Musk by contrast has shown that he only cares about limiting speech that damages himself, and he will say or do anything to obscure that fact. He promised not to ban the elonjet account, and then reversed course: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/14/elons-promise-not-to-ban...
He falsely claimed that Twitter refused to take action on child exploitation: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1601302412056473600?s=20&t=4...
He has banned journalists who were critical to him in the past: https://mastodon.world/@kairyssdal/109524620754087441
He has banned Mastodon and Pixelfed's accounts, falsly labeling them as "malware."
And most hypocritically, he claims the reason for all of this is because these people have shared "assassination coordinates" and "doxxed" him, even though first of all, the information is public: https://mastodon.social/@JxckS/109524630642043912 Second, most of the journalists never linked to his private information: https://famichiki.jp/@stopthatgirl7/109522071808584229 There is evidence that his claimed stalker was far from an airport, and worst in my opinion, he has doxxed critics in the past in much more damaging ways: https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/37229846-montana-skeptic/... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon... https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitter-employee-flees-home-el...
In group vs out group.
https://level.medium.com/its-always-about-power-f9fca4321e0c
And Musk has been fine with accounts that use their freedom of speech even if they resulted is safety risks. For example @libsoftiktok is an account Musk unbanned, and has likes their tweets, who post misleading information resulting in direct threats against people and organisations (e.g. children's hospitals).
For example they just recently tweeted a video* that was purposefully edited in a way to make it seem someone was pro-pedophilia, when they weren't.
*https://twitter.com/RobertLouisr/status/1603422570665201664?...
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...
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857581503569929
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857590299103232
Perhaps you should actually read Taibbi's work in this thread.
Twitter makes it super easy to do mass warrantless surveillance, because Twitter gathers millions of people together in the same searchable public space. It's a honeypot.
What's dangerous about the "public square" concept is that Musk doesn't just want a public square — one public space among many, one among equals — he wants the public square, a monopoly on online conversation. "I think I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596751751532937217
We shouldn't have all of our conversations, political or otherwise, in one place. That's a giant mistake. We need decentralization for our own safety and freedom.
Who said it was illegal? The FBI? Twitter? Can you highlight a quote here?
Look at the sort of wording used in the examples in the thread.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857573219819529 - "notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter's Terms of Service"
See: https://kottke.org/22/12/the-boring-conservatism-of-elon-mus...
Twitter repeatedly denied that right-wing users were being shadowbanned. That turned out to be false.
A month ago, someone on HN patronizingly explained to me that Twitter's moderation was "primarily dictated by building an advertiser friendly platform": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33652282 The Twitter files have made it clear that this user's claim, "Twitter's moderation policies weren't primarily dictated by their political views", was false.
If Twitter's moderation was primarily about staying advertiser-friendly, they would've announced their shadowbans publicly, so advertisers would know they were safe advertising on Twitter as a platform. There wouldn't be any interesting revelations to be had.
As for doxxing, I see rules against doxxing as pro free speech. Doxxing doesn't contribute meaningfully to the public discourse. It just intimidates people into silence, interfering with speech exercise.
Free speech is a subtle concept: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/is-it-possible-to-have... A ban on doxxing advances free speech as I understand it. You're welcome to disagree, but I don't think my position is unreasonable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33995312
>he has doxxed critics in the past in much more damaging ways
Can you point to a case of, say, Yoel Roth's real-time location staying up on Twitter even after the recent rule change which prevents doxxing?
It appears to me, based on the article you linked, that Yoel fled his home in the wake of ordinary criticism. Not doxxing specifically. Ordinary criticism kind of has to be allowed -- it's essential for our democracy that e.g. citizens are allowed to criticize politicians. But doxxing is where I draw the line.
It seems this is why Mastodon was banned: https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/15/elon-musk-suspends-mastodo...
Elon is far from perfect. But his child was physically threatened, and he responded by implementing restrictions which I consider to be correct anyways (as I stated -- doxxing is anti-free speech IMO). I think people are making more of this than it deserves. It's good if you have a CEO who's capable of changing their mind.
In any case, whatever happened to the old "Twitter is a private company, they can do what they want" argument? Right-wingers aren't the only hypocrites here.
https://spectator.org/64130_obama-accused-hillary-labeling-h...
And these are just the big ones. They've pushed for back doors into iPhones for instance.
I don't care how trustworthy anyone thinks they are. No one should be able to just arbitrarily transcend the law because they are "clean".
> Who is saying that people should be harmed?
The rights actions speak so loud no one can hear their words.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/briefing/right-wing-mass-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-3...
https://www.salon.com/2021/06/25/filling-the-trump-void-righ...
"Create a strong and unique passphrase for each online account you hold and change them regularly. Using the same passphrase across several accounts makes you more vulnerable if one account is breached."
This is an ask from the FBI. But they obviously aren't coercing you not to use abc123 as your password.
I think Part One and Part Two had significant frontpage time on HN, then not so much until now. That raises the question (at least in my mind) what's different about Part Six? I think part of the answer is random fluctuation (you can think of HN's frontpage as a slot machine with 30 slots—it's not random, but randomness is involved), and part of it is maybe that the government involvement aspect makes the information here more significant.
When it comes to divisive topics, HN moderation spends a lot of time in the uncanny valley between the major ideological camps. This topic is a good example. One passionate subset of the community would like all of these submissions to get major attention, while an opposing passionate subset would like all of them to be soundly ignored. Our job is to somehow balance the conflicting vectors. That's not so easy, and also not so easy to articulate. The idea is not to maintain a centrist position*, it's to try to keep the community from wrecking itself via ideological fracture.
* for some reason that is a pet peeve of mine - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/1...
As I've said, Taibbi has been very clear that he has no evidence of government involvement in any response to the Hunter Biden story.
I think this is a typo and should be FITF, the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/foreign-...
The fact that you need different internal descriptors should be a red flag. All kinds of phrases get used like selective invisibility, visibility filtering, ranking, visible to self, reducing, deboosting, or disguising a gag. Each is a form of censorship, but that's a bad word since the days of Anthony Comstock so it is never used. Censors never describe themselves as censors. See the book "The Mind of the Censor",
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58150067-the-mind-of-the...
What he said, says, or will say, doesn’t matter.
Twitter is a global platform ideal for steering public sentiment, opinion, and influencing political outcomes.
I keep seeing this, and I'm confused every time I see it, because speech on a private platform isn't protected by the first amendment.
Twitter can always say no to the feds (and other governments) in re: far more onerous and demanding requests than just an agent clicking a Report button, and in fact with far more official processes you can see the stats where they actually do just that. https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/removal-requests...
You can imagine how this could be weaponised. For example FBI agents could be tasked to report tweets from people who hold disfavoured opinions. This interpretation is also inline with the court’s finding over Trump’s use of the block button: https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/05/trump-twitte...
> Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime.
> Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting. This can include inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods, such as false information suggesting that one may vote by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction.
> Help defend the right to vote by reporting any suspected instances of voter suppression—especially those received through a private communication channel like texting—to your local FBI field office or at tips.fbi.gov.
Guess this is in their purview.
https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca...
> Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime.
> Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting. This can include inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods, such as false information suggesting that one may vote by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction.
If that debate club guy was spreading voter misinformation, the FBI would come by and investigate him, too.
you are welcome
It is protected from the government. Of course, Twitter can decide to censor whatever they want, but if the government was threatening either Twitter or individuals on the platform, over protected speech, eg. criticizing the president, that would certainly implicate the 1A.
The government simply asking, with no implied threat, seems to be OK [1]. But, I don't think it builds confidence amongst the citizens if they were seen doing this very often.
1. https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...
> Does the First Amendment protect intimidating speech?
Not always. The First Amendment does not protect intimidation in the form of “true threats,” “where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence” against another person or group. Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 360 (2003).
Even when speech is not openly threatening, states and localities nonetheless may impose some restrictions on speech in order to protect the integrity of elections and the rights of voters to cast their ballots free from intimidation. In Burson v. Freeman, 504 U.S. 191 (1992), the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that banned campaigning within 100 feet of the entrance to a polling place.
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...
> Long before the Court affirmed the right to vote as constitutionally protected, Congress had passed a series of laws which extended civil rights protections, including suffrage protections, to recently emancipated slaves following the civil war. These laws, deemed the “Enforcement Acts,” are to some extent still in place today, and those statutes continue to be the primary method by which the federal government enforces the civil rights of individual citizens. 18 U.S.C. §§241 and 242 provide broad jurisdiction to prosecute corruption of rights. The statutes cover the intentional deprivation of any right protected under the Constitution or federal law. §241 makes it unlawful for two or more persons “to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”38 §242 makes it unlawful for anyone “acting under color of law” to deprive a person of such a right.
> The Supreme Court acknowledged the broad scope of §241 when it opined that “[t]he language of §241 is plain and unlimited. [It] embraces all of the rights and privileges secured to citizens by all of the Constitution and all of the laws of the United States....We think [its] history leaves no doubt that, if we are to give §241 the scope its origins dictate, we must accord it a sweep as broad as its language.”51 The broad scope of the law allows for the sweeping protection of federally recognized rights. At the same time, it constructs some barriers for applying the law when new types of violations must be articulated. To that end, the statute has been the target of a vast number of vagueness challenges in federal courts – although to little avail.
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...
> [A.] Generally speaking, courts have said "yes, that's fine," so long as the government speech doesn't coerce the intermediaries by threatening prosecution, lawsuit, or various forms of retaliation. (Indeed, I understand that government officials not uncommonly ask newspapers, for instance, not to publish certain information that they say would harm national security or interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation.) Here's a sample of appellate cases so holding:
> [B.] On the other hand, where courts find that the government speech implicitly threatened retaliation, rather than simply exhorting or encouraging third parties to block speech, that's unconstitutional.
> [C.] Does it matter whether the government acts systematically, setting up a pipeline for requests to the media? One can imagine courts being influenced by this, as they are in some other areas of the law; but I know of no First Amendment cases so holding.
> [D.] Now in some other areas of constitutional law, this question of government requests to private actors is treated differently, at least by some courts. Say that you rummage through a roommate's papers, find evidence that he's committing a crime, and send it to the police. You haven't violated the Fourth Amendment, because you're a private actor. (Whether you might have committed some tort or crime is a separate question.) And the police haven't violated the Fourth Amendment, because they didn't perform the search. The evidence can be used against the roommate.
> But say that the police ask you to rummage through the roommate's papers. That rummaging may become a search governed by the Fourth Amendment, at least in the eyes of some courts: "the government might violate a defendant's rights by 'instigat[ing]' or 'encourag[ing]' a private party to search a defendant on its behalf."
> Likewise, "In the Fifth Amendment context, courts have held that the government might violate a defendant's rights by coercing or encouraging a private party to extract a confession from a criminal defendant." More broadly, the Supreme Court has said that "a State normally can be held responsible for a private decision only when it has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State."
> So maybe there's room for courts to shift to a model where the government's mere encouragement of private speech restrictions is enough to constitute a First Amendment violation on the government's part.
So basically it sounds like this could be the makings of a very fascinating case, if it holds up in court, but there is ample legal precedent of the government doing pretty much what happened on Twitter, already.
> No different than your local cops coming to the bar you like and asking for you to be kicked out. Would that be ok?
I may not like it, and it may not be morally okay, but I am almost certain cops are able to do that, because that is the system we have created.
> FBI calls you up and tell you what they think, and you'll totally ignore FBI. Totally.
The OP literally says that's an option that certain companies have opted to do:
> An FBI agent just reached out with a key point about the “gross” subservience of Twitter before the FBI: “A lot of companies we deal with are adversarial to us. Like T-Mobile is totally adversarial. They love leaking things we're saying if we don't get our process right.” (1/2)
> “I feel like that’s the default position. People used to get mad about that in the Bureau, but — they're supposed to represent their clients and their customers. Why in the hell would you expect them to make it easy on you? Do the right thing. Do it the right way.”
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603890210252668928
It sounds like Twitter was choosing to play nice with the feds, unless any evidence of coercion arises.
Taibbi also brings that up -
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603890210252668928
> An FBI agent just reached out with a key point about the “gross” subservience of Twitter before the FBI: “A lot of companies we deal with are adversarial to us. Like T-Mobile is totally adversarial. They love leaking things we're saying if we don't get our process right.” (1/2)
> “I feel like that’s the default position. People used to get mad about that in the Bureau, but — they're supposed to represent their clients and their customers. Why in the hell would you expect them to make it easy on you? Do the right thing. Do it the right way.”
Sounds like Twitter just went along with it, without coercion. Which you may choose to criticize as weakness or cowardice, but maybe that's just how they chose to do business.
> I don’t disagree with what you posted at all.
Then you agree that your earlier statement "That goes well beyond the remit of the FBI and violates numerous norms of law enforcement influence over public speech" is wrong and baseless, given the legal context that I have provided.
> And what makes me more uncomfortable is when people read the story and say “so what? It’s a nothingburger”.
For the record, my stance is that it's not a nothingburger, but it is so insignificant so as to provide a convenient distraction for actual malicious acts that are going on, like the Z-Library shutdown. And that all of this is underwhelming, much like this other poster's opinion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024363
"A whole bunch of mildly unsatisfactory situations" seems to be an adequate summation of this whole situation. Which this thread, like all culture wars, has made a mountain out of.
For a centuries long historical review see:
The Reactionary Mind
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reactionary_Mind
> It argues that conservatism from the 17th century to today is based on the principle "that some are fit, and thus ought, to rule others".[1]: 18 [2] Robin argues that rather than being about liberty, limited government, resistance to change, or public virtue, conservatism is a "mode of counterrevolutionary practice" to preserve hierarchy and power.[1]: 17
Edit: Here’s a link with some relevant case law. https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...
Disagree with the established precedent if you want, but if you do, I’d recommend picking a different battleground than whatever this Twitter Files fiasco is. This stuff isn’t even on the questionable end of the spectrum.
Do you believe freedom of speech applies to foreign governments?
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/160385966043116748...
https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/160385966043116748...
"They could sue if they don't want to do it" does not make the request legal.
https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1587198479608303622
What's shocking is that people's perceptions of what's legal have changed so dramatically in just a few years. I can't imagine anyone making these arguments in 2005. It seems some powerful interests have been able to successfully co-opt SV companies and change the entire public conversation about what the First Amendment means. I would like to know a lot more about what's going on here. I don't think the same tired arguments about "disinformation" and "social harmony" that have been trotted out for centuries against free speech have suddenly gained all this credence by accident.
In our system, law including the Constitution is interpreted by the judiciary. You could as well ask "where is the Miranda warning in the Bill of Rights?"
The actual precedents around "jawboning" are murky and contradictory, but it's well-established that the government can step over the line in violating constitutionally protected rights via informal coercion.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/informal-government-coercion-and...
It seems to me rather that all these folks shocked to hear this stuff just haven’t been paying attention to either their high school civics course or to current events of the last 20 years.
You actually think the FBI doesn’t report content? Obviously they do.
You don’t think the FBI gets a privileged reporting line over newuser1848391? Obviously they do.
You don’t think Twitter regularly gets content moderation requests, from governments or elsewhere, that they simply decline? Obviously they do.
And you don’t think they sometimes get content moderation requests from governments or elsewhere that they oblige? Obviously they do.
Here’s a good overview of relevant case law: https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...
Will you also be surprised to hear that almost all private companies can (and many will) simply choose to hand over your private data to the government upon warrantless request?
So long as there’s no coercion it’s completely legal. Not considered a controversial topic.
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...
There are lots of dangers with this pattern but this is simply an extremely extremely poor case to try to take up the fight on.
There’s some selection bias here — the tweets we see in the thread are the ones twitter didn’t remove and the accounts twitter didn’t ban.
Twitter surely has the deleted tweets around somewhere, but it doesn’t seem to have been provided to the twitter files reporters.
Per [1]:
"Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, denial of truth (doublethink), and manipulation of the past [...]
Or maybe you're just ignorant of the contents:
https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-executive-met-fbi-weekly-0150...
https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+shadowban&oq=defin...
verb: shadowban - block (a user) from a social media site or online forum without their knowledge, typically by making their posts and comments no longer visible to other users.
It can be, and you're zeroing on sense where vague lingo like "enhanced interrogation" replaces plain "torture".
But that's a stretch. Every profession develops their own lingo over time. They're called "term of art" (1)
An example is when one sysadmin asks another to "bounce the box" - these words have specific meanings which are opaque to outsiders, but are brief and precise to insiders.
This "internal lingo" developing is normal, inevitable, even necessary, and not in any way a "red flag".
If the admins of twitter had several different terms instead of calling them all the same thing then ... maybe they just needed to be brief and precise, to distinguish between them, in order to do the job effectively? You're trying to invent a problem where there is none.
1 )
https://www.yourdictionary.com/term-of-art
Do we know this for a fact? The only way to find this out is to test it in courts. There could be executive orders involved, the Patriot Act or related acts, or simply a "state of emergency" or two declarations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
Open:
"Now, Therefore, I, George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby declare that the national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001, and, pursuant to the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), I intend to utilize the following statutes: sections 123, 123a, 527, 2201(c), 12006, and 12302 of title 10, United States Code, and sections 331, 359, and 367 of title 14, United States Code."
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/WCPD-2001-09-17/pdf/WCPD...
This is seriously some hitleresque reichstag fire stuff. The FBi manufactures a fake domestic terrorism crisis and uses it to justify their further expansion of power.
They literally wrote a blog post about it 4 years ago[1]. This wasn't hidden. Anyone who is "shocked" by Twitter's definition of shadow banning (which, in my opinion aligns with what I posted anyways) is doing performative outrage of an insincere nature.
[1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...
NYT has published data about the growth of CSAM due to tech companies. [2]
Would you engage with the point of my comment if I called the domestic terrorism non-linear growth, and the CSAM growth exponential?
edit: politeness
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/evolution-domestic-terrorism
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-...
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...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/27/trump-t...
To the extent that "informal coercion" could be problematic. This is pretty standard practice for most politicians of course and I think we all know where all those "Free Speech" proponents that are worried that Twitter was "informally coerced by FBI's emails" stood on this, when Trump was constantly threatening Twitter.
This is factually not true at all: https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/politics/poll-constitution/in... https://thenewamerican.com/poll-most-americans-dont-know-bil...
People talk to the police and incriminate themselves all the time. This has been a front-line of civil rights activists for decades now. What are you even talking about?
> It's not unusual at all for police to pull people over for minor infractions and assert they have the ability to search their cars, and for people who know their rights to decline said search, and for everyone to go on their merry way. If the cop chooses to force a search anyway, it's not unusual at all for them to get sued and for all evidence collected to be deemed inadmissible. This is all, again, extremely well established.
"Not unusual" is a very subjective term and doesn't mean anything at all. And it is now confirmed that Twitter had daily meetings and contacts with the FBI/DHS, which means they did talk to federal law enforcement. There is no reason to make this statement is absurd knowing that they did talk...
> Twitter surely has an army of extremely capable and well-paid lawyers who know very well which requests they have a right to decline. They've got to be more legally equipped than your average 9th grader.
See the links above. Also Twitter is not a person and this does not apply to most employees and moderators. And the execs who knew what they were doing and wouldn't have done it if it weren't in their interest of those of the company. That's where the de facto coercion comes in. The DOJ coming for the Twitter "asking" or "indicating" that they do not approve some content is an undue pressure in and of itself.
>This is why it's important for people to have an accurate understanding of their rights and their relationship with their government. The position you're taking weakens people's understanding of their rights. So let it be known for any future operators of social media networks: the US government cannot coerce you – even implicitly – to remove legal content from your website. If they do, decline and let them bring you to court, hit up the ACLU to represent you, and sue the fucking daylights out of the US Government. It's your right and your duty!
Okay Mr. Goodman, at this point you're just grandstanding.
https://www.start.umd.edu/publication/qanon-offenders-united...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...
Since then, Apple has stepped up their end to end encryption stance, which seems like the opposite of what you’re implying.
> Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive.
[0] https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_S...
Vs
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.
It's my intention to distill a bunch of those explanations into a set of loose commentaries on how HN and HN moderation work. But it's the sort of thing that never rises above the middle of the todo list. Maybe one day.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/15/tech-groups-supreme...
Instead it feels like vapid virtue signaling, especially as Musk is doing far more to fight CSAM than the previous owners. Also, all the FBI censorship in the Twitter files dump had nothing to do with CSAM.
Anyways, no, your CSIS link doesn't even support the notion of super linear growth. And, if the FBI is inflating domestic terrorism numbers, what other agencies are doing the same?
https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-fbi-agents-pushed-to-f...
"The FBI leadership’s “demand for [w]hite supremacy … vastly outstrips the supply of [w]hite supremacy,” one agent told the Times. “We have more people assigned to investigate [w]hite supremacists than we can actually find.”
The FBI brass has directed the bureau’s investigative efforts primarily toward domestic extremism cases, especially those with racial components, the agent said. The agent suggested that the push is so forceful that otherwise legal activities are sometimes swept up in the FBI’s scrutiny of certain actions for a potential extremist link.
“We are sort of the lapdogs as the actual agents doing these sorts of investigations, trying to find a crime to fit otherwise First Amendment-protected activities,” he said. “If they have a Gadsden flag and they own guns and they are mean at school board meetings, that’s probably a domestic terrorist.”"
These reports really should disturb you and other readers, that law enforcement agents are being incentivized to act deceitfully on behalf of Partisan politics and as an excuse to broaden their power and influence.
So what are you saying? The government doesn't actually have a right to speak? Without some evidence of threats or coercion I don't see the problem.
> People hate Musk way too much that they are blind.
You think Musk would act any differently?
> If this was trump, the shitstorm would begin.
Not true.
https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-granted-requests-fro...
> neither causes harm
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/transphobia#effect...
> Nor dehumanizes
Intentionally causing harm (see above) and pushing for it to be acceptable for others to cause harm is in fact dehumanizing.
I note you still fail to present any argument other than "I feel like you're wrong"
> just in case they feel a bit sad if they happen to hear it
I recommend you read that source I provided again.
E: And a couple others -
https://mentalhealthcommission.ca/resource/transgender-peopl...
https://sci-hub.st/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32345113/ Good paper, but here's a sentence from the conclusion. > Findings underscore the importance of risk factors such as emotional neglect within the family, interpersonal microaggressions, and internalized self-stigma
In addition, what reason do you have to not respect a trans persons identity? Biological sex is already much _much_ more complex than just the XY we're taught in middle school. Klinefelter's and intersex people both exist, as do other blurred lines.
There's also nothing inherent about 'sex == gender' - transgender people have existed throughout history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history
Now then, unless you provide actually interesting input we're done here until you come back with your main :).
As a more concrete counterpoint, here's a news article from last year which includes a lesbian woman describing her rape by a man who calls himself a woman: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57853385
The editors decided to replace the male pronouns she used to describe him with "they" and "them":
> Another reported a trans woman physically forcing her to have sex after they went on a date.
> "[They] threatened to out me as a terf and risk my job if I refused to sleep with [them]," she wrote. "I was too young to argue and had been brainwashed by queer theory so [they were] a 'woman' even if every fibre of my being was screaming throughout so I agreed to go home with [them]. [They] used physical force when I changed my mind upon seeing [their] penis and raped me."
How do you think she must have felt reading this truthful quote of hers mangled into a lie? A rape victim who isn't permitted to have her rape accurately reported, after she had already been shamed into getting into bed with this man by him weaponising the same ideology that censors her now.
Was she guilty of hate speech by describing her own rape?
I read your source by the way, it's very one-sided, and mostly irrelevant to the conversation about speech.
In this case, Twitter packages up two objectively observable things, people you follow and people who are popular, along with Twitter's own opinion about who the bad-faith actors are. It's that last subjective part that is at issue here. Yet all three are lumped together under the term "rank" [1], and we are told it is the bad actors who are manipulating, not Twitter.
I'm not calling for the demise of Twitter's former leadership, just calling out corporate speak where I see it. YouTube is at least transparent in this respect. They openly say that they "reduce" content [2].
[1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...
[2] https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/the-four-rs-of-responsib...
You might not have been aware of that but it was common knowledge years before. During the hours when that story was blocked using the same mechanism they used for other hacked materials like you might have seen if some celebrity’s nudes had been leaked. Within a day that was removed for the NY Post news story since they were individually taking down the tweets with the actual nudes.
> This is not my opinion or guessing. We know this to be absolute fact.
What we know as absolute fact is that you’re getting your information from people who carefully lie to you, and you didn’t verify the source. It sounds like you’re referring to Zuckerberg’s interview with Rogan, where he said this:
“The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'."
That’s important because what he said doesn’t support that narrative:
Rogan: “Did [the FBI] specifically say you need to be on guard about that story?”
Zuckerberg: “No, I don’t remember if it was that specifically, but it basically fit the pattern.”
https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/mark-zuckerberg-criticizes-twi...
Now, this is all off topic from the “Twitter Files” but again it’s important to remember that the mythology around conservative oppression is being used to distract from the real point that the laptop story failed to have the impact Giuliani & Trump wanted was because there wasn’t much of substance there and the evidence was tainted by sloppy handling. They’re trying to market it as a tale of censorship because they know that it wasn’t effective as a scandal.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598828932395978752
That mentions that both parties had access to the tools at the time, and both had requests honoured.
But only party was in power at the time, and that was the Trump administration.
To me, it's rather clear that a bunch of people who are not particularly principled or have a strong understanding of the ethics or laws involved, but are prone to thinking that anyone working against their own agenda must be evil or nefarious in some ways, reverse-engineering their way into finding faults with how things more or less have always worked. This also isn't some nefarious hidden secret motivated by partisan concerns. Trump's own Director of FBI, Christopher Wray stated that Russia was attempting to interfere in the presidential election:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-security-idU...
> Russia is determined to interfere in U.S. elections despite sanctions and other efforts to deter such actions before the next presidential election in 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday.
And he specifically told the public what the FBI is doing about this:
https://time.com/5548544/russian-internet-trolls-strategies-...
> FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, said social media remains a primary avenue for foreign actors to influence U.S. elections, and the bureau is working with companies on the problem.
> “What has continued virtually unabated and just intensifies during the election cycles is this malign foreign influence campaign, especially using social media,” Wray said. “That continues, and we’re gearing up for it to continue and grow again for 2020.”
You are getting more and more obtuse. You know this is not the same, but you still use it in your argument.
In this case, FBI asked for the location of the accounts that "Twitter will voluntarily provide to aid the FBI". Ref: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1604191731141984256
Why didn't FBI get a subpoena properly? why asking twitter to voluntarily provide information?
Were the FBI afraid of getting a subpoena for some reason?
FBI asked for the location of the accounts that "Twitter will voluntarily provide to aid the FBI". Ref: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1604191731141984256
> whereas law enforcement may have a genuine law enforcement interest in asking for a company's cooperation.
Then, getting a subpoena shouldn't have been an issue since they have a genuine law enforcement interest. Judges would have an easy time signing the subpoena since this would be totally justified and reasonable. right? right?
Yet FBI decided not to do that and decided to ask Twitter to "volunteer" the information.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/politics/washington-pipe-bomb...
It failed because the bombs were found and because Mike Pence defected or at least chickened out at the last minute.
That’s why they were chanting “hang Mike Pence” not “hang Nancy Pelosi.” What you saw was a rage filled riot in the wake of a failing coup attempt.
Had the bombs gone off and Pence stopped the count a state of emergency would have been declared. I’m not totally convinced of this part but I’ve read that they were expecting a bunch of radical left counter protestors and that the role of the mob was supposed to be to start a big street brawl with Antifa or whoever was supposed to show to help feed into the state of emergency ploy to suspend the election.
It was more elaborately planned than Hitler’s beer hall putsch which was a bunch of Nasis getting blasted at the bar and having a street brawl with police that ended in a very asymmetrical gun fight.
Luckily it probably will end here this time though since Trump is too old, Flynn and Bannon are too obviously kooky, and DeSantis doesn’t have it in him. He knows how to troll the woke for attention but I don’t get hard core fascist vibes from him. He will try to do a Viktor Orban but it won’t work here because America has courts and federalism, and he doesn’t have the balls to attempt a coup. Say what you will about Trump but he did have balls.
Which is substantially less problematic that the sitting President threatening Twitter. Yet here we are.
> Yeah, but the Muller report came out around the time he said that and basically debunked the issue as a serious problem; raising the question of what exactly Wray was trying to stir up. He looks like part of the anti-Trump crowd that has been active in the FBI for the last few years.
This is so far off the mark that it's hard to take you seriously. The Mueller report extensively documented Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2016 election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
> However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion
It didn't exonerate the Trump campaign either. It more or less said that it couldn't prove the collusion in large part due to extensive attempts by the President's attempt to torpedo the investigation. It describes these attempts at obstruction of justice, without specifically accusing him (or exonerating) because Mueller didn't think it would be fair even if he believes a crime occurred:
> The report describes ten episodes where Trump may have obstructed justice while president and one before he was elected, noting that he privately tried to "control the investigation". The report further states that Congress can decide whether Trump obstructed justice and take action accordingly, referencing impeachment
> Mueller's belief that it would be unfair to accuse the president of a crime even without charging him because he would have no opportunity to clear his name in court; furthermore it would undermine Trump's ability to govern and preempt impeachment
Come on, do you really believe this is anything other than the usual trolling that goes on over there: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdXO_XkXgAsIMFy?format=jpg&name=...
Which specific government agency meddling in which specfic election? The Trump Administration meddling in the 2020 election with Hatch Act violations[0]? The FBI releasing a statement (which turned out to be nothing at all) about Hillary Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner's computer[1]?
Or was it the FBI demanding that Twitter take down the NY Post's tweet about their "Hunter Biden laptop" article[2]?
>Personally I wouldn't be comfortable not taking action when the FBI would ask anything from me, because it's safer to just comply.
Then you don't know or understand your rights. And more's the pity.
[0] https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/violations-...
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/what-fbi-found-emails-anthony-weine...
[2] Except the FBI didn't demand (or request, for that matter) any such thing.
>Is this a violation of the 1st Amendment or a way to skirt around it?
Which specific security contractors? Which specific think tanks? The above assertion that you quoted makes several assertions, none of which (at least AFAICT) have any facts, data or evidence attached to them. Perhaps I'm missing something important? If so, what might that be?
What's more,. I receive multiple contacts from DHS daily[0]. And I (as an individual with minimal resources and little ability to "fight" the government) have never felt pressured by the Federal government to do anything.
I'd expect that corporations with multiple billions in revenue (like Twitter) and lawyers on staff would zealously protect their independence and reputation rather than being seen as shills for some shadowy "government conspiracy."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_and_Infrastructu...
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/16048884298162094...
In fact, most of the comments in support of Twitter and the FBI throughout these threads are pretty decisively debunked in the continued reports.
It goes against the essence of socialism and communism.
I know who TERF non-socialist Meghan Murphy is. You can see here that she is not a leftist: https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/06/08/why-i-left-the-left...
She keeps saying she is. She doesn't understand (I mean I'm sure she does, but she's a lying bigot) that socialism and all the wonders of it don't work if youre being a SWERF and TERF. Things don't work that way. You have to want better conditions for every one. Otherwise...how are we giving people equal chances to succeed?
I think the problem is the vast majority of people have no clue what socialism is. Most people have read no socialist texts, but are inundated with right wing and capitalistic propaganda all the time.
tldr: SWERFs and TERFs are not leftists. Like how people like Jordan Peterson (before), Tim Pool, Dave Rubin are all right wingers through and through, but keep pretending they are centrists. You have to act the act. Not just talk. This applies to Meghan Murphy too.
I have spent dozens and dozens and dozens of hours getting into TERFs. Radical feminism didn't originate on the political right, but at this point trans people are dying and in danger. This is abundantly clear to any dyed-in-the-wool socialists in the 2020s. Even if it wasn't clear decades ago. Or even a decade ago.
Unfortunately you showed your true colors deadnaming Jessica and using the incorrect pronouns.
Here's an insightful article she wrote some years ago that dives further into this problem much of "the left" has, framed around their celebration of the prostitution of women: https://www.feministcurrent.com/2011/11/07/why-does-the-left....
She writes:
"While I have long been a supporter of labour rights, of unions, and have counted myself as a fighting member of the working class who has waivered somewhere between socialism and Marxism from the moment I understood the concept of class struggle, I've found myself suddenly misaligned with some of those with whom I share my end of the political spectrum."
"These are the people I vote for. They represent my interests and ideologies and yet, when it comes to the issue of prostitution, it feels as though we've been pitted against one another."
"On one hand there seems to be a distinct lack of class analysis – we forget that there are reasons that some women are prostituted while others are not, that some women have a 'choice' while others do not. On the other, because decriminalization has, in part, been framed as a labour issue (i.e. that this is a job like any other and, therefore, should be treated in the same way any other service sector job is, in terms of laws), the gender and race factors fall to the wayside and we forget that prostitution impacts women and, in particular, racialized women in an inordinate way."
And:
"The reason for a man to buy sex from a woman is, without a doubt, because he desires pleasure without having to give anything in return. This is a male-centered purchase. If we are to define sex as something pleasurable for both parties then how on earth can we define prostitution as sex work? There is something decidedly unprogressive about calling something 'sex' when the act is, in fact, solely about providing pleasure for one party (the male party) without any regard for the woman with whom you are engaging in this supposed 'sex' with. Doesn't this defy the whole enthusiastic consent model?"
"While I certainly support human rights and worker rights, I also support women's rights and believe that, as a feminist, I cannot and will not work towards normalizing the idea that women can and should be bought and sold. I certainly will not promote this as part of my progressive politics."
And much more - the whole article is very much worth reading. Do you not agree that she makes many thoughtful and well-considered points?
The fundamental problem is that within many leftist groups, there is a huge blind spot when it comes to women's issues. It should not be too much to ask that women be spared from male sexual violence, and women be permitted female-only safe spaces away from men.
Please cite some left and right wing texts you have read and understood. Please explain why class solidarity excluding trans and sex workers is still leftist. Write in your own words so I know you understand in-depth nuanced politics and can accept you’re right and I’m wrong.
I wrote my comments to help people reading see the truth. I’m sure with your swagger you will respond in good faith.
Evidence Meghan identifies with ERFs: https://www.feministcurrent.com/2022/12/27/2022-the-year-ter....
