| favourably, in case he deviates too much from their agenda.
| lovich wrote:
| > The two people Kyle Rittenhouse shot, both had extensive
| criminal records. That's kind of amazing, that criminals would
| be such dedicated civil rights protestors. Simpler explanation
| is that FBI sent informants, or agent provocateurs.
|
| "People protesting against the government were criminals as
| defined by the government they were protesting against. It
| unbelievable that anyone who is a criminal could be involved in
| something positive whether out of an actual belief or just
| being angry at the government that had punished them
| previously, therefor it's obvious that there must be a
| government conspiracy involved"
|
| Does that capture the gist of your argument?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Joseph Don Rosenbaum, was imprisoned and made to register as
| a sex offender involved the molestation and rape of five
| separate boys.
|
| Yes, I'm skeptical that he was there because he was a civil
| rights advocate.
| lovich wrote:
| And he needn't be to have been protesting against
| government power. Him being there for entirely self serving
| reasons is a much simpler explanation than that he was an
| fbi plant who was willing to put his life on the line for
| some sort of social manipulation as you have claimed.
|
| You started with a view and appear to have worked your way
| backwards to justify it.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Why would would anyone ride a bicycle when the simpler
| unicycle exists. Is that the crux of your argument?
| lovich wrote:
| A:have you never heard of Occam's razor?
|
| B:do you really think that someone with a criminal
| history would never go to a protest? Are they simply 1
| dimensional characters in a play who cant go to a protest
| or agree with its cause because they are "bad" people?
| They couldn't go because even if they didn't agree, it
| hurt the government they disliked? They couldn't have
| gone because they had friends going and it was a thing to
| do? They couldn't just like general mayhem? I do not
| understand how you think a government conspiracy is the
| simplest explanation here, especially when the guy went
| after someone with a gun while armed with a skateboard.
| That's the behavior of someone motivated, not someone
| doing their day job of undercover agent or having been
| forced to do undercover work by the government in
| exchange for leniency.
|
| I'll actually turn this back on you, how exactly do you
| believe either of the two people killed by rittenhouse
| were part of a government conspiracy. How we're they
| recruited and what was the goal?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| > do you really think that someone with a criminal
| history would never go to a protest?
|
| 1. Just because some criminals attend protests, doesn't
| mean that is it typical. All 3 people that Kyle shot had
| criminal backgrounds. What are the odds of this happening
| in a random sample of all protests? Clearly this wasn't
| your average protest. White criminals protesting for
| black people's civil rights?
|
| 2. It is important to note that everyone has the right to
| peacefully assemble and express their views, regardless
| of their criminal history. However this was not a
| peaceful protest, as property was being actively
| destroyed.
|
| 3. Criminal justice system forces plea bargains in return
| for cooperation. Even innocent people will plea bargain
| under duress. Threats of lengthy prison sentences or
| harsh treatment, or a parole officer revoking parole is
| how the system extorts cooperation. Becoming an informant
| is the only leverage someone like Joseph Rosenbaum may
| have had.
|
| 4. Let's assume you're right. They were there for civil
| rights protest. But that seems like a conflict in your
| own thinking. Since the core issue was governments abuse
| of civil rights. Which would be a giant conspiracy. Which
| you seem to wave away as being a possibility.
|
| I gave specific examples where other government's
| intelligence agencies in the past were known to do send
| in agent provocateurs. Why do you think America is
| exceptional?
| lovich wrote:
| What does point number 2 even mean in terms of your
| argument, it's just tossed in there like it's relevant.
| And your point 4 makes zero sense? How is protesting the
| governments abuse of civil rights a conspiracy?
|
| For point 1, people willing to go out and do action are
| more likely to be criminals than someone who stay home.
| On top of that this is just large numbers making rare
| circumstances occur. You'd likely point to the birthday
| problem[1] as a shadowy conspiracy if this is enough to
| make you think of government involvement.
|
| For point 3 you're making the claim that he could have
| been an informant stretch to imply that he was. You have
| failed to outline how they would have been recruited or
| for what purpose. Show some evidence instead of making
| vague implications. Actually fuck, I'm even letting you
| get too much leeway there. Informants do not actively go
| out in public and start physical fights with people
| holding a gun. Even if he happened to have been an
| informant that would not imply the government put him up
| to attacking rittenhouse.
|
| You've gotten too conspiracy brained if you look at
| rittenhouse event and conclude the government must have
| set it up. What would they have even gained?
| cyberphobe wrote:
| I didn't notice the author, almost took this in good faith, then
| I got to this banger:
|
| > After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit
| themselves in the #TwitterFiles
|
| these people are delusional
| onos wrote:
| Ah the old ad hominem argument.
| counttheforks wrote:
| Literally the opposite when you ignore the author and judge
| the article on its contents.
| trentnix wrote:
| I have to say I'm astonished at the casual dismissal of the
| blatant lies of the previous Twitter regime, their clear election
| manipulation, and the governments involvement in drawing
| attention to utterly trivial social media activity. The
| conspiracy theorist in me thinks the governments attention on
| small, inconsequential accounts was all a backstop to justify the
| narratives they were feeding to the press about Russian election
| manipulation and "misinformation".
|
| I feel like a frog in the boiling pot watching the other frogs
| try to convince me there's no danger. I hope you're correct.
| acdha wrote:
| > I'm astonished at the casual dismissal of the blatant lies of
| the previous Twitter regime, their clear election manipulation
|
| Can you provide specific examples of these "blatant lies"? For
| example, Taibbi's earlier dumps showed that the testimony to
| Congress was accurate.
| trentnix wrote:
| "We don't shadow ban"
| acdha wrote:
| Clearly true - as shown by the Twitter they followed their
| stated policies, as explained in the public interviews they
| did back in 2018.
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/twitter-will-start-
| hidi...
|
| Bari Weiss tried to misrepresent what shadow banning means
| but especially here I'd expect people to be familiar with
| what the term means.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| > their clear election manipulation
|
| I'm confused here. I only see Republicans trying to manipulate
| elections with unsubstantiated voter fraud claims.
| chamwislo wrote:
| This is how soft power works. You only need a few sock puppets
| to sway a crowd.
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