zlacker

>>GavCo+(OP)
"Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content."

Is this a violation of the 1st Amendment or a way to skirt around it?

>>memish+g3
The problem was that it was entirely one way. This was not about dangerous misinformation. Many of the accounts they wanted suppressed were low-follower accounts making jokes. A ton of FBI agents paid to sway an election. Even if you are comfortable with the outcome of the election, what about future elections when they decide to back a candidate you do not support?

>>starkd+Uf
What do you mean by one way? They clearly asked for scrutiny of pro-Democratic tweeters in addition to pro-Republican ones:

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857581503569929

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857590299103232

Perhaps you should actually read Taibbi's work in this thread.

>>Apocry+7m
It doesn't matter if they were pro-dem or pro-republican. They were doing nothing wrong. What business is it to the FBI. The FBI had partisan agents working on government time to censor American citizens during an election. If you step out of your partisan headspace for a moment, you might realize how dangerous this is.

Imagine how this my play out in a future election with different candidates.

>>starkd+GI
But there is no partisan headspace if both parties were impacted. Clearly their lack of interest is due to other factors, which you must learn to appeal to. Not everyone fails to care because of petty political concerns.

>>Apocry+GM
So it's your estimation that both parties were censored an equal amount?

>>simple+QN
Based on Taibbi's own evidence, it is perhaps arguably so. But to me, more important is the total number of accounts looked at, which appears to be in the mere dozens, if not around a dozen accounts, with none more notable than a lesser Baldwin brother.

In principle, certainly it is not great for security services to meddle in public spaces. In reality, I am willing to believe that the federal government is a tiny fish in the sea of requests from local authorities, individual police departments, private individuals via reports, not least of all the legally persons we call corporations. I bet any day, Twitter's moderation teams are blanketed with requests from companies and businesses of every type and size, both advertisers and not. All equipped with legal teams that could potentially target Twitter.

In short, I find it to be performative virtue-signaling to be concerned about around a dozen small potatoes that the FBI asked for the mods to take a look at. Especially if this might just be cover for the real large-scale systemic censorships that occur at some deeper level that no FOIA or Taibbi journalism would be able to unearth. Especially when the PRISM programs are right there if you want something of substance to be outraged about. This, in comparison, is no different from a mom and pop store asking Twitter to go after an abusive account spreading slander about them. Litigiousness is an all-American custom. This didn't even trigger any warrant canaries. Hysteria over this is concern-trolling.

>>Apocry+KO
There is a major difference when a branch of government makes these requests as compared to another business entity. Especially, the federal government. For one, it becomes more of a command than a request. The consequences for not complying is orders of magnitude greater.

It's not performative virtue signalling to push back on a lesser threat just because you are not pushing back on the greater threat. The gov't has been very good at hiding the existence of these programs. We do not know much about PRISM, so there's less to go on. You need to push back whereever it occurs. We still have no idea how widespread this is. Not to mention, it is likely going on with google, facebook, instagram as well.

>>starkd+642
Based on other posts in this thread, it sounds like SOP as far as content moderation goes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34026457

It sounds like most of this discussion is entirely driven by normative fancies rather than any actual knowledge of how these processes are already being run in the industry, let alone how the first amendment actually applies. For the latter, it would seem that a whole bevy of court cases undergird this whole endeavor:

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...