zlacker

>>GavCo+(OP)
Aside from people in tech and the MAGA crowd, does anyone actually care about the "Twitter Files" stuff?

>>mikece+23
You may not mind it because you're side won. But that is incredibly short-sided. What if the FBI decides to sway an election to a candidate you don't support sometime in the future? See where this is going?

>>starkd+ff
Yeah, like what if one of the parties had their emails hacked by a foreign state, and then a week or so before the election, against their own policy, the FBI issued a press release about how they were urgently reopening an investigation not into the hack but into possible wrongdoing by the hacked candidate? And then later acknowledged there was no wrongdoing?

You're right; I really hate to think about what the fallout would be if the FBI inappropriately swayed an election.

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

>>hairof+Dh
But the FBI was not actively hacking the emails. You are really just proving my point about the FBI unnecessarily involving itself in these issues. They are supposed to be impartial. That's this story should be taken seriously from a bipartisan perspective.

>>starkd+mk
Looks like in this election their meddling was bipartisan, one of Taibbi's very own examples was jokingly intended to mislead GOP voters.

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

>>Apocry+Nl
Not everything is a partisan. The FBI should not be asking Twitter to take down accounts. Period. These accounts he cited were low-follower accounts that were doing nothing illegal or immoral. This is a threat to everyone, no matter what side of the fence you are on. How is that so difficult to understand?

>>starkd+5I
> The FBI should not be asking Twitter to take down accounts. Period.

Have you considered the real consequences of this? If the FBI for example finds accounts linked to child exploitation, drug trafficking, or terrorism; should they not ask Twitter to take down those accounts? If they find accounts linked to Russian, Chinese, or Iranian farms who are using it to amplify certain messages in order to try to destabilize the US, should they just say hey that’s fine?

Further, from what I read of the tweets, it appears what those accounts wrote may have been illegal after all.

Here’s a quote from an FBI website:

> Report potential election crimes—such as disinformation about the manner, time, or place of voting—to the FBI.

I’m not sure exactly what laws those are referring to, but it appears deceiving people about voting may be illegal. So although you and I and other smart people might read their tweets and think “haha!”, not everyone may read it as a joke.

It is the government’s job to protect the rights of its citizens. Freedom of speech is not absolute (slander, libel, threats, yelling fire in a crowded theatre, etc.), and in this case I think it’s reasonable that one’s right to freedom of speech shouldn’t supersede another’s right to vote.

A Twitter ban is certainly less damaging than criminal charges over whatever statute it violates.

>>divide+K41
Oh, please. These issues were not about child exploitation. It was the heavy hand of governent coming down on citizens over jokes. Parody and satire have always been given wide interpretations in the courts.

The fact that you point to the FBI website as proof they were acting in good faith shows a remarkable faith in the government you have. It is not the governments job to protect people's rights. The gov't violates rights all the time. It's the job of the third party institutions like the media to expose and for the courts to render judgment.

>>starkd+382
The OP is about FBI policing of federal election misinformation, which is both part of the federal government’s purview:

https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

And as shady or problematic as their relationship with Twitter is, is borne out of legal precedence:

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

Not to mention, in the last decade, by the process of jawboning:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/informal-government-coercion-and...

So really, your complaints go up further than you think. This is something that has been happening for decades based on judicial decisions, you just weren’t aware of it.