The interview with the repair shop owner is also reduces this story’s already dwindling credibility:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...
I think it's also interesting that the "hacking" ban doesn't have an exemption for the press. Even though the NY Post is fairly partisan even by tabloid standards,it seems like a double standard if I can still link to an NY Times article containing information about classified government activities that were revealed via hacking
The damage is still done then. NYPost knows the article is fake news, and so does Giuliani and the other folks surrounding the article.
But put it there, and by the time your "open discussion" is done, the elections will be over.
In normal circumstances, that doesn't matter. Talk about it, let it fly around the internet and then in a week or so we'll hear the authoritative rebuttal.
However, we are 20 days from the election. People are literally lined up and voting as we speak.
My feelings on this are mixed. It's effectively restoring the "old media" order where random trolls can't steal elections. But it's naturally preventing "the truth" from stealing an election too.
The FBI has confirmed the authenticity of subpoenas in the past and I'm confident that they'd be able to do so before November. Determining if the pictures are photoshopped is trickier but could probably also be done relatively quickly
Edit- I hit reply on the wrong comment, whoops
The purported facts beggar belief -- that an extremely famous person took his laptop, full of extremely damaging material, to a repair shop and then simply forgot about it. That a Mac repair shop owner violated all ethical standards to spy on a customer laptop. That after stealing the customer's laptop and data and finding supposedly treasonous data on it, he gave it to Trump's campaign team instead of the FBI.
There's no evidence that it's true and substantial evidence that it's false.
Repair shops look through equipment all the time-- they're one of the largest sources of reports for child pornography.
> instead of the FBI.
I think you've just proved you didn't even read the NY POST article? It claims he gave the laptop to the FBI and includes a supposed "federal subpoena showing the computer and hard drive were seized by the FBI". The continues, "before turning over the gear, the shop owner says, he made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello"
I have no idea if this stuff is bullshit or not-- presumably the FBI will come out and debunk it completely shortly.
But I don't think the discourse is furthered by opinionated comments from people who don't even give an appearance of having read the article.
There’s no cool cosmic justice here, where the Post loses readership because they publish lies or that politicians will be punished for promoting lies from sources they knew to be bad. There’s just this hazy miasma, where the Post is vaguely not credible but also not totally distrusted, and people forget which politician promoted which story a couple days later.
That means the best way to play the game isn’t to research the truth but to drum up the most fantastical lies you can. That game has nothing but bad outcomes for humanity in the long term, and I don’t blame the platforms for trying extremely flawed approaches to prevent it.
“When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.”
Entirely reasonable sentiment to express.