Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims | Hacker News Reader

Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

bbc.com

780 pointsnkurz1,664 comments

All: don't miss (if it's the kind of thing you want more of) that there are multiple pages of comments in this thread. To reach them, click the More link at the bottom of each page, or like this:

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Why is everyone ignoring @jack's official explanation for why Twitter blocked the specific link from being shared? This is the one falsifiable action Twitter clearly took. Twitters official policy is to not allow publication of hacked material or information with Personally Identifying Information - and this material was hacked and had unredacted personal email addresses. I haven't seen any reasonable arguments against these policies, instead I've seen nebulous accusations of biased censorship.

Twitter is clearly okay with the discussion of these emails - no hashtags or keywords are being suppressed: it was a link to a single story that was blocked since it violated stated policy.

Incidentally, the NYT reports that the US intelligence community heard chatter of the GRU using hacked Burisma emails as an October surprise before the NY Post story broke (a trick so nice, they had to do it twice). I guess no one cares for facts anymore, as long as they see patterns that fit their preconceptions

If this is hacked emails, doesn’t that prove the article is credible?

I'd say the article is self-consistent, but not necessarily credible. I don't think "hack" means literal network intrusion. If the article's own description of the provenance of the information is taken at face value, cloning a hard drive at a repair shop without authorization still qualifies as "hacked", and in violation of Twitter terms.

The "authorization" is provided by the owner of the laptop, which is legally the owner of the shop, since whoever dropped the machine off signed a contract indicating as much.

Surely you provide authorization to perform a data recovery but not to share the data with the media?

Weird the same standard doesn't apply to tax returns by the federal government. Either have principles and stand by them always, or admit you're covering for one side.

The tax returns were obtained from a credible source, meaning that the documents were almost certainly authentic. Meanwhile, the NY Post has made no effort to verify the authenticity of the hacked material, and it is well known that the GRU will mix false documents when they release hacked material to try and amplify the impact.

Also, NYTimes did not disclose any PII in their articles about Trumps taxes. The NY Post couldn't even be bothered to scrub that out.

Furthermore, it has been widely reported that Giuliani was being targeted by the GRU to launder disinformation[1]. This article is from December 2019[2]. Here is a quote from the article:

"Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) suggested over the weekend that any evidence presented by Giuliani should be scrubbed for possible Russian propaganda..."

So there you go. A republican senator, on record. Anyone who has been paying attention was expecting Giuliani to try and stir up an October surprise, and it was widely known that he was probably going to be laundering GRU disinformation.

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/521328-intellig... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/30/giulianis...

This is non-responsive to whether the documents were hacked or not.

The tax returns were absolutely hacked. There is no question that those documents were not legitimately obtained.

No one knows if they were hacked or not, that is the problem. But the cover story is so flimsy caution is warranted in this case. If it turns out the flimsy cover story was true, and if the NY Post removes PII from their story, then twitter will lift the ban. It is not that complicated.

RE: Tax, the NY Times, which has a long history of credible investigative journalism, has stated that their source had legal access to the documents. They were not obtained by their source via a hack. The source most likely did not have permission to share the documents, but the practice of using anonymous, credible sources has a long history in journalism and is widely accepted as ethical. And the practice of laundering RSU disinformation is generally looked down on. And the NY Post has failed to prove that they aren't laundering RSU disinformation.

owner of hard disk =/= owner of information on it. Anything less, means all the data you store on AWS automatically belongs to Amazon to do with as they please.

Any subset of it could've been fabricated or modified to for the narrative.

From my understanding that is what happened in france in 2017

Let's see if the emails have DKIM validation again.

If there's a body hash (bh) parameter, then you can pull the DKIM key from DNS and prove one way or another whether it went through a mailserver with that DKIM private key.

In the context of Twitter's actions and explanation, it doesn't matter. They aren't trying to ascertain the authenticity. Note the policy is against both hacking and doxxing and this story is doxxing regardless of how the emails were obtained.

This is the key point. Twitter blocked the NYPost article before doing any sort of investigation.

Jack is just trying to justify it after the fact.

Just like the policy change he made to privilege government-connected after an extended period of letting Trump get away with violating Twitter’s supposed rules. For some reason, the Trumpeters never combined about that retrospective justification.

The Jack giveth, the Jack taketh away...

That's what happens with a free press when you are at first see as a benefit and later a liability to the person who owns a press...

"policy change he made to privilege government-connected after"

???

How does this constitute hacking?

The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed deviced after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop. The data is theirs to do with as they please and they chose to publish it (at least, that's the story). No hacking necessary.

> The data is theirs to do with as they please. No hacking necessary.

I'd love to see the jurisprudence on this. If there are any photos, do they also get the copyrights? Can they share any nudes they find? How about that Adobe license?

As a non-lawyer, it is clear that owning the medium doesn't mean you own the information on it (or the cloud wouldn't be a thing). If we agree on that, then logically, it is possible to exfiltrate information that does not belong to you without authorization, which I think can be called "hacking".

Ownership of data is not the same as ownership of publication rights. However, the pictures and emails in question were clearly not copyrighted or licensed.

If transferring ownership of a physical data storage device does not constitute transferring ownership of the data stored therein, then I don't know what does.

When it comes to the cloud, that sounds more to me like leasing storage rights, but I'm no lawyer.

However, the pictures and emails in question were clearly not copyrighted or licensed.

I think you misunderstand US copyright law. With few exceptions, almost all pictures and emails are copyright by whoever took the picture or wrote the email. Is there some reason that these would not qualify?

> I think you misunderstand US copyright law.

I probably do. This is the first I've heard of that.

Regardless, the NY Post article in question did not publish any of the pictures and I doubt the same copyright law applies to emails.

It looks like copyright does apply to the vast majority of emails based on the text of applicable laws.

"Northeastern University Law Review: Do Not Forward: Why Passing Along an Email May Constitute Copyright Infringement"

http://nulawreview.org/extralegalrecent/do-not-forward-why-p...

However, the issue has not been well tested in courts. The piece ends by saying "Congress should act to clarify whether and when forwarding an email infringes the author’s reproduction right in the work."

Since when has any news outlet considered copyright when publishing information of public interest? That is core fair use.

If copyright applied in cases like this, any politician who said or wrote something embarrassing could block reporting it.

Usually the embarrassing information is published before the embarrassed party is aware that their dirty laundry is about to go public. Once the information is out there, a copyright infringement suit is usually an irrelevant or losing move for managing the politician's image. I would rate this story worse for Biden if he filed a copyright infringement suit against the computer repair guy or the Post, for example. Using copyright could prevail legally yet lose in the more politically important court of public opinion.

>Is there some reason that these would not qualify?

I believe excerpts of pictures or emails taken for news reporting qualifies as fair use. It's not like they showed the whole picture, they just cropped his face with the crack pipe in his mouth. Likewise, the full emails where they discuss illegally peddling influence and pay for play with all the headers wasn't published. Just select emails with enough metadata to give context.

Copyright doesn't supersede the first amendment right of free press. At worst, the NYPost is on the hook for $150,000 per violation. They can probably make that much and then some on the scoop. It may be worth it to them, even if they lose on a fair use argument. It's a huge scoop in October of an election year.

All true, in my not-a-lawyer opinion. The important addition is that "fair use" is a defense that allows the use of copyrighted material in certain circumstances. Like a book review that includes an excerpt from a novel, the underlying material is still protected by copyright. It doesn't mean the material is "not copyrighted"---the whole reason fair use applies is because it is protected by copyright. Practically all emails and photos that contain any element of originality are protected by copyright.

US news publishers are not prohibited from publishing copyrighted information for the purpose of making the news. That’s part of the First Amendment.

Whether the repair shop owner had copyright to the content is totally irrelevant. He had legal possession of the drive, and handed it to a journalist who found something newsworthy on it.

Almost every single major story every told in modern history will contain essentially the same type of information transfer, and it is not illegal for the journalist to use this information or publish it if it’s newsworthy.

Sometimes a source can go to jail for sharing the information. But almost certainly that won’t happen in this case, because there is no evidence that the repair shop owner did anything wrong. In fact, he was the one who called the FBI!

>Whether the repair shop owner had copyright to the content is totally irrelevant. He had legal possession of the drive, and handed it to a journalist who found something newsworthy on it.

No. He handed it to a lawyer working for the President of the US' personal lawyer (Rudy Guiliani), not a journalist. Guiliani handed it to the NY Post and then worked with them.

The nudes isn't even hypothetical - reportedly the data included intimate videos.

So is all piracy hacking?

S/hacking/violation of CFAA or similar state statute. Hacking is often used as a shortcut for “computer crime”.

Should Twitter ban all copyright-infringing images by saying they violate a rule against "hacking"? Almost all memes are copyright-infringing.

...no? I was just clarifying what was meant by hacking.

I was more asking about what Twitter's view is. If they consider copyright violation to be hacking, and they have a rule against hacking, do they ban all copyright violation with that rule.

Considering copyright violation to be hacking seems pretty out there to me, and I haven't seen clear evidence that Twitter actually holds that point of view.

I made no such argument - I was establishing rules around ownership of information when the medium belongs to someone else, seeing that you cannot hack your own information (gp's argument)

>How does this constitute hacking?

IIUC, the idea is that the whole thing was a setup from start to finish:

1. Burisma emails were hacked;

2. Hunter Biden's iCloud account was hacked;

3. They bought a Mac, dumped a bunch of the hacked photos, along with some real hacked emails and some forged ones;

4. Sent someone over to the computer shop with the frame up on the laptop already in place;

5. Either the store owner was complicit from the beginning, or they just used him as a dupe.

The above may or may not be true. But again, IIUC that's the line that Twitter is taking.

If that's what Twitter believe (or can credibly claim to believe), then they're executing the policies in their TOS.

I'm not saying it's true, and I'm not saying it ain't. That's just my understanding of Twitter's stand on this.

That seems like an extraordinarily risky undertaking. You would certainly be found out and face real consequences.

Remember the guy got the FBI involved, which would make the whole operation a federal crime.

Look up the Skripal poisoning. Russian agents have operated in NATO countries before to do stuff like this.

That said, the “hack” theory is pretty weak, I believe it mainly relies on a coincidence that Burisma was hacked last year https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hacke...

However, the computer shop guy claims the laptop was dropped off in early 2019 and this article says the Russians hacked Burisma in November 2019. The email PDFs themselves provided by the NY Post are dated September 2019, so stuff doesn’t add up here.

There is no shortage of Republican operatives that will risk jail time to further their cause. See [1] for example.

And regarding the FBI, they were hoping that the FBI would open some sort of investigation, which would give the issue much more credibility. But that failed, so plan b was to just hand it over to NY Post.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-...

Even if that scenario is true, there is zero evidence to corroborate it, nor has there been any concluded official investigation into the matter. I don't think it's fair for Twitter to execute that portion of their policy based on assumption alone.

> Even if that scenario is true, there is zero evidence to corroborate it,

I'm not saying that there is.

That's just my understanding of Twitter's reasoning, not a defense of them or anyone else.

Don't shoot the messenger, eh?

Meanwhile Steve Scully was suspended, reportedly because his twitter account was not hacked, as previously claimed, so sometimes the "hack" claims are spurious and need time to be sorted out.

There's zero evidence to corroborate anything, though, including plausible scenarios where publishing this information is either illegal or foreign electoral interference or both. And, as far as it goes, not even the Post's story has any evidence to verify it. Even the emails' authenticity is still in question, which would be trivial to verify if Giuliani and the Post simply released the raw emails instead of image files.

If that were true, we would already be hearing denials about those emails. The fact that we haven't, indicates to me that they are instead going to tack on the "official Biden schedule shows he didn't meet with this guy" line because the emails are legit.

They already said precisely that.

It's perfectly plausible that the Biden campaign has no idea if they're authentic or not, because neither he nor anyone on his campaign were on them. The only people who actually know if they're authentic or not are Hunter Biden, the sender, and anyone who has the emails. Which, incidentally, includes the NYP, who could mathematically prove their authenticity instantly by simply publishing them in the raw. In fact, if the NYP did any due diligence at all, they already verified the emails themselves. Which raises the question: why are they publishing just the images?

My bet is that the NYP didn't bother to verify the emails, because they don't even know how to do basic due diligence on these types of things. (I would guess they're authentic though, FWIW.)

Could be a "drip drip" play - wait for the people in question to explicitly deny the authenticity of the messages, then drop the raws for maximum impact. The longer they sit on this, though, the less likely that is, and I'm not sure if I trust the Post to be savvy enough for that kind of thing.

That's exactly what this is. 'Expect more bombshells in the coming days' -- Rudy Guilliani

> Hunter Biden

You're right - my comment was written under the assumption that the Biden camp has enough access to Hunter that they could verify the authenticity of the emails. I'll add: I would be shocked if that were not the case.

Regardless of my personal feelings about the NYP, my guess is they probably did verify to some extent and I agree that they are probably authentic.

I can understand the temptation of doing this sort of "slow the spread" if you're a social media platform faced with Trump, my worry is when that gets turned around and deployed against the Left, or against anti-trust, etc. I'm already getting near daily push notifications from Uber telling me which way to vote in California elections, I'm terrified of what the future holds where Twitter et al. can ban certain messages from even being sent to friends.

My mental model of Hunter Biden is a well-coiffed crack addict, who probably has said and done a thousand things and as likely as not has no clue what scams he was engaged in in 2015. He could potentially verify the emails; he could hem and haw out of embarrassment; he could lie; he could have himself lost access to the emails, which were, after all, downloaded onto the laptop he ostensibly lost.

And suppose you're a campaign operative, and you've been tasked with finding out from Hunter whether the emails are authentic or not. He swears that they're not. Next question: do you bet the campaign on his honesty?

> my guess is they probably did verify to some extent

Probably verifying to some extent is frustrating when it's trivial to mathematically prove authenticity via DKIM.

As far as social media and big tech goes, as soon as they took on this role of moral arbiters of the world, they signed onto an endless stream of these controversies. This is the world we live in now.

> he could have himself lost access to the emails, which were, after all, downloaded onto the laptop he ostensibly lost. And suppose you're a campaign operative, and you've been tasked with finding out from Hunter whether the emails are authentic or not. He swears that they're not. Next question: do you bet the campaign on his honesty?

This was in 2019 - I'm assuming that the emails are backed up somewhere.

> they took on this role of moral arbiters of the world

Who gave them this role? I certainly didn't and I will donate to anyone who supports taking this role from them.

> This was in 2019 - I'm assuming that the emails are backed up somewhere.

Where? The laptop was lost in 2019, but the emails are from 2015. At some point they were on his company's mail servers, though whether they're still there would depend on their mail retention policy, which in my experience is often as short as 2 years. Even if they do still have it, going from campaign to Hunter Biden to ??? to IT personnel can take awhile.

> Who gave them this role? I certainly didn't and I will donate to anyone who supports taking this role from them.

I mean, if you're on Facebook/Twitter/etc, you are giving them this role, it's just a tradeoff you find acceptable for convenience.

"I sure hope this computer repairmen scans the data of our abandoned computer, realizes what it contains, and turns the data over to Rudy Giuliani or equivalent."

If the store owner was in on it, then he's taking a heckuva gamble on this working out right, with relatively little (known) reward.

The claimed story seems simpler.

That isn’t a credible argument. Why would Hunter Biden, whose dad is running for President, leave his laptop at a Trump-supporting discount computer repair shop without paying with (supposedly) incriminating emails on it? It’s so convoluted... it only makes sense if you wanted to fabricate cover for illegally hacking someone’s data (or more likely, modified and/or falsified data) and releasing it. As it is, the computer repair shop doesn’t own copyright of the PII and has no right to release it.

He's left valuable stuff before. He left his wallet and a crack pipe in a rental car that he returned. Some people are just forgetful.

Aside from the leak, it's also not the loss that it would be for most of us. He's rich. He had some sort of iCloud backup thing (sorry not a Mac user) to restore all the data, so he wasn't missing anything. Picking up an old laptop wouldn't be worthwhile if a replacement arrived before the old one was repaired.

The loss is that he left (supposedly) incriminating data on a laptop. That is incredibly valuable no matter how rich he supposedly is. It's just not a credible argument.

(And again, note that the repair shop owner never saw who dropped off the laptop. He just inferred it was Hunter Biden because there was apparently a Beau Biden sticker on the laptop.)

Have you ever interacted over a period of time with a crack addict?

Crackhead does not think the same way or act in any sort of reasonable manner. Well sometimes they do and then next day they break into a house crack a woman on the head killing her and get put into prison. While having enough money in the bank to stay high for years. It does not make sense but that is what one former classmate of mine did.

None of it surprising in any way.

This “(supposedly) incriminating data” is incredibly valuable and (presumably incriminating) circumstantial evidence of illegal drug use is not?

Why would you smoke crack when you know the navy would drug test you?

Why would you knock up a stripper while cheating on your dead brothers widow who you were also dating?

How the contents of that laptop made their way to the news is a bizarre story. But that dude also made some bizarre decisions.

> Why would you smoke crack when you know the navy would drug test you?

Because you are addicted.

Not following the details of the story, but has anyone suggested that Hunter dropped off the laptop himself?

Stealing a laptop and causing a bit of damage to initiate a costly repair, then leaving it with a shop under an assumed name seems like a solid Mitnick-level hack to me.

I think the most likely scenario is that he went on a bender (he has well known substance abuse problems) and locked himself out, dropped it off to get it fixed, and forgot about it. This seems much more plausible than some of the other extremely complex theories which assume that, ahem, Rudy Gulianni (of all people) was able to plan a years long scam to procure this particular computer.

Is there any evidence the computer is legit? The only indisputable thing is the photos right? And those could have been hacked from anywhere. Or am I missing something? (I haven’t studied it much)

There's lots of stuff on there that only Hunter would know. It's legit.

Or, none of the leaked data came from the "computer" in question. Hunter's iCloud backup was hacked, Burisma's internal emails were breached by the GRU last year. Combine those two sources, mix real correspondences with some forgeries, and blame it all on a single laptop a MAGA supporter happened upon in rural Delaware.

Makes perfect sense, if you want it to.

Yeah, sure, certainly plausible. But that's a lot more complicated than a guy who has a substance abuse problem doing things with his computer that a guy with a substance abuse problem would probably do (btw Hunter is sober now, I think).

> certainly plausible

You missed my sarcasm. If you believe son of the Vice President abandoned his laptop in rural Deleware to a Trump supporter to eventually give it to the Trump campaign, I have several bridges in NY to sell you.

Ha, well hat tip to you my friend. Poe's Law strikes again.

As if this needed clarification (it very much did not):

https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/

They have Hunder's signature on the receipt

Here is a good explanation of what likely happened[1]. The laptop shows up at this repair shop in early 2019, and the shop owner "declared that because he is legally blind, he could not identify the person who brought it in".

Supposedly, this blind shop owner then gains access to the computer (doesn't say how, was it unprotected?) and it contains lewd videos of Hunter (again, blind shop owner). So he copies the drive (which is likely illegal in Delaware) and then he reached out to the FBI, or the FBI reached out to him, or someone else reached out to the shop owner (i.e. Rudy) and told him to reach out to the FBI. We don't really know because they can't get their story straight on that one.

Months later, and the FBI still hasn't announced an investigation, so they go to Plan B and Rudy hands the (likely illegally ) copied hard drive over to the NY Post.

Even if you believe their story, the shop owner likely broke some laws by copying and handing over PII to NY Post. But I am personally more inclined to believe that either the laptop was planted by someone, or that shop owner (who is an avid Trump supporter) was in on the ruse, and that the laptop/source material was not accidentally left by Hunter.

[1] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/15/1986703/-Dezinfo...

Hunter Biden's iCloud backup was hacked, which isn't too hard. Combine those real photos with some real (and some fake) emails the GRU hacked from Burisma last year, you have a ready-made "October surprise".

The degree in which you "fall for it" is the degree in which you want to see Trump reelected. No one that could fog a mirror would normally believe such nonsense.

The FBI had Hunter Biden's laptop (or really repair shop owner's, since he didn't pick it up or pay the $85 repair bill) since December of last year. This should be fairly easy to corroborate. That's why we aren't hearing on-the-record denials. There's a lot more where that came from, and it's likely real.

The FBI investigated the circumstances in which the Trump campaign ended up with Hunter Biden's photos and emails.

That doesn't corroborate the story, it compromises it.

> it compromises it

How? The laptop does exist, so at a minimum this is not an outright fabrication, allusions to which I've seen several times in the comments here. The veracity of the photos of crackhead Hunter seems to be also beyond reasonable doubt. As is the fact that he was magically getting millions of dollars for things he has no expertise in, for some reason. The veracity of emails can likely be confirmed by the FBI using DKIM.

A better question would be why this did not come up during the impeachment hearings. There's some exculpatory evidence on that laptop.

FWIW, using language like 'crackhead Hunter' is a pretty strong tell that you are a troll. If you want engage in debate on HN, I suggest you clean it up a bit.

And to answer your question, the intelligence community believes that this is GRU disinformation[1]. So that is why this wasn't used in the impeachment hearings. And also why the FBI is not investigating this.

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/521328-intellig...

There's literally a picture of him with a crack pipe in his mouth. He's factually a crackhead.

Also, you might want to avoid such categorical statements, because one of Devon Archer's business associates has recently flipped and provided his emails as well. Those corroborate the "China" arc of the story. Note that the story you linked is a repost of a WaPo story, which itself has no on-the-record corroboration from ODNI, FBI or DOJ. So I'm pretty sure it's fake news.

Images can be faked. Videos can be faked. I can make a deepfake video using open source tools with a few hours of work. There is a video floating around on the internet that shows Trump in a hotel with women peeing on the bed. Mainstream news doesn't report on that video because the origin of the video is uncertain. NY Post has made zero effort to verify the authenticity of the documents they have. And they are a right wing tabloid, so have no prior credibility to trade on.

And please post links to your sources. Until then, I am going to go out on a limb and assume that the reason you are not doing so is because they are also coming from sites with little to no credibility.

Authenticity of the image is not disputed by Bidens. :-) Hunter Biden also left drug paraphernalia in the rental car when returning it. There's a police report to that effect. His history of addiction to illicit drugs is even corroborated by CNN, which would gladly sweep it under the rug, if it could. Seriously, this is not a good hill to die on.

And the authenticity of the pee tape has not been disputed by Trump :)[1]

Everyone is aware that Hunter has had drug issues. But HN is not the place to be calling someone a crackhead. Go to reddit for that.

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/pee-tape-unclear-deepfake

> And the authenticity of the pee tape has not been disputed by Trump

Now you're just making shit up. It has been, numerous times.

> There's literally a picture of him with a crack pipe in his mouth. He's factually a crackhead.

It was a meth pipe. If you got something so basic wrong, why would anything else you said be true?

As if this needed clarification (it very much did not):

https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/

Wouldn't it classify as hacking if the data had any encryption? Bypassing encryption to reach copyrighted media would be a DMCA violation if nothing else.

No clue if any encryption was used though, and either way the doxxing restriction could stop it.

OSX has had FileVault enabled by default since 2014, though we don't know how old the laptop in question actually is.

It's not hacking to decrypt your own data. The argument is, and the precedent set by law supports, that failure to pay for and retrieve the device after a set period of time transfers ownership. It's basically the legal grounds of "finders keepers"

People keep asserting that ownership of the data passed to the shop owner, but it's not at all clear that's the case.

1) Assuming Biden did bring and abandon the laptop, what do state laws generally say about data ownership? What does Delaware law say about it?

2) We can't assume it was Biden who brought the laptop. Suppose it was stolen: naively, I'd guess ownership can't pass to the store owner, because the person who brought it didn't own it in the first place. But who knows: IANAL. What if the laptop was legitimately owned by someone not Biden, but they stole Biden's data and moved it to the laptop before abandoning it?

3) Again naively, it appears that the shop owner definitely and Giuliani potentially distributed intimate videos of Hunter Biden without his consent. That would seem to run afoul of revenge porn laws, which are on the books in both Delaware (as of 2014) and New York (as of July 2019).

I don't know if the blanket assertions you're making are accurate or useful. At the very least, they need to be fleshed out, and there's way too little information available right now to say conclusively that the owner of the shop broke no laws.

That would still violate the DMCA where owning data isn't important.

> The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed deviced after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop. The data is theirs to do with as they please and they chose to publish it (at least, that's the story). No hacking necessary.

The "repair shop" is almost certainly a poorly-convinced backstory as to the origin of the hacked materials.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-intelligence-analysts-hac...

But you are right in saying that hasn't been confirmed yet.

Well that policy is terrible. It doesn't matter if it is in line with one or another bureaucratic policy, it's still censorship.

Twitter adopted this policy because they know that progressives are more likely to be compromised by leaked information

...are you suggesting that progressives have more "dirty laundry" than conservatives in general?

Or that conservatives are more likely to dox people?

Or that conservatives tend to be older and less likely to use technology for storing sensitive photos

> ...are you suggesting that progressives have more "dirty laundry" than conservatives in general?

Yes. For one thing, if there ever collusion in 2016, it came from the Democrats now established pay-for-play policies, selling US influence to the highest bidder. Once again, knowledge of these actions required multiples hack/leaks to be disclosed.

> ...are you suggesting that progressives have more "dirty laundry" than conservatives in general?

In general yes, that is true. Or said another way: Progressives say different things internally and externally, far more often than Conservative's do.

Usually when Conservatives' emails are hacked there is nothing in them that people don't already know.

Note: I'm not making any judgement on the content of what they say, just the difference between what they say internally vs. externally.

The alternate assumption is that both sides are being hacked by a third party, but the third party only releases hacked info from one side...

I don't think we should ever take the CEO's official explanation of the reason something happened unless its under oath with clear evidence, otherwise its just PR.

When PR is strategically relevant, the official explanation is a strategic move. So, yes, you should pay attention in this case, even if it's not the whole story.

I dont know, I think this is some sort of thing to protect twitter honestly, in case someone hacks and posts something from Twitter. How is hacking any different from stealing? Surely news stories with stolen and even classified content are allowed, I don't understand why hacking is so different.

So obviously no Wikileaks or any “sources inside the $agency with access to information” (but with no clearance to leak) cannot be published on Twitter any more, right? No guessing in who poisoned Navalni, etc... Got it!

I mean, you can logical fallacy all you want here but this isn't what OP said at all. I'm not agreeing one way or another, but holy weak argument.

It's good to hear we can't publish any leaked information about Trump's tax returns, re the NY Times, a story Twitter intentionally allowed to run at max distribution, along with dozens of prominent anti-Trump stories that ended up being baseless over the last four years which the media happily concocted.

Everyone here knows exactly what's going on and it's rotten as can be.

Which publication do you think has better journalistic integrity? NY Post or NY Times?

Do you think those screenshots of emails were well vetted given the simplicity of verifying email header info if it had been published?

> NY Post or NY Times?

After the 1619 Project, I'm not even sure anymore.

Unless you have a factual error you'd like to report, citing the 1619 project is a tell that you don't like it's conclusions, and anything you dont like is "fake news".

Are you aware that the 1619 Project has been heavily criticised from within the NY Times?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opinion/nyt-1619-project-...

https://i.imgur.com/7zadiIM.png

Yes I am aware. Bret Stephens was hired to write headlines like this, to appeal to the "fair and balanced" crowd (which will always fail, nothing will ever be enough).

The fact that NYT didn't post this story says more about their bias than the legitimacy of the story itself. You know full well they would post a story with this level of verifiability if it was damaging for Trump.

> this level of verifiability

As far as I know, literally nothing about the story has been verified.

Are you saying the photos and videos are fakes made by some ML algorithm?

For all you know the Post validated the content itself as real.

The photos are legit, obviously, but the emails as are yet not authenticated. All we got to see was a PDF printout. The full emails, with DKIM headers, being released would solve this problem instantly.

The only practical way for the Post to verify the authenticity of the emails is via the DKIM signature. It's also trivial for them to share the emails and their headers as opposed to just sharing screenshots of them, if they're interested in making it easy to verify the emails' authenticity.

I'd say there's a far better chance the photos and videos are real than the emails. Given Biden's political connections I think getting videos of his kid smoking crack would be considered very valuable compared to what it would cost to have some party pal take the video.

Think about how well it works for a scenario like this. Using real videos to legitimize fake emails is an easy win, especially if you don't release either. No on can disprove the legitimacy of the emails and if Biden says they're total BS you release the real videos to add more legitimacy and give the whole thing another news cycle. Then you claim victory and go silent.

I think that's there point 0 verification and "anonymous sources" is all that's needed vs trump but for everyone else there is at-least some due diligence.

> Which publication do you think has better journalistic integrity?

Should that matter if the criteria for Twitter is whether something contains hacked/leaked materials or PII? Big news often contain the former and most articles contain the latter. Twitter would lose a lot of journalists if they went down that route. Might be good for the sanity of the users though.

I actually do think it matters. I also think there should be a distinction between things leaked by a whistleblower and things leaked by a thief or a patsy. However, since whistleblowers are often putting themselves at significant risk, we end up relying on the integrity of the journalists / publications in terms of taking their word for the legitimacy of the source.

So yeah. A publication that makes a significant effort to vet their source and the story deserves the benefit of the doubt while a publication that acts as a click-bait tabloid without any kind of investigative effort doesn't.

That said, I think Twitter is grasping a bit and trying to use a policy that's right or wrong when the reality is more subjective.

The other thing I don't understand is how revisiting section 230 of the DMCA and turning Twitter into a publisher is going to improve things. If the current publishers don't suffer any repercussions for anything, how will it be different if Twitter is considered the publisher? They're looking for a whipping boy IMO.

I very much do agree with you with regards to giving more trust to companies (or individual journalists) with a good track record. My issue is mostly that Twitter isn't using that as a policy (at least not as a stated policy) but a more vague thing like "can't contain information gained by unauthorized access" and then applies that selectively.

I kind of understand why they don't, because that would likely be hard to quantify and you'd have to decide what basket a company goes into, which would act as a gate keeper (if you don't have a good track record, or none at all, you can't publish visibly) and they'd likely have to constantly monitor for changes. Not something that scales well or can be automated, and definitely something where they'd get roasted each time the NYT commits a faux pas.

> If the current publishers don't suffer any repercussions for anything, how will it be different if Twitter is considered the publisher?

True. In a post-fact world, consequences for publishers reporting falsehoods might need to come back on the table. On the one hand that's a problem because it stifles reporting, on the other hand they have been playing very loose and saying "oops, sorry, we'll do better next time, promise" every time doesn't work.

Well said.

> In a post-fact world, consequences for publishers reporting falsehoods might need to come back on the table. On the one hand that's a problem because it stifles reporting, on the other hand they have been playing very loose and saying "oops, sorry, we'll do better next time, promise" every time doesn't work.

That one flip-flops in my head all the time. Maybe the idea of reduced liability or a higher bar for proving libel / slander in a civil suit against a publisher might be an option, but with _some_ exposure to liability. There has to be a threshold where high quality publishers could bear the costs of honest mistakes, but bad actors would be overwhelmed financially.

You're not even trying to hide that policies don't matter. Apparently it's all about whether you agree with the author or not.

Social media sites are legally entitled to censure things they disagree with, but it's dishonest how they portray themselves as being non-partizan.

> Social media sites are legally entitled to censure things they disagree with

That's right. But when they do that, can they claim that they are a 'platform' and not a 'publisher' ?

If paulX is a for-profit-business can he claim that his business a non profit and apply tax code designed for non-profit charities ?

The NYTimes just said “trust me, we have the returns, but no, you can’t see them”.

I don’t see a whole lot of difference here.

Exactly. I guess banning content on a private platform by its private owner is totally okay, at least legally. Banning content with double standards, though, makes the platform editorial, which means people should be able to sue the company left and right.

And hacked in what way? Didn't the repair shop owner take ownership of the computer after repeatedly asking for payment but not getting it? Didn't the owner give the hard drive first to FBI, then to a few media, and then to Giuliani?

As for fact checkers, Twitter didn't really fact check those media who give a report that says "anonymous source says", right? Twitter didn't really fact check that Jack Tapper contradicted himself now and in 2016 on exactly the same fine people hoax, right? Twitter didn't really fact check The Project 1619 that teaches us to hate America with a long list of inaccuracies (if not outright lies) or the critical race theory that claims that all white people are born racists or Asian people are complicit racists because they bought the values like working hard or being good at STEM, right? Or why isn't leaked tax records not "hacked"(FWIW, I'm only arguing the definition of "hacked", not whether it's good or bad to reveal tax record).

Oh wait, I guess I'm not exactly following the righteous narratives here, as all the morally superior mainstream media are doing. So this makes me a what? A bigot? A Nazi? A brown but really white supremacist? A racist?

The rest of your polemic aside, specifically what do you think makes Twitter more susceptible to lawsuits here?

I'm assuming it's a reference to the fact that engaging in editorial conduct voids a platform's section 230 safe harbor.

> Banning content with double standards, though, makes the platform editorial, which means people should be able to sue the company left and right.

Unless Section 230 gets repealed, it's the exact opposite, actually.

Yeah, Section 230 protects them, and I think Twitter shouldn't be protected by 230 for their actions.

> and I think Twitter shouldn't be protected by 230 for their actions

I don't see how. Their actions are explicitly what are protected:

> Civil liability - No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of

> (A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

What do the words “in good faith” mean in that context?

> What do the words “in good faith” mean in that context?

Essentially nothing, which is why a few of the proposed bills to punish tech companies for removing content have tried to turn that into a clause with teeth.

Basically if you took twitters actions and did the exact opposite it would be "in good faith". They just don't give a fuck since they assume they won't suffer consequences.

Hiding negative articles about Biden that wouldn't have been hidden if they were about Trump goes under which of those kinds? Section 230 lets you filter out unrelated disturbing content like porn, it doesn't let you inject political bias.

> Section 230 lets you filter out unrelated disturbing content like porn, it doesn't let you inject political bias.

It's important to remember that it's the first amendment that protects Twitter ability to filter anything it wants on its own platform, but it's the "material that the provider or user considers...otherwise objectionable" part of Section 230 that maintains the liability shield for other content that remains on their platform. That covers removal of essentially any content.

Whether it covers it or not is up to the courts to decide.

At a certain point moderation becomes speech. Literally these words are not my words, they are Meriam-Webster’s. I just chose which ones to include in my comment. In so doing I convey a particular message.

If it forces wikileaks to redact the CC details of innocent bystanders then I'm all for it.

I believe they did that without needing promting from Twitter's policy censoring political speech

Twitter would've never picked up on it because the database I'm thinking of that they leaked was basically just a list of donors (i.e. leaking democrat data fits their priors https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...)

I wouldn't mind the policy if it was enforced equally.

Did Twitter block the NYT story on Trump's taxes, which they did not have any official authority for having?

Do you not know the answer to your question?

People ignore what @Jack says because he has a record of saying dumb shit that doesn't pass the sniff test.

Yeh but what about wikileaks, trumps taxes, and so many other story. But even if it was policy the fact they banned the press secretary of the united states should give everyone pause.

Should the press secretary’s Twitter account get special treatment?

Yes.

I figured the rules applied to everyone when they sign the TOS.

When the internet has a publicly owned space that no private entity controls, you get to make that argument. Until then, platforms like Twitter are the next best thing we have to a public square (and in fact really the ONLY online public square), and that means that when our public political figures speak their voices must be made heard.

Arguing otherwise simply justifies using the rules as a sledgehammer to silence voices you don't like. The WH Press Secretary is a very, very loud voice that should be listened to whether you like it or not. She said nothing mean, nothing cruel, nothing divisive or illegal or inciting violence, she linked to a news story by the 4th largest publication in the US. This is about as vanilla as you can get and it is completely unjustifiable to block her account just for that.

Twitter.com is not a public square. It’s a private property and they can kick your ass off whenever they feel like it, for any reason.

You know perfectly well that that's not a satisfying argument to what I said. Try again.

And, you're wrong by the way. Courts have already ruled more than once that it is, which is why Trump's account still exists.

You're wrong by the way. Trump's account exists because Twitter makes money off of him.

Are you aware of the term "public easement"? In many jurisdictions you are not able to block public access to your "private property" once the public gets accustomed to accessing that property. Same thing should apply here. You don't get to just open your private property for everyone to use and then close it for people you don't like politically many years later.

Twitter has a terms of service that you must agree to before using. These aren’t the same thing.

Twitter has already, on several occasions, been forced by the courts on "public square" grounds to take actions Twitter didn't want to for political reasons.

You're looking at the leaf on the tree and assuring everyone you see the forest.

Section 203 made them a public square because unlike the private property who would be liable for whats done on that land twitter gets a pass. And its looking more and more like they shouldn't. And if that happens twitter wont exist.

==The WH Press Secretary is a very, very loud voice that should be listened to whether you like it or not.==

This sounds pretty authoritarian. I can think of plenty of times this wouldn’t be true. What if she directly invited violence or knowingly spread foreign propaganda?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/feds-exam...

How exactly is it authoritarian to say that the press secretary for the president of the United States shouldn't have their means of communications, on what's become essentially a public commons, rate limited by a corporation? The problem with your argument, and frankly more than half of the arguments in this clusterfuck of a comment thread, is that if we want to go that way we have to argue in favor of corporate sovereignty given the power these companies have. That's gross to me, for probably a dozen or so reasons.

Because nobody should be above the rules they agree to before using. You are arguing for political immunity based on holding a job that is neither elected nor approved by elected officials. That is authoritarian, whether or not you find it “gross”.

Your desires to insult those who disagree with you and fast forward to some “corporate sovereignty” fantasy aren’t relevant to the discussion of whether this action broke the terms Twitter has laid out.

==if we want to go that way we have to argue in favor of corporate sovereignty given the power these companies have.==

Or, we just allow them to manage their users, user agreements, and platform like we do other businesses. Your argument is to take that power away from companies and give it to government.

Who is talking about political immunity? I want to hear what my officials are saying! You would deny me that right. Who is the authoritarian here?

If it is not clear to you yet, there is no recourse to logical discussion. The desire to "silence" certain voices has been expressed clearly, and influential institutions have already led the way in this regard.

I predict that your views will likely find a far more receptive audiance in the generations that will follow. What is happening now is the result of decades of pedagogical prepration, and generations that really do not know what it is like to live under authoritarian regimes or cultures.

Those of us who immigrated to United States precisely to escape authoritarianism recognize the signs full and well. It is quite unsettling to see what is happening in this nation.

I know! I never thought I’d see unmarked government agents roaming American cities disappearing people [1]. Maybe the uproar over a private company enforcing their TOS is actually meant to distract from the true authoritarian threat?

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-us...

"[A] private company enforcing their TOS" is a disingenuous characterization of the issue. A de-facto public communication platform -- the "consumer product" in your 'technicalities' world view -- is obstructing disemination of expression.

Unmarked officers of the state grabbing people off the streets is not acceptable, either.

Both are features of mickey mouse states, the world over. There are various assumptions we make, when we try and make sense of the world. Most of these assumptions are based on good faith. Suspending disbelief regarding the unspoken possibilities for actual dynamics in play affords the insight that the above 2 items are not necessarily at odds for some interested actors.

==“[A] private company enforcing their TOS" is a disingenuous characterization of the issue. A de-facto public communication platform -- the "consumer product" in your 'technicalities' world view -- is obstructing disemination of expression.==

It is obstructing the dissemination of things that break its TOS. Should people be allowed to dox others on Twitter? People get banned for calls for violence pretty frequently.

What makes Twitter a “de-facto communication platform”? Is tiktok? Skype? Instagram? Twitter isn’t a public square, but the internet is, and this story is readily available on the internet.

Then you probably want to know that your public servants are doing that, don't you? Rather than not know at all? Authoritarian would be you're not allowed to know at all. I'm pretty sure we tried that sometime in history, oh that just rings a bell... and it didn't work out so well then.

Or didn't you realize that this insanity cuts both ways?

> Arguing otherwise simply justifies using the rules as a sledgehammer to silence voices you don't like.

Arguably, this is the purpose of every rule ever made in any context (if you follow the chain of reasoning far enough)

The internet itself is the public square. There is an immense amount of publicly owned space online. Take for example:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/

One of thousands of places online that the white house fully controls, where the press secretary can say whatever she wants, accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

For some private individuals a twitter ban, coupled with bans from a dozen other internet hubs, might be a difficult hurdle to overcome, as starting a new site and then getting traffic to it is difficult due to network effects. But to claim that public officials have no means of having their voices heard besides twitter is patently absurd.

Hey, when everyone is hanging out over at whitehouse.gov, let me know.

Until then your argument is beside the point.

No. The White House Press Office does not need a twitter account. They can issue press releases and hold press conferences, and both will be widely covered by the national media or view on the internet. There is no reason they need to use twitter.

Of course it should. Not only practically because twitter shouldn't be monitoring the government that polices it, but also cause if that government lets say strips twitter protections it would be dumb of twitter to have done.

Twitter's "rules" would have stopped huge stories like The Pentagon Papers, Panama Papers, Watergate, etc from being posted on their platform. The statement read like it was typed up by an intern that didn't communicate with the legal team or any logical person.

(edited for clarification)

>Twitter's "rules" would have stopped huge stories like The Pentagon Papers, Panama Papers, Watergate, etc.

Only in a universe in which Twitter is the sole means of broadcasting, publishing and communication - but we don't live in that universe, so no, they really wouldn't have.

I don't mean they would have literally stopped the entire story from being a story, but that their own rules would have banned the posting of that news on their own platform, even from viable sources.

Sure, but it still wouldn't matter. It's not a good argument that Twitter "censoring" content actually has any relevant effect beyond its platform.

Except for the fact that section 230 argues they shouldnt be censoring anything. So they should be liable to be sued for doing things like this like any other publication.

No it doesn’t.

If Twitter's censorship really has no relevant effect beyond its platform, then why has there been such a push to get Twitter and others to deal better with Russian bots following 2016?

Are these people mistaken? Does what's allowed to appear on Twitter really have no effect on the broader society?

Did I claim that Twitter had no effect on broader society? No. I claimed that Twitter theoretically banning content related to stories like Watergate, the Panama Papers, etc, would have had no relevant effect on the dissemination of those stories beyond its platform. In other words, that Twitter's policies have no relevant effect on the media landscape at large or the spread of information outside of its domain.

Russian bots may or may not be a problem, but that problem is orthogonal to the point I'm trying to make.

So what if Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft/Bing, Apple and Amazon all refuse to carry the content (including advertisements next to this content).

Do not tell me that's not Big Tech putting their thumb on the scale in a dangerous way.

And before you say it, "muh private platform" is not an acceptable argument. This is dangerous to our society.

>So what if Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft/Bing, Apple and Amazon all refuse to carry the content (including advertisements next to this content).

Then the content will probably go on to achieve gigantic commercial success; as is usually the case it appears that something is being banned. See e.g. Spycatcher, this story.

>So what if Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft/Bing, Apple and Amazon all refuse to carry the content (including advertisements next to this content).

I mean, do they also control the entirety of mainstream media, all of the news outlets, all book and newspaper publishers, email, television, radio and the entire rest of the internet?

Sorry... this is Hacker News, so I have to point out that they actually don't, and that was kind of a rhetorical question.

No, believe it or not, people would still know about Watergate or the Panama papers even in that case.

>Do not tell me that's not Big Tech putting their thumb on the scale in a dangerous way.

You mean the purely speculative case you just made up? Sure, it would be, but then the purely speculative case you just made up doesn't reflect reality, so who cares?

And even then, as I mentioned, there is still an entire universe of broadcasting and publishing outside of social media, and the internet itself. So even if all social media sites and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon suddenly decided they weren't competitors and collaborated to ban the same content, that content still isn't memory holed or erased from history.

>And before you say it, "muh private platform" is not an acceptable argument. This is dangerous to our society.

Yeah... you should take your brilliant intellectual riposte to 4chan where it would be best appreciated. Here we rather appreciate putting a modicum of effort into refuting someone's position. You're going to need something more compelling than that.

==And before you say it, "muh private platform" is not an acceptable argument. This is dangerous to our society.==

More than one thing can be dangerous to our society, like if these platforms were used to spread falsehoods and misinformation unchecked.

I don't consider that dangerous to me.

You're not society, though, are you?

I'm part of an individualist culture which sees things through the lens of individuals, not collective society. Now I care about society and make individual effort to care & contribute towards it, but I wouldn't attempt to view things through a collectivist lens when considering the policy decisions of giant corporations.

I’m not sure I follow. Can you provide examples of policy decisions that are individual and not collective?

Also, what “culture” are you referring to?

In a nutshell, individual freedoms (freedom of speech) trump collective safety (censoring misinformation). The answer is more information, like fact check panels.

Take a look at the national defense budget or each city’s police budget if you think collective safety is below individual freedoms. We clearly put more resources towards collective safety than individual freedoms.

There was an interesting case of that in Australia recently, when ISPs colluded to block a bunch of websites that wouldn't take down the Christchurch shooter's manifesto (some of those were forums with very liberal rules on what goes, and their members posted that content). There wasn't any law or government directive or anything like that, not yet. But there was also nothing anybody could do about that, since it was just a bunch of private companies exercising their judgment.

Whatever you think about their cause, you should be worried by the precedent set here. This is censorship at the same scale a government might do, but snuck in through the backdoor, and completely outside of any democratic mechanisms.

Why? Watergate was largely built off journalistic work not hacked materials, obviously deep throat was inside the FBI but he was never quoted

>obviously deep throat was inside the FBI

Which is still a huge moral difference. I would have hoped that HN would be one community that would understand the difference between a whistleblower leaking data to journalists to expose a crime versus an outsider committing a crime in order to acquire data to leak for their own political gain. But I guess I shouldn't expect that considering many people here think Snowden, Manning, and Assange are all of equal moral standing.

The phrase "for their own political gain" describes one of those people much better than the other two

That was my intent. Snowden and Manning are whistleblowers. Assange is very much not a whistleblower.

He's a publisher, not the original source, so he can't be a whistleblower (or leaker or whatever). And he seems to be a pompous ass, but let's be honest, people are mad at him because of the particular true things he published.

Collateral murder undermined the effort to sell war as a noble goal, and then Podesta's emails hurt the democrats, so now both political parties and their fans feel personally burned by him.

He's being railroaded right now, were you aware? Not a US citizen but somehow inexplicably being extradited and charged under the US espionage act.

Assange lied about Seth Rich being a source.[1]

Assange has said that he had information on the Trump campaign but decided not to publish it[2].

Assange is accused of taking an active role in hacking/cracking.[3] Also you don't have to be a US citizen to be charged for a crime by the US government.

Any idea that he is an independent journalist is now gone. He's not a force for radical transparency like he originally billed himself to be. He's only concerned about transparency when it benefits him personally or politically and is happy to lie about or coverup anything else.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/us/mueller-report-seth-ri...

[2] - https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/2934...

[3] - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/wikileaks...

I said up front that he's a pompous ass, I'm not defending his character.

> Also you don't have to be a US citizen to be charged for a crime by the US government.

You sure about that? I mean, if a non-US citizen commits murder on our shores, fine, charge them, but the espionage act for non-citizens who didn't personally commit any espionage? Really? Shit, even if they did, they're not Americans, you want to extradite every non-American who isn't sufficiently pro-America?

I will admit that aiding and abetting is a gray area, but we are all subject to the laws of countries that we decide to travel to or associate with. If it is true that Assange attempted to solicit classified information and did not simply act as a neutral publisher for a whistleblower, then charging him would fall pretty well in line with both the letter and spirit of the espionage act.

If a US citizen blew a whistle on some abuse in Russia or China, would you be in favor of handing them over to be tried by local authorities?

How much of this argument relies on "we are the good guys of history, so we get carte blanche and if you disagree you are bad"?

We don't have extradition treaties with those countries so that hypothetical would never happen. It is the same reason that Snowden isn't facing trial in Russia.

Part of being a "good guy" is standing by your word. We have extradition treaties with the UK. Unless there is some belief that the wanted person couldn't get a fair trial in the UK, we would follow the same process that they are putting Assange through.

You do know that the US has not joined the Rome treaty (which establishes the International Criminal court) and one of the arguments being is that it would allow the trial of Americans who have committed crimes on American soil which is unconstitutional. The US has also be threatening that they would invade the Netherlands to free held American personal. Sounds to me not much like a good guy, but more like a bully saying "do as I say not as I do" .

But there’s the problem right there. Your analogy is incongruent with the Assange case. Assange is not a whistleblower. Again, if Assange merely published information that he was given (unsolicited), then he should be protected by the first amendment and is not guilty of a crime. However, if he sought out classified information and instructed someone on how to exfiltrate that information, then he clearly broke US espionage laws.

Again, he's not American.

Also, "sought out information".. you're gonna take that as an exception for rights of the press? No publishing about watergate if the editor and journalist "sought out" the information?

> Again, he's not American.

What is your point? Espionage laws are typically intended for foreign nationals.

> Also, "sought out information".. you're gonna take that as an exception for rights of the press? No publishing about watergate if the editor and journalist "sought out" the information?

The press has the right to publish classified information as long as they are solely publishing the information and do not partake in accessing or gathering that information. This was the finding of the Supreme Court in NYT vs US[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_S...

That phrase seems to apply to Deep Throat (Mark Felt) too, given that many thought he was angling for the job of FBI Director.

As if that wasn't enough, Felt ran COINTELPRO, too.

Did the Panama Papers expose a crime? Who decides whether a crime has occurred? I would say that Snowden exposed a crime (perjury) by James Clapper. Manning (IMO) exposed war crimes.

Similarly, I think that it was in the interest of the public to report when it was discovered that Trump only paid $750 in taxes (despite not committing a technical crime!) or that Hillary Clinton received some debate questions in advance (again, not a crime!).

This standard that Twitter is applying appears to have no clear line of enforcement, nor does the principle you've put forth.

>Did the Panama Papers expose a crime?

Yes, here is the first google result.[1]

>Who decides whether a crime has occurred?

This is complicated and why there is a preference for whistleblowing to occur through official channels rather than through journalists. However sometimes there is a level of corruption that can't be dealt with any other way besides going public with it. In those instances, it is up to the whistleblower and journalists initially before eventually the court decides. Snowden was good in this regarding by trying to limit what was leaked. Manning did a poor job here.

>I would say that Snowden exposed a crime (perjury) by James Clapper. Manning (IMO) exposed war crimes.

No disagreement here. Snowden and Manning fit a clear definition of whistleblowers. Assange is the one who is not on the same moral footing as those two.

>Similarly, I think that it was in the interest of the public to report when it was discovered that Trump only paid $750 in taxes (despite not committing a technical crime!) or that Hillary Clinton received some debate questions in advance (again, not a crime!).

Trump's taxes likely did reveal numerous potential crimes. He reported different numbers to the government and lenders which would likely indicate he committed fraud.[2] He both employed his daughter and paid her as an external consultant which isn't allowed[3]. He regularly claimed things as business expenses in questionable ways.[4] I'm sure there are many others too, those were just the first three I remembered.

[1] - https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/first-us-t...

[2] - https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-never-b...

[3] - https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/28/politics/ivanka-trump-donald-...

[4] - https://theintercept.com/2020/09/28/donald-trump-taxes/

> Yes, here is the first google result.[1]

So you would have supported Twitter blocking all mentions of the Panama papers until this conviction last month? Or would Twitter judge ahead of time that a crime has occurred and thus permit the hacked materials to be released?

> In those instances, it is up to the whistleblower and journalists initially before eventually the court decides.

But only journalists of a certain political bent? You seem to be advocating adding Twitter, FB, and other for-profit corporations into the conversation here.

> Assange is the one who is not on the same moral footing as those two.

Assange was the journalist who published Manning's releases. This seems incoherent to me.

> Trump's taxes likely did reveal numerous potential crimes.

The NYPost article revealed the crime of crack possession. It was not so long ago that the FBI did a sting operation to get the same sort of footage they used to convict my city's (DC) mayor. And the FBI clearly thought they had some information about a crime, which is presumably why they were subpoenaed.

Obviously, that's a stupid argument - but that's the point. You are just going to set up arbitrary thresholds for what is a crime and what isn't post-facto to justify blocking what you don't want and allowing what you want.

> or that Hillary Clinton received some debate questions in advance (again, not a crime!).

Also, not actually true!

There were claims that she received debate questions weeks in advance, which are a complete and total fabrication by a probably-not-innocent prank website.

There were separate claims that she received debate questions shortly before the town hall debate. And there was an effort to do so from someone outside of her campaign - but the questions that were provided were not the ones asked, so.... It's false to say she received some debate questions in advance.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-received-debate-qu...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/31/ha...

> but the questions that were provided were not the ones asked

Oh come on, the 2016 election is in the past, you don't have to spin it. The questions asked were similar enough and it can't be denied that Clinton got the questions in advance, but not Sanders.

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donna-brazile-wikilea...

> An email later obtained by POLITICO showed that the text of the question Brazile sent to the Clinton campaign was identical to a proposed question Martin had offered CNN. (A similar, though not identical question, was ultimately posed to Clinton at the town hall).

> In the newest email, sent one day before the March 6 Democratic primary debate in Flint, Michigan, Brazile tells senior campaign staff that “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash. Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint.”

> The next night, a woman named Lee-Anne Walters asked both candidates a very similar question.

> The questions asked were similar enough

Honestly I'm confused why people are so hot and bothered about the questions asked. Are any of you seriously surprised by the questions asked? Of course the candidates prepared to answer these questions. If they weren't prepared their prep team should be fired for being woefully incompetent. Seriously, all the questions are about the most popular topics. I honestly would have been shocked if Flint wasn't brought up considering it being part of the national conversation.

Should she have gotten them? No. Is it cheating? Yes. Is it a big fucking deal to detract from actual issues? No. It is just another example of minor cheating that they are doing constantly. But this is like cheating on a test where the teacher pulls questions from the homework and changes a few numbers and you already memorized how to do all the homework problems.

Believe or not we need to trust the integrity of our elected officials. That's the only way government works.

Really hard to discuss the integrity of our elected officials given the current President's penchant to lie like a marketer.

It is important to discuss, because at the margin having more integrity will get more turnout and help boot out the current President.

I'm not sure why you think I disagree with you. What I said is focus on the bigger lies because all the little ones pull away from a continued conversation.

The Constitution of the United States was explicitly designed to create a government where people do not have to trust their elected officials, and still have a functioning government.

> Is it a big fucking deal to detract from actual issues? No.

I think its a big deal when candidate keeps on cheating or lying. It establishes a pattern of dishonest behaviour which the other candidate can easily make a soundbite by calling her crooked.

What some people claimed seems entirely irrelevant to the factuality of whether Hillary Clinton received some debate questions in advance of the debate. On that, the evidence seems pretty cut-and-dry. From your article:

> In an email released Monday morning by WikiLeaks, Brazile provides details to top Clinton aides about what Clinton would be asked at a CNN debate March 6 in Flint, Mich., by a woman whose family had lead poisoning.

> “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” Brazile writes in the subject line of an email to Jennifer Palmieri and John Podesta. In the body of the email, she adds: “Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint.”

I hate Trump. But acting as if people are so stupid that you can just deny that this even happened? You're only hurting Democrats at the ballot box.

What I said was "there was an effort to do so from someone outside of her campaign - but the questions that were provided were not the ones asked, so.... It's false to say she received some debate questions in advance."

Was there dishonesty from the DNC? Yes! But it's important to say what happened. Someone did a bad job of trying to supply her with a couple of questions. Instead the only thing they managed to provide her was a hint about two of the subjects that would be discussed. So to the point I responded to - Did she "receive some debate questions ahead of time" - nope! She didn't! Just some things that were close.

Did that give her an unfair advantage? Maybe! But I doubt it - if Bernie's campaign didn't expect a question about the Flint water issue, then they're idiots. And I don't think they're idiots. The help offered to Hillary was inaccurate and of dubious worth.

If you attempt to commit fraud, but are really shitty at it and bumble the attempt - I don't think that that makes it any more morally benign.

The emails [0] show pretty clear strategizing with Clinton campaign staff over preparing answers to the exact questions being proposed at the CNN town hall. That the CNN town hall ultimately chose to go with similar questions worded slightly differently does not in some way absolve the Clinton campaign.

[0]: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5205

> The help offered to Hillary was inaccurate and of dubious worth.

If you buy a gun and then rob a bank with it -- except the bank teller laughs at you because there's water dripping from your "gun" -- it doesn't diminish the fact that your intent was to rob a bank while yielding a deadly weapon. Just because you're ineffective and can't tell a water pistol from a Glock doesn't mean the intent doesn't, or shouldn't, count.

What crime was committed? The agreement in the article shows that the computer in question became property of the repair shop after 90 days (https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/Comput...)

Do you really believe that BS?

It is written on a piece of paper so I guess that guarantees that it is both authentic and legally enforceable.

Even so, it only mentions the equipment. Would owning the equipment grant the store ownership over all the information on the computer? Does the store gain legal authority to share that information with a third party that is neither a government official nor a journalist like Giuliani?

What do you think Occam's razor would say is more likely? That the documents in the NY Post's reporting are fabricated? (While also knowing that it's over 24 hours later and Biden's campaign has yet to deny that the emails are legitimate) or that the documents are authentic.

I'd give it at best a 50/50 likelihood of being fake, and would hope that a free and liberal society would demand a lot higher confidence than that before they start wantonly censoring things on the internet.

I wasn't saying definitively that the documents are fake. I simply have no idea whether they are authentic or not. These documents originate with Rudy Giuliani who was just revealed to be the target of a Russian disinformation campaign regarding Hunter Biden.[1] I will view anything that is coming from Giuliani with a healthy dose of skepticism until there is some outside confirmation.

However the authenticity of the documents isn't even relevant to the overall point. If they are fake, there is a crime of fraud. If they are authentic, it is likely a crime to release this information. There also doesn't appear to be any evidence of a crime committed by either Hunter or Joe Biden. Even if a meeting took place, which no one is able to confirm, that alone isn't a crime. That lack of crime would seemingly eliminate this as an example of whistleblowing. The end result is that it appears that a crime was committed just to make Biden look bad and try to turn the election in Trumps favor. I don't know why Twitter or Facebook need to allow their platforms to be a pawn in that game.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-bi...

> Even if a meeting took place, which no one is able to confirm, that alone isn't a crime.

Except, if it did take place, Joe would be caught in another big lie because he stated he never had any dealing with Hunter's business.

If you rent storage space and fail to keep up payments the ownership of any property within transfers to the storage operator. What else is a repair shop owner to do with devices that no one collects?

There is a difference between physical ownership of property and ownership of information. Imagine there is a book in that abandoned storage space. The operator will gain ownership of that copy of the book, but they aren't going to be granted copyright over the book.

But now that you have legal access to the book, you can publish citations from it under fair-use doctrine.

Sure, but fair use is a defense that needs to be argued. You can probably argue that the New York Post publishing excerpts from some of the emails should be protected by fair use. I don't see how you can argue that the store owner is protected by fair use or how the Post releasing and profiting off previously unpublished full photos of Hunter Biden qualify as fair use.

If it is not covered by fair use, then it would be at most copyright infringement, and there the rights holders can use DMCA takedown notices. There was no necessity of Twitter to engage in pro-active censorship here.

In my understanding the policy was aimed originally at stopping the spread of photos like in The Fappening hack. But there was nothing hacked here in my understanding.

In 2016 there were an audio recording of a private conversation that happened after an interview has concluded which the recording studio later used without the permission of the recorded person.

If I remember right the basis for why that was legal was that there existed an public interests to release the recording of a private conversation to the public, and that the recording equipment were legal property of the recording studio.

Four years later and the lawyers of NBC seem to have been right on that.

Once the information is out there, it's in the public interest for it to be openly available and not censored.

No one condoned Russia's intelligence hacking and leaking the DNC/Podesta/Clinton emails, of course, but once they became public knowledge, it'd be ridiculous for a social media company to censor all links to the emails.

Similarly, no one condones repair shop owners snooping on customers' laptops for political dirt, but once it's public, the information itself stands alone.

Twitter would be right to ban the repair shop owner's account, if he had one, but I don't think they're right to censor any references to the leaked information. It's law enforcement's job to determine if a crime was committed and to prosecute the individual if so.

We have the timestamps, the dead patriot... and the obvious front company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjzB9H1F2jE

God forbid anyone mention the contents...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21319618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21480268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21337908

Your links don't seem very informative, and the Youtube video is 10 minutes long. Could you make your comment more explicit?

If you want to know something, wouldn't you spend the time to ask a question about the content?

It is exceptionally difficult to tell someone something; it's often counterproductive. If someone is curious, they will look themselves, and ask a question that belies they have read the material.

If you cant spare the time to read hot mic words or listen to someone who was a NSA technical director, why would you want to hear what _I_ think about it?

> Once the information is out there, it's in the public interest for it to be openly available and not censored.

This is the way it works these days, but I'm not sure it actually makes sense. In a trial a judge will often tell the jury to disregard information that has been improperly brought forth. It's difficult to enforce, but what wouldn't it make sense to have something similar in the court of public opinion?

Also, it's a slippery slope argument, but I'll point out that "once it's been said, it's true" is a social anti pattern. If I lie, and someone else quotes me, does that make it information that is "out there" or is it just noise?

FWIW, the more we learn about this story, the more similar it sounds to my extreme example.

>In a trial a judge will often tell the jury to disregard information that has been improperly brought forth. It's difficult to enforce, but what wouldn't it make sense to have something similar in the court of public opinion?

No, I don't think it'd make any sense. Courts of law are very specific, rigorous systems. Since people's lives are on the line, it's necessary to abide by a very precise spec. I don't think Twitter and criminal trial courts can be considered analogous at all, and I very much hope they stay as separate as possible until the end of time.

>Also, it's a slippery slope argument, but I'll point out that "once it's been said, it's true" is a social anti pattern. If I lie, and someone else quotes me, does that make it information that is "out there" or is it just noise?

It is a social anti-pattern, but it's the role of respondents to discuss and assess if something is true or not. If something has significant indications of possibly being a hoax, Twitter may be in the right to add a label saying it may be a hoax, but I don't think they have the right to just remove it. If it's a truly unsubstantiated and damaging and/or absurd conspiracy theory (Seth Rich, Pizzagate, Q, etc.), they can put it behind a warning wall with links to resources showing it's false, but even then I still don't think they have a right to just remove it.

In a case like this, where as far as I can tell there isn't currently any strong evidence it's a hoax (just information that happened to be obtained unscrupulously and possibly illegally), it'd be especially egregious to remove it or even put a warning near it. I don't think tech executives should hold the power to judge what is and isn't a social anti-pattern and to ban them, beyond what's already banned in their terms of service (abuse/harassment/etc.).

Also, to turn the slippery slope around, do you think Twitter should have banned all references to Snowden's NSA leaks, due to the information being released illegally? Or the Pentagon Papers, if Twitter existed then? What about the Shadow Brokers compromise/leak (which possibly was a result of Russian intelligence hacking NSA or noticing some tools they mistakenly left on a system, though the attribution is still unconfirmed)?

When is Twitter supposed to judge that disclosure of illegally-obtained information is okay or not okay to censor? Obviously there are some cases where they should censor the material, like someone's explicit photos being leaked as a result of an iCloud account compromise, but especially when it comes to high-profile political leaks or hacks, censorship seems like a terrible idea.

I'm definitely on the anti-Trump, left-leaning side, but even with the current US polarization I'm kind of surprised how many people seem to have a massive bias and blindspot here. If this were Donald Trump Jr.'s emails plucked by a repair shop owner, discussing arrangement of some large payment from Lukoil, I don't think any of the people making these arguments would be at all consistent (beyond maybe agreeing the acquisition was unethical).

The way to address the exposure is to actually look at the contents of the emails and determine what it may imply about Joe Biden and his son, if anything; not to just try to get them removed from the internet Streisand-style. If there is actual misconduct or malfeasance here that implicates Joe Biden, that'd be especially unethical and irrational to call for. So far I'm kind of skeptical that that is the implication here, but it still needs to be assessed impartially.

I think we're past the point, and Twitter is already analogous to court. People's lives and careers are ruined by the social justice mob, sometimes deservingly, sometimes not.

I realize arguing against free speech is deeply unpopular, particularly on this forum. And I also realize it's inherently hypocritical. And, generally, I agree that the cure for "wrong" speech is more speech. Free speech is sacred to me as well.

But, I've also learned that, when shit hits the fan, you gotta slaughter some sacred cows, including those you never thought you could. The counterexamples you bring up are terrific. Is there a way, one that isn't just individual whim, to judge and moderate speech, in a way that is socially productive? I would bet there is, one that we haven't discovered yet.

After all, peer reviewed science hasn't always existed. I think the parallels there are rich. Modern scientists do operate as high priests of truth and knowledge. Who performs that function for speech? The woke left? The conservative right? FANG tech? None of those sound reasonable to me, but that doesn't mean a reasonable plan doesn't exist.

I don’t use Twitter, so please remind me: did the site allow linking to articles or documents that Snowden stole[0]? And isn’t a hack just theft by other means? If Twitter benevolently censored linking to those docs then at least we have consistency.

[0] - Yes, it’s more involved than “stealing” because Snowden acted as a whistleblower, but I’m trying to draw a comparison.

They've already used this same policy to stop Blueleaks.

Their policy applies to content published on twitter, but does it also apply to linking to (or simply discussing) content published elsewhere? Because twitter has been removing posts and suspending accounts for that.

Linking to doxxing is in and of itself doxxing, so you're now doxxing people on Twitter. This does not necessarily apply to all other rules (e.g., linking to someone making death threats wouldn't constitute you making death threats), but it definitely would to some (you're not going to last long linking CP).

Jack's tweets were clear that "simply discussing" is okay, however.

If you don't want to get dox'd.. get better opsec

Listen more to what people do than what they say.

There is always a good sounding explanation, especially from those with full time PR people on staff.

Twitter took down the New York Posts twitter account. 4th biggest newspaper in the country.

1) Was this Twitter policy new as in the last few days?

2) If not, how did they treat the NYT's Trump tax papers ( clearly hacked from some sources, since it was not revealed). For all one knows, at the time of release, it could have been fake?

3) Does twitter/FB have processes to identify hacked material?

For these reasons, @jack's explanation is not being accepted.

second this, twitter's bias did not start with the recent one, it has been a while, quite a while.

facebook is no better, google search no better either.

someone should be locked up, to avoid further tensions between two sides and who knows, maybe civil war or something alike. People can die because of its biased censorship.

This is exactly right. If FB, Twitter or HN apply their Terms of service rules selectively (or that the ToS are biased against specific political candidates or groups or opinions) -- then they are not a neutral platform.

If they are not a neutral platform, these companies must not be able to claim protections reserved for neutral platforms (like this section 230).

It is the same as a for-profit business must not claim same tax benefits as a Non-profit Charity. If they do, their execs will likely face jail time.

Systemic violoaters, would face more jail time.

I really hope someone reached out to the NDA protected people working at FB/twitter to establish exactly where the bias lies.

We know that despite loud voices arguing about conservative bias it is the opposite, that conservative voices get a pass.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

The crowd tangle data shows conservative news being the most powerful when it comes to discussions, but Facebook is saying reach is not the same.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/02142744614/new-s...

It's fascinating to see papers like Washington Post turn their noses up at the Post story because they haven't independently corroborated it, yet they were immediately citing the NYT Tax story as gospel with no indication that they had independently corroborated the legitimacy of that evidence (I tracked down their first articles on the topic via Google News and found nothing indicating that they were able to independently verify the validity of the documents).

This being the same newspaper that was forced to settle a lawsuit after defaming a minor in seven articles by lying about an interaction he had with a protestor--even though the encounter had been recorded and was freely available online.

These are the folks who are sticklers for independent corroboration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/washington-po...

The New York Post doesn't have a great track record on being factually accurate though, whereas the Washington Post can reasonably assume articles published by the New York Times have undergone some reasonable standard of fact checking (even if imperfect), so it's not a reasonable comparison.

NYT has become increasingly click baitish, and leaves out facts and mis-frames stories all the time. They publish opinion pieces as if they were factual, and and leave out key facts in stories or add opinion in to frame it in a way no reasonable person looking at the hard evidence would assume is the case.

They've lost their standards a while ago. The difference with these papers is they use the same tricks other papers do, they just write in a more "intellectual" fashion so you never question it because you feel smarter just reading it. But you go check multiple sources and you find there is the same kind of spin and framing you'd expect from Fox News on a topic.

>> there is the same kind of spin and framing you'd expect from Fox News

Almost every independent analysis of media bias and journalist quality disagrees with you. In fact, I don't know of one that agrees with you.

Allsides.com rates the NYT (news, not opinion) as 'leans left' and rates Fox News (news, not opinion) as 'leans right'. Which ones disagree?

This wasn't hacked. It was legally obtained as it was left and became business property after repeated attempts of returning the machine.

Jack's response came much after the censorship actions were taken. You have to analyze with timelime. his PR firm told him he needed to do damage control.

Moreover why was this policy not applied to Trump's alleged tax return? This is one of many examples one could give. You may be too far in the SF bubble or not have a diverse news list.

Having my data in your hard drive does not mean that it allows you to view my my data, unless I specifically I allowed you to do so.

It does, however, mean exactly that if you sign a contract saying "all this stuff belongs to me if you don't pay me and leave it here for 90 days". Most places, from computer shops to car shops, have similar rules regarding abandonment and/or nonpayment.

That’s right.

Please look into how this data was obtained rather than making up legal stuff to feel you’re on the right side.

Even if I sell you my hard drive it does not mean that I grant you access to my data. If that was the case we would just have to get some EOL hard drives from Apple/Microsoft/Google etc and get access to their IP.

Your comparison is not even comparable to a legally agreed forfeiture as it was in this case. Bad snuck premise. Try again.

Taking a picture of people in public is perfectly legal yet it requires no permission. There are countless examples of where permission has nothing to do with legality or legitimacy. Please do your research and stop spreading misinformation about law.

Flame war EOF

When you give your pc to geek squad to change a fan you do not forfeit your rights to your IP. Spin it as you want, but you cannot change the facts. Edit: Feel free to share with us the signed document that the shop owner has from his customer about releasing his data. That form would help his memory about who the customer was anyway.

Again bad snuck premise. If you leave your PC at Geek Squad there is a standard legal clause that states if you do not pick up the item within a certain amount of time then it becomes their property. Being that it is their property they can choose to dispose of it or do whatever they want with it, including reading the information and sharing it.

Geek squad is not a warehouse nor do they want the burden of holding the equipment indefinitely. This is common practice across almost all goods services such as laundry, shoe repair, instrument repair, etc. There’s an overwhelming legal precedence in this case. In this case the shop owner attempted to return the equipment several times but no response was heard, therefore the standard contract clause(s) are executed.

I think where you’re struggling is you’re confusing your emotions, clearly you don’t like this outcome, with legality. Feelings are not facts.

I could cite a whole bunch of legal jargon and cases to utterly destroy your weak argument, but I’ll have mercy keep it high level like above.

I won’t be responding to further comments because we both know you’re just pouting here and you got some free legal education on my dime.

As I said feel free to cite the terms that Hunter Biden signed. We can then discuss about jargon.

Btw Do you mean that there are people paying for your level of legal advice? Good for you man.

So many people downvoting my comment but no substantive replies. No irony wrt censorship here.

The Steele Dossier was widely spread on Twitter and was debunked.

That's news to me. Can you cite a credible source for the debunking? I'd love to read more.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-01/steele...

The URL has opinion right there in the middle of it

True, but the text contains facts around which the opinion is based. Those facts are not in dispute.

Many things have been corroborated, nothing has been disproven.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/steele-dossier-retrospective

The idea that it was/is fake is a lie direct from Trump's mouth.

Downvote with reason or response, what a great place for discussion.

I believe the policy was changed in 2019.

Its one thing to have a policy. Its another thing that the policy is Right (maybe) and that the policy is Fairly Enforced (almost definitely not).

It wasn't hacked. Why is it ok for ANYONE, let alone a political party and news orgs, to get away with one-sided comms?

Just as bad, if not worse than Trump.

Trump's tax returns were hacked, in that the disclosure was not authorised, yet they were shared freely on twitter.

It smells very much like "rules for thee but not for me", which is why people have a problem with it.

> Twitters official policy is to not allow publication of hacked material or information with Personally Identifying Information - and this material was hacked and had unredacted personal email addresses

I think the idea is that if this is the rule, a lot of Republicans think it has already been broken a number of times against them.

Ha, against "them". All republicans. As a monolith. As if they are a sports team.

This sums up the central problem in modern politics as a whole right here.

Modern? George Washington warned about this in his farewell address. 8 years after the United States of America began this was already becoming a problem!

George Washington on “the spirit of party” in his farewell address:

> It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.

Do you have any examples of someone's non-public contact information being shared without a response? Their guidelines permit discussion and linking to press stories of hacks provided they don't include someone’s private information, information that could put people at risk of physical harm or danger; and/or information related to trade secrets.

Blue Leaks comes to mind.

Was that shared on Twitter?

Yes:

https://twitter.com/blue_leaks

This one is more also nefarious than it looks, because it includes private information on victims of crime.

How is Hunter Biden not the victim of this crime? Even if you believe the laptop story, his data was stolen.

But you're right. Blue Leaks, if they share hacked personal data on Twitter, should absolutely be banned under the same policy.

They were.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/twitter-has-perman...

They don't seem to be doing a very good job of it given that it took me just a few moments to find the material on an account named blue_leaks ...

That account seems to post news stories about the leaks, which is not a violation of the guidelines. The group that published the leaks had their account banned and links to their site blocked.

> Even if you believe the laptop story, his data was stolen.

They allegedly have a contractual right to the laptop due to non-payment. It's a damn good reason not to take your PC there for repairs, though.

I hope you realize how unlikely the laptop story is to be true.

I can understand why it feels "too perfect" for an October surprise, sure, but then how did they get the pictures of Hunter sleeping with a meth pipe? I ran them through the tools on hackerfactor.com and I see no obvious fakery.

I've heard rumors that Hunter was allegedly hacked to get them, but I have yet to see media reports of this from prior to this story breaking. If you can provide some, please do!

Right now, my take is that, at best, this is an elaborate cover story for releasing real dirt and at worst, it's legit, like the time Hunter returned a rental car with a crack pipe in it. We'll need to dig into it further, though, I want to see if the emails have DKIM validation with a body hash parameter, etc.

> We'll need to dig into it further, though

Fundamentally, the reason this got banned and then ignored is that that need is SUPPOSED to be supplied by the journalists doing the research, not random conspiracy nerds on the internet.

> I've heard rumors that Hunter was allegedly hacked to get them, but I have yet to see media reports of this

Exactly! Which is the level of rigor you should expect to see from your sources. Which makes it doubly frustrating that you seem not to be applying that same logic to the original story.

FWIW: I'll bet you anything that no headers ever appear for those emails anywhere (at least none from western domains -- I'll admit to the possibility that the Kremlin could forge a DKIM signature for a Burisma address). They're almost certainly forgeries, which is why they're being distributed in the crazy obfuscated way they are.

Well, let's just say that there aren't many journalists I trust to validate a DKIM signature and even then it matters whether there's a body hash in it or not. The last time this came up, I know that I personally pulled the DKIM key to check and I never saw any journalist doing that, though several did repeat Donna Brazille's claim that the email was fabricated--something proven directly false by the body hash parameter on the email claimed to be fake.

Oh, and the relevant DKIM key in that case came from Hillary's DNS server, I know because I pulled it myself. Maybe the Kremlin hacked that, but that would implicate a lot more reporting than just Donna's claims.

So yes, I do want to see more journalism regarding this, but it also needs sufficient rigor. I don't just believe any random person who claims XYZ, whether or not I tend to agree with them, I want to see verifiable facts.

And yeah, those are in pretty short supply. I've seen tons of anonymous rumors, various forms of citogenesis, etc. far more often than I've seen things that can be subjected to some kind of objective fact finding process.

> Well, let's just say that there aren't many journalists I trust to validate a DKIM signature

Uh... why would the journalist "validate" the DKIM signature? Publish the RFC822 content of the email and let everyone do it themselves. That's the whole point of public key encryption. And the fact that the Post skipped that very obvious and easy step tells me that this is almost certainly faked data.

> I don't just believe any random person who claims XYZ

With all respect: you clearly seem inclined to believe this nonsense about the emails with only the barest of evidence. It's only the attempts to refute it that have you worried about "rigor".

Eh, sometimes the signatures fail to validate because mail clients do non-substantive modifications (spacing, etc.). We went through that before, too. You're right that one should always validate it themselves and I should've said that I don't think many journalists know how to work it, because honestly, I haven't seen anyone but Wikileaks actually do that validation, ever.

> With all respect: you clearly seem inclined to believe this nonsense about the emails with only the barest of evidence.

I haven't said anything about the email content, though. I investigated a photo of Hunter sleeping with a meth pipe using hackerfactor.com's tools to look for manipulation and did not find any. That doesn't mean they're real, but it gives them some level of credence, given that there are old reports about his rental car substantiated by police reports.

You're right that it doesn't validate the email content. I plan to withhold judgement until we have more data, but it looks like they do have some files of his.

It doesn't help that the last time we went through this sort of thing, there were spurious claims of manipulated documents which were actively disproved and some of the denials I've read parse very narrowly, which isn't right.

> but then how did they get the pictures of Hunter sleeping with a meth pipe?

Actually, and this is coming from someone who is definitely not a Democrat: I'd think that picture points towards planted evidence. The picture is probably real for what I know, but why would he keep it on his laptop?

A better question is why he'd take it to begin with, but I've seen enough people post stupid pics of them doing drugs that I can't fully discount it for that reason.

I mean, how many times have we heard variations on "Idiot caught doing drugs after posting pics on Facebook/Instagram/etc."?

Blueleaks led to numerous twitter suspensions, and note that the your linked account does not feature "ddossecrets" in the bio because of that.

Saying a public person's email address is private information that could lead to physical harm is quite a stretch. If the NYP had redacted the email addresses they would have named a different excuse.

I've seen commenters on HN that claim that the emails are suspect because they don't include DKIM signatures. Redacting the email would make it even more suspicious in their eyes.

Sure,

Maybe Twitter would have found other reasons to block the story if it didn't violate an explicit policy literally, for example it being fake news. Calling something fake news takes more investigation and judgement so the reason they gave was simplest.

It's like, boy, they sure have it in for a sleazy and deceptive hit-piece meant to influence an election at the last moment. Unfair!

I'm not saying that, it is a list of three. And on the guideline for "private information," non-public emails are explicitly mentioned.

If it has been published in a major newspaper is it still non-public?

Yes, it is compromised private information.

Trump shared Lindsey Graham’s phone number on Twitter during the 2016 election primary.

The rule was enacted in 2019, though Donald Trump gave out Graham's number during a rally.

Twitter allowed the NY Times to post about Trump's tax returns after they were leaked by an IRS employee: https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1310474354967359489

The official policy appears to be flexible when the leaked supports Twitter's political opinions.

Unless the IRS was hacked, this comparison is invalid.

What hack? The amount of disinformation and lack uninformed opinions is astounding. Try coming back to the middle on politics and reading news sources from one side.

The PC was left at a repair shop unclaimed, it then became the shops property. They were explicitly given access to the material, but Hunter never picked it up, this isn't a hack, and far less a violation of privacy than the Federal Government employee's leaking personal tax information which they are legally obligated to keep private.

Yes this is the incredible flimsy cover story that Hunter Biden drove 2500 miles from his home to leave a laptop with a random person then never came back for it.

This after "US intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that Rudy Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, as he gathered information he thought would expose the Bidens."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-bi...

Forgive me if i'm fast forwarding past the obvious lies and openly mocking all those who can't do the same.

As if this needed clarification (it very much did not):

https://time.com/5902557/hunter-biden-rudy-giuliani-ukraine/

Hunter's laptop wasn't hacked. After abandoning it, the laptop and all its contents became the property of the store owner. This is similar to a storage unit. If you don't pay, the owner is legally justified in taking possession of all your stuff and is not guilty of breaking and entering or theft.

There's no evidence that any actual hacking took place to obtain the Biden emails. The article stated that they were obtained from a laptop negligently left at a repair shop.

Twitter just decided to claim that the post is lying, with no evidence and no fact-checking, and then banned the Post Twitter account and every other account that shared the article. At the same time, they allow content like the Panama Papers, Pentagon Papers, multiple Wikleaks, Snowden leaks - which were all obtained by admitted unauthorized hacking.

If you consider the Snowden leaks the result of "hacking" but the current leaks not, what exactly is your definition of "hacking"?

I for one, would specifically exclude the legal owner of a set of data from copying that data and giving it to a third party from the definition of "hacking".

Agreed, assuming there is informed consent - meaning the legal owner was aware of what was happening, was intending to provide the data and was not deceived.

Without those conditions, you'd exclude the whole field of social engineering from hacking, which is all about making the owner "voluntarily" copy data to a third party - and is widely regarded a subset of "hacking".

Also pending the specific circumstances under which you "own" data, which may not be identical with owning the storage medium, as discussed in other posts.

Because the us media and public are disarmed by bad faith arguments.

I don't think platforms like Twitter should act like such a gatekeeper. It's like being a rule maker and a judge at the same time, which could lead to abuse easily.

Free speech prevents the US government from acting like gatekeepers, not private publishers.

"A spokesman for the Biden campaign, Andrew Bates, said that Mr. Biden’s official schedules showed no meeting between Mr. Biden and the advisor." Sounds different to Biden did not meet the advisor. Overly specific dementi are suspicious. And is GRU using authentic emails or fake ones? Because if they are valid, it doesn't matter who obtained them. Just like when the DNC screwed Bernie Sanders during Hillary Clinton's campaign.

I don't understand why any of this matters. Is it just to paint Biden with a 'corruption' brush? Trump's family has already been shown to have done as much or worse than these claims against Hunter, and Trump's network of hotels have been raking in cash for access (recent NYT story: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/10/us/trump-prop...).

This is such a strange argument.

Trump's base doesn't care that he's corrupt. Biden's does.

They don't get held to the same standards because they're playing to different audiences.

If Trump is worse doesn't matter. If there is something true about Hunter and Joe Biden, he would be open to blackmail That's a security risk.

They are trying to drag down Biden by implying he is the person mentioned in Hunters family texts, saying that half of their salaries go to "Pops".

Give me a break. The unauthorized leak of Trump's Tax Returns were all over social media and nothing was done about that.

Their policy didn’t stop them from allowing millions of tweets related to unverified Trump taxes, debunked pee dossier and other Democratic talking points. This is straight up election interference.

> This is straight up election interference.

How is a domestic firm exercising it's Constitutionally-protected free press rights “interference”?

Twitter and Facebook are not just any domestic firms, they do control a major part of social media. They may not have a legal responsibility to hold every post to the same standards, but if they enforce their policies selectively on political grounds, that should surely raise some eyebrows.

Anyway, if Twitter/Facebook ever had the intention to stop dissemination of that NY Post article, it surely backfired.

Hacked meaning something like illegally obtained tax returns? It is clear who twitter is carrying water for.

> I guess no one cares for facts anymore, as long as they see patterns that fit their preconceptions

How about you? Do you think Donald Trump called white supremacists "fine people" or do you care for facts?

- Can you point me to a link of how this was hacked? My understanding is that the laptop was given to a mac repair place and then they didn't pay for it. I have no idea why someone would do not pay for their repair though. - A lot of people are focusing on the Donald Trump tax returns which were hacked in a way but accepted on Twitter. They have personally identifiable information too as in when you go to the IRS website it asks you for a return's amount as a means of verification etc.

Somebody dropped off a laptop and never identified themselves nor was there any paperwork, and the owner happens to be unable to see anybody well enough to recognize them, and this laptop has highly personal and sensitive information, and nobody ever returns for it or inquires about it? How is anybody taking this story seriously?

> Twitters official policy is to not allow publication of hacked material or information with Personally Identifying Information

The root of the issue here is that Twitter is the one deciding this in the first place. What appears on their platform influences large numbers of people. I know it, you know it, and know it too--influencing people to e.g. buy stuff is how they make money after all. It's not hard to understand why a company with such influence making such large impacts without being accountable to the public scares people, particularly those who evidently think differently than those who run these companies.

> without being accountable to the public

Edit (I should have included this), Disclosure: I work at Google Cloud and have worked with folks at Twitter (but never their policy teams or anything).

I would say that compared to many cable news sources, the mean time to response of Twitter and Facebook is actually better. No media company is perfect. Unfortunately, no media company is particularly accountable to the public (anymore).

It’s fair (right?) to be concerned about control of media. I think it’s less clear that Twitter is less accountable, less responsive, or more impactful than other major media sources.

It wasn’t hacked. It was left at a computer repair shop then never picked up or paid for.

> this material was hacked

False. Laptop became the property of the repair shop when nobody paid the bill or turned up to pick it up.

Good policy. Sucked execution for different norm.

The materials were not hacked. They were abandoned at the repair shop and therefore lawfully came to be owned by the repair shop.

1) the emails weren't hacked

2) the NYT articles about Trump's tax returns that were obviously obtained illegally weren't given the same treatment.

3) apparently tweets were also blocked based on hashtags: https://twitter.com/ChrisGolas/status/1316806523243225095

> 2) the NYT articles about Trump's tax returns that were obviously obtained illegally weren't given the same treatment.

This, the unbelievably biased treatment of this throughout the media and social media and good old qui bono tells me all I need to know.

Everything else is just technical details.

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

If you're having trouble with it, then perhaps try and remember how the Internet has changed over time. What started as a network of scientists and enthusiasts has become a network of corporations and governments (increasingly driven by party-focused politicking). That's not even mentioning the emergency of social networks and the prevalence of foreign and domestic misinformation/manipulation therein.

If the Internet hadn't changed so radically, their viewpoints might have also remained similarly stale.

It didn't happen overnight.

2016 U.S elections changed things a lot.

Spreading misinformation is not free speech.

Yes, it is.

What? It absolutely is. A lie is covered under free speech. One can say anything under that doctrine.

This is not true and does not cover fraud.

incorrect. you're conflating action with speech.

engaging in fraud is not speech. If I told you that I owned a hedge fund and would make you 10x returns, that's speech. If I take your money with the promise of 10x returns and enroll you in a scheme, that's an action.

>If I told you that I owned a hedge fund and would make you 10x returns, that's speech.

If I gave you money based on that speech it would be hard to argue in court that you didn't engage in fraud. I'm not a lawyer, so I'll agree with you.

the sentence immediately following the one you quoted asserts as much. are you agreeing or trying to make the same point with different words?

It's certainly possible to twist this situation around to where I don't give you money, like giving it to the guy right next to you.

The action there is separate from the speech. I imagine for these disinformation type campaigns, the action is voting

Not without consequences.

As a recent example Alex Jones reversed his conspiracy theories on the threat of a lawsuit. Spreading misinformation comes with penalty.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School...

The consequences of free speech is another beast altogether to be sure.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence.

If I sell you a bar of lead painted gold, and tell you that it's solid gold, I can still be held responsible for fraud. My words would constitute a crime.

Now, if I told you explicitly that it was lead, but you decided to pay the gold price of your own free will, then I would be okay.

It would literally be the words I used to that constituted the crime. Lying isn't free speech in plenty on contexts. Go file a false police report and find out what happens.

It's still free speech. It just comes with consequences. The OP doesn't dispute that. Why is it that folks are so eager to run to this as if it were an argument, as if it somehow invalidates that speech is a freedom?

Who gets to decide whether I'm being misinformed or not?

Should a private platform allow misinformation on his platform?

Misinformation is such an Orwellian term, considering most "facts" and "fact checking" are subjective unless it's hard numbers, but even using numbers and stats isn't enough anymore because even they must be interpreted within the context of contradictory concepts like a persons lived experience.

Not so muddy as that - the exact truth may be hard to pinpoint. But outright falsehoods are still pretty plain.

Or there’s cases like WMDs or “Assad gassed his own people” which are outright frauds coming from the establishment who determines what is factual.

>I have no idea what happened

The fundamentals of free speech are just easier to uphold when the forum (Internet) is much smaller and the participants (hacker culture, chat rooms) are more uniform. Both the size of the forum and the diversity of the participants has changed - that's what happened.

Put another way: humans evolved living in fairly small groups that were often related to each other. Their brains are optimized to operate in that environment. Put those brains into an environment where the number of other humans is orders of magnitude larger and most of those other humans are not physically present and not related to you and...that brain doesn't work well.

I'm not sure the diversity matter so much as the scale. Once you've got a very large audience, it becomes possible to scale abuse on it.

When each community is small, you have to put in a lot more work to say, spread disinformation so there's natural censorship on it.

I grew up in the early 2000s. I find it difficult to understand as well, but I think what happened is that emotional human contact was overrun by corporate/nation-state bots. Bots cannot be convinced that their positions are wrong; they exist solely to spread discontent and fear. This is far different than the early Internet where you could safely assume everyone you were talking to is a real person. They may be a dangerous person, but a person nonetheless. You could equally assume that their day job does not consist of demoralizing or confusing people, and their positions on the issues were a result of genuine thought and strategy rather than a built in set of beliefs meant to serve some mystery person or group's end game.

Basically, free speech only works if we have reason to believe the people holding onto the "bad" ideas in the idea marketplace listen. It stops being a solution when there are no consequences to being wrong, when your reputation doesn't matter, and when you can be as immoral or insidious as you want without a care in the world. This is the result of automation invading human spaces.

So make political bots illegal and the world becomes sane again?

What needs to be banned is thinking that some people can't think for themselves.

they clearly cannot though. example: the spread of qanon.

and if you think that is real, then the example is everyone who think qanon is absurd.

Antivaxxers, people who deny the efficacy of mask wearing and social distancing in preventing the spread of airborne diseases, climate change deniers, people who think emacs is better than vim. There's a lot of cases where the evidence is plentiful and unrestricted speech is at odds with keeping the world going.

It is not just "some people are stupid", that is too small scale thinking. We are constantly assaulted by algorithms trained to manipulate people, trained off of millions of A/B tests and microinteractions, constantly being tweaked using real psychological research and real manipulation techniques. There are real weaknesses in the human mind, and we have to constantly be on guard to avoid them being exploited. For most people it is simply too much effort to go through life and read every comment as if it is trying to trick you. They just want entertainment, and that's totally fair.

I'm ready for a social media Butlerian Jihad.

For every real bot there are probably 10 people accused of being bots because the accuser can't cope with people who disagree with them. In this respect 'bot' has become the new 'troll.'

The word 'bot' is overloaded unfortunately. It means today, both a robot as before, and also, a person who is unwilling or unable to have a normal conversation. Real people are 'bots' too today, when they don't actually talk to other people but only parrot the same points repeatedly. They may as well be robots as far as we can tell from their text online.

> 10 people accused of being bots because the accuser can't cope with people who disagree with them.

If those 10 people aren't really talking, though, then I would consider them bots too. If they are stating one point, over and over, and refusing to listen to others or change their minds about anything, then...they're bots.

Maybe those ten accused people have the problem, or maybe their accusor has the problem. It's just as likely that somebody throwing around insults like 'bot' is the person with the problem. If I call somebody a jackass, maybe it's because they're a jackass or maybe it's because I am the jackass.

You can't talk on Twitter. Any thread loses its order and it branches randomly. Different users sees different threads. It is made to encourage monologues. I guess it is why it is popular among politicians, celebs and journalist.

Free speech works even if people don't listen.

Respect/creditable is earned.

Does this mean you agree in principle with George Bush's 'free speech zones' aka "you can say what you like, but you have to do it over there where nobody will hear you"?

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

I just want to tell you that you're not alone in this. It's seriously unsettling to me to see the way in which this culture has changed.

Most of the tech companies have decided that China will soon dominate the world. They appear to be getting ready for China's attitude towards free speech to be imposed on the rest of the world.

I hope I'm wrong.

You know that's not the first time that idea has occurred to me either and I have this worrying nagging in the back of my head that that is literally exactly the long game they're playing.

> Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on

At this rate it will be the hill that the civilization dies on. The whole "absolute free speech is a sacrosanct human rights for everyone" is an ideal that simply would not scale with the 21st century civilization. Most users around here grew up firmly believing that value, and it is further reinforced by American/Western exceptionalism, so I can see how this comment will be very negatively received.

But we can all agree that freedom isn't free, at one point in the future the cost would be so high that the whole civilization would be facing a "give me freedom or give me death" moment. I can't predict whether that moment will come in the form of an anti-science misinformation campaign during a pandemic that is far more serious than even Covid or a mentally deranged, conspiracy theory supporting leader who has full control of the nuclear arsenal, but that moment will come one day.

The second law of thermal dynamics applies to more than just physical systems, entropy also plays similar role in a complex society that is getting ever more complex. Before our species can attain the ability to modularize our own society through interplanetary colonization to ensure survival, we have to face the very uncomfortable truth that we have to put in more rules and checks into our existing society to ensure the entropy doesn't snowball out of control too fast. That means we have to put everything on the table and re-exam all of our values, because there is no value to speak of in a dead world.

The unfortunate thing is it's very difficult to have this conversation, even with very intelligent people, without everyone getting emotional. After all a lot of these beliefs and values are something we hold very dear, and maybe that is the ultimate tragedy of our world.

It should be the hill that civilization dies on, because without free speech there is no civilization. Without free speech corruption will grow and societies will decay because there is nothing to stop the rot before it spreads.

As long as there is people and society there will be a civilization one way or the other.

You may not like that civilization, but saying a specie cannot survive unless we adhere to democracy and free speech is the product of your upbringing but not the product of objective reality.

You could even make the argument that China and Russia are actively feeding into things like this in order to make people anti-free speech/thought and cause internal strife/erosion because our eroding institutions (including free speech) gives them a leg up globally to set their own agendas in motion.

The very fact that is successful just further reinforces my point doesn't it? If we see different countries as competing organisms, obviously in the 21st century China would have a leg over us precisely because of things like their government would shut down any anti-mask speech or movement at the first sight.

Imagine a terrorist cell just unleashed a biological weapon that's far more deadly than Covid. Which country do you think will fare better in this scenario, China or the U.S.? Would Americans still be arguing about the superiority of democracy and free speech if a majority of the people died?

You could make this argument about any totalitarian regime vs a free society, so no.

Of course I could make this argument, and it would be a very valid argument too.

There are pros and cons to each system, do you really believe free societies has absolutely zero trade offs or drawbacks?

No I don't believe there are no trade offs, I believe a free society is a vastly superior system despite its drawbacks. I'm sure if the United States government did a strict lockdown and welded the doors shut of COVID patients and left them to die, we'd have a much lower case count.

> I'm sure if the United States government did a strict lockdown and welded the doors shut of COVID patients and left them to die

No country did that, why are you making things up? China stopped people from leaving their houses but at the same time provide supplies and delivered food through organized effort for weeks. That was well documented by even foreigners living there.

Hell, let's not use China's example, what about countries like Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, etc all managed to be both democracies and selectively enforce rules at the same time?

There is video evidence of China welding and barricading apartment doors shut with people still inside.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1703503427818

https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/other/is-china-locking-up-ent...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/business/china-coronaviru...

>Hell, let's not use China's example, what about countries like Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, etc all managed to be both democracies and selectively enforce rules at the same time?

Not sure what your point is here. If you're saying information is a virus to society and we need reasonable restrictions on it to save it...I don't agree and there isn't much if any recorded history to support that assertion. Information and expression doesn't kill, it's not a virus. It's not even a comparison.

>I don't agree and there isn't much if any recorded history to support that assertion. Information and expression doesn't kill

What the hell? Are you serious? Yes, anti-semitism never killed anyone, anti-vaccine misinformation never hurt anyone, and calling Covid a hoax didn't cause any unnecessary death either /s.

>it's not a virus

It's not, because it spreads far, far faster than even the most dangerous virus.

Yes you are correct, it is the damn commies. That's why people like Snowden and Assange received all sort of protection by the western democracies for their roles in unveiling bad stuff done by powerful people. Could you imagine Snowden in Russia or Assange in a left latin country? Yucks.

That's a great deflection, but it's not in the same sphere as the fear of the newly found fears of election interference that is driving people to become anti-free speech. That is directly coming from Russia and China.

Snowden and Assange are quite different, though I am also not opposed to whistle blowers, if it isn't reckless and endanger lives (such as giving up troop positions, etc.)

> it's not in the same sphere as the fear of the newly found fears of election interference that is driving people to become anti-free speech.

I grew up in a latin-american country, US interference in elections was a given, not a suspiction, a fact, million of dollars poured by the NED and the CIA, which proportionally meant a huge fraction of the electoral budget in the country and yet people still went to vote. Now I need to feel worried about the end of the civilization as we know it because the russians bought 500k or so of facebook ads and have bot farms? Go to reddit, specifically to r/politics and you will see there the blue wave doing the same, but there is not outcry. Hillary lost, because she was a lousy candidate and because of the EC system, luckily for Vladimir he also got what the wanted, but not because of the genius of his intelligence services.

I don't deny any of that, and I don't think Hillary lost because of Russia. I don't even think that was their goal at all. The entire goal is to establish distrust in American institutions among the populace, which includes the 1A. That was my entire point.

I understand your point , but surely you would agree that A) Any Russian disruption is dwarfed by the inside dynamics in the country. B) Many people in power use the Russian-scare to promote a narrative that may help them to maintain or obtain power. This is nothing new. McCarthy did the same.

This sounds nice in abstract. Let's walk it two steps towards the concrete:

1) Our elected officials suppressing the voices they believe are most dangerous to our society.

2) Donald Trump shutting down The New York Times.

This seems like a move that would jumpstart the entropy snowball, not slow it down.

As far as entropy goes, if we actually have a "supreme leader" then it would actually drastically lower entropy. It would be a shitty society to live in unless we are talking about a benevolent AI or something, but entropy would indeed be low.

Btw my original comment wasn't about the danger of free speech, it's about the danger of absolutely unchecked free speech from all aspects of society.

I don't follow your argument. Free Speech doesn't mean that anyone has an obligation to listen.

You can solve being saturated by noise on the listening side much better than on the sending side... much better because the listeners needs are diverse, because listeners must be robust against adversarial inputs (or otherwise the first madman with a random number generator floods you out), because the listeners time/sanity is what is at stake so that's where the incentives are, and so on.

The fight against entropy should be all of our missions but it can be accomplished without forcefully silencing people.

"Free Speech doesn't mean that anyone has an obligation to listen"

Quite.

And those who have no obligation to listen include Facebook and Twitter. They are absolutely under no obligation to deliver any message you wish to send.

You won't get much disagreement from me on that basis though I wish that was the reasoning they gave-- rather than the transparently false statements about leaked documents.

I'm also dubious about applying that to private messages: Twitter isn't a party to those messages, interception of the content is an unlawful wiretap. Without unlawfully monitoring the content of the users private community it's not clear to me how they could be suppressing the content.

They are free to do whatever they want with any message on their platform, private or public. If they were regulated as a common carrier, this would not be the case.

I believe that Twitter and Facebook have no desire to be regulated as common carriers.

There is no way this is an unlawful wiretap, as they own and operate the wires.

This is absolutely not true under federal law (18 U.S. Code § 2511.) (also apparently CA PC 631).

It doesn't matter who owns the facilities. Except for certain narrow exceptions (warrants, government officers, jails, incidental operations necessary for maintenance) any unauthorized third party interception of a private communication is unlawful. Common carrier status is relevant for liability but is irrelevant for § 2511.

I think you are confusing a Twitter DM with a private communication. Note that Twitter is not intercepting your DMs, they are the ones transmitting and storing them.

I believe they should be treated as a common utility, because this is what they are because of network effects.

In that case, I think they would be under obligation to not silence people like this.

People are stupid. They're easily mislead. They make horrible decisions. Those decisions effect me.

> People are stupid.

But not people like you, of course.

> They're easily mislead.

That’s right. They need to be led by someone like you, instead.

> Those decisions effect me.

And your “stupid decisions” affect me. Which of us gets to subjugate the other, because the other is “stupid”?

See the problem, Colin? Where are you going to find these angels who will rule society for us? I’m not exactly eager to delegate the task to you.

Whoever owns the platform controls it. If you are sufficiently upset with that you can create your own platform.

And I’m free to criticize their censorship, and the way they lie about it.

If the only reply left is “Well, they can legally do it!” (assuming their lies about said censorship aren’t legally problematic), that’s very telling. It completely ignores the question of morality, especially when the platforms in question have so much control over society.

Lots of things are legal. That doesn’t make them right. In some cases, they’re very wrong.

And yet,here you are, freely spouting non-sense, misinterpreting the second law of "thermal dynamics" and arguing for a very strict and highly-self-convenient notion of freedom of speech.

I still wish you can express your views all over the internet without the risk of being cancelled.

>I still wish you can express your views all over the internet without the risk of being cancelled.

I don't, especially if me spreading nonsense directly causes harm to a large number of people and the society. I do not believe my unlimited free speech rights is of higher priority the health and wellbeing of the overall society.

The whole "individual rights always triumphs over the interest of the society" is exactly the type of American exceptionalism I mentioned. It's a very strange notion in many cultures (and no doubt you'd say those cultures are inferior) and it's more or less another symptom of a culture that worships narcissistic behavior.

You are just one guy in the Internet, relax, dont give yourself too much importance. While people fight to stop the "tin-foil brigade" to have their loony youtube channels, they enshrine Hollywood actors, Silicon Valley neo-barons and politicians, whose opinions are ACTUALLY dangerous and influential, and yet none of them will be cancelled.isnt it curious?

The whole point of my comment is I am not important, and neither are you, so both of us should shut up if our speech materially hurt the society.

> Silicon Valley neo-barons and politicians, whose opinions are ACTUALLY dangerous and influential, and yet none of them will be cancelled.isnt it curious?

I see you failed on reading comprehension. They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society, such as anti-mask movement or anti-vaccine movement. I don't know why you are trying to trivialize "tin-foil brigade" when it literally killed many people this year.

> I am not important, and neither are you, so both of us should shut up if our speech materially hurt the society.

That's an oxymoron, if we are irrelevant we then dont have the power nor the audience to affect society in a grand scale.

> I see you failed on reading comprehension.

Nice try.

> They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society, such as anti-mask movement or anti-vaccine movement

And yet they are free as a bird. From Jim Carrey to Boris Johnson, from Jack Dorsey to Elon Musk, from Mark Zuckerberg to Alysa Milano, they have spouted absolutely nonsense and they are as influential as ever.They should not be banned btw, but ridiculed.Alex Jones deserves the same treatment and not being hypocritically swept under the rug.

> I don't know why you are trying to trivialize "tin-foil brigade" when it literally killed many people this year.

This a global pandemic, a big portion of the deaths was sadly unavoidable no matter your location in the map or your political persuasion, it is juicy ammunition for political gains though. The other big part in the deaths comes from the clusterfuck of mismanagement of the crisis. The people responsible for that WILL NOT be cancelled. The influence of the loonies in their youtube channels represents at worst a minuscule fraction of the deaths.

> They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society

“Proven” by who? You?

No thanks.

Way to make up strawman's argument.

Do you agree that there are objective facts that should be accepted by the society for the well being of the society? Such as Earth is not flat, vaccine does not cause autism, and wearing a mask is helpful at preventing Covid spread?

If you do not believe such object facts exist, then we do not live in the same reality, if you do, then there must be some mechanism that raises certain statements into the status of "facts", and that's the same kind of mechanism we should apply.

> Way to make up strawman's argument.

Please explain what you think I’m strawmanning. If you demand that certain topics be banned from discussion, you must explain, as a matter of implementation, who gets to decide what is banned.

> Do you agree that there are objective facts that should be accepted by the society

What, concretely, do you mean by "should be accepted by the society"? To use an extreme but historically common example, does it mean that people should be executed for having different beliefs? You need to be more specific.

> If you do not believe such object facts exist

I do believe the Earth is round. I do believe it’s a fact. I don’t believe people should be banned (or worse) because they think otherwise.

In fact, flat Earth theories are interesting, because they challenge my assumptions and ultimately clarify my understanding of the subject.

This is why freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas is so important: It is the only mechanism by which we can correct our own epistemology and keep it in check, both at the individual and at the societal level!

> there must be some mechanism that raises certain statements into the status of "facts"

Sure. What does this have to do with censorship, though? The topic of discussion was policy, i.e. what is to be imposed on other people.

Wow you are not even discussing in good faith anymore.

Where did I say discussion of certain topics should be banned? Where did I say people should be killed for believing different things? It’s literally strawman after strawman from you.

> you must explain, as a matter of implementation, who gets to decide what is banned.

No I don’t. I pointed out a problem, but I am not suggesting solutions, and I sure as hell don’t owe you an implementation.

> Where did I say discussion of certain topics should be banned?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797649

> Do you agree that there are objective facts that should be accepted by the society for the well being of the society?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795296

> They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795078

> I do not believe my unlimited free speech rights is of higher priority the health and wellbeing of the overall society.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24793340

> The whole "absolute free speech is a sacrosanct human rights for everyone" is an ideal that simply would not scale with the 21st century civilization.

> But we can all agree that freedom isn't free, at one point in the future the cost would be so high that the whole civilization would be facing a "give me freedom or give me death" moment.

Feel free to clarify what you meant, which is precisely what I was asking about.

> Where did I say people should be killed for believing different things?

I explicitly said that was an example, not something you specifically said.

If Jim Jones had an amplification like Twitter, maybe it would be 909,000 people that drank the kool-aid and killed themselves rather than the 909 people that did.

Some ideas don't deserve to be amplified, and there is no guarantee that anyone and everyone gets to have their ideas amplified by everyone else. I see far too much right-wing kool-aid being guzzled today, and it seems like about 40% of America would rather die by suicide than live in a world where compromise happens with liberals, and for no good reason except misinformation, disinformation, and subterfuge.

So you'd really rather watch the world burn than accept that Twitter has no obligation to amplify anyone's lies?

> If Jim Jones had an amplification like Twitter, maybe it would be 909,000 people that drank the kool-aid and killed themselves rather than the 909 people that did.

The mere fact you say that it shows you have 0 idea how a sect like that works and how it preys and works on people.

> I see far too much right-wing kool-aid being guzzled today

You are correct but it is highly suggestive you only mention right wing lunacies, sure, climate change denial, anti-vaccine movement and oil industry cheerleading are particularly popular in the right win and they will be very damaging to society. But how about left wing lunacy, no reason for concern? From opposition to nuclear energy to GMOs, blank slatism and denial of any significant difference due to sex or ethnicity, forced quotas across all areas of society, cancel culture, a strong government promoted censorship. I am going to be honest I am pretty left wing, for real, not the american variety, and with the exception of global warming and vaccines(this is not so clear cut politically) I find myself more often than not in the other side of the road from them,

HN hasn't change. It's always been this way since it first started. Even in the 90s, "censorship" like what we see today happened. The actions haven't changed. The scope is what is different. Instead of affected a few hundred people, it's now affecting hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions.

> internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship

I don't see that having changed. Obviously I don't know the specific people you are thinking of, but judging by your comment here and the timeline you are mentioning, I don't see much as change beyond scope.

Honestly, if people think people are becoming pro-censorship, I think it's more a case of ignoring everything that was happening before.

I was born in the early 90s, and likely grew up on the same internet you did in the late 90s/2000s. In that time, I remember fondly, of participating and even moderating many, many, phpBB, vBulletin and Invision forums, and this idea that, in the past, you could post anything you wanted and people would just "put up with it" has never been true to me at least. Even 4chan never had the "free from consequences" free speech that seems to be worshipped.

Even pre-internet, one's social groups would cast them out if they were to say something everyone else in the group thought was wrong or didn't want to hear..

Yeah. There was a significantly higher ratio of moderators to users back then and the way I remember it is that toxic people were banned and no one batted an eye.

Now it seems like half the internet is comprised of toxic people.

The “communities” are also huge and generic rather than smaller and topical. Back in the 90s/2000s moderators were usually enthusiasts with domain knowledge and insisting people stay on topic was a pretty solid moderation tool since the moderators’ on topic opinions usually had more value than some random troll.

New technologies brought new challenges. There was no social network in the 2000s and before. No retweet button, no "curated" timeline that showed you what you "like". YouTube did not try to push more videos like the ones you watched previously until the mid 2010s.

Free speech does not have the same meaning as before. Before it just meant that you could say whatever you wanted. Now people use it implicitly to mean that they can say whatever they want, but also that they are entitled to have their thoughts broadcasted at large using the amplification mechanisms I mentioned above.

While I believe free speech is a good thing, I believe free amplification is terrible.

If you think about it, before social networks, amplification was done through TV and newspapers, and those have editorial boards that filters the content they share. If a newspaper's staff is pro-environment, they can prevent any columnist writing anything that denies climate change, and it's not controversial.

However the problem is how do we decide who can get free amplification and who can't? Based on what? My preference would be that no one is, and we go back to uncurated things and to an internet where you have to look for the things you want to read/watch, versus getting content pushed onto you.

We had AOL message boards and similar forums with free amplification before social media.

The difference in scale is so astronomically large that using 'amplification' for both of these cases is misleading at best.

How many AOL users were there, total, in the 90s? Now, how many Twitter users are there, today? It's not even a fair fight.

That's only one metric, another would be trust, and clout, and others. The president tweeting is different from a random AOL user posting to a message board. Totally different beasts.

Huh? Assuming only talking about USA, AOL had more than 30 million subscribers. And that's not counting their family members/guests. Twitter claims to have 40 million active US members, a claim I doubt heavily. They aren't far off.

30 million subscribers who read the message boards? And they all took each post as seriously as they do a tweet today? I doubt it. You're also cherry picking from my comment and ignoring the parts about how amplification is different today than then, outside of the numbers scale.

Also, I'm not comparing to just the USA twitter users either! It's a global platform. That matters. Retweets are not region-locked!

Not just message boards, live chat! Thousands and thousands of chat rooms, and everyone on IM, and everyone FWDing inappropriate emails around. I'm not sure how old you are or if you had AOL, but it was by far the most social internet experience I'd ever had!

Global users, of course, Twitter trumps it in count, no doubt. I only assumed US users because the post was about US politics.

Not all AOL subscribers participated in these boards/posting though.

In addition, you have social media boosting other social medias, Facebook, Reddit, this place, each with their own individual brand of shenanigans. You didn't have that way back when (mostly because the alternatives were just as sparse)

That's not even remotely the same thing. When you post on an AOL message board, the only people that see it are people who are in AOL, use the Message Boards, and actively choose to read the thread and post with your message.

When I log in to Twitter right now I get a message that Ariana Grande has a new album. I don't follow her, I don't care about her, but Twitter decided I needed to see that.

I have notifications disabled but I can only imagine what it pushes out.

On top of that pushing of unsolicited information, the social networks purposely push controversial topics to gain your attention. After a while those controversial and outlandish posts are legitimized and normalized.

That's Twitter's choice to be user-hostile. There's no technical reason they can't show me all the posts from people I follow and nothing else.

Right, and that would be a lack of the amplification which is exactly what's being discussed.

Wouldn't the obvious choice be to let everyone have the same access to free amplification? No one is being forced to listen, and I'd rather have the ability to ignore what I don't want to see/hear instead of a bunch of 20 somethings Engineers deciding for me.

Whenever I see a comment like this, I have to point out that they are already deciding what you want to see and hear. On most of the platforms in question you're being suggested content by a bunch of algorithms that you can't inspect, understand, or control. And while it's not censorship, drowning signal in a flood of noise is not that different.

Suppressing in direct messages is pretty different.

A lot of people I know use twitter DMs as a primary communication method for people in their own families, even inside the same household. Twitter filtering communication between family members in your home is ... well ... a perfect excuse for me to strongly encourage them to stop using twitter.

It's impossible because amplification is a zero-sum game. There's a limited amount of attention per human being. Thus everyone vying for attention is competing in this game, and any criteria for choose one amplified voice over the other necessarily results in bias.

It is a completely unavoidable artifact of our attention span and mortality, with no possible workaround. Hence why curation and bias becomes the value propositions.

That’s a good point. In many ways it is a free market for attention span. Except that people can now pick not from a short list of established editors, but from a massive list of interesting people to follow.

I think people should be the judge for who they trust and/or want to listen to.

I don’t see the “but now we can’t control what they see” objection kindly.

I think "amplification" is simplifying the effect that these social networks have.

Not only do the social networks allow you to amplify your opinion, they also nudge users further and further into bubbles where voices amplify even more.

Before social networks, if you got a pro-environment newspaper, the bias of that paper still had a bound on it. But imagine if the paper was constantly changing based on what you read. Were you interested in the article yesterday? Here is an even more biased article. Read it again? Try this article even more biased. Soon, the original paper would be so moderate that it would almost appear anti-environment.

The number of conspiracy theories floating around right now is alarming. And I blame a lot of it on the algorithms that these social networks are using to promote content people seem interested in. You get into rabbit holes and eventually land up reading extremist/fringe theories.

Exactly. Amplification is like a printing press.

The infinite scrolling, sound-biteized, dopamine hit farming, engagement (and outrage) maximized social media is more like this: https://www3.pictures.zimbio.com/mp/7aRQwqq77srl.jpg

Key to this is that the objective isn't interest, it's "engagement", addictive behaviour and advertising consumption. It may be content that you hate, or-- better-- content that depresses you: Sapped of initiative you just keep scrolling and clicking, and some studies have show that depressed people are easier to influence and more vulnerable to advertising.

I can't think of a way that you can provide equal amplification to everyone. Physically there is only so much space "above the fold" on a website or on the first page of search results. Something has to be put front and center, thus receiving more amplification than other things.

How would you determine what can fit on your mobile screen? What sorting algorithm would you choose?

If you sort based off of what the most recent submissions, you might not ever see things that interest you and you might leave the platform.

If you sort based off of most recent or the most comments, then the most controversial posts would be amplified above more moderate and well thought out posts.

You can think of any type of sorting algorithm you want, you can even provide options/combinations. However it is impossible to give all content the same access to free amplification.

"I can't think of a way that you can provide equal amplification to everyone."

Yes we can. You could make a transparent algorithm in which eg. 15 out of 15 posts in my FB feed are from my friends in chronological order, at most two per friend. Likes etc. are just graphics and a reply from a friend bumps the post.

And something similar for Twitter.

It is not rocked science if you don't want to make the site so bad you possibly can to make visitors stay longer and see more ads when they wade through the irrelevant crap to see the post they want to see.

This is de facto no recommendations and no amplification. Which I agree with; IMO even algorithmic recommendation is an implicit endorsement of "we want you to see this content you didn't specifically ask to see", at which point that's an editorial decision that people should be held liable for.

I like the way Twitter is now, if you configure your settings correctly. You see all the top-level Tweets made by the users you follow. In chronological order. And nothing else. Of course, this includes retweets. If you don't want to see retweets from one of the users you follow, you can specifically disable retweets from that user.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you have only 15 posts that can be viewed at a time, doesn't that mean those 15 posts are getting amplified over the others? Maybe not since all posts theoretically would be temporarily visible in those 15 posts at some point?

Won't posts that encourage quick responses (clickbait, memes, controversial posts, etc) be bumped up much more frequently, thus making sure they are amplified more than other postings (while burying other posts)? Sure this might not be much of a problem on a site where you only are following a small number of people, but I find it hard to imagine it could translate to a larger site that inherently isn't just you following a few friends (i.e. Reddit).

It is not a full and perfect proposition.

Ye well one friend could spam alot and almost always show up in his two slots in the feed. But aslong as you have a finit number of annoying friends you could deal with that by maybe muting them from the feed or just live with it. It might be a problem since many Facebook users have 100s of "friends", but I see that as an user error. You could have a "favorite" bar with friends you easily could click on and see what they have posted. Ie. actively looking instead of a feed if the feed gets too spammy by 100s of friends.

Having absolutely equal and fair exposure would need some kind of normalized random selection of posts since last login but that would probably just get messy and confusing.

"Won't posts that encourage quick responses (clickbait, memes, controversial posts, etc) be bumped up much more frequently, thus making sure they are amplified more than other postings (while burying other posts)?"

Ye but atleast its deterministic, your friends find it interesting enough to talk about and the conversation can continue till it is done instead of disapearing in the feed. There could be a big cross to click to mute it.

I have no hope of having an algorithm decide what I want to see. That is my main point.

make this service. "tune your own algorithm" social network. not sure how broad the appeal of that will be, but you can do an MVP to find out

I agree wholeheartedly: the "right to free speech" is not the same as a "right to be heard", but we have managed to conflate the two with all of this "free amplification", as you describe; there is a big difference between someone getting to say something to their followers and that content being broadcast and even recommended by Twitter to random people. I personally believe that if a website has a recommendation algorithm that should be considered an editorial decision they are making and they should be liable for the content they recommend (and much more so than they are today: the same level of standard we hold a newspaper to should apply); but, if a user merely posts something and people have to actively choose to follow the poster, then that's on them (as the website is acting as a utility connecting consenting parties). Doing it like this (which might even be the status quo of the law if Section 230 is repealed, btw) changes what kinds of apps can be built and what businesses models are viable "at scale", but almost certainly for the better: apps that work like how Instagram used to--where you just saw content from exactly who you followed in the order they posted it... something many (if not maybe even most) users preferred but which was clearly less profitable for Facebook--seem like they should be fine and you should get to post whatever you want to the people who opted in to hear what you had to say. People who generally like recommendation systems try to defend all of their algorithmic amplification, and then the sometimes-arbitrary-feeling censorship seemingly required to make them universally viable, but here we see Twitter taking the ridiculously extreme position to even block private messages... the regulatory fallout of this political decision is going to be fascinating to watch.

I believe the vast majority of the content you see on Twitter and pretty much everything you see on Facebook is from people you follow (ads excluded). Twitter/FB though use an algorithmic feed mechanism to reorder the posts which makes sense. I think they should be transparent about how they generate the feed, but I don't think you can hold them accountable for the content of a post someone made just because it got reordered to the top by an algorithm.

There are multiple levels. While I like the idea of separating seeing only what my followers post and seeing other posts, it gets really blurry when the people I follow are clicking the "like" and "retweet" buttons. I would guestimate around 30% or more of my twitter feed are posts people I follow have liked or retweeted rather than posted on their own.

And the network can make that happen on its own, without an algorithm reordering content - if someone I follow is retweeting something that someone they follow retweeted.

Well that's not the full story is it? They actively blocked, with human knowledge a post. They definitely editorialized that. No algorithm involved.

The block is only needed because of the amplification. If tweets and posts showed up chronologically vs from ML-driven engines to identifying the most grabbing content, we wouldn't be systemically hyper-charging emotionally hooking misinformation.

You don't need to unplug the bullhorn if there is no bullhorn.

Twitter also blocked the article in DMs, which do show up chronologically rather than through ML.

Nobody's systematically hyper charging emotionally hooking anything. This is or rather, without the artificial suppression, would be completely 100% organically viral.

It shouldn't be up to absolutely obviously partisan corporations to decide which October surprise info dump is misinformation deserving of censorship, and which is the aok rough and tumble of presidential electioneering.

Finally, on the facts, the Steele dossier was far more obviously fraudulent than pictures of hunter smoking a crack pipe in the bathtub...

People would find that unreadable, and someone would come along to replace twitter or facebook with a better experience.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all used to use chronological feeds instead of ones sorted by personalized algorithms. They switched to the latter because they found they could make the platforms more addictive and increase screen time and therefore ad revenue. Doing so also involved them making the algorithms purposefully seek out inflammatory content in many cases to show to users because that keeps the user on the platform longer.

But it's okay, because they own the platform. the people on twitter complaining about it are free to start their own twitter-like platform. It's a great country that allows this.

If they want to take that stance, they should also be held liable for anything posted to "their" platform, from porn to slander, fake news, and any personal insults.

They are trying to claim control only when it suits them and not when there may be liability. Can't have it both ways.

If they want to take that stance, they should also be held liable for

Why? I pick up a piece of rubbish from the ground, so I'm responsible for everything that anyone litters? It doesn't make any sense.

Twitter isn't claiming they prevent every type of bad on their platform, they're just trying to prevent one type of bad for now

Bad analogy, corporations aren't citizens.

Could you explain why corporations are responsible for everything on their platform if they police it to any extent?

Because policing content based on political opinion is editorializing.

Actually...

Don't compare the whole world to private property. When someone comes along and complains "Hey you censored my post" their response amounts to "We control over what is acceptable on our site". At that point haven't they just taken responsibility for all the content on their site? I suppose they could claim they're going to censor certain things on certain high profile accounts as a policy for [reasons]. Maybe?

If you choose to follow disinformation posted by a hostile nation state, is that a right to free speech or free amplification? What if those voices argue harmful or destructive effects on you and your society?

I guess the line is so blurred because often these aren't "people" but often institutions, governments and those intending to shape public opinion, even bots in some cases.

You're talking about it like Twitter is censoring someone specifically but it's so much more complicated and nuanced than that.

I'm also curious on another aspect, as I don't believe "right to free speech" is meant in any way to imply a lack of liability for damages caused by that speech.

If I convince millions of people that Example companies widgets kills kittens, when I have no reason to believe that to be the case, I would be held liable for the damage to the brand.

But the pseudo-anonymous nature of the internet and most platforms, and even trying to avoid problems like the Streisand effect allow damaging speech to avoid consequence.

I'm not advocating for any approach to fix the problem, this is just a curiosity of mine as of late.

It's sad that mainstream media outlets even get away with slander in politics. Everything is twisted either to fit their views or just to make outlandish headlines to get clicks.

> I'm also curious on another aspect, as I don't believe "right to free speech" is meant in any way to imply a lack of liability for damages caused by that speech.

It depends what you meant. The law doesn't give carte blanche to say whatever you want, however you want, either. Your example above is what libel and slander laws are about. People make (probably millions) of false claims about companies daily and none of them rise to the level of a credible accusation largely because they're done anonymously. Someone who could actually "convince millions of people" probably has at least SOMETHING damning, and if they don't, the backpressure from everyone else is going to be pretty intense. That's actually _normal_. Desirable.

_Some_ speech _does_ require freedom from damage because otherwise the direct effect is the chilling effect. Political speech is specifically one type of such speech. The internet really has forced us to look carefully at what kinds of speech warrant that protection and which don't and we clearly haven't figured it out yet.

But certainly giving that power to private companies - and removing it from the hands of the people, the government, the law, the courts, and posterity -- is _definitively not_ the right way to do it.

Yea sorry if I was unclear, I was referring to slander and libel civil actions, and using an intentionally contrived example that probably didn't fall into the grey area as I intended.

I think the really difficult part about all of it is, the areas that don't require protections, aren't because the speech isn't damaging, it's that an uneven application of the rules can lead to worse problems. Or issues where it's impossible to find objective neutral parties (a jury) to decide on issues central to politics.

Ah, fair enough. 100% agreed!

Liable in what sense? Who would have standing to sue? The New York Post hasn't suffered any damages. (US courts don't consider loss of potential revenue from hypothetical newspaper sales or web traffic to be damages.)

> I believe free amplification is terrible

It's exactly what they were saying at the invention of the printing press. Amplification becoming too cheap. Maybe being on the side of censorship is always being on the wrong side of history no matter the issue. Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"?

How exactly is press free amplification? How do I get my random opinion broadcasted to a newspaper audience? I would probably have to write an opinion column and send it to the journal, then they would read it, and decide whether or not they want to publish it. If it's the NYT for example, you can be sure that no matter how well written your piece is, they will never publish something that pushes the theory that COVID-19 is a plot by Bill Gates to put chips into everyone.

But you can probably find a sketchy, low-audience journal that would.

Well it's the same thing, a well known community was banned from Reddit to prevent them from using Reddit's amplification mechanism (/r/all etc), but they now have their own clone of it, with a smaller audience, that you are free to consult.

It's not a great comparison because both entities are regulated completely different based on what they allow on their platform/paper with exceptions to certain things. That's where people are getting confused. If you curate the news, you can be held liable for things published, if you don't you are allowed a pass (with some exceptions.) By stepping in actively censor a news story that has yet to be disputed, social media platforms have opened themselves up to being held liable for -all- posts.

> By stepping in actively censor a news story that has yet to be disputed

That's not why Twitter "censored" the news story. They removed links to a story that violated their published policies.

> They removed links to a story that violated their published policies.

I am not sure that it matters 'why they censored'.

Put it another way, I do not think it matters if they applied their own ToS rules correctly, incorrectly, selectively or whatever.

I am not sure that their terms of service, allow them to claim protection under 47.230 [1]

I am sure that the position that the fed government investigators will take.

If Twitter folks (or their crowd-sourced moderators, or committees) gray-out/remove/comment on/hide/edit content that Twitter claims 'is not theirs' -- then it is hard to imaging they are compliant with the 'non-publisher' protections of section 47.230.

Imagine if one is a for-profit business, claiming tax code for a non-profit organization.

Their Terms Of Service mentions: 'Making the world better and being charitable. We do not do business with bad clients'.

Does that make that business less criminally liable for claiming taxes of a non-profit?

To me it does not.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

I don't agree with the comparison either, but, in the 16th century just about everyone could make a broad side and disseminate whatever they wanted.

Literally, wars were started because of this. Similar to today's information age propaganda wars and disinformation, physical media was used in a similar way. There are some valid comparisons here.

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

Huh that's a cool comparison. I guess society will have a rough patch when a new, more accessible medium of communication is mass released to the public.

It's not an entirely inappropriate comparison. The similarities are obvious, and they are extremely relevant.

However, relative to the days of broadsides, the barrier to entry for dissemination of ideas has decreased by orders of magnitude and the potential reach of such ideas has increased by orders of magnitude.

It's like comparing slingshots and nuclear weapons. Yes, they're both things that let you hurt people from a distance.

"Free amplicfication" isn't about absolute lack of cost, it's about cost relative to older mechanisms. The printing press allowed information to spread much faster and more cheaply than having a monk write it by hand. It also allowed ideas that were not monk-approved to appear in print. When it first came out people were pretty upset about the incorrect ideas that propogated as a result.

Eventually people with power figured out how to mostly control the printing press and so created the heavily gate-kept institutions you describe. The transitions our society is facing now echo these past struggles.

There are similarities with those past struggles, but the differences are significant.

We cannot simply hand-wave some of them away as "the struggles every new medium faces."

Printed materials were still pretty gate-kept. Sure, anybody could spend a modest sum and get a bunch of roughly-printed pamphlets printed up. You could walk around London and hand them out. People did, and I suppose some of these ideas got traction. And some of those ideas were even good.

That was still a lot of money and effort, and it was still a lot of work to establish some kind of credibility so that your ideas might actually gain acceptance. Otherwise you were just a crazy person handing out pamphlets along with all of the other crazy people.

Today, you can post insane and dangerous COVID-19 falsehoods to half of the freaking world via YouTube or Facebook and your message is indistinguishable from ideas presented by people who actually know what they're talking about.

The gatekeeping America used to have was... not great. Network television's self-censorship was often stodgy, at best. But you didn't have absolute fucking lunatics screaming about chemtrails and Bill Gate's 5G microchip mind-control scheme racking up literally millions of followers. That is a PROBLEM.

If you say to me that the ideal solution is to simply have a more educated populace, I wouldn't disagree. However, that doesn't solve things now. We need long-term solutions (education) as well as short-term ones (so we don't have the loonies electing other loonies who actually get to steer the most powerful militaries on the planet)

> If you say to me that the ideal solution is to simply have a more educated populace, I wouldn't disagree. However, that doesn't solve things now.

Even in the long term, how are you going to produce this more educated populace? Or rather, who are you going to entrust with the task? The same educational establishment that produced the current populace?

But even if you can produce your more educated populace, you still have the problem that the Russian trolls aren't going to stand still. They're going to be better, too, by then.

What is the end goal of this argument? That everything is great now?

Hardly. Things are a mess. But if your solution involves having (or making) "better people", your solution likely won't work in the real world.

How do you imagine such an educated population occurs when you conflat Freedom of Thought with Freedom of Speech?

If you don't like certain ideas being distributed then who made you the boss of ideas?

Without a free exchange of ideas, you can not have a educated population, you only get programmed automotons.

    Or rather, who are you going to entrust with the task? 
    The same educational establishment that produced the 
    current populace?T

Ideally, education teaches critical thinking, not a specific indoctrination.

Education, obviously, often falls short of this ideal and you don't necessarily need formal education to be a critical thinker.

I do think that's pretty achievable. When I went through school in the 80s and 90s we weren't exactly devoid of this sort of thing.

Absurd ideas like chemtrails and flat-eartherism don't last very long in the face of the slightest hint of critical thinking.

    But even if you can produce your more educated populace,
    you still have the problem that the Russian trolls aren't
    going to stand still. They're going to be better, too, by
    then.

I certainly don't disagree, but doing a better job of critical thinking certainly seems like a reasonable first step no matter what else we do.

> The same educational establishment that produced the current populace?

Yes, them, but with adequate funding and a return of Civics and Home Ec required for all students.

How much funding is adequate? I'm so sick of hearing that throwing more money at X is our only solution. Per capita education spending has gone up significantly in the past 30 years.

Enough to pay teachers an enviable wage, so that the job is desirable and competitive, even in poor neighborhoods (not just the schools with good test scores). Funding education reduces crime, homelessness, poverty... it's not a magic bullet and you don't just get there by throwing money at the problem, but with good policy and adequate funding, education is just about the biggest payoff investments that we can make as a society.

First fix the leaking bucket .. remove the incentives for stupidity and uselessness and timewasting distractions that are rampant in western society.

Then, money you spend on education will get a ROI instead of being skimmed off the top.

> remove the incentives for stupidity and uselessness and timewasting distractions that are rampant in western society.

Kind of an awkward take... this conversation is literally taking place on social media.

Do you have a concrete proposal for how to accomplish that goal?

Personally I actually get value from HN, there's plenty that is informative and useful here and I consider HN a discussion forum. Social media is more what I would term fb where the main point is about the social connections, instead of the discussion and learning the discussion implies, in my opinion.

As for concrete proposals .. it's a massive topic, and full of interdependent systems and feedback loops and it might be hubris if anyone says 'heres a single concrete proposal to address it all'.. but here's some thoughts more on identifying issues to address in the context of schools, and aligning the results of schooling to learning.

A natural process of learning, especially for children, is to copy an image/role model/idol and learn through imagining themselves as that role model.

What are the social aspirations, or role models, that children usually idolise in our current schools and society? Film stars, sports stars, super models, instagram 'influences' which are usually just models ..

Common themes amongst these: glamourous lives, big money, social capital.

Another common theme is accomplishment in those fields does not have a linear relationship to hard work, to learning, and to the cultivation of knowledge.

Instead it's about coolness, social gaming, and largely about genetic lottery of beauty or sporting ability - yes some hard work but that's not going to get you far without these other pre-requisites.

It's also about luck, so rewards are not linearly related to effort, thus the payoff for effort is very uncertain.

Actually accomplishment in those fields is mostly a winner takes all market environment, so most people can never find success, and the majority of people who realise that they can't ever succeed to their aspirations give up putting in effort, it's a cause of apathy.

So the mainstream kids who idolise mainstream 'stars' aren't incentivised to learn and apply themselves mentally, they are incentivised to try to be cool, play social games, preen themselves for physical beauty, and hope to heck they are lucky .. and the vast majority has to face the unhappy reality they will never be stars.

That's a problem. What if their role models were Einstein who had a talent for imagining and discovering interesting things about the world, even as he worked a mundane job as a clerk (in the patent office). What if social capital for the mainstream classes was accrued to people who worked hard and made sensible decisions and created useful things, instead of to playing social gaming and trying to look beautiful/rich/make other people jealous and 'influence'.

So I don't have a concrete proposal, or the 'answers', but (I think) at least this is asking some of the right questions!

"But you didn't have absolute fucking lunatics screaming about chemtrails and Bill Gate's 5G microchip mind-control scheme racking up literally millions of followers. That is a PROBLEM."

This article is about blocking a story by the NY Post. It may be true or may be false, but it already passed the traditional gatekeepers.

Just because it passed the bar at NY Post doesn't mean it passes the bar at Twitter.

That's the crux of it. There is surprise that Twitter even has a "bar". People used to think of Twitter in one way, and now Twitter's actions have encouraged people to think of Twitter in a different way.

So twitter is not an impartial conduit - instead it is editorial and opinionated, and should face legal accountability for it's views as such, in the same way as newspapers?

According to Section 230, probably yes.

But I don't think Section 230 is adequate to the task.

You realize, of course, that even HN is strongly moderated? The mods kill a lot of stories here. And HN is a better place for it.

By your logic, HN should now be liable for anything that anybody posts. Is that what you want? Does that seem like it's in anybody's best interests?

    This article is about blocking a story by the NY Post. 
    It may be true or may be false, but it already passed 
    the traditional gatekeepers.

It passed a gatekeeper, and was refuted by others. And if you're describing the NY Post as a "traditional gatekeeper", you're not familiar with the NY Post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post#Style

It represents roughly the midpoint between a serious journalistic operation and the National Enquirer.

In the distant past of 2007, the National Enquirer broke a sex scandal involving democratic politician John Edwards which often is thought to have played a major role in the 2008 dem primaries.

Should factually accurate information that matters to people be rejected or hidden because of style? Who gets to decide the correct style? Would you apply the same standards to alternately aligned publications of questionable style, like WaPo/HuffPo?

Almost all of the stories in the National Enquirer are factually correct. You might not like the subject matter but they are journalists.

The National Enquirer is listed at the edge between "Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info" (2nd lowest category) and "Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info" (lowest category).

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2...

The National Enquirier is NOT a reputable journalistic outlet.

The argument that Twitter or FB need to restrict/block content is based on the idea that Twitter/FB built readership for "lunatics" in the first place.

Bu that argument doesn't apply here for two reasons:

1. The NY Post has existed in some form for 200 years, and has built its own reader base.

2. Twitter blocked even direct messages.

The NY Post is old (founded by Alexander Hamilton!) but in recent decades has truly evolved into a gleefully trashy and conservatively opinionated newspaper, having been run by Rupert Murdoch for some time.

I completely fail to see how their rights are somehow being impinged here. They have their own mini-media empire and are part of a larger media empire.

How... exactly are they being stifled and why is Twitter obligated to amplify their voice?

I would certainly agree that this does fall afoul of Section 230, which I think was a great foundation but could use some serious rethinking.

NY Post is a tabloid/rag with a pretty bad reputation

and even their reporters didn't want to publish it

https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-hunter...

> The New York Post’s front-page article about Hunter Biden on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it, two Post employees said.

> Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility, the two Post employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

...

> Many Post staff members questioned whether the paper had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive’s contents, said five people with knowledge of the tabloid’s inner workings. Staff members also had concerns about the reliability of its sources and its timing, the people said.

> Today, you can [print] insane and dangerous ... falsehoods and your message is indistinguishable from ideas presented by people who actually know what they're talking about.

I bet the response of the Catholic clergy to the printing press was probably pretty similar to this statement. And the ideas of the reformation were certainly far more dangerous than any chemtrail conspiracy.

Chemtrail conspiracy theories are... pretty insignficant. If your goal is to eradicate all conspiratorial wrongthink of this magnitude or greater, you are going to run into ~a lot~ of problems. Epstein memes are very popular.

A few things wrong with your rebuttal.

One, nobody is taking away your right to say or think things. This is about Twitter's obligation (or lack thereof) to broadcast your thoughts to others.

They are not burning you at the stake like a vengeful Catholic church during the Inquisition or outlawing your thoughts like "wrongthink" in 1984.

Two, the printing press analogy is highly flawed. Twitter is like the owner of one specific printing press, not some entity that controls all printing presses. If you owned a printing press, would you want to be obligated to print things you find factually and harmful?

I assume you'd certainly want the freedom to turn down printing jobs. Or do only certain freedoms matter?

Right, it's vastly preferred to have qualified people lying to everyone about WMD's in Iraq or the Gulf of Tonkin.

Very flawed comparison. The government lying to you is one thing. The government has literal life and death control over you and others. There is only one government and we can't easily choose another.

These things are not true about Twitter. You can go post on your own Mastodon instance or the Daily Stormer or the Fox News comment section if Twitter is too restrictive for your liking.

Also, do you recognize the irony/insanity of complaining about this on Hacker News, a strongly-moderated platform? HN's centralized moderation is far more stringent.

I believe the consequences of professional, expert misinformation -- half a million civilian casualties -- pales in comparison to the amateur hour on Twitter. I'm referring to New York Times reporting in the lead up to the Iraq war, which was later found to be purposeful fraud, and played a huge role in juicing the public for war.

You don't need to look very far to find other examples.

For clarity, the printing press was for books. Newspapers did not come along until much later.

Interestingly, the Catholic church was very concerned about the ability to mass produce literature and wanted to have control over what could be published. They didn't want just anyone to be able to publish a book. Imagine giving people a platform to speak out against the Church!

This is a major reason for Martin Luther and the Lutheran Church.

There is an excellent hard core history podcast that somewhat relates to the topic.

Yeah this one: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophe...

It's a good episode. History is pretty gruesome.

The "press" has historically not been neutral; political sheets/tabloids heavily aligned with specific parties or individuals were very common in American history until the 20th century. There was little, if any, notion of "journalistic integrity" - they were simply a way to get out what specific persons wanted heard.

I don't think it's comparable. If social network is the new newspaper, everyone is free to create your own newspaper. That's why I'll always defend net neutrality. But forcing a private institution to adopt a specific editorial stance, THAT'S anti-freedom. In general, we should work to promote alternative platforms, not to force the existing ones to promote what we believe is right.

I agree, but I am also a fierce critic of what Facebook and Twitter are doing. By doing this they are actually driving many people to even -more- extreme platforms. I am generally not opposed to them banning antivaxxing, and things that are an active threat to safety...but banning the NY Post story was way too far, and Twitter has even doubled down on it by banning the follow up stories. The thing is that their business models rely on them not being held liable for what is posted, yet by curating things which aren't abhorrent or in the interest of public safety they have opened up a massive can of worms of potentially removing their limited liability from user generated content.

> If social network is the new newspaper, everyone is free to create your own newspaper.

The main difference is that people buy a newspaper for the information it publishes while people join a social network because their friends are there. A social network starting to editorialize content is therefore a problem since there is really no alternative ways to keep in touch with friends as effectively, meaning these social networks gets to force their opinions on people.

How would alternate platforms work when platforms result in winner take all dynamics?

> But forcing a private institution to adopt a specific editorial stance, THAT'S anti-freedom

Who is forcing a private organization to adopt any stance? "Leaving alone" is not the same as "actively promoting." Twitter leaving alone a story does not mean Twitter is promoting that story, that is exactly what section 230 is about.

> not to force the existing ones to promote what we believe is right.

I guess they don't need to pay taxes either, or take a stand against violence, or racism, or....? They still exist within the society in which they function and that means both social and legal rules bind them, same as you or me. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, their status as a corporation doesn't somehow entitle them to a more special or louder voice than any one else's.

> Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"?

Absolutely, of course. Hate speech and Holocaust denial are censored in Europe generally, and a majority of people in those countries today do say support these bans (i.e. they say "thank god"). Because they saw the kind of hateful thinking that led to WWII, and how shockingly easy it is for people to be convinced of revisionist history, and don't want that to be repeated.

Similarly, libel laws function effectively as censorship, but are widely supported. I think most of us are happy that newspapers can't maliciously print lies about common citizens.

(Edit: love that I'm being downvoted for this -- apparently people don't like these objective facts?)

I upvoted you because you're absolutely right.

Is it the wrong side of history? Early printing is unambiguously connected with violence just as much as it is connected with intellectual freedom. Blood Libel and the associated murders of innocent jews could not have spread in the same manner without broadsheets.

"It is really complicated" is the conclusion that early modern historians of information come to.

> Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"?

Well, the honest answer to the "can you remember" question is going to be misleading. By the nature of the thing we're talking about, the historical things like that are things that people aren't going to remember.

If you believe in "to the victor go the spoils" on the information front, then successful censorship (and more generally propaganda) is always on the right side of history.

If the censorship is always on the right side of history, then we would definitely know instances of "thanks a lot for the censorship".

I think a better argument is that being on the side of forcing people to do things is being on the wrong side of history no matter the issue. People should be free to decide, of their own volition, that they want to choose to not amplify something. That's different from being compelled to not amplify it, which is generally bad.

But I can think of a number of examples of censorship that history has not judged poorly:

- Libel and slander. If I say "I used to work with 'hartator and they brought in KKK flags every morning and broke the build every evening, you don't want to hire them," it's generally considered reasonable for you to get the government to force me to stop and also force other people not to repeat what I said.

- Planning crimes. If I say "Hey, let's get together tomorrow evening and murder some strangers for fun," and we start talking about how to do it, it's generally considered reasonable for the government to consider that a crime.

- Trademark infringement and other fair competition laws. If I say "These headphones are recommended by Apple" and they're not, or I say "These apples are organic" and they're not, or I say "This is an all-beef sausage" and it contains pork, it's generally considered reasonable for the government to say that I can't keep saying that if I want to keep selling the things I'm saying them about.

- Employment agreements. If I say "Hey, new employer, here's a list of my old employer's customers and here's some of their source code," it's generally considered reasonable for the old employer to object.

(There are a number of cases of compelled action that are currently not considered unreasonable - prison labor, military drafts, etc. - but I think those stand a much higher chance of being on the wrong side of history, in the long term, than any of the above.)

The printing press was also used to fuel deranged, antisemetic hysteria in the form of Martin Luther’s widely-disseminated book, On the Jews and their Lies. So, I guess some things really never do change:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemiti...

>Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"?

Nazism in Germany, post-WW2. And I'm okay with that.

If only USA would do the same thing in the middle east today... Right wing extremism is a huge problem there.

Perhaps, instead of outlawing new technology and modes of communication, we should produce more speech to teach people how it works so they don't get sucked in by an algorithm and believe everything they read.

Those editorial boards you speak of get things wrong constantly. Limiting who can respond to them in front of an (at least) equally large audience is dangerous and a disservice to all, especially minorities.

Limiting who can publish and the size of their audience is categorically a violation of free speech. There is no daylight there.

>free amplification

This amplification isn't magic. You can't build an audience on YouTube (or anywhere) unless people actually care about what you have to say. And doing that is hard work.

Usenet newsgroups were social networks, if one recalls the digressive flame wars that could result there, I'd say.

Our problems are simply symptoms of a business model that’s out of control.

If I had to choose between advertising and free speech, I’d be happy to utterly abolish advertising. Even though that means completely tearing down the current media industry.

Obviously there’s middle ground to be found, but censorship is just treating the symptoms and in the dumbest possible way.

We’re just digging the hole deeper and deeper.

Who gets to choose who gets pick the things amplified or not?

In today's world these folks get to have a strong influence over how people are influenced.

Handling this well is very important. If people misuse that position than they can and will cause people to be influenced certain ways because of it.

The dirty secret is that no-one picks that. There's no-one turning the knobs to adjust your news feeds, just like there's no-one managing your Gmail inbox who you can turn to for help. It's all machines. Algorithms automatically amplify what's most engaging, and flame wars are more engaging than calm discussions.

Algorithms are designed by people. People who have--whether benevolent / well-intentioned or not--particular values, agendas and biases.

Not the algorithms OP is referring to. Those are black-box learning models which discover what to recommend based on - in the case of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter - what generates the most advertising revenue.

The "particular values, agendas and biases" you're referring to are just advertising revenue, not some political bias installed by the developer. If you WANT to believe there are such developers working at those companies, I can't stop you. But the evidence isn't really there. Make some friends who work at those companies and see what you can find out from the people who actually develop the tools you're accusing of having such political bias in.

Now, if we are talking about political bias in these platforms' policies, you might have something.

You didnt read the article, did you?

Algorithms didn't silence this article.

The fact that machines are helping these people accomplish their goals does not mean that people don’t have goals and that they shouldn’t be liable for the consequences of accomplishing their goals.

Calling it an amplifying algorithm is an insult to the term - literally a sort by most recent or appending to the bottom of a text file primitives posting would favor flame wars as "engagement". The rhetoric of sinister algorithims has been passed around a lot by propaganda "documentaryists" but really with even a bit of knowledge knows trying to cast a correlation algorithim as a singularity in a box master manipulator is absurd. What is next? Putting the wind on trial for billions of sexual assault charges because of all of the skirts it blew up without their consent?

People dont really understand how dangerous of a situation were in right now. When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts, sources, and even political candidates voices, they literally decide politics. Democracy is being challenged. We need to decide if we want kings or democratically elected representatives to be in charge of the country.

> When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts, sources, and even political candidates voices, they literally decide politics.

That's been happening for some time now, by algorithms that are optimized for outrage, engagement, clicks, etc.

> People dont really understand how dangerous of a situation were in right now. When big tech platforms can amplify or decrease thoughts,

Every form of media has that power, social media is not at all special in this respect. A post getting banned from twitter makes no difference to someone that gets their news from Fox News and talk radio. It's up to the people to manage their own thoughts, same as it ever was.

> It's up to the people to manage their own thoughts, same as it ever was.

So let them read what you don't want them to. If it isn't illegal or incitement of violence, it doesn't need to be removed.

> If it isn't illegal or incitement of violence, it doesn't need to be removed.

But it can be removed, because its one of many millions of privately owned websites on the internet... This is the great thing about the internet, anyone can create a website and run it however they want and users are free to visit whichever sites they like the most. This is a win-win for everyone except for those who want to control what site owners do with their own websites.

"Can be" and therefore "must be because I say so" are two entirely different things.

It's still an option to just leave it alone. What is this obsession our culture recently has that says "Just because I CAN do something, I MUST do something"?

It's an option to leave it alone, but it's the site owner's prerogative. If you don't like the site owner's moderation practices that's fine, but there's no reason that your opinion should override the owner's intentions with respect to how the site is run and the type of content on the site.

The only thing that has changed is that the power that used to be in the hand of the press and those with access and control of the press is now in other hands and in some ways more transparent.

A lot of the people yelling about the power of social media giants now are yelling because they represent the old status quo, not because they want democratisation of thought.

People choose which press to go to based on what they thought of the information provided there. People choose social networks based on which people are on them. Social networks controlling what you see is therefore much more dangerous than newspapers controlling what you see, since if you don't like what you see in a newspaper you can just switch but if you don't like twitter removing your posts most of your reasons to stay are still there.

> Who gets to choose who gets pick the things amplified or not?

I get that you're asking this question rhetorically, but the "obvious" answer is the correct one: the people that own and operate the amplification system as their business model get to pick. Why should it be otherwise?

If the powerful choose what is and is not amplified, they will try to avoid amplifying things which hurt their causes, and to amplify things which support them.

I don't want to be a pawn of the wealthy, or of governments, or powerful people in general. I don't trust my own government to do what's in my best interests, let alone foreign governments. I certainly don't trust the wealthy, either. That's why I think it should be otherwise.

> I don't want to be a pawn of the wealthy, or of governments, or powerful people in general.

Then don't. It's your choice to get all your news from facebook or twitter. You're here on HN, so I believe you already understand that the contents of facebook and twitter shouldn't determine the contents of your thoughts.

I don't want countless people to be pawns of the wealthy. I don't think very many people themselves want to be pawns of the wealthy.

Yet very many of these people will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for news, rather than changing to an alternative. So your solution to the problem fails.

> I don't want countless people to be pawns of the wealthy. I don't think very many people themselves want to be pawns of the wealthy.

It's not up to you. People can visit whatever websites they want, your subjective judgements about the nature of the content on the website isn't relevant. If they have a problem with the website they are free to visit another one.

> Very many people will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for news.

That's their choice. Very many people will continue to use pornhub and there is nothing the church can do about it... yet.

For me, it's simple. Facebook is doing bad things. I don't like bad things. I think we should stop Facebook from doing bad things.

Is up to me to stop it? No. Of course not. Obviously not. In fact, even if I had the power to single-handedly, unilaterally, stop Facebook from doing these things, I wouldn't. Because I don't believe that might makes right (that's my wider point, after all).

What I want is a popular, democratic movement to regulate the websites that people use, in the way that the informed population think they should be regulated.

Allowing countless to be made pawns of in the name of liberty seems foolish.

> I don't want countless people to be pawns of the wealthy

Too late. People are too easy to manipulate when you can amplify whatever you want.

then don't use twitter and convince others you know to do the same

Of course convincing individuals not to use these services is important. But it's not a solution to the problem.

> I don't want to be a pawn of the wealthy, or of governments, or powerful people in general.

yeah - this is the same sentiment out founding fathers had (in US obv.)

> I don't trust my own government to do what's in my best interests...

That's why we vote. The system created relieves us of worrying about being manipulated by powerful people, by letting the people run the government.

The truth is, your opinion only counts as much as your vote. That's how it should be. Your fringe opinions shouldn't count more than the rest of the people's opinions. So go vote. And let that be that.

Voting is a small part of a functioning democracy. Voting, then letting that be that, is very undemocratic.

This comment is arguing against something I didn't say.

I disagree. You say voting equals government by the people. I say voting does not equal government by the people.

Perhaps a better question than “who gets to choose which things get amplified?” is “who is liable for the consequences of amplifying certain things?”

You’re mischaracterizing how free speech was viewed in the recent past. “Free speech” (as a cultural value, I’m not talking about the first amendment) was about the marketplace of ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketplace_of_ideas. It meant a free market in ideas, where the dominant ideas arise from competition. What you call “amplification” is just something that makes the marketplace more efficient—it allows ideas to disseminate faster so people can decide which are the good ones and the bad ones. The curation you mention is the antithesis of a free market of ideas.

I understand the theoretical argument, but empirically do you think the quality of ideas that people believe has increased from (say) 2000 to 2020?

It seems like there's a lot more going on than just faster dissemination, and the way information travels these days might have introduced new asymmetries and inefficiencies.

I think the quality of ideas has improved. We focus on disinformation, but social media gets used for a lot of other things. Reading a dry article on police brutality (which let’s face it, people just skipped over in the past) is a lot less impactful than seeing something shared by a friend.

I think we’re overestimating the effect of social media. A certain group of highly educated urban liberals is shocked by Trump. (And I don’t say this pejoratively. My college educated friends were literally despondent after he was elected.) And they’re looking for an explanation. And it so happened that social media became a major force around the same time. But I think that’s mostly, though not completely, a coincidence.

Social media didn’t create Trump. Right wing populism is happening all over the world, in Europe, India, etc. Its a reaction to liberalism and globalism that’s been brewing for decades. And social media didn’t create Trump’s audience. My mom, a 70-year old Bangladeshi woman who has voted straight ticket Democrat since she was naturalized, thinks Trump is too unpolished, but loves his “energy” and “vigor.” She thinks he would be a “great President” if he could “implement his ideas.” My mom doesn’t have a Twitter account. (I think she’d love Boris Johnson, i.e. Trump with a bit more polish and competent.) She didn’t get this from Breitbart. She watches CNN in a loop all day.

Social media isn’t not a factor, but I think folks overestimate how much of a factor.

I'm not surprised at how your mom reacts to Trump. I'm surprised so many young people believe that covid is no big deal. I agree with you that the quality of our ideas has improved, but I also disagree in that the spread of our bad ideas has also improved. Concepts that were held by a fringe of society in the past, like the idea that the Earth is flat have grown their own communities who have interests in keeping those ideas alive. Ideas, bad and good, have gotten a lot stickier.

With stickier ideas, the marketplace becomes worse, because nothing ever gets pruned out of it. Too much energy is spent on limiting the growth of bad ideas than can be spent on refining the better ideas.

> I'm surprised so many young people believe that covid is no big deal.

Have you ever entertained the idea that perhaps you're wrong and they're right? I mean it's at least possible that you've been lead to the wrong conclusion by systemic errors that have yet to be identified, and perhaps wont be for many years into the future.

> Right wing populism is happening all over the world, in Europe, India, etc.

Social media is happening all over the world.

> A certain group of highly educated urban liberals is shocked by Trump.

3 million more people voted for Hillary than Trump. Biden is polling 10 points ahead of Trump.

If you are in favor of the popular vote movement, how do you reconcile that for residents of sparsely populated states like Wyoming? Why would such residents bother to vote at all under the popular vote? (I would not)

Parties would realign to more evenly split the electorate. Wyoming would still count.

Can you explain that? I do not understand.

A packed stadium rally in Pennsylvania would have about the same number of attendees as a packed stadium rally in Wyoming or Rhode Island. You couldn't just rely on predictable "safe states" won by voters going straight-party on ballots. As it is, there's barely any reason for a Democratic presidential nominee to show up in reliability red states, let alone offer them anything in a platform.

Switching to a popular vote could lessen the current extremism.

> A packed stadium rally in Pennsylvania would have about the same number of attendees as a packed stadium rally in Wyoming or Rhode Island.

That’s absolutely ridiculous. Apparently you’ve never been to Wyoming, population 550,000. Pennsylvania has 12.8 million.

Thank you for affirming my belief that a popular vote system is just as ridiculous for America.

To be fair, the Trump team targeted the electoral college win. If they had targeted the popular vote, i.e. campaigning in states that they wouldn't win outright, but could garner votes, they most likely would have won the popular vote. Meaning they could have won that game if they had tried.

Correct. The popular vote is meaningless for the same reason who is leading after 500 meters in a 10k is meaningless. Nobody is trying to win the popular vote. Most of the voting eligible population doesn’t vote, and we don’t necessarily know which way things would break if folks campaigned for those votes.

> > A certain group of highly educated urban liberals is shocked by Trump.

> 3 million more people voted for Hillary than Trump.

As I said, I’m not using this as a pejorative. I’m not just talking about folks who voted for Hillary, but ones who were despondent when Trump won. I worked late on election night and got home to an election watching party with DC yuppies and when I walked in the door I thought someone had died. These are the folks who were so stunned the started looking around for an explanation. And social media just happened to be rising at the same time.

Not all Hillary voters reacted that way. My mom and dad voted for Hillary. But they weren’t shocked by the existence of Trump. They didn’t see it as an indictment of the system. They didn’t go on the whole Russia collusion ride like all of my friends. (Not coincidentally, they supported Biden from the start. Meanwhile, I was shocked when Warren and Harris did so poorly, when it came to voting, because that’s who all my grad-school educated urban friends supported.)

I don't understand how anybody cannot be shocked by Trump. He's unlike any previous president, he has aggressively pursued his radical agenda, has broken every norm that has gotten in his way, communicates in purposefully shocking ways. I could go on and on. His supporters are also shocked though in a good way. He's the most polarizing president of our lifetimes by far. Anybody who thinks he is normal is just not paying attention.

I’m talking about the period immediately after the election, before trying to dismiss Comey, etc.

And don’t get me wrong, he’s not fit for office, but the idea that there is anything “radical” about his agenda, before or after the election, is pure gaslighting.

He actually ran on a moderate Republican platform. He committed to protecting Social Security and Medicare off the bat. (Remember Bush and Gore fighting over the “lock box?” Even fricking Sweden has partislly privatized their social security.) Even though it was right after Obergefell he said pretty much nothing about same-sex marriage. He criticized Clinton for her past criminal justice stances. Bluster aside, even his immigration platform wasn’t nuts. Liberal darling Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand became prime minister by campaigning on cutting legal immigration by half. Trump didn’t even do that. He focused on stopping illegal immigration, which 60% of Americans worry about: https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro....

His agenda also hasn’t been “radical.” What has he done? He has banned refugees and immigrants from certain countries—all ones you would expect given the political status, such as North Korea and Yemen. The only one on the current list that looks odd is Nigeria, but Trump instituted that ban at the same as the EU imposed Visa restrictions on Nigeria (February 2020): https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/eu-plans-to-impose-vis...

He had a corporate tax cut, which is consistent with what the UK and Sweden had been doing, and Merkel suggested Germany follow suit: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-davos-meeting-merkel-tax-...

He repealed a bunch of unpopular environmental regulations Obama pushed through in the last couple of years of his final term. This was after his 2012 campaign, where Obama criticized Romney for standing in front of a coal plant and saying “this kills.” https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/oct/16/barack-oba...

> Governor, when you were governor of Massachusetts, you stood in front of a coal plant and pointed at it and said, ‘This plant kills,’ and took great pride in shutting it down. And now suddenly you're a big champion of coal," Obama said.

> You wouldn’t always know it ,but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas that was me, people.”

So yeah, Obama waited until the last couple of years of his term to push through some unpopular environments rules such as changes to that would require farmers to get federal permits to drain ponds in their land, and things like that. And Trump repealed them just as easily. That’s what happens between administrations.

Then you had the First Step Act, which was a progressive step.

He appointed three justices who were prominent in conservative legal circles long before Trump came in the scene.

So what exactly about his agenda was “radical?” Even if he had succeeded in things like repealing the ACA, that would have taken us back to 2008? (And Trump genuinely didn’t want the total repeal option without any replacement. He was the one who crafted the repeal and replace idea, while previously republicans had just wanted to repeal.)

This was a fun read.

Only big thing you forgot was not starting any new wars and getting two more Arab states to formalize peace with Israel.

Here's a list of radical actions, even if you think these were good ideas I don't see how you can argue they're not radical in the sense that it's outside anything previous presidents have tried to do

- increased military spending to Iraq war levels during peace time - trillion dollar deficits during boom times - fired dozens of cabinet members and other top officials whenever they didn't display dictator levels of obsequience to him - got impeached for using US diplomacy for personal political gains - tried to kick millions off of SNAP - had DOJ help states kick people off voter roles - reduced confidence in the election process - changed DOJ's long standing definition of civil rights to instead protect religious people and white and asian discrimination - pulled out of major international agreements with little notice including the Paris Agreement and the Iran deal - attacked european allieas and weakened NATO - cut legal immigration in a bunch of ways including cut refugee by 80% and cut H1B. And implemented draconian inhumane policies on illegal immigrants. - appointed hundreds of extremely ideological judges

(hopefully d ang doesn't slap us down for discussing politics)

You seem to be using "radical" as a synonym for "bad." "Radical" means taking an ideology to an extreme. Being an incompetent grifter isn't "radical."

> - increased military spending to Iraq war levels during peace time

The defense budget is significantly smaller as a percentage of GDP than under Obama: https://www.factcheck.org/2018/07/trumps-defense-spending-ex...

> - trillion dollar deficits during boom times

Bad, but not radical.

> - fired dozens of cabinet members and other top officials whenever they didn't display dictator levels of obsequience to him

> - got impeached for using US diplomacy for personal political gains

Bad, but not radical.

> - tried to kick millions off of SNAP

Clinton did way more welfare reform than Trump.

> - had DOJ help states kick people off voter roles

Cleaning up voter rolls is required by federal law.

> - reduced confidence in the election process

Bad, but not radical.

> - changed DOJ's long standing definition of civil rights to instead protect religious people and white and asian discrimination

Not radical. In Evanston, Illinois, Asian kids are now being held back from returning to in-class instruction: https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-school-be-antiracist-a-new-.... We can debate the merits of this, but it's not radical to suggest that discrimination against asians is a violation of civil rights laws.

> - pulled out of major international agreements with little notice including the Paris Agreement and the Iran deal

It's not "radical" to pull out of an agreement we had been part of for less than a year since its effective date: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement

Presidents change course on foreign policy all the time. Trump's foreign policy has been relatively successful.

> - attacked european allieas and weakened NATO

Are you talking about a concrete policy?

> - cut legal immigration in a bunch of ways including cut refugee by 80% and cut H1B.

Not radical. European countries have done the same thing recently, after realizing their 2015 actions on refugees were ill-advised. Calling a cut to H1B "radical" is hard to credit. Is every small shift to the right from a Republican President "radical?"

> And implemented draconian inhumane policies on illegal immigrants.

Very bad, maybe radical.

> - appointed hundreds of extremely ideological judges

No, just normal conservative judges. The "extremely ideological judges" are ones that think you can look at a 230-year old document and find new things in it that nobody realized were there before. We have normalized that gaslighting, but taking a view that the words on the page mean what they say isn't "radical."

> He actually ran on a moderate Republican platform.

Hm so, building a wall with a neighbor and having the neighbor _pay for this wall_ is a moderate position? Or is this bluster?

Saved this comment for later

> I think the quality of ideas has improved. We focus on disinformation, but social media gets used for a lot of other things.

I'm not sure what anything else in your post has to do with the quality of ideas being better. You claim that right wing populism is a reaction to liberalism and globalism, and that ideas are getting better. This leads me to connect the dots and think that your claim is that right wing populism is a good idea.

We know now, in hindsight, that the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression led directly to the circumstances that led to the rise of Hitler. And indeed, Hitler was not alone. Fascist dictators rose throughout this time period. Was the discourse worse then? Was it better then?

This feels disingenuous. "Ideas are getting better." "Fascism is a natural reaction." Please, if you are trying to make a political point, say it. Don't tiptoe around it.

I gave an example of the "good things" I was talking about:

> Reading a dry article on police brutality (which let’s face it, people just skipped over in the past) is a lot less impactful than seeing something shared by a friend.

Attitudes towards for example LGBT people and on racial issues are have advanced significantly since 2000, and I think social media has a lot to do with that. (One of the major issues cited by people for why they switched their opinion on same-sex marriage was knowing people in committed same-sex relationships. Social media makes those things more visible.)

As to right-wing populism: it is not fascism, any more than left-wing populism is Jacobinism or anarchy. I don't think it's a "good thing" necessarily, but predictable and possibly necessary. I think Boris Johnson, for example, is absolutely what the U.K. needed, before it got swallowed up by the EU.

> I gave an example of the "good things" I was talking about:

>> Reading a dry article on police brutality (which let’s face it, people just skipped over in the past) is a lot less impactful than seeing something shared by a friend.

> Attitudes towards for example LGBT people and on racial issues are have advanced significantly since 2000, and I think social media has a lot to do with that. (One of the major issues cited by people for why they switched their opinion on same-sex marriage was knowing people in committed same-sex relationships. Social media makes those things more visible.)

Fair enough. I disagree. I think social media has also helped radicalize folks, though I feel that nothing has really changed (not a positive change either). The press was, after all, hopelessly partisan and sensational for most of the West's history. We just had a brief respite. But fair enough and thanks for clarifying.

> As to right-wing populism: it is not fascism, any more than left-wing populism is Jacobinism or anarchy.

What's the difference really? I'm not talking about the boogeyman "literally fascist" thing. Fascist regimes themselves frequently started out as right wing populist representative regimes. Hitler is a fantastic example of that transformation ad absurdum, but there are several other simpler ones, like Franco. And these fascist regimes often started out quite popular.

And likewise with left populism. Stalin and Napoleon are left populism ad absurdum, but we have several more "mundane" examples, such as Tito or Hoxa. I think extremism is bad because of its tendency to flout the rule of law. I see that happening around the world all over again.

America is all about quantity. And the quantity of ideas has exploded in the 21st century.

We’re still figuring out how to find the pearls but giving carte blanche to a handful of tech monopolies is definitely not going to work.

>America is all about quantity.

America used to be about quality. Sure, quantity was still a thing but the "shining city on the hill" image of America was about quality.

We've lost our way.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

America has never been about quality. Quality is a result of vigorous and excessive competition.

It is sort of funny to say, "America has never been about quality," while referencing a poem about immigrants who moved here for a better quality of life. I think you've missed something rather obvious.

I do, but I also do not use or consume content from Either Facebook or Twitter so....

Same as it always was. My Trump supporting uncle on facebook was just a Pat Buchnnan supporting uncle at a bar.

That's not how it works in reality, in reality a lot of gullible people who before internet would have spend their whole lives without hearing the "flat earth theory" now have access to internet and are quickly influenced by a lot of stupid theories because they are pretty bad at distinguishing bad ones from good ones; although just to be clear that is more a failure of the education system than anything else (e.g Japan has near 0 flat-earthers unlike America)

Exactly. People seems to forget that the social landscape of people using Internet in 90/2000s was totally different. As far as I remember, internet was then populated by idealist early adopters, gamers / tech savvy hobbyists. Part of this pool translated to conservative boomers and now Internet is considered as a serious thing.

> are quickly influenced by a lot of stupid theories because they are pretty bad at distinguishing bad ones from good ones;

Actually this is an interesting problem to think about; what, then, did these people believe before they could get access to crazier ideas?

I think you'll find the answer was still, "what they were told to believe". The answer hasn't changed from then to now, we're simply far more aware of being upset at the answer. In a way the problem that was always there has been revealed and some people don't like the loss of control over these people's opinions.

Me personally I'm an advocate of "let go, stop controlling, see how things turn out" and then fix the real problems that appear, rather than creating worse problems by squeezing the play doh too tightly. It has the upside of being morally defensible rather than having the air of "I destroyed your life for your own good."

You're defining "dominant ideas" as the ones that make people the angriest and get the most clicks! That's not the same as quality. That's entirely how those amplification algorithms exist!

We need to invest in education to vaccinate the population against deception via clickbait.

Yep, countries with a greater average IQ have much less people believing dumb theories (e.g about bill gates and covid-19), countries like Japan and South Korea. All countries that reduced funds for public education years ago in a short-sighted attempt to save money are seeing it's dire consequences, and now amplified thanks to the internet.

Everyone who could vote in 2016 grew up in an age of ever increasing educational funding: https://images.app.goo.gl/ovrFXSUJaJ8tHBTBA

Teachers still complain they have to pay for school supplies from their pockets [0] [1], and if the money is not going to them I wouldn't really call it educational funding

[0] https://amp.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/528u9w/teachers_o...

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/longform/teaching-in-a...

If you mean “school fiscal responsibility” and not “educational funding” then say that. They are two different things with different solutions.

Ask anyone what they think "educational funding" is and they pretty much will all mention teacher's wages among other things. The single most important thing to get good education is good educators, and to get good educators you need good wages, but I'm pretty sure you already knew that so you are just nitpicking about the exact definition of those words.

US teachers are paid well above the OECD average: https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/teachers-salaries.htm. (OECD figures are usually adjusted for purchasing power in each country.)

That's what they make after 15 years experience, the actual average for all teachers is much lower[0] (it is $38.761), one cause is that about 30% of teachers leave the profession less than 5 years later[1]; for example the average pay for a teacher in NY is 45K, one of the most expensive places to live in the US. According to the OECD itself teachers on the US have one of the longest working hours[3] in the world, this unpaid overtime means money lost due being unable to have a second job or due incurring in costs directly related to lack of time (e.g. eating out thanks to having no time to prepare lunch); the cause of this overtime seems to be lack of prep time in the instructional day as teachers are expected to be actively teaching for most of the day, and are provided woefully few hours for planning, correcting, and collaboration [4]

[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/teacher-pay...

[1] https://www.epi.org/publication/u-s-schools-struggle-to-hire...

[2] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/new_york/new_...

[3] https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/teaching-hours.htm

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/9m1d7k/why_do_ame...

Actually, I don't think the "free speech" argument as deployed in defence the unmoderated promotion of fascism actually has a coherent concept of quality: the entire point of the argument is there will never be a time when an idea can legitimately be locked out of "the market", because there simply isn't any fair way to judge ideas.

Whenever the market idea is mentioned, it's always to invoked the principles of unregulated exchange, and not to remind readers of things like legislation about quality control for products to enter the market. And it is always argued that this market should have a constant and unceasing exchange (and more to the point that their particular idea should be given more space), so this isn't a market that works toward a consensus but rather a site that needs to be maintained in constant conflict.

I don't think I agree that they are mischaracterizing how free speech understood, and I don't think that distinction you are drawing identifies a new idea incompatible with what they are saying. Free speech encompasses a lot of things depending on what you want to emphasize, including a notion in a healthy democracy the best ideas survive critical scrutiny.

As other have mentioned, I think however plausible that conception of speech was then, it's utterly ignorant of the problems we're facing today, where ideas spread for reasons that have nothing to do with merit. If anything, I would think you would want to agree with the person you are replying to that the spread of ideas is not due to good ones rising to the top in a marketplace that is selecting for quality.

Two keys to an actual functional market place, as you allude to, involves both good faith engagement (you aren't going to convince somebody deliberately out to cause harm to stop with a well reasoned argument) and critical evaluation (something that is practically non existent on most of the internet)

> As other have mentioned, I think however plausible that conception of speech was then, it's utterly ignorant of the problems we're facing today

I think it is the exact opposite. Maybe I have read too many dystopian novels like fahrenheit 451, or 1984, or read too much about Chinese govt's control of its population, but I feel that modern technology has allowed too much censorship power in hands of not just the govt, but a few corporations. And it is extremely important that we do not compromise on free speech now.

We're dealing with the net result of a few different forces. Social media has enabled a massive avalanche of misinformation, and of this massive avalanche of misinformation, some subset of that new avalanche gets removed.

The net effect is that there much more misinformation than there has ever been before. Despite the best efforts of twitter, facebook & youtube they appear to have been virtually powerless to halt the spread.

The problem of social media CEOs having too much power is real, and has wrought real damage: Zuckerberg's naive ideas on speech have lead to far too much harm, and now that he's recovering from his free speech trutherism and implementing reforms it's too little, too late.

Lastly I would say that if you are looking at this state of affairs and seeing 1984 or fahrenheit 451, you're seeing things wrong. There are fair examples of that, e.g. Hong Kong, mainland China. But the western internet doesn't fit that at all.

> What you call “amplification” is just something that makes the marketplace more efficient

Most efficient in generating engagement for selling banners, not in lifting up the most correct or useful ideas. Was it is, it's pure marketplace manipulation.

Yeah but the issue isn't good ideas and bad ideas and a marketplace where they can be disseminated. We're talking about facts and truth vs. misinformation and actual lies. And in that context, Mark Twain's saying comes to mind: a lie can travel halfway around the world before truth can finish putting on its shoes. This is infinitely more true today since the lies in question are manufactured to be as inflammatory and scandalous as possible, so as to keep their consumers engaged, and they can be spread to entire audiences with the click of a button.

I don't think moving viral misinformation from chain e-mail to hyper-spread tweets via algorithm has improved the marketplace of ideas.

> What you call “amplification” is just something that makes the marketplace more efficient—it allows ideas to disseminate faster so people can decide which are the good ones and the bad ones.

Can you cite empirical research showing that the process works the way you believe it does?

That's lofty and all, but all we got in the end was Boaty Mc Boatface.

Turns out the most popular things will be the most inane -- by definition, because they appeal to most people. And so we amplify beige slurry.

> no social network in the 2000s and before

This isn't really true though. Social networks have existed since the earliest days of humanity:

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

> but also that they are entitled to have their thoughts broadcasted at large using the amplification mechanisms I mentioned above.

Twitter is blocking this story in Direct Messages (equivalent to a private email). How is that amplification?

Also, Twitter could de-prioritize tweets with the link on a global feed, while still showing them to people who follow the specific person.

And that too is not amplification - you asked to see messages from that person, you should be able to see them.

We are not talking about next video suggestion here. We are talking about censoring direct messages or feeds people deliberately follow. Tech companies inserting their political bias in direct communications. Not amplification.

You're still free to send a text, write a letter, call. Twitter and facebook aren't public utilities.

I saw an interesting comparison the other day. If this was a message board from the early 2000s, and the moderator was deleting posts, you move on, not throw a giant fit about free speech using some one else server.

Twitter and facebook have become an internet "public square", kept in monopolistic power by network effects and compulsion mechanisms stronger than casinos.

Insofar as they're monopolies, they should be managed by the people as if they were a public space.

There is prior case law to support this idea.

This would be similar to the central area of a mall or when companies provided housing to workers to prevent unionization efforts. Both places were upheld as places where the First Amendment must be upheld, despite private ownership.

By what objective metric(s) do you determine that a particular website has become an internet "public square"?

When the president of a country is using it.

Ok. Where's the internet public square? Please show me the way because I think I forgot my map.

Why does the unwelcomed network want to stay on Twitter. Why don't they make their own news feed site to post and comment on?

If that's a genuine question .. .. .. you can research on the term network effects.

Because it's not about being able to say what they want on a particular platform, it's about saying what they want where everyone else will hear it.

A lot of people look at this issue and see two groups fighting over it. There are (at least) three groups though: for, against, and undecided. This is really a fight about how to convince the undecided, so solutions like "go make your own platform" aren't desirable; undecideds aren't going to know about the new platform, and won't automatically appear en masse on it, so it actually makes reaching them more difficult.

> Twitter and facebook aren't public utilities.

> You're still free to send a text, write a letter, call

Exactly. This is why free college and free medical care are not necessary.

You can learn from public libraries and go to the forest and apply herbs when you are sick.

We didn't take over Harvard and make a public university. They co exist. Do we need a publicly run social media?

Though tbh I'm not totally sure what point you're trying to make.

This is a crucial point. We are not talking about someone coming to my house and blaring Tweets with a bullhorn.

If I follow @NYPost then I want to hear what they tweet. Twitter may have every right to censure them, but it’s the wrong thing to do, and people are rightly incensed about it.

If I want to retweet a @NYPost article to my followers that is my business. And my followers can gladly listen or unfollow.

Twitter’s faux rationale about “hacked materials” sticks coming just days after NYTime’s story on Trump tax returns.

If these monopolistic social networks want to interfere in public & private messages on their platform to the benefit of particular political candidates they shouldn’t be doing it with the benefit of Section 230 immunity and/or should be scrutinized for making campaign contributions in-kind, like how National Inquirer got hit with charges for their buy&bury on Trump’s affair.

Twitter has made themselves clear on this. They're going to censor content they don't like, even in direct communications.

Use another platform if you don't like it. If you can't do that because all of the content producers and your friends have decided that twitter's level of censorship is ok, then you're just out of step with the rest of society.

It's like complaining that Coca Cola is an evil company and you hate them. If everyone else but you still likes Coke then your view on their practices, however valid it may be, won't be relevant

It’s totally fine by me if they want to take on the legal liability of being a publisher.

I think it goes against the stated purpose and core mission of their platform. So perhaps they are lying to their users, and even to themselves.

> The mission we serve as Twitter, Inc. is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve – and do not detract from – a free and global conversation.

It also may be an illegal campaign contribution in some cases.

wouldn't this leave you in a worse situation? say twitter becomes a publisher (whatever that means) and gets sued out of business. then you still won't be able to follow @NYPost or retweet content to followers.

I'm curious, how do you think twitter becoming a publisher would help you to accomplish your stated goals?

Twitter can't afford to become a publisher, so if the law didn't let them do what they do now without being a publisher it would force them to stop. Currently they get to eat and keep the cookie.

Twitter and Facebook are in a no-win situation. Remove this content and they are punished by the right removing section 230 protections. Allow it and the left calls them destructive monopolies and breaks them apart. It seems they have chosen to halt the spread of murky 'October surprise' claims on their platforms rather than repeat the course of October 2016. I can't blame them (and agree with their decision).

> Remove this content and they are punished by the right removing section 230 protections. Allow it and the left calls them destructive monopolies and breaks them apart.

This seems to suggest a larger solution -- that these platforms do actually have within their power to implement.

Stop helping those two bickering ninnies by taking sides, and instead use the huge bullhorn society has handed them by screaming, "Shut up the both of you, stop bickering and maybe help the people you were elected to help!"

Who is right and about what are always less important than simply helping people. There is SO MUCH that is being left undone because we endlessly want to debate single issues for literally DECADES while people die in the streets.

Leadership was abandoned long ago and these gigantic bully pulpits could right the ship and instead they are being used as game pieces by their partisan owners. It's... sad to watch.

If you want to hear what the NY Post has to say, you can sign up to their email newsletter [1]. You can forward those emails to those who care what you like.

In regards to section 230, the whole point of it was to allow platforms to selectively restrict content from third parties. Before 230 some courts had ruled that if they restricted content from any third party, then they shared in liability for any third party content they did not restrict. So if I deleted spam for boner pills from my chess BBS, but did not delete someone’s accusation that a particular chess book was plagiarized I might be sued by the book author for libel. To ensure I would not be liable for that kind of thing, I would have to let the boner pill spam stay, along with anything else that was not illegal.

[1] https://email.nypost.com/

When radio came the first few decades were great, but soon more and more people started to broadcast and corrupting music started to harm society. People demanded that government and only government could artfully decide whom aught to be allowed to speak to the masses and censors cracked down on unlicensed radio. Several decades later however and the enthusiasm for radio censoring lost it appeal.

When television came we also had a few early decades where everything were great. There existed one or two stations, and that was it. Then suddenly a flood of people and companies started to use this new technology and harmful video nasty with violent and nude content started to hit society and people cried out once again for government to start censoring and determining whom aught to be allowed to speak to the masses. Several decades again and the enthusiasm for TV and movie censoring lost it charm.

Then Internet came and everything was fine the first few decades with only a few major websites like yahoo and myspace. Then 4chan and 8chan was created and quickly people want censoring again, but this time its not the government who should determine who aught to be allowed to speak to the masses but rather a handful of companies in charge of social networks and cloud services. This is where we are now. In a few decades, I predict the enthusiasm for Internet censorship will drop a bit as it done for all previous technologies that enables unregulated amplification of speech.

> While I believe free speech is a good thing, I believe free amplification is terrible.

This is so abusable. Even the best of intentions won't stop it from being abused horribly. I value twitter much less. The same thing is happening there that happened to the declining legacy media.

There have always be who are so fragile that they can never handle freedom. I feel sorry for you.

But Twitter blocked direct messages, too.

Your argument somewhat makes sense for FB, depending on the details. But Twitter outright censored this content.

Stepping outside the US, there is evidence that misinformation spread of Facebook (including WhatsApp) was directly responsible for the Rohingya genocide and forced migration [1]. At what point do these platforms have an obligation to not allow themselves be used for such campaigns?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

Letting Facebook censor WhatsApp is like censoring SMS. Should we let private companies censor SMS messages?

I read all of the replies to you looking for a positive one to vote up and couldn't find one

I think your phrasing of this new problem for our society is very clear and objective.

By the power invested in me as a computer possessor with an internet connection, I declare this to be a good idea, worthy of amplification!

> While I believe free speech is a good thing, I believe free amplification is terrible.

This thought is the exact reason the first amendment separately mentions freedom of "speech" (hard to accomplish much with it) and "the press" (much more effective).

I would second this and take it a step further and point out that the right to free speech is not the right to freely say whatever you want. This is particularly sticky when it comes to misinformation.

Currently we have systems which make misinformation more dangerous (primarily via amplification) and a bunch of people conflating free speech with the freedom to say whatever you want. I think what we still need to explore is whether or not there is a responsibility on individuals to be factually accurate when engaged in amplified speech. What does that even mean? Do you simply need to believe what you are saying at the time? Or is the standard higher? Is this responsibility shifted if you provide a citation (where the responsibility of the cited source shoulders some of the responsibility for your derivative thoughts)?

It's a particularly thorny issue. One that isn't necessarily new, but is particularly acute in contemporary times. I am against censorship, but I also recognize certain trends which seem to be deepening divides and strengthening conspiracy theories in our society.

Giving big tech companies even more power than they already have isn't the right move though.

Never said we should. Just because they are part of the problem doesn't mean they have to be part of the solution.

Yes, this exactly: social media platforms blur the boundary between communication and broadcasting, and are causing new debates over free speech.

> People were also stopped from sending the article in a private direct message

In this instance, the solution has already reached beyond the realm of "don't allow certain things to be amplified". You literally cannot share this information even in a private 1-on-1 chat.

> we go back to uncurated things

Yeah. The more I reflect on things the more I think social networks are just a thing that shouldn't exist. Although, of course, here we are on hacker news talking about it. So IDK. Maybe you just can't unring that bell and we're just screwed.

They can text it, email it, send it over messenger or whatsapp..

> The more I reflect on things the more I think social networks are just a thing that shouldn't exist.

I keep ending up there too honestly.

We'll always build something "like" socializing online. Humans don't stop "humaning" if you get my meaning.

We really do need to figure it out though... either mostly agree it's a bad idea, or figure out how to do it without it being as destructive as it is.

The challenge with this framing is that you're equating social media to newspapers which provide editorialization. IIRC, one of the core distinctions that allow many tech companies to avoid liability for consumer generated content is not having an editorial role. If they embrace being media companies and editors I believe different regulations will apply to tech companies than currently do.

Isn't that why they are cracking down now? As social media platforms were increasingly used to spread outright lies, propaganda, and radicalization, the public started to demand social media apply editorial functions- and here we are today.

"The public", it was a small group of elites. And of course big tech aren't against getting more power so they "comply", they were just waiting for the chance to do it without significant backlash.

> My preference would be that no one is, and we go back to uncurated things and to an internet where you have to look for the things you want to read/watch, versus getting content pushed onto you.

What a well written response, my friend. Hats off. Perhaps EdgeRank truly was a pandora's box we should have left well enough alone. Who knew how much havoc a simple matrix determinant could cause?

Tell that to megacorporations? Why are prescription drugs allowed to be advertised on TV? Free speech.

speech is communication.

communication is between two or more people.

You seem to be misguided as to what Free Speech means.

Counterpoints:

- Attention is a zero-sum game. In the past, we'd get more of our news from local papers, radio stations or lunch break gossip, resulting in a natural diversity of viewpoints. Nowadays, it's all the same social media outlets and handful of national newspapers (whose staff generally spend all day and form their opinions on Twitter, which thus winds up being upstream anyway) for everyone. Compared to what we had before, one side winds up getting free amplification anyway.

- I don't think free speech as a positive right for the speaker is necessarily the correct framing; at least, it neglects half of the issue at hand. I consider it at least equally important that "free speech" protects my right as an information consumer to get exposed to as many viewpoints as possible on a matter. Right now, my sense is that national newspapers all echo the Twitterati consensus, Facebook has developed in such a way that social and increasingly technological pressure would not allow even those people on my friend list who I suspect had interesting and generally well-thought-out non-mainstream opinions to share them with me, and the rest is all conspiracy websites that are unusable as a source because they've largely been cut off from the means of establishing credibility and separating wheat from chaff via social proof.

If I were a US voter (I'm not), I'd want to know whether Biden was involved in corrupt dealings. As it stands, it seems that if there were a compelling case that he was (and, well, I don't know if there is one!), the media and its allies would be working overtime to prevent me from learning about it.

>> and we go back to uncurated things and to an internet where you have to look for the things you want to read/watch, versus getting content pushed onto you.

But people are lazy. Why write a post when you "share" some crap that came through your feed with one click.

We will get to self hosted distributed social media when it becomes easier than Facebook or Twitter.

Okay so maybe we need to start regulating AI, or machine-curated content, or recommendation systems, but not stamping out one of the cornerstones of western intellectual culture. Free speech is certainly more important than YouTube’s engagement metrics.

>Free speech is certainly more important than YouTube’s engagement metrics.

More important to you. Wanna guess what's more important to YouTube?

I’m not disagreeing with that, and I’m also aware that as a private company, whatever they do with their website isn’t an infringement upon first amendment rights. I’m just bristling at the parent comment who seemed to be saying that in our new AI-driven world, free speech is no longer an intrinsically valuable thing.

>I’m not disagreeing with that, and I’m also aware that as a private company, whatever they do with their website isn’t an infringement upon first amendment rights. I’m just bristling at the parent comment who seemed to be saying that in our new AI-driven world, free speech is no longer an intrinsically valuable thing.

Those are all good points.

I didn't understand GP to be claiming that ML algorithms trump free speech, which may explain why we're actually in violent agreement WRT YouTube's recommendation algorithms.

I'd note that I avoid the big social media sites like the plague, and not even primarily for the toxic atmosphere. Rather, I find the business model to be inherently cynical, exploitative and destructive of communities (cf. sites like nextdoor.com).

As long as the incentives (maximization of advertising dollars) favor pushing for ever higher engagement, the cycle that creates increasingly fine-tuned filter bubbles and "targeted" advertising, we're going to see less focus on free expression from large corporations, because their primary goal is to maximize profit.

I believe that this model will eventually collapse and be replaced (with something better or worse, I don't know) with a different one. My concern is in the damage that this will do to our discourse and societal cohesion in the meantime.

Which points to larger problems with our economic model. Maximizing short-term profit is fetishized as all-important, regardless of potential downsides[0]. That focus legitimizes predatory behavior based on the (incorrect) idea that captialism is necessarily a zero-sum game.

This distorts the economy and the culture, pitting us against each other in surprising (and very destructive) ways.

I am most certainly not advocating that we abandon capitalism, as its had a largely positive effect on health, wealth, technological advancement and a host of other areas.

Rather, I believe we need to change the incentives around markets to encourage a broader, fairer capitalism that creates increased prosperity for everyone, rather than those already at the top.

[0] From a long-term perspective, focusing primarily on short-term extraction of value from the economy is self-defeating. Primarily because our economy's success is based on consumer spending (~70% of the US' GDP is consumer spending). Through wage suppression, rent-seeking and (a good thing) automation, we're reducing the ability of larger and larger segments of the population to contribute to that 2/3+ of the economy. If unchecked, we'll eventually get to the point where wealth and income are so concentrated that we won't be able to sustain that model and everyone will lose.

Because there are only so many pairs of jeans, lava lamps, snow globes, raisins, cars, houses or pizza pies that any one individual or household can use.

This argues for a much broader distribution of economic resources (wages, access to capital, safety nets, infrastructure, etc., etc., etc.) than we have now. This could provide enormous benefits to those who have the least and, in the long-term, those who have the most.

Beyond that, it can create a stronger, more resilient economy for everyone.

If you have free speech but no-one is allowed to hear it. Is it still free speech?

How is this any different to “you are free to speak but you’ll be murdered after you do”. You’re still free to “speak”, you’ll just die after. Freedom of speech right?

I believe free amplification is terrible.

Why? So that poor people can't be heard?

You are confused with the meaning of "free" in this context.

I'm not.

The problem is the scale and centralization of power with social media.

Global conglomerates serving billions where moderation is controlled by a few individuals with absolute control and no accountability. This is a major issue as these networks are quickly becoming a critical medium of communication and expression in this century.

But what if some of those small communities engage in no-no think? How can we allow those with no-no think to co-exist with our world? Shouldn't they be stamped out of existence for the good of everyone else who doesn't have no-no think?

Sadly the above is a very common belief structure now. It's a product of utopian thinking where if just this one more enemy can be destroyed, peace will fall upon the Earth and all will be well. It seems to be that these utopian dreamers always end in the elimination of those who don't share their dream vision of the world.

I would much rather go back to a series of small private communities with known members, much like how the physical world still has neighborhoods and groups of friends.

It still has plenty of idea sharing but enough social friction to support proper filtering and decorum.

So HN can't remove posts either because that violates free speech? I grew up on the internet too and forum bans were always a thing. You haven't convinced me this is different.

The president doesn't make major annoucements using HN. The fact is, Twitter has taken on a different role.

What hacker communities did you grow up in where the only free speech worth protecting was the US President's?

Give me a break, the president should have his twitter account permabanned for all his ToS violations, and he should use official channels like a .gov web site to address the nation, where he can be held more accountable when spreading blatant falsehoods and certainly won't be censored.

This whole sham of using Twitter is a freedom of private speech trick he uses to facilitate ambiguously mixing occasionally factual official statements with trash "protected" speech.

If anyone holds his feet to the fire for tweets, he can simply claim he was acting as a private citizen stating an opinion - obviously the president of the united states wouldn't use twitter for official business!

I look forward to seeing how history treats this embarrassingly incompetent era of american politics.

> he should use official channels like a .gov web site to address the nation, where he can be held more accountable when spreading blatant falsehoods and certainly won't be censored.

I'm calling/writing my congress-critter today to ask that they look into doing exactly this

I think verified government accounts based on a person's role in the government would make more sense. It gets rid of the ambiguity you're talking about. If Trump was forced to tweet from @potus, the verified account for the POTUS, that makes it clear he's communicating as the POTUS, not a private citizen.

Personal accounts should be subject to the same rules as everyone else. Give official government accounts special treatment; can't be banned, no censorship, etc..

I don't think that addresses the problems sufficiently.

Official government statements should come through more secure channels than a privately owned and operated web site that arguably resembles a 21st century tabloid where people's accounts are regularly hacked or otherwise taken over, and both censorship and access are arbitrary and unregulated.

Just today we have an example of a C-SPAN political editor admitting to having lied about their Twitter account being hacked to abdicate responsibility for comments they made on the platform [0].

Such claims would not only be unbelievable coming from secure government owned and operated channels, but would be damming to the administration should they honestly occur, incentivizing running such services properly without such vulnerabilities and with an immutable audit trail.

Furthermore, if a .gov provided forums for open public discussion in response to official statements, they would actually be protected under the 1st amendment. Unlike on private platforms like Twitter, where arbitrary censorship and blocking of discussion/access is perfectly legal.

All of this junk occurring on private websites like Twitter/FB is completely misguided and a tremendous disservice to the American public.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/15/media/steve-scully-cspan-susp...

I would be 100% onboard with a complete ban on social media use for government officials conducting government business. Add in a Wikipedia style diff history for official government policies / positions and it sounds even better IMO.

> immutable audit trail

This would be amazing because knowing that something is un-delete-able might cause some politicians to take a pause and think about what they're saying. Some. Lol.

> Official government statements should come through more secure channels than a privately owned and operated web site

This can be done today. An application communicating via an open and federated social protocol can be stood up on government infrastructure/DNS namespace. These systems already exist and work.

But if the president did make major announcements on HN, he would not be subject to moderation on here? If the president has unilaterally imposed these restrictions on what Twitter can do by virtue of using it, he should make it official and make Twitter a public service. Otherwise, I don't understand how this is different than the president showing up at your house yelling at you with a megaphone and refusing to leave because your property has now "taken on a different role".

Telling Twitter what to say violates their free speech.

I have to agree with this. How is this really any different than blocking spam links or links to undesirable websites in direct messages? How does it differ from moderators on a website removing users from a group for valid or for trivial reasons? Does a company like Twitter have any obligation to allow anything it doesn't want on its platform?

This situation is very much a double-bind. In this case, someone gets to make noise about the "truth they won't let you see" and claim bias.

I've been here over 10 years and I don't really recall seeing anything other than blatant spam or crap removed in that time. Maybe I've just not seen it happen. But, the way things seem to have worked here (very well I might add) is that when enough of the community disagrees, things get downvoted to death and if you don't have "Show dead" enabled, you don't see them. Your choice. I've had show dead enabled as long as I can remember because I like to see everything posted.

Sometimes I agree with things a lot of people here clearly disagree with and I'm fine with that. I can decide to either argue my/their case or move on and accept we have different views. Maybe sometimes seeing things heavily downvoted here changes my mind on subject as well and question if my views are right or not.

We can't all agree about everything all the time. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. We all are, nobody is ever 100% right, 100% of the time. I sure as hell don't want somebody else controlling everything I see and read because they think it might give me the "wrong" ideas. I'm an adult and I should be allowed to make my own mind up and most importantly question things, as should everybody else, regardless of education level or where they "fit" into society.

When I think about all of the forums and comment sections I regularly interact with, the ones with the most open, democratic, free speech, with little to no direct moderation seem to be the most engaging, tolerant and frankly, nicer places. I've given up on engaging with anything that's heavily moderated or frankly, blatantly biased - Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and I feel a lot happier.

‘I would rather have questions that cannot be answered, than answers that cannot be questioned’ - Richard Feynman.

> I've been here over 10 years and I don't really recall seeing anything other than blatant spam or crap removed in that time.

Well, besides the usual "who decides what's 'blatant spam or crap'?" response to the "it's only bad stuff that gets censored", I'd suggest you haven't really been paying attention, then. Take a look at dang's comment history[1] and you'll see a lot of warnings before ban but also plenty of bans and references to previous bans, usually for substantive, not spam, reasons.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

You must have missed the DOJ filing against Yale last week. Removed in <30 minutes due to comments.

HN is a LOT more heavily moderated than Facebook, Twitter, and most subreddits. You must really not have been paying attention if you haven't noticed after 10 years.

As others have already mentioned, HN is in fact actively moderated. It's by far the most curated public discussion forum I frequent. The civil tone that prevails here is in many ways a result of the community guidelines being strictly enforced, and backed up with a banhammer.

If you were to take the above at face value, would this change your perception about the value of moderation in online communities?

Controversial content (lately that means political) regularly gets flagged and removed. As a recent example the NYT Trump Taxes article went through cycles of being posted, rapidly upvoted, then flagged to algorithmic removal, over and over again. To point where meta-discussion came online (and was flagged) [1]

Personally I think downvoting is the appropriate response to say "this is not interesting or relevant to HN", but many have realized flagging provides outsized influence.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610890

It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish. Even if it is a very popular website.

If they make bad decisions, then people can go to competitors; it's as easy as typing in a different URL. That's how the Internet--and open societies in general--are supposed to work.

What it looks like to me--someone who has been on the Internet since before the turn of the century--is that a more recent generation of people grew up with these very popular websites as part of their lives, and they came to believe that these very popular websites are somehow inherent to the Internet and to society in general.

They're not. The Internet is more available to entrepreneurs, startups, and new ideas today than it was when Twitter and Facebook were started. They're not too big to fail.

Scale makes a difference. These social networks are no longer just a small private website serving a local community but a critical communications medium.

When they can influence billions and shape elections, it's time to seriously review their power. This is how we treat ISPs and phone providers today, and social networks of a certain size should be considered in the same class.

> critical communications medium

Undersea cables, phone lines, and the radio spectrum are critical communications media. Private web sites with selective publication criteria by way of their content moderation policies are not.

Why? What's your reasoning exactly?

Should private companies have any regulation at all? Should oil companies avoid pollution? Should ISPs ensure quality of service? Should medical companies ensure safety? Why is it that trillion-dollar companies that are larger and more powerful than anything else before should not be regulated when it comes to something as crucial as our freedom to communicate?

I find it ironic that another major HN story today is another instance of Google wiping out someone's account without any recourse, erasing their online presence and decades of data. Is that the new normal? Megacorporations ruling our lives without reason or appeal?

The world has changed. Social media is no longer just a website. It's communication fabric with network effects larger than entire nations that surrounds our lives. We either deal with it accordingly or risk losing much more.

I fundamentally disagree with your premise that these incumbent commercial social media services are a communications fabric. These companies are in no way common carrier, critical communications media.

The underlying physical infrastructure, sure, the underlying standards like the TCP/IP stack, DNS, Ethernet, etc, well those are too, but these are categorically not quite same as what you are arguing should also be included in that group.

It is about political power, Facebook and Twitter shouldn't have the power to significantly alter elections by selectively choosing what information people see.

Facebook and Twitter make money through the sale of advertisements and the sale of data for market research purposes. If their power needs to be moderated, people can do like the old television days and boycott their advertisers:

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/28/arts/a-boycott-of-tv-adve...

The "old television days" are long over. Considering the size of these companies and their advertisers, there is no way that boycotting or other protest would make any impact.

You're dealing in fantasies from an obsolete era.

Basically everyone advertises there. So boycotting their advertisers is like boycotting earning money because your disagree with the government and want to hurt their tax revenue.

But why? You offer no explanation other than saying you disagree. What exactly is the difference?

More people communicate over social media than phone lines today. Why is the former not equivalent to the later? Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey said that he believes social media is a human right - do you disagree with him?

You keep talking about social media in general but the question is whether Twitter and Facebook specifically--just those two companies--are critical infrastructure.

Obviously Twitter is not because it has been down for about an hour now and life is going on just fine.

I'm not sure that "critical infrastructure" as regards to communications mediums and legislation should be understood in the terms of absolute necessity, rather by terms of popularity and wide usage. That wide usage brings with it a lot of power on the part of the platform owners and a certain immunity to being boycotted or replaced.

The critical question is if they ought to be allowed to wield that power unchecked, up to and including when that reach has progressed far enough to have real impacts on our political system, and so impacts on people's lives.

Remember, we're talking about what we'd like the law to be, not what the law is. These definitions are up for debate and redefinition.

Of course they ought to be allowed to affect the political system. The whole point of the First Amendment is to ensure that private citizens can act to change the government—the fundamental concept behind the design of the U.S. federal government.

News organizations have wielded this power for at least a century. Their decisions on what stories to publish obviously have political implications, and in some cases their editorial boards even explicitly endorse one candidate.

Facebook and Twitter are private entities, just like The NY Times or Fox News.

Social media are specifically not publishers, so no they're not "just like" the NYT/Fox.

They don't create content as an organization and only facilitate communication, which is exactly why section 230 is being contested.

Section 230 applies equally to any interactive computer service, whether it is operated by Twitter, Facebook, NY Times, Fox, Ycombinator, or even you or me.

The First Amendment applies to everyone in the U.S.

Yes, and since social networks are only third-party content, they should not be interfering with it otherwise they are exercising editorial control and are now first-party content.

So you see no problem whatsoever with large, nigh-monopolistic interests having absolute authority over how politics is discussed?

This is not a strawman, I simply see no other way to interpret this comment.

I said communications medium, not infrastructure. Life goes on fine when the internet is down or your phone is disabled, but they're still considered important and necessary.

Facebook and Twitter are just 2 of the biggest with many others like TikTok, Whatsapp, WeChat. It's the size and scope that should be used as a measure of when they cross over into public utility vs private project.

> Should private companies have any regulation at all?

I can actually get behind no regulation for private companies, twitter can censor who they like as I can drive my favorite tank registered as my company vehicle and don't bother with taxes anymore.

Until you are delisted from google, banned by youtube, blocked by facebook and twitter and now your online potential was reduced in 90%. Imagine being blocked from every walmart,costco, 7-eleven and being told that it is freedom because you still have the choice to go elsewhere

> Imagine being blocked from every walmart,costco, 7-eleven and being told that it is freedom because you still have the choice to go elsewhere

I'm imagining someone who messes up badly enough to get banned from all those places and still somehow blames the stores rather than their own actions.

Yes, perfect analogy, everybody knows all people who has been blocked from twitter "had it coming" to them.

> I'm imagining someone who messes up badly enough to get banned from all those places and still somehow blames the stores rather than their own actions.

That’s exactly what antisemites say of Jewish expulsions.

When they can influence billions and shape elections, it's time to seriously review their power.

Yeah, but it seems like FB and Twitter have been reviewing their power over the last four years.

They looked at the power of trolling-network, botnets etc to the influence elections. They basically triggered a circuit-breaker when a heavy hit-piece hit their networks.

Which is to say "the power of social networks" isn't just the power of the owners of the networks but also the power of groups embedded in the networks. Should these providers be fair brockers for all kind of manipulated viral content as well as for individual positions? Should they use their position of the ultimate kill switch to be the ultimate authority? I don't know but I don't think you put the most recent events as Facebook versus Organic Content - it's more Facebook versus Rupert Murdoch.

They have no accountability or oversight. Their reviews are completely up to them and they have nothing to prove to anyone about efficacy beyond increasing advertising revenue as much as possible for investors.

Where does one go when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seem to take these steps in tandem? The joke of "go make your own social network" has been tried with places like Parler and Gab, but they get banned from app stores, ironically blocked from technically, but not ideologically, decentralized services like Mastodon, or even dropped from web hosts. The open Internet is dead.

Those projects failed because the general public agrees with FB/TW/YT’s actions so far. When they bad QAnon, the only people annoyed enough to leave are QAnon adherents, so you get a new social network full of trash. As a result, nobody else follows them.

People don't visit FB/TW/YT for their editorial control. People tolerate FB/TW/YT's actions because it is easier, they don't necessarily agree with them.

Those projects failed because Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have enormous network effects that make it nearly impossible to usurp them.

CUT TO: Stallman standing on a rooftop, brooding. His hands at his hips. His cape flutters in the chilly evening wind.

"In your darkest hour, when the demons come, call on me brother, and we will fight them together!"

You can still publish! AWS and cloudflare will happily take your money if you're not a neonazi. If you are a neonazi, A) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs_Q4hEqmA B) you can find some mom-and-pop co-lo that will take your money. AFAIK, 8chan is still serving page views.

> You can still publish!

Sure, but that's like "if the utility companies are cutting of your water and electricity, just make your own! nobody is stopping you from hooking an exercise bike to a dynamo and buy bottled water at the store". Technically true, practically not really a thing.

Sorry I just fail to understand the conservatives' values here. They will go to the supreme court to fight for their right not to sell cupcakes to gay people but then turn around and demand to control what twitter does with their servers.

I think the whole idea about not selling cupcakes to gay people is stupid (but I understand the theory, it's like asking an ideological vegan to provide the side dishes to a BBQ), but it's not the same issue.

In monopoly situations (or duopoly, if you wish), there are generally different rules that apply, because you can't just go somewhere else to do business: there is nothing else. Hence utility companies can't simply go "I don't like your nose, no water for you".

I guess I just don't see twitter as a monopoly. I lived a long time before they existed and I hope/suspect I will live a long time after they are a major player in the news cycle. (Lets just say I'm not long twitter.)

I think creating new platforms has actually gotten easier since twitter's inception. Back in the day it was almost magical to have a website that performed at scale. Now you just hand a credit card to your favored cloud provider.

In your metaphor I see the internet as the utility not the platform provider. If akamai or level 3 decide that they wouldn't carry your traffic, then you might have a case that you're being censored.

If Apple can keep Epic out of the app store then @Jack can ban whomever he damn well feels like.

The audience is the monopoly. The entire media and political class are addicted to Twitter, and they haven't even heard of Mastodon or ActivityPub or whatever.

Sounds like twitter is doing a good job of keeping it's user base happy :) and I would argue that not spreading disinformation is part of keeping them happy.

Other companies/platforms are free to advertise or offer services to entice users to switch. As conservatives like to remind us money is speech. You are not entitled to someone else's attention but you can try to buy it.

Maybe there's a higher principle here than partisan warfare?

If they were banning Russiagate conspiracies, while letting conservative stuff run rampant, would you be giving me the pitch about how private property is more important than free expression?

  Maybe there's a higher principle here than partisan warfare?

You're going to call me a neoliberal shill ;) but I'd say my higher principle is the market. There is a reason why Nestle, Version, and Disney spend loads of money on twitter and not on gab. Nestle doesn't want chocolate chip ads next to holocaust denial. So yes if twitter decided that pissing off their liberal users grossed more revenue I'm fine with it.

Don't impute principles to the market. Those companies wouldn't touch gay rights with a 10 foot pole until one day all of a sudden they're beating their way to the front of the line at the pride parade. They'll follow what's popular, and if that's liquidating jews, they'll do it (some of them did!).

In this particular case, where there's a common carrier for information, we figured out the market failures and how to handle them long ago, the answer is neutrality to the message. There are some people in the thread making the case that it's different now, and maybe it is, maybe we need a different approach, but "just trust the market" is the dumbest idea ever.

The market is paper-clip-optimizing gray goo. Harness it, but don't anthropomorphize it and certainly don't "trust" it.

As far as comment wars go this a been very civil. Thanks! :) This will be my last reply in this thread but I wanted to try to make the case against conservative populism one more time.

  Don't impute principles to the market.

I'm not saying the market has principles. People can be moral or immoral. As you have noted, the market is amoral. I was saying that the debate over who can say what and where they can say it can be solved by the market. Twitter owns their severs and can decide what they want to do with them. You don't have the right to compel them to allow you to use their severs. You are free to build (or rent) your own servers and scream into the void. No one is obligate to listen to you but you are free to provide them something of value in return for their attention.

  Those companies wouldn't touch gay rights with a 10 foot pole until one day all of a sudden they're beating their way to the front of the line at the pride parade.

This is very true and it should be of great concern to conservatives. In the previous generations, conservatives had a lock on the culture war but since the 90s they have completely ceded the field to progressives and liberals.

Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once since 1990. Trump isn't even attempting to win the popular vote this year. The median income in 2018 was 10k higher in blue states than red states. And you wonder why advertisers (and thus twitter) value blue tribe users more?

Conservatives can't gerrymander the market. They are going to need to find a way to compete for relevance with the majority of the public not just their base.

  They'll follow what's popular, and if that's liquidating jews, they'll do it (some of them did!).

This is a straw-man. No one is in favor of letting billionaires commit extrajudicial killings. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is higher in my principle stack than the rights of market forces.

In conclusion, I will say there is a way out of this morass for conservatives. They have to kick the neo-nazis, the proud boys, and qanon out of the party. They have to accept science and that the scientific method is the best way to determine objective reality. If they continue to call anything that falls outside of their accepted narratives "fake news", they will continue to lose the culture war. And thus, be more and more sidelined from the national discourse. Due the undemocratic elements of our constitution they conservatives may retain political power, but in the end, the consent of the governed is more important.

Ah, I had it right the first time, you're stuck in partisan war rather than a property rights absolutist.

Don't trade principles for that, it's not worth it, the news cycle will be different tomorrow anyways. Certainly don't trust the corporations over individuals or the press for a one news-cycle 'win'. What kind of liberal values are those? "George W Bush liberals"?

(I'm a Bernie voter, not a conservative, btw).

ftfy:

They will go to the supreme court to fight for [a sole proprietor's] right not to sell cupcakes to gay people but then turn around and demand to control what [giant corporation] does with their servers.

So if @Jack solely owned twitter it would be ok? I don't see how being on the NYSE makes the morals any different. If anything having a board of directors and shareholders makes TWTR more democratic not less.

> So if @Jack solely owned twitter it would be ok?

This is a nonsense hypothetical.

Without limited liability, Twitter would not exist in its current form or size.

What does limited liability have to do with a corporation being owned by one person? I assume this poster is questioning the "giant corporation" part. Maybe you meant to say "any corporation"?

> Maybe you meant to say "any corporation"?

Correct.

I also mistakenly thought the cake baker was a sole proprietor. They are incorporated. I should have done a simple search before posting my original comment.

That said, I now mostly agree with the comment I was originally replying to.

> What does limited liability have to do with a corporation being owned by one person?

Correct, nothing. To clarify:

My position is that an entity enjoying limited liability (which in the US includes an LLC or corporation owned by a single person) has exchanged "rights" for indemnity and therefore can be compelled to - for example - bake a cake or not censor content hosted on their servers, but that a sole proprietor can do whatever they want re: refusing service or moderating content.

Hobby Lobby, for example, is not a sole proprietor.

The baker refused to make a custom made cake for the wedding and offered them an off the shelf cake instead. That is very different from a big corporation refusing to serve you off the shelf services that requires no manual actions at all on their part.

Some of twitter's users see them as complicit in spreading disinformation. So it does cost them something of value to do nothing. It costs them their reputation with some segment of users. Twitter is making a judgement call. They think pissing off some conservatives by banning this link will net them more good will from other users.

On the morals of it; I think that if twitter thinks that banning all conservatives will make them more revenue they can and should be allowed to do it. My value statement would hold equally if you :s/conservatives/liberals/g.

Conservative lawmakers have become very found of the Obama quote, "Elections have consequences." Well, the culture war has consequences too. And conservatives have completely gotten their asses kicked in the culture war in the last 30 years. Due to anachronisms in our means of determining representation this has not translated into a loss of legislative power. But if they want to hold sway outside of Washington they will have to make an effort to win back the hearts and minds of the public and more importantly the American consumer.

This is false. Nobody has fought for a right not to sell cupcakes to gay people.

In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the owner declined to perform a creative service, that being decorating a cake for a gay wedding.

You might think that is also wrong, and that’s fine, but it’s a very important distinction. Legally compelling someone to perform a service that violates their religious beliefs is tricky to balance against non-discrimination. You have to consider the precedent that doing so would set. The supreme court recognized this in a 7-2 decision, so it’s clearly not a trivial or ridiculous objection. It only is to you because you don’t share the religious belief. But we must balance everyone’s rights, and that isn’t always easy.

But you can still publish. And that's the point.

You can say just about anything you want, but that doesn't mean other folks are required to listen to you or expend their resources to amplify your speech.

And that's a good thing. Because if you can force others to publish/host/amplify your speech, others can force you to do the same with theirs.

>cloudflare will happily take your money if you're not a neonazi

Cloudflare isn't as ideologically pure as you might think. To this date, they have only refused service to Daily Stormer and 8chan for political reasons. Real neonazi sites like stormfront dot org (unlike 8chan that had many apolitical communities like for games or anime) continue to enjoy their protection because it hasn't negatively affected their stock (the news on DS and 8ch broke before the IPO, but their launch might have been a failure due to bad press).

8chan was only served because they managed to find some very shady Russian hosters. They were very close to being depeered from the Internet backbone.

> Where does one go when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seem to take these steps in tandem?

I know folks like to get all conspiratorial over social networks "acting in tandem", but it really shouldn't be all that surprising.

Individuals have vastly different tolerances for all sorts of things, but if you lump them into groups of tens of thousands, the average tolerance for things will be quite similar.

When the latest alt-right provocateur hits the threshold of bad PR for Facebook, he's likely right at the threshold for the other major social networks. No need for a shadowy cabal.

The question is who defines that threshold. In this case, its a few people at a few tech companies, and I don’t feel like it’s controversial to say that they all internally inherit the progressive/leftist/whatever Bay Area culture they’re largely based in.

That is controversial, though. Or just flat out wrong in spots.

Thiel: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-d...

Kaplan: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/facebook-joel-kaplan-kavanau...

TDW is the most successful alternative social network at the moment and it got hugely popular very quick despite being blocked.

Uh, yeah. Make your own website. Why does it have to be social?

Wordpress.

This is like asking why you aren't allowed to go into any supermarket and scream in people's faces.

Yeah, if what you are doing is obnoxious and a lot of people hate it, you are going to get rejected from the vast majority of spaces.

There's already a place which disseminates right biased information and censors opinions from the left: Fox News.

If you're an entrepreneur today and you start an internet company without paying Google or Facebook money for advertising you're probably not going to succeed. The only question is how much marketing "tax" these companies will extract from you. If you have direct competitors, you'll at least have to pay Google to keep their name off of the first search results for your company.

> .... and they came to believe that these very popular websites are somehow inherent to the Internet and to society in general. They're not.

Amen. And my feeling is that we would be better off without them. This is why i'm in favor of slow computing, slower network speeds, and slower lifestyles. (I should state that this is not sarcasm)

Agree on lifestyle, but not computing.

Modern 4k monitors are awesome. Need a fast computer to drive them.

My phone shoots 20 megapixels photos. I only post them on social media once in a year or so, but have cloud backups and I need bandwidth for that. I watch movies sometimes, Blu-ray ain’t available at local physical retail, again need internet bandwidth and local storage.

> It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish.

Imagine I make a website where I censor everything except pro Trump memes. Is that a bastion of free speech, compared to a website where I allow, y'know, actual free speech and discourse?

I can't stand when people try to conflate the first amendment with freedom of speech. Nobody is (seriously) arguing that websites shouldn't have the legal freedom under our government to limit speech to whatever they desire. What we're arguing is that these platforms ought to value free speech as a principle and act impartially. Of course they have, and should have, the freedom to censor whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. But they should have the integrity not to.

>What we're arguing is that these platforms ought to value free speech as a principle and act impartially. [...] But they should have the integrity not to.

But you're ignoring the fact that the corporations' value system consists of maximizing profit.

Anything that isn't pushing in that direction is both a distraction and a hindrance to the stated goals of the corporation -- making money.

Valuing free speech or having integrity are laudable ideals. I do my best to prioritize both. Sometimes I fail. But I do the best I can.

But my (or your) goals as an individual aren't relevant in this context.

Changing the incentives for these corporations to do whatever it takes to maximize profit would be a good thing.

That will entail the willingness of a majority of us to vote with our feet/wallet, likely aided with smart regulation.

But until we change those incentives/priorities, the status quo is what we'll get.

Facebook and Twitter have never been impartial principled venues for free speech. They have blocked content from the very beginning, mostly relating to sex and violence. Facebook even banned photos of mothers breastfeeding their children.

And they make editorial decisions constantly about what content each person sees. The fact that these decisions are scaled by computer algorithms does not mean they are not happening.

This idea that they are neutral and free communications channels is a marketing message that they invented and pushed, because they thought it would help them succeed in business. We don’t have to believe them.

They’re just private companies, two among millions. If they make unpopular decisions about how to operate, they will fail. They should be allowed to do that.

Conversely, if they make popular decisions that you disagree with, it doesn’t mean the whole concept of free speech is damaged. Again: just two companies.

The more reason to break up these corporations.

i was with you back in the 90s, but ive observed the open communication of the internet not going at all well. forums that don’t censor always turn into cesspools. HN censors, yet you are here.

It's censorship that benefits their power structure or preferred power structure. It's easy to demand freedoms when others have them and you are fighting to gain them. Once that freedom or power has been achieved, some simply turn out to have not been concerned about gaining it for everyone but just for themselves and their group. Talk of fairness wasn't genuine, it was a means to a end for them to gain what they wanted with no concern for everyone else.

The real folly in all of this is the assumption that these tools will always be in their hands and will never end up turned against them. History shows that this is almost always a poor assumption and that the reversal of power often happens both sooner and faster than ever imagined.

What twitter does has nothing to do with the NY Posts' free speech. Just as NYP is free to say whatever they want, Twitter is free to silence it on their platform. Freedom of speech and the first amendment is to restrain the federal government from prohibiting speech. That is the hill to die on, as it protects twitter's right to do what it wants to do with its platform.

An orthogonal issue is social platform monopoly or oligopoly, and that we need more options and better competition.

They should also be taking responsibility for copyright infringement in that case, which to my understanding is what the section 230 changes are?

If twitter wants to defer to users being responsible for their speech, the users should be having the rights to post what they want.

This isn't an all-or-nothing type of deal. A company does not have to take responsibility for copyright infringement in order to have the right to moderate their own platform. I do not see what Twitter does as censorship and don't believe users should have the expectation that whatever they post will be amplified.

Do you think it should be illegal for HN to moderate posts and ban users (without accepting legal liability for all user generated comments)? If HN can moderate comments, why not Twitter? If you think it's unethical for HN to operate the way it currently does, why are you still here? Maybe you should stick to your principles and delete your account.

What's the alternative?

During the 90s information traveled slower and those with large audiences took the time to research reports before sharing it with the world. And if it turns out that they were wrong, the correct information can be spread across those few platforms to everyone.

Now, misinformation can be created way faster than it can be discredited and there are a massive number of surfaces where the misinformation can live without being corrected.

Politicians need to control the narrative. If everybody is on Facebook, Twitter, that's where politicians will go. Wait until everybody starts coming to HackerNews lol.

I was born in late 70's in Czechoslovakia so I remember the communist regime with its propaganda. I'm all for free speech but when I see propaganda I want to smash it with a steel tube which probably makes me pro-censorship.

I still want to believe in the ideals of Internet as I've encountered it back in 1994 but that would require ideal people and we're not ideal. So some rules are needed.

And what would happen if the communists you hate so much were the ones deciding what gets censored?

Just like the communists have always been doing.

> I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s.

$TWTR $FB

Up until a few months ago I agreed. I have since been convinced that the power of Twitter/FB etc in connecting people who have never been connected is something we need to think carefully about...

When guns were flint locks, the amount of damage one person could do was pretty limited. When machine guns became generally available (and i'm aware $200 is not "generally available" in 1920). That changed. These weapons were introduced to "force multiply" an individual.

Before the internet, the amount of damange a single guy with free speech could do was pretty limited. But with the internet, we're all force-multiplied. This message is probably going to be read by hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. In meat space, i'd have to be standing in a large concert hall for that kind of audince.

I still believe in free-speech, and frankly I also believe regular individuals should be able to buy machine guns. But I don't blame people for having some hesitation about that. Crazy people exist... and force-multiplying those individuals can cause a lot of harm to society. I'm very pro-speech, but I respect that we might need to have a conversation about it.

Never owned gun, and never thought of owning one, until this year, precisely when politicians told us, on TV, that calling 911 is a privilege, and when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police. I never felt so much need to own many guns and train for tactical shooting to defend my family when needed.

Don't be confused. Regardless of political leaning, the police are not your friends. If the US were to degrade to a dictatorship it would be the police rounding up the "undesirables".

No, I'm not confused. Police has been of great help in my community. They are kind. They take crimes seriously. They are friendly to kids in school. I shouldn't need to mention this as it goes without saying, but whatever: they are kind and friendly to kids of all colors in my community.

And dictatorship in what way? You mean that the president repeatedly asked mayors and governors to ask for national guard, as required by law, but couldn't do anything because they said no? You mean the president has no power over state or city jurisdiction so he could only yell on Twitter for opening the cities -- pathetic in a way. You mean the president has no authority to ban critical race theory so all he could do is to ban them in federal agencies, again under his full authority? You mean the president has no power over media so all he could do is to call them fake news? Or you mean that the first thing that Hitler did to gain power is to disband the police, just like many of our justice fighters have been demanding?

Are you somehow forgetting the bizarre, unmarked "police" presence Trump sent into Portland? Are DHS and Border Patrol agents with no identifying information or accountability reassuring to you?

It depends? https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2013/07/are-unmarked-polic...

The Federal Police were trying to keep them from burning down a federal court house:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHb3xVqxcp8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EgMijMhS_U

I think you need a different perspective.

Curious about why people downvote this. Really just curious about specifics, as I fully understand that people have different opinions on gun ownership. I used to be really against gun ownership too.

Is it because 1. I didn't state facts? I double checked videos 2. I took what politicians' words out of context? Again, I double checked the context. 3. I should not use a gun whatsoever? But then how do I protect myself, assuming escaping is not an option (of course I'll try to run first). 4. This is advocating violence? Then what's a better alternative?

It's because this is a discussion about free speech, not gun ownership. Gun ownership was just being used as an analogy in the comment you were replying to. They'll also downvote this comment, because it asks why people voted a certain way, which is against HN guidelines.

Thanks

Well, because the below is an incendiary and mostly false statement. Additionally, just because the police in your community are perfect doesn't mean real problems don't exist elsewhere.

"when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police"

Pelosi on people toppling statues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z8yhQMTIiI. For I remember, statues are not the properties of the mobs, no?

AOC on looting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzlRVUJLOwo

Seattle council member on looting of stores: "Colleagues, I hope we’re all saying we understand why that destruction happened and we understand why people are upset", and "I don't want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told looting doesn't solve anything."

Minneapolis council woman supports "dismantle" police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idw83kGmwzw

And didn't Don Lemon, the warrior of our justice warriors publicly called democrats to stop rioting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp7oPgIwpZ8? To be fair, being silent does not mean supporting rioting. I guess that the Portland government letting "protesters" destruct federal court building for 5 months is not condoning either. But hey, it is the righteous people who told us "silence is violence, not me.

> because the police in your community are perfect doesn't mean real problems don't exist elsewhere.

Of course not. But following the same logic, we should "abolish" or "dismantle" police for a few bad apples?

> a few bad apples

You know that the aphorism is "a few bad apples spoils the bunch", right? The underlying metaphor is that you have to get rid of the entire group because the infection has spread to all of them even if it's not immediately visible from the outside.

I appreciate this discussion and your viewpoint, but I frankly fail to see your point.

What is being said is that the police shouldn't be the instance to handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling, or social working. We're talking about shifting funds to those and let police do what they have been trained for.

On that, as an aside... I will say that as black-belt in Aikido, I remain flabbergasted that police officers are not taught simple techniques to subdue or disable people/threats without resorting to deadly force.

To your original post I will also say that owning a gun does not make you and your family impervious to crime! You cannot protect your family with a gun, it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield. On the contrary you will likely escalate a situation.

> What is being said is that the police shouldn't be the instance to handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling, or social working. We're talking about shifting funds to those and let police do what they have been trained for.

I wish that's the discussion, but I failed to see that's what actually happened. I'm aware that many people argue that "defund police" means allocating fund for better use, but it sounds revisionism. The word "defund" means stop funding, simple and clear. BLM/ANTIFA's demand is clear too: abolish police. The word "abolish" does not mean restructuring, nor does it mean improving. The Minneapolis council woman was specifically asked for her view about "dismantling police", and I don't see how the word "dismantling" can be interpreted as routing fund to a better org.

So, no, the left populists did ask for reallocating funds to "handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling". They were asking for dismantling police. People may take "defund" as "reallocate fund", but that's interpretation that is not supported by facts.

Sorry you lost me with "BLM/ANTIFA" and "left populists". The sides seem clear in your mind, and it's us vs. them.

It seems nothing I can say will have you reflect on your viewpoint, so I won't. Take care.

Are you taking issue with this sentence?

> BLM/ANTIFA's demand is clear too: abolish police.

Because that sentence is literally correct.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matte...

https://blacklivesmatter.ca/defund-the-police/

https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-lives-matter-philadelphia-l...

https://facebook.com/sometimesantisocialalwaysantifascist/po...

What side? I was simply stating the demand by the BLM protesters in Washington DC and in NYC, as well as the demand by the leadership of BLM movement. There are multiple videos, pictures, and NYT/WaPo OpEd that showed such demand.

> You cannot protect your family with a gun

Why make such an obviously false claim? It already has in the past.

> it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield

Non-sequitur.

Because you're spouting off about abolishing the police when a tiny fraction of people actually want to do that, much less elected officials. That any number of elected officials CONDONE rioting. It frustrates me to no end that people will hear one boogeyman then start talking about the end of civilization.

> abolishing the police when a tiny fraction of people actually want to do that

A number of jurisdictions adopted steep police budget cuts in recent months (including e.g. Seattle and Portland - home to multi-month violent riots), and Minneapolis literally dismantled their police department. So I challenge this assertion.

I also don't get how cutting LE budgets is supposed to improve policing.

My prediction is that Seattle and Portland will be Detroit within 4 years. The city will be empty, most business will flee. I left Seattle years ago because I was sick of the bullshit that's going on there. I lived on what became the border of CHAZ. I even made a video about it:

https://battlepenguin.video/videos/watch/9f81cd38-3ee9-4f26-...

I'm in contact with people in Seattle frequently. I'm still really shocked at how bad things have gotten. I knew police officers and defense attorneys there too. This defunding thing is not going to end well.

Pretty much my expectation as well. I'm looking for properties in Texas or Florida right now, before real estate market craters in WA, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

You haven't listened very much, then. There has been a lot of discussion on how social services, mental health services, and demilitarization of police tools and tactics would benefit cities.

In a near-zero-sum municipal budget, funding increased homelessness assistance, increased staffing for mental health response, increased investment in lower income/higher crime areas would necessitate funds being reduced elsewhere; many suggest reducing police funding in places where those new services would step up.

If cops stop responding to certain kinds of emergency calls, is it not reasonable the funding for that capacity get shifted to the group that does respond? If cops were fighting fires and then a fire department was created, wouldn't you shift some of the firefighting budget to the new crew?

The "steep" budget cuts in Seattle's LE budget amounted to 3MM out of over 400MM. Less than 1%. Is that steep to you?

From https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...:

"The Police Department reductions passed Monday represent only about $3 million in 2020 savings; the department was allocated $409 million this year — more than the city spends annual on parks and social services."

Your comment is disingenuous. This is only for 2020, this is how much they could cut _retroactively_. City council demanded 50% cut for 2021, and overrode the mayor's veto to allow this to proceed: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...

Quote: "Though the council’s bills were expected to immediately slice only about $3 million from the Police Department’s $400-plus million annual budget — nowhere close to the 50% that seven council members in July vowed to extract — the council members described the trims as a crucial “down payment” on more sweeping changes to come."

Dig a little deeper next time. Don't fall for fake news.

See the links above.

> It frustrates me to no end that people will hear one boogeyman then start talking about the end of civilization.

It also frustrates me to no end that people will see one police brutality case, which was later challenged with tons of video evidence, then start talking about all cops are bad, there is this and that evil systemically, and then start rioting and looting with all righteousness.

I use to hate police when I was younger. I think the advent of the body camera has been a game changer. I've also seen police do incredible heroically things they did not need to do. I wrote this a few weeks ago:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-the-...

We've seen hundreds of instances of police brutality, many of them after George Floyd was murdered. After Breonna Taylor was negligently killed by incompetent cops, judges and prosecutors. The state is killing people. That should be worth protesting.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797040

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Wear your mask, wear your seatbelt, get exercise and don't do drugs.

If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group. That is not meant to be an overly hateful statement.

Police (and other law-enforcement) are an exercise of the power of government. The former exists to ensure the latter can continue to exist.

Therefore, police (and law-enforcement) exist to enact laws to preserve the status quo and whatever accepted social mores happen to be in vogue at the time via statute. Protecting you and your loved ones only occurs when your needs align with the desires of the state.

If you happen to be part of a marginalized group, often, power structures dictate that the desires of the state run contrary to your needs, or, more often, the desires of the state are literally enacted to make your life more difficult.

For example - Where I live, we have a saying, "No cops, no problems." This is because a) police take 45+ minutes to respond because we're very rural, b) police generally only respond by taking notes and harassing anyone they find on the scene, regardless of their role, and c) police, once they respond, are well known to run warrants on anyone around just to be able to say they've arrested someone that day (the second part of that is my conjecture, but I also can't come up with a reason they would run warrants on an innocent bystander, regardless of said bystander's past).

My need of having my car not be stolen apparently does not align with the government's need to ensure my father is prosecuted for low-level drug offenses from many years ago. (to use the next word too much, I think) Therefore, police do not have my interests at heart. Please apply this lesson to any other marginalized group to see where the problems with police come from, and why I called you naive.

It's total absolute bullshit to say all police don't care about protecting you. You might have had poor experiences, but generalizing from that is a mistake.

Police care about protecting you just as long as your interests align with the interests of the state, is what I said.

For most people, these two things align.

Most. Not all. That is my point. I live in a community that the police absolutely have no interest in protecting. We are a problem to be dealt with, not a community to protect.

Not everyone has that experience, I understand that. But police are, by virtue of who pulls the purse strings, an extension of the power of government.

I never said all police don't care about protecting you. I said they absolutely care about protecting you, as long as your wants align with the needs of the state.

I don't think it's a necessary condition that your interests are aligned with the state for the police to protect you, unless you're applying a very flexible interpretation as to what the interests of the state are, in which case the point becomes pretty weak.

Good thing that poster was talking about police as an institution and power structure and not making your strawman argument about about what is in the heart of each and every cop

Good thing that literally their first sentence says police aren't there to protect you, which I literally cited in my post, and not some strawman argument about what is in the heart of each and every cop.

> If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group.

You’re ascribing a lot of emotion to a pretty disinterested argument. The purpose of police is to enforce laws, not protect people. This isn’t a hateful statement, it’s a fact that has been affirmed in court. If there is a shooter at your local high school, police are entirely within their rights to cordon off the area but not go in and intervene (this is precisely what happened in Florida). That’s not to say that those same police officers were indifferent to the lives and plights of those students, but their goal is to enforce laws, not save all lives by any means necessary. Trying to generalize your experience of police into their policy is a mistake.

How does cordoning off the area and not going in reflect enforcing the law to the best of their ability? Mainly in contrast to cordoning off the area, and then sending at least someone in.

Because it is to the best of their ability. Sending someone in sounds good, unless of course you’re that someone, and then you get to worry about either dying or killing someone innocent. Police have no duty or responsibility to risk their lives in order to save someone else, just like an emt, firefighter, lifeguard, etc.

Since the beginning of time, civil societies have had police and a justice system. I know it's in the old testament.

Society needs an authority to turn to to resolve disputes or injustice and to maintain order, the alternative is chaos.

That authority may not be perfect, it may have certain biases that need to be worked on, but without it, disputes will be won by the superior marksman.

Absolutely, 100% with you on that.

I guess, then, at the heart of the 'defund the police' movement is an attempt to move toward working on those biases.

That is what is lost in much of the conversation - we need to fix certain things in the policing of the US - because people immediately turn to 'what will we do if there are no police'.

I guess, how do we turn the conversation from 'defund the police' to 'fix this shit' without losing people along the way?

I don't have answers for any of this.

I wonder if busting the police unions would be a place to start.

Allegedly the unions have positioned themselves as the chief obstacle to any & all reforms.

Justice system, yes. Police? Not so much. Find an Old Testament reference to a police force, if you wish to be credible on this point.

Police and military was the same thing. Today we have decoupled them for many good reasons.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_police

https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9980/jewish/Cha...

Deuteronomy 16:18

Most Americans have a positive experience with police and with police protecting them. This is true in minority communities too.

Yeah, and stats showed exactly that. If we are talking about stats and facts and truths, I wouldn't need to rant like this.

Really? I find that very difficult to believe based on the sum of my interactions with police. Maybe they're lying, but most of the people I've spoken to have nothing but negative things to say about the way they've been treated by police.

Most people have nothing to say about positive interactions with the police.

I mean I specifically ask them if they have ever had an interaction they would characterize as positive and most say "no." admittedly I've only talked to 15-20 people about this so my sample could be skewed.

How many people have you asked?

This is like the review site problem... people don't tend to walk around giving random anecdotes about good experiences with routine or common services.

But the polling is what I based my comment on. Even in minority communities, increased police presence polls significantly higher than decreased presence - and that's before proposing any reforms.

> Most Americans have a positive experience with police and with police protecting them. This is true in minority communities too.

I'm not a minority and I grew up solidly upper middle-class. But even as a child, I knew that it was really dangerous to piss off the police.

Because the police were generally considered to just be the biggest and best armed gang. Because they acted that way.

Things have gotten much better in the ensuing 35-40 years here, but there are still serious, structural problems with police impunity -- especially if you're a minority[0][1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...

[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/10/13/nypd-stop-frisk-warrants...

NYPD (in decades past) is an bit of an outlier... but even then, there's a gulf between "have a good experience with" and "don't piss off".

Modern polling is what I based by contention on, and I don't think citing the most notorious counter-example (and reaching back before reforms to solve exactly the problem you allege) is much of a response.

Minority communities routinely poll in favour of INCREASED presence in their communities nowadays.

>NYPD (in decades past) is an bit of an outlier... but even then, there's a gulf between "have a good experience with" and "don't piss off".

I'm pretty much with George Carlin (at least I'm pretty sure it was him) WRT the police: "It's not that I don't like the police, I just feel better when they're not around."

Most iOS users have a positive experience not having access to compilers and multitasking, this is true of developers too.

Yeah, I'm well aware of Warren v. District of Columbia. That said, in reality most police do respond to 911s, they do help communities, and they do fight crimes. Oh, the police in our town do catch mail thieves. In another word, they do protect us by upholding the law.

“ If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group. That is not meant to be an overly hateful statement. Police (and other law-enforcement) are an exercise of the power of government. The former exists to ensure the latter can continue to exist.”

Do you know this is just regurgitated political theory from Karl Marx and wasn’t considered even remotely true for thousands of years?

Is it true now? Probably not, but you seem convinced it’s true...

If you're only just finding out that calling 911 is a privilege, you have that privilege. What are you worried about?

Seems like an overreaction. No one has actually abolished any police force in the U.S., AFAIK. The Minneapolis city council made some noise about it, but most of them regret it and nothing has come of it.

Any guns you own are statistically more likely to kill/injure your family than protect them.

I appreciate the optimism. Usually I'd be optimistic too. I'm pessimistic in this case because I sense a culture shift. Few media, few intellectuals, and few politicians initially condemned the rioting or looting or violence. They did so only months later. Instead, CNN reporter could stand in front of a burning building, telling millions of people that it was a "mostly peaceful" protest. And where are the politicians when the business owners in Kenosha saw their life's work burnt away by mobs?

What does that have to do with protecting your family? No one in Minneapolis or Kenosha died as a direct result of looting/civil unrest, and no one invaded any personal dwellings. In both cities, the only deaths were protesters killed by non-protesters.

And from personal experience - I live in Minneapolis, and at no point during the unrest did I fear for my personal safety or my property. Well, except when the police with machine guns rolled through my city yelling and shooting "less-lethal" ammunition at anyone who dared peek out their front door.

>I'm pessimistic in this case because I sense a culture shift. Few media, few intellectuals, and few politicians initially condemned the rioting or looting or violence.

I appreciate your point of view and anyone who didn't condemn violence should be roundly criticized.

However, my experience here in NYC was much different.

Not only did pretty much everyone decry the violence (a significant portion of which -- and there's plenty of video evidence too -- was instigated by police), but time and again over the two or three days that there was looting, the protestors took it upon themselves to stop the looters, because no one wanted that -- except the looters.

What's more, much (not all) of the violent actions against police property were perpetrated by folks from out of town.

I can't speak to Portland or Seattle or Kenosha, but here in NYC, even some of the police[0][1] stood (and knelt) with the protestors to condemn police violence and urged the protestors (to cheers, I might add) to kick the looters and other violent folks out.

There's nuance there and it's sad (especially in the context of discussing social media) that those nuances are lost in social media bubbles where the loudest and most extreme are given undue exposure, if not primacy in the discussion.

[0] https://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/nypd-chief-of-departme...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWnzUTjGCoQ

What about the transition from parchment writing to the printing press?

When the printing press came out it force multiplied. Same with amplified sound.

The internet is still in it's current form the same internet with the same philosophies.

You can always host your own website and say whatever the hell you want.

I'm with you, solutions that come to me are:

1. Creating a level playing field by setting clear standards of what is allowed vs what is now allowed for all social media. Gov bodies are the ones to do this as companies have proven they can't self police themselves.

2. Break up big tech - too much power in their hand that they are absuing. This would be painful though for the stakeholders and won't happen easily as there are lot of vested interests.

You have the right to speak freely, but you do not have the right to make me listen. s/me/FB/ you get the idea.

I think a big part of the backlash is because of 4chan culture going mainstream. 4chan's idea of finding weaknesses in society and attacking them "for the lulz" has been adopted by right wing youth culture. The culture war has lost all morals. I've asked friends that knowingly disseminate false information why they do it and they see themselves as part of an all out political war where anything goes. I don't see how democracy can function in such an environment where nobody knows what is real or fake.

"Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" Was the phrase I grew up on. Seems like the opposite today where we allow looting and riots but saying the wrong thing gets you in trouble.

Arm one man with a stick and the other with a verified twitter account, and I know who I'd bet on.

A government entity cannot censor your speech. But YouTube definitely can. They are a private entity.

There is no difference between "censorship" on Twitter/Facebook and "censorship" on HackerNews. Each site has a set of rules that must be followed. Don't like it? Then start your own website.

Free speech moved from everyone having a voice on _their_ servers to people being entitled to say what they want on _your_ servers. There have been moderators ever since people gathered on someone’s server to discuss things.

Moderators still exist even though we are not just on IRC anymore.

Your idea of free speech doesn’t exist in communal internet spaces as abundantly as you might believe. Perhaps it never did.

Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too seriously. But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech), and own that platform and teach this as esteemed fact rather than an opinion.

And it's dangerous because when you equate speech with violence then how far are we from responding with a so called violent act with actual violence?

One thing they've gotten right is that discourses (how we talk about things) does in fact have a lot of power. So controlling discourses means you consolidate power. When you control how we talk about things then you can control what we talk about. When you control that, then you control how people think about things and you've now successfully won the culture and therefore seized actual, real power. Like being able to use a small minority of corporate activists to pressure a company into viewing certain content as violent or "problematic" and other content as orthodox and therefore appropriate to "platform".

This is how the church worked in the West for years, how it still does in certain places (Saudi Arabia) - by using dogma to determine what is right and wrong. To become the sole arbiter on what is knowledge and what is blasphemy and therefore the authority to discipline and punish.

This is where we are.

> But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech)

And the media, which is increasingly opposed to free speech.

Today we're seeing journalists talk about how other journalists should be banned from the public square by powerful corporations. They seemingly aren't bright enough to pause and wonder if this will ever be used against them. And this is being done under the banner of progressivism.

There are so many layers of irony here.

> And this is being done under the banner of progressivism

I think it's a very confusing time. A lot of people want to be "good people". They don't understand how the definitions of words have changed and what they're really signing up for. "Anti-racisim" sounds great - what reasonable, moral person wants to be racist? But you begin to read the text and you start to see it isn't what you think it is. That it isn't anything like what we've been working towards in terms of civil rights and equality.

I don't think "Progressivism" is the right word. There's not a good name for this philosophy yet other than derogative terms like "woke". Social Justice maybe but I find it unjust. I've seen "therapeutic totalitarianism" as one candidate.

Bari Weiss wrote in Tablet yesterday (before this current hullaballoo had begun) about this[1]. I think "successor ideology" is an apt if awkward stand-in term, because it focuses on the project as an attempt to ideologically present "the next stage" or replacement for liberalism:

No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology” — as in, the successor to liberalism.

At some point, it will have a formal name, one that properly describes its mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality. Until then, it is up to each of us to see it plainly. We need to look past the hashtags and slogans and the jargon to assess it honestly — and then to explain it to others.

The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game — due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself — must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with — designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power.

[1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-...

Good read and I agree. She is so right and it’s sad she was chased out of the NYT.

Chased out through this very same mechanism even.

Weiss is, if anything, less genuine than Twitter execs on this issue.

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...

Leftist totalitarianism.

There isn't anything remotely "leftist" about this sort of thing. It's done in service of some left-ish movements. Or, rather, I'd argue that "progressive" and "left" have been (mis)appropriated.

There's still a lot of actual racist violence by the police in this country. And there's a situation where municipal governments essentially have no power to actually stop out of control cops.

But there are lots of people who want to do something but aren't going to dive full tilt into actually challenging the serious problematics of a violent police force. So there's a huge market for "do something small" which involves challenging fairly petty expressions of racism.

Basically, on "the left" and "the right" you have experts taking people's real grievances and turning them into "feel good" symbology. The idiocy of the social signaling is annoying but the way the actual grievances go unaddressed is a considerably worse problem.

Its authoritarianism. One thing that frustrates me so much as an independent, is the refusal of even very intelligent people to acknowledge the y-axis of the political spectrum. People accuse the left of going right while the right goes far right, but that's not it! They are both going "up"!

>Today we're seeing journalists talk about how other journalists should be banned from the public square by powerful corporations. They seemingly aren't bright enough to pause and wonder if this will ever be used against them.

One of the issues is calling media personalities who read from teleprompters, "journalists". Call them actors, call them media spokespeople, but they aren't engaging in anything that can be construed as, "journalism". Further, it isn't in the interest of corporate media outlets to hire people who are smart. They want people who sound articulate, look good on camera and repeat the talking points that they are told to repeat. What we see on cable outlets these days shouldn't be considered, "news" so much as infotainment. By now, most people, regardless of their political affiliation (if any) understand that society has largely gone off the rails, and in their desperation they are left with an appeal to authority to make things better and restore a patina of "normality". It is dangerously seductive to suggest to people who are desperate to end the chaos that if we just silenced the "bad" people things would be okay (leaving unsaid who determines who is bad and what we are allowed to think and say).

I'm not talking about cable news anchors, I'm talking about the New York Times, which is defending Twitter and Facebook censoring the Post.

It's really kind of mind boggling really. Does the Times not think they will ever fall afoul of the goodthink, and this weapon will never be used against them?

Conspiracy became illegal in the 80s? Threatening people? That seems recent

Speech is considered violence by some people.

Some people consider a lot of speech violence but nearly everyone considers a small amount of speech violence or some equivalent. Telling someone to grab a electrified wire is violence by nearly everyone's standard. A mafioso directing a hit man to kill is nearly everyone's standard. The famous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is mostly violence etc.

So you can't say the situation is "free speech or not". The situation is always where the boundary is. Of course, the question of where quickly spreading slander on the eve of an elections is on the spectrum of protected speech is a complicated question. But it's a bit different than the question of whether a given dogma can be challenged.

Right when there is a clear and imminent danger has been the judicial limit on speech. I think nearly everyone finds this reasonable.

To my point though there is the idea that “silence is violence” which implies if you don’t actively work towards a certain groups objective then you are in fact committing violence.

Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause? After all my silence on the matter was a hostile act. Maybe I’ll just get a struggle session and be re-educated. Lifelong ban from participating in society but alive at least. If I’m lucky.

"Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause?" Yes, it does mean that. They're saying so explicitly.

And I think it’s important to highlight as you have. People will say “well they don’t really _mean_ that”, etc. but they should be taken at their word. They do.

>And I think it’s important to highlight as you have. People will say “well they don’t really _mean_ that”, etc. but they should be taken at their word. They do.

And who is "they"? Specifically. Not some amorphous "group" like "progressives" or "the left" or "SJWs".

I'm not being snarky here. It seems to me that one of the most damaging trends we're seeing is equating a hundred million (and more) people with the loudest, most obnoxious and nasty .01%.

Painting folks with such a broad brush is a recipe for division, conflict and mayhem.

Assuming that someone with a Trump bumper sticker is a dyed-in-the-wool racist and white supremacist fascist is stupid in the extreme. And so is assuming that someone with a Biden bumper sticker is a totalitarian monster bent on total mind control.

People are individuals and should be assessed and measured as such.

It's intellectually lazy to just stick anyone who doesn't share your beliefs about Trump or Biden or abortion or gun rights or any of a hundred other contentious issues into a big box called "enemies."

And when you do so, you play right into the hands of the tiny group of folks who want to profit (politically, economically or both) from dividing us.

You have the choice not to do so. It's up to you and me and everyone else to step up and judge people on their individual actions, not some invented "in" or "out" group.

> Right when there is a clear and imminent danger has been the judicial limit on speech.

Are you thinking of “clear and present danger”? That used to be the test in the United States, but since the 1960s it is “imminent lawless action.”

> I think nearly everyone finds this reasonable.

I don’t know about that. From what I can tell, the US legal system is extremely accepting of speech that incites violence relative to many other democratic governments. I think the current test is unreasonably lenient and likely allows a lot of speech that directly advocates and incites violence.

To my point though there is the idea that “silence is violence” which implies if you don’t actively work towards a certain groups objective then you are in fact committing violence.

Yeah, certain kind of leftists are prone to over-the-top rhetoric. What does it mean? Not a lot given these aren't organized group, not even ineffective organized group but just individuals seeking attention for themselves.

Telling someone to grab an electric fence is not violence by anyone’s standard. Nor is shouting fire. As a society, we have never considered those utterances to be violent crime.

You are incorrect here. "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is one litmus test for speech not protected by the 1st Amendment. And telling someone to grab a wire that you know is electrified and they don't is pretty violent.

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

How many times do we have to go over the fact that the fire issue is actually proves the point. It was a bad ruling used to silence Yiddish WW1 protestors that referenced that hypothetical in the first place! So tired of seeing this regurgitated so much.

again. wrong.

You seem to be equating unprotected speech with violence. Perjury is also not protected under the 1st Amendment but there's nothing violent about it.

The only speech I would consider to even approach violence is a direct threat. And even that isn't really violence - it's the threat of violence.

>The only speech I would consider to even approach violence is a direct threat. And even that isn't really violence - it's the threat of violence.

And credible threats of violence aren't protected speech either.

You seem to be agreeing with me. Replied to wrong comment? We’re saying the same thing.

>"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is one litmus test

Nitpick: It's not "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" it's "Falsely Shouting fire in a crowded theater"

If there were a fire, I'd certainly want to know about it, wouldn't you?

You are incorrect here. "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is one litmus test for speech not protected by the 1st Amendment.

How does this contradict anything I said? I said it was not violent. It isn’t.

Your syllogism goes something like this:

Shouting fire is speech. Shouting fire is illegal Violence is illegal. Therefore spec is violence.

I don't even know where to begin picking it apart. It has the -form- of an argument, but...

These are strange times.

The infamous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" was mentioned by Holmes in U.S. v. Schenck which had nothing to do with fires or theaters. The case involved whether Schenck could be convicted under the Espionage Act for the crime of writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft. That is the dangerous idea that sent a person to prison.

>...In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"

Even Holmes seemed to quickly realize that the Schenck decision was odious since in the same term, he also wrote:

>...In what would become his second most famous phrase, Holmes wrote in Abrams that the marketplace of ideas offered the best solution for tamping down offensive speech: "The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

There is absolutely speech that is violence, and it is typically not protected by free speech. Harassment, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, calling for literal violence against others, these are allowed to be regulated (in the US) and understood broadly to be dangerous.

No, speech is not violence, full stop. It never has been, and it’s a mistake to even tolerate this new definition.

Think about it. How can calling for violence be violence? The violence is the violence, the calling for it is incitement.

Redefining terms like this is nothing more than subverting the truth to control a narrative.

Then you're going against a hundred years of legal thought on free speech there. There's a reason certain speech is not protected, and it's been hashed out. if you have a better legal argument than "it's just not," I'm interested, but it needs to address why previous thinking is incorrect. Edit: a [quick link][1] to all the types of speech in the US that is regulated and why.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

Searched for 'violence' and derivative forms in that wiki link:

> limitations on free speech balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as rights for ... protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons.

The speech is not violent. However, we can say that speech that promotes such might not be allowed under "free speech."

Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not violent though it can cause people to panic and cause harm.

What does this have to do with what I said? Why do you think I said anything about what is protected? We are arguing about the definition of the word violence.

Why is violence your line? What makes violence unacceptable but verbal harassment, abuses, bad faith arguments are deemed acceptable. Honest question that I'm still not settled on. What I still believe is that society should be the one managing this boundary area, and the state should stick to it's defined rules on free speech.

People should be able to boycot people, free enterprises should he able to manage their media channels, the state should not.

I've been called names and threatened, and I've been attacked. I know which one I consider violent actually physically dangerous vs stressful :)

Who said violence is my line? Who said anything about what is and isn’t acceptable? Where are you getting this from? We are arguing over what the word violence means. I didn’t make any other claims.

you're wrong.

>Harassment

That is not regulated in the capacity of speech.

>yelling "fire" in a crowded theater

That line is from a 1919 court case about whether you could oppose the draft.

>calling for literal violence against others

This is permitted under Brandenburg v. Ohio. Calls to illegal action are only prohibited if they are (1) intended to cause illegal action, (2) reasonably likely to produce such action and (3) imminent.

Where does this idea come from that unprotected speech == violence? Perjury is not protected speech, do you think that is violent?

Violence is fundamentally a physical thing. Incitements to violence and threats of violence are bad, but they are not the same thing as violence.

> Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too seriously. But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech), and own that platform and teach this as esteemed fact rather than an opinion.

Who is they?

Fair question.

The radical left as some name them. But more specifically the activist culture motivated by “critical theory” to dismantle scientific-liberalism and enlightenment principals/philosophy.

Just to clarify you believe the radical left have infiltrated the upper echelons of capitalist society and academic institutions and have an anti free-speech agenda and have a goal of dismantling enlightenment principals?

Can you also explain what you mean by scientific liberalism?

“A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.”

- Johnathon Rausch

1) no one owns the blessings of what is knowledge by virtue of any sort of implied authority.

2) all accepted knowledge is open to revision upon new evidence or proof

This is a good read that articulates this more than I can.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703086.Kindly_Inquisitor...

I think some people have an inherent need to gain influence. To have power over others, tell them what to do. Due to monopolization and centralization, there are fewer and fewer spots to do it in a constructive way (found your own company?).

Except if you claim that you're offended, you're suddenly given the right to control what others say. If you claim that you are fighting racism/sexism/etc, you're shielded from 90% of critique. So this "safe haven" has attracted all kinds of opportunists that just enjoy attacking others to feel better about themselves.

Look at your typical BLM protestors. It's not Black doctors protesting against being treated differently from White doctors. It's unhappy people from both races that have found an uncriticizable cause to justify their own disappointment in life.

I am the same age as you and agree with you, but don't plan on dying on any hill: the high ground is a strategically superior position so we should win.

Is it “free speech” to deliberately create a misleading story/propaganda for your advantage, then spend money on fake accounts to astroturf your propaganda and give it fake credibility on third party corporate services? — That sounds beyond the intent of “free speech” to me.

BTW, I use to run “blue ribbon campaign” banners on my 90s era webpages. So I understand where you’re coming from.

You're describing what's long been called a "confidence game".

It falls within free speech, because otherwise the institution which determines whether the speech is what you describe becomes too powerful.

The correct way to deal with this is probably twofold: to have a variety of organizations which determine what is untrue, and to somehow figure how to make them seem credible.

Those organizations should probably operate independently of the companies actually implementing their blocking algorithms, and obviously of each other.

Then we need a diverse enough set of communications channels that each can make independent determinations how they filter communications on their platform, referencing the analysis of various organizations in the first paragraph.

This would maybe make for more controlled environments while not having universal censorship of controversial ideas.

I am from the same generation. Got introduced to the internet in mid-90s, after about a year of using FidoNet. Will die on the same hill.

I was born in 1974. Netscape's browser (what became Mozilla) was released my junior year of college. It was a cute alternative to gopher and ftp.

Then, newspapers were published once or twice a day. Magazines weekly or monthly. Publishers worked as editors, fact-checkers, and curators (with their various agendas, of course).

The original miracle of internet free speech was the promise that anyone could become a publisher - no more gate keeping by major media companies - no more financial barrier to entry to buy presses, paper, delivery trucks.

Then various platforms emerged to centralize online publishing -- Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LiveJournal, Yelp, ... and thousands more. They took the profit model of traditional publishers (paid advertising), exploited the structural advantages of digital publishing, and gave up the overhead and responsibility of curating and creating content.

Now we are trying to figure out how to manage real time publishing platforms that can't (or won't?) validate identity, won't take responsibility for fact-checking, are open to targeted manipulation by adversaries, and are capable of distributing damaging lies and propaganda with little oversight or financial consequences.

Speech is still "freer" now than when I was a teenager. The reach of an individual voice is massive in today's world compared to the 1980's. When I was young, my community was the people who lived within biking distance. Now it includes all of reddit, twitch, hackernews...

Can we sustain these advances while managing the mob-mentality inherent in human nature? Can we protect our forums from adversarial misuse? Are open platforms that shrug off responsibility for content while collecting advertising profits compatible with democracy?

Looks like we'll find out in the next few years.

> Now we are trying to figure out how to manage real time publishing platforms that can't (or won't?) validate identity, won't take responsibility for fact-checking, are open to targeted manipulation by adversaries, and are capable of distributing damaging lies and propaganda with little oversight or financial consequences.

The identity validation part is worth repeating. I'm not a fan of real names, but I'd consider opting in to an identity that follows me between platforms so I could build a reputation.

I'd also like to see more transparency from social media platforms. I'd love to be able to get metrics on a post. X% of likes came from these countries. X% of retweets came from known VPN IPs. X% of shares came from IPs in known botnets.

I'd also LOVE to filter out people that participate over a certain volume. If someone is spending 8h+ per day on Twitter, I want them hidden because IMO they have nothing to add if all of their experience is from social media and not the real world.

> I'd consider opting in to an identity that follows me between platforms so I could build a reputation.

same.

consider scuttlebutt.

Entry barrier became too low, no skills required to post anything.

Web became centralized. Instead of visiting dozens websites you started visiting few conglomerates.

People thought that their opinions are unique and matters anything, so they started posting everything everywhere.

You say on HN which has highly moderated comment threads.

So suppressing free speech is only ok if it’s done by unpaid volunteers (never mind that free speech as such never existed, since you still had all sorts of restrictions include libel, defamation, fire in a theater, etc kind of restrictions).

If I discovered that HN moderators were banning links to specific major news articles they didn't like, I'd find that extremely concerning. As far as I know, the HN moderators restrict only comments which are needlessly inflammatory and posts which don't have to do with the technology industry, and I'd be fine with it if Twitter or Facebook adopted similarly general policies. (I'd be a huge fan of forming some version or corner of Twitter without politics at all, frankly.)

I would rather see you work on removing US libel and slander laws, and petitioning Germany to make it legal to make nazi salutes again, which are more direct free speech issues, instead of private platforms doing what they want with their private platforms.

I think this is just an extension of the Eternal September. The population of the Internet is wildly different from those that you're thinking of: not only is a majority of the world now online, a vanishing minority of the countries many of us are primarily exposed to are not.

There are plenty of reasons that this new population may establish different norms than the old one: Some say it's because they're privileged, and don't understand the harm that Enlightenment liberalism does to the marginalized. Some say it's because they were free-thinkers and iconoclasts, and indeed, you'd expect any heavily-selected subpopulation to be less conformist than "all people". Others have claimed it's simply intelligence: back when the Internet was all educated nerds, support for free speech was higher because of the well-known correlation between intelligence and free speech absolutism[1].

In addition to the Eternal September effect, I think the broader retrenchment of liberalism we see across the world is very relevant. The cause/effect relationship between the Internet and this cultural retrenchment is unclear but IMO, almost certainly bidirectional. My model of liberalism has always been that its support in large populations is a fragile state, and that it's only supported by the masses when they've cargo-culted it from their civic religion. The minute this effect fades, most people don't have the moral reasoning ability to actually hold a principle, and can't be convinced that protection of an enemy under a principle is a protection of that principle, not of the enemy. They also don't appear to have the capacity to understand that the world turns, and the person on top is guaranteed to be someone they dislike, at one point or another. The only skew that rolling back Enlightenment protections is likely to have over time is against the _marginalized_.

[1] Note that this isn't a stand-in for "free speech is good", since the proponents of the privilege argument would claim that measures of intelligence are themselves just measuring privilege.

Oregon Trail Generation checking in. IRC, even the rowdy networks, had no free speech thanks to the 'tyranny' of channel operators. #politics on EFNet was (is?) notoriously right wing for instance. Message boards had no free speech thanks to their moderators. I don't see how this is any different?

Private companies censoring things arbitrarily is pro-free speech.

I'm not making any particular argument, only showing the weakness in your cognitive dissonance.

Its is not censorship. No censorship has taken place. The article still exists on the NY Post web site and their newspaper. Their audience is still sizable.

Their article included personal information and was consistent with policies that have been in place for almost a year.

Twitter is not a public utility in the way that phone services are. They were (rightly) criticized along with others for letting mis-information run amok in the last election and beyond. They have (slowly) taken steps to listen to these concerns and this is what happens.

I full support Twitter in this. This is not censorship, this is limitation of deliberate mis-information and personal information.

But that standard has never been used before and was manually engaged here.

Trump's taxes were repeatedly shared and there are photos of the content (not to mention the content itself, which is far more private than an email address).

This standard has never been applied like this, and you can still link to the Web Archive version without limitation - same content.

It's also not "limitation of deliberate misinformation" - that has never once been used on deliberate misinformation like the Steele dossier.

Ahmari of the NYP had a reasonably good counter: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/if-unreliable-is-the-issue-why...

Re: "Trump's taxes were repeatedly shared..."

That's kind of comparing apples to oranges. One is a public figure, the other not. And is tax info comparable to email addresses? I'm not saying whether or not it's fair, only that it's very different kinds of personal information being compared here. Equivalency is hard to establish.

Being a public figure doesn't mean your rights don't exist.

I actually abhor that the photos of Hunter were shared, but he's a public figure too. As this (and other recent reporting) has shown, he was using his father's name and implied access thereto for personal profit.

Note that there is no evidence Hunter ever actually got Joe to do anything for him. What is a matter of record is that Hunter was IMPLYING he could do so, which is scummy but probably not illegal. Johnson-Grassley investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe and I want to stress I'm not alleging otherwise.

Hunter sounds like a jerk; I'm not voting for him.

My editorialization aside, Twitters stated reason is that the images contained in the articles include personal and private information (email addresses and phone numbers) which violate our rules.

That (to me) is valid in itself. I do wonder, had they redacted things properly then this would all be a non-issue.

To your example; my understanding is that Trump's taxes did not in the same way (by this I mean things like Trump org address etc isn't a private address). I have not dug deep into those articles to say that with 100% certainty.

I would say that content of my tax return is much more private information than my home address.

That may be true but that was a reason they used later, as an excuse.

Hence they don't ban the Web Archive mirror (which has a static URL), and they don't ban any of the previous leaks about Trump taxes, health records, etc.

Not to mention Wikileaks - by definition that is a trove of email addresses and completely uncensored private information that you can tweet with impunity right now.

The selective application of their terms is precisely the problem. It renders their policies essentially meaningless when certain groups are given preferential treatment.

The thing is, I would have thought by now that these companies would have learned from the past. The more you try to censor information on the internet, the more attention you draw to it.

How is failing to send private messages which contains ideas you disagree with not censorship? You've limited the definition to "taking down the originate reference" but that's too limited.

Because they weren't private messages. Private messages are between two parties. Instead, these were messages on a platform which is owned by Twitter between two users where these users have agreed to restrictions. You can read about those restrictions here:

https://twitter.com/en/tos

HN is no different. I know this because I've been dinged by dang.

Direct Message is 1-to-1 private message. DM is banned.

Free speech is dead. When you have a mass of people who are hysterical, and not willing to get into a debate, that's what is happening.

It’s weird how happy people are to give up freedom, isn’t it? American Democracy is absolutely, 100% under attack on the internet today. We should be doubling down on the freedoms that make America the amazing place it is, rather than sowing the seeds of tyranny.

Misinformation and hate speech are clearly important issues. But loosing free speech would be a colossal mistake. I used to live in a country with no free speech, trust me the USA in its current state is hundred million times better and more just. Free speech is just super fundamental. So, in my opinion, nothing restricting free speech is acceptable - the downsides of that are just too enormous. We need to learn to live in a society where information is easily available and free speech has absolute protection. And yes, this involves learning to be able to detect misinformation, manipulation, etc. without outright banning it.

Voltaire put it well: ""I disagree with what you have to say, sir, but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it."

No one in america is restricting your free speech. Go buy server space and write what ever you want.

There are then questions of monopolies and utilities. Cloud providers won't allow you to host certain content and if you buy your own server your internet provided can and will restrict the kind of content you can host.

Also there are de-facto monopolies on communications and social networks.

> Cloud providers won't allow you to host certain content and if you buy your own server your internet provided can and will restrict the kind of content you can host.

yeah because in practice free speech isn't black and white like these internet discussions like to pretend it is. Is not being allowed to host child porn a violation of my free speech?

there's nuance when defining free speech. Similar to the paradox of tolerance, you need to draw the line somewhere otherwise you'll be drowned out and taken over by speech that doesn't happen in good faith.

> "Is not being allowed to host child porn a violation of my free speech?" - No, in that specific case it would clearly violate the rights of individuals depicted in the content you are hosting and therefore must be taken down.

Child porn is not protected speech.

Every country has limits to freedom of speech. In the US you can't lie to a Federal Officer, you can't distribute or possess images of child abuse and you cannot advocate for a direct an imminent threat of an individual.

Those are all pretty reasonable. You CAN have a fictional representation of child abuse (writing/drawing) which is illegal in the UK, Australia and pretty much any other country except Japan.

Speech is tricky. Every country has limitations. China has freedom of speech in their constitution, so a law by itself is not enough to ensure you actually have that freedom.

Right free speech isn't straight forward.I think that is lost on alot of these commenters.

But there's two layers here, does free speech apply to social media. No it doesn't, it's not the government. What would be free speech violation is if you criticized the government then had the government tell the social media company to remove something.

Then there's the hypothetical, if social media companies had to listen free speech. Is spreading manipulative false information protected free speech? That seems abusive to me, close to slander.That's not protected speech.

> slander

Slander isn't criminal, it's a civil issue. And social media companies don't have to worry about that _because_ of section 203 protections.

Under US law, yes, social media companies can do what they want in this particular case. But should they? They are massive and they control narratives. The fact that we have real freedom of speech proves this because we have other channels to discuss and bring attention to this issue.

There is another angle: Because of FB/Twitters massive size and control over their audiences, is allowing some stories and blocking others election interference? It most certainly is.

> They are massive and they control narratives.

they might only control the narrative on twitter. only around 10% of americans would be a monthly active user on twitter. the world is not twitter, or social media. It might feel like that. Plently of people are still getting their news from other places. the article is still on nypost.

> is allowing some stories and blocking others election interference?

Lets say CNN decides to not publish this story, is that election interference? Now their viewers won't know about it.

You could also say its election interference to run an unfounded story in the first place

your argument is also similar to saying: "don't like your water company? - Drill your own water well!", "Don't like your power company? - Install your own power sources", etc.

In many places utility companies have a monopoly. Twitter doesn't have a monopoly on the Internet, there are a billion other places you can post content.

Can you name a few of the billion places? Of course with similar potential impact as Twitter, and without the censorship.

No one says anyone has a right to be listened to. The right to free speech does not guarantee a right to an audience.

In the physical world, the analog here is "you are standing on a box in front of the courthouse, shouting today's particular theory on some regressive tax, and nobody is listening (but nobody is pulling you down and shoving a sock in your mouth either)"

The online equivalent of the image I have painted above is, "You go on Twitter and you post something, and nobody is interested and it just gets ignored."

Twitter removing it is the same as someone pulling you off the box and shoving a sock in your mouth.

Until that actual public square exists online, Twitter, while they may have the legal right to silence you, have an ethical responsibility not to - because THEY chose to provide the platform that they knew everyone would use.

If they want ideological filtering they should make it part of the signup requirements.

>Until that actual public square exists online, Twitter, while they may have the legal right to silence you, have an ethical responsibility not to - because THEY chose to provide the platform that they knew everyone would use.

You are under the misapprehension that Twitter (or Facebook or Google, or any corporation for that matter) has any ethics at all. They exist to make profit. And anything that doesn't align with that is unimportant to them.

I'd also point out that on Twitter or Facebook, you aren't the customer, you're the product. And they keep you in your little section of the feedlot (filter bubble) to keep you pacified and feeling good, as they profit off your PII and eyeballs.

Your analogy is entirely wrong. The equivalent to standing on a box on the street is hosting content on your own server, which anyone can still do. The equivalent of someone pulling you off your box is someone coming to your server rack and yanking the cables out, which Twitter is not doing.

Incorrect. If you are standing on the street, everyone will hear you whether they want to or not (though they may ignore you), unless they are deaf.

You are not entitled to impact or reach.

Until every cloud provider on the planet removed your site and disallows you to even register a domain name:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-...

You realize that you can rent a VPS and host a website for a few dollars a month in almost any country in the world right?

Maybe you should link a real source instead of your own website.

Counter point, I live in a country with no constitutional free speech and a government with a censorship office, and this country is free and open and a wonderful place to live. So you're going to have to find a better causation theory.

Maybe you are part of the group suppressing speech of the oppressed? How can there be censorship and everyone be happy?

A lot (a majority?) of people in Russia and North Korea genuinely happy about the kinds of systems and leaders they have.

Maybe it's a wonderful place for you because your specific speech is not suppressed. Maybe not all your citizens think that way.

Based on the description I would be interested to know which country we're talking about.

New Zealand.

> Voltaire put it well ...

Voltaire did not say this.

I actually don't care who said it, I like that quote because of its meaning and not due to the authority (or lack of thereof) of whom could have been its author.

If Voltaire wanted to say it, we would certainly support his preference in the matter...

I too started the Internet in the 90s and I was post 20 then.

I also have seen "weaponized trolling" in the last ten years that seems to make the world a good deal worse. The way climate change denial has gotten legs from combination of the average person's poor thinking and the particular dynamics of electronic communication. I see bots on my FB feed activating now, pushing propaganda that makes me chuckle but certainly push some morons to actions.

Putting aside the point that Twitter/FB own the medium. Someone is going to manage any given medium. Is "throttling" censorship? Because the NY Post story never was made unavailable, it was just throttled, it just slowed down, slowed down enough that the rebuttal was made available at the same rate as the original story.

There are junctures where "free speech" can't really be a criteria - Oliver Wendel Holmes' "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is the epitome of such examples (and these can be misused, in fact Holmes' made his example to misuse it, justifying repression against those who oppose WWI). Is spread viral false news on the eve of an election in the "fire" or the "freedom" category? Honestly, throttling seems like a good compromise if we're looking for the simple free availability of information. But when information is the coordination, activation and/or manipulation of people at scale, talking about freedom stops meaning a lot.

Suppose there's a fire, and a hurricane, and an epidemic and an economic crisis and different things shouted will save some people and trample other people. What category is "shouting" "you don't need a mask, come shop before I go bankrupt"? Etc.

First, I'm not for or against any specific actions in saying this, but...

I'd say that if your views on what censorship is haven't changed as the actual social medium of thought has (over 20 years), then you're perhaps being dogmatic about censorship. Ideas around censorship came about when the social medium that mobilized thought were MUCH more viscous.

Like imagine a physical surface on some liquid medium, in which its initial properties were such that a small force rippled to such a degree due to viscosity. You'd generally know the forces other points would feel when event Y happened so much distance away. But if suddenly the liquid developed very different properties, and now waves travelled differently through it, you must respond by adapting (or at least CONSIDER adapting). Whatever science or activity or measurement was happening on that surface before, that would need to be adapted or changed or even discarded. One's views on how to navigate the environment must change to respond to such an important change in the mediating layer.

Sorry if that's a bit of mixed metaphor, but I truly feel it's more than light analogy. Anyhow, be well!

    But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet 
    hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship

I was born in the 1970s and I can tell you why I flipped.

The (hopelessly naive) ideal many of us had was that, by breaking down communication barriers, we'd create an egalitarian "marketplace of ideas" and the best ideas would win. And by "best" ideas we generally meant principles of equality, science, and so forth.

Regardless of what you feel needs to be done... I'm sure you can agree that hasn't been achieved. Probably more like the opposite.

The problem is that by amplifying all voices, we've simply created another "might makes right" situation. Unfettered online discourse is dominated by those who yell the loudest. This includes a large number of woefully misinformed people, and genuinely malicious actors such as (for example) the hordes of paid internet trolls funded by America's rivals in order to sow discord and disinformation during our 2016 elections.

In effect, we've replaced the staid and conservative corporate self-censorship of decades past with something that is quite frequently worse.

I mean, free speech sure sounds good, but in reality it means that your racist uncle ranting about chemtrails on Facebook gets to be heard right alongside people who actually know what the fuck they're talking about.

I unapologetically do not know what the solution is.

There is no solution to this problem that doesn't involve unaccountable third parties setting the ground rules for what is okay to say. I'd take a thousand racist uncles writing about chemtrails before taking a single official censor. The abuse factor for the latter is simply too high to ever permit.

Freedom of speech, as a concept, includes by extension the freedom to be wrong.

    There is no solution to this problem that doesn't 
    involve unaccountable third parties setting the 
    ground rules for what is okay to say

Literally nobody is talking about taking away anybody's right to say, write, or think things.

You're confusing this right with Twitter's utterly nonexistent obligation to transmit and amplify your thoughts to others.

If Twitter wants to editorialize in this manner, then perhaps it's time to revisit section 230 after all.

We should revisit it, for sure.

I do not think that law is adequate to cover the current state of affairs.

Personally, I'd allow curation/gatekeeping by platforms like Twitter as long as (1) it's transparent (2) there are viable alternatives, including totally unmoderated places where people can post all the coronavirus hoaxes and exhortations to "join the race war" they desire.

It's also worth noting that you are posting this on Hacker News, platform that is far more stringently curated/moderated than Twitter. Why are you here if moderation is so objectionable to you?

You are here presumably because you like the job they do. If that changes you can go someplace else. There are countless alternatives to both HN and Twitter and you can even start your own. Either from scratch, or just spin up a Wordpress site or a Mastodon instance or whatever.

>> There is NO SOLUTION [Emphasis added] to this problem that doesn't involve unaccountable third parties setting the ground rules

Are you absolutely sure that this statement is correct?

A little older than you, but same basic experience.

I also don't understand how the tide turned so swiftly against freedom of speech, and in favor of authorities deciding what people should be allowed to hear or read. But it did turn, and I don't see the trend reversing.

While I don't like the prospect of an increasingly censored society, it will be interesting to watch the struggle between the big platform censors and those who want to say banned things. I expect this will only escalate over time.

Anyway, just wanted to say you're not alone. Watching some of your cherished values be discarded by society is something you have to accept as you get old, I'm afraid.

> I also don't understand how the tide turned so swiftly against freedom of speech, and in favor of authorities deciding what people should be allowed to hear or read.

Freedom of speech meant freedom from /government/ control of speech. It has never meant freedom from the any impact. This article (facebook et al blocking/removing/deplatforming) is functionally no different than a newspaper choosing what to publish in their editorials page, a property owner having a bulletin board whose postings they control, or a shopping mall not allowing someone to stand up on a soap box and proselytize.

Freedom of speech has always meant the idea that different points of view should be aired, not suppressed, and that people should decide for themselves what is right or what is correct, rather than authorities deciding for them.

A society where "wrong" points of view are thoroughly suppressed by giant social media companies or angry mobs (or angry mobs on social media) might not violate the literal text of the First Amendment, but it lacks the spirit of free speech that inspired the First Amendment in the first place.

What I find most disappointing is not that Facebook is censoring QAnon (or whatever), but that the popular sentiment is they should be. That's a big change from the culture I grew up in, and not for the better.

In my local newspapers growing up, the "letters to the editor" section was always populated by the local nutjobs writing inflammatory screeds. Hypothetically, the letters had stirred a lot of discussion, and my local paper decided to print them in bold type on the front page. Then the letter-writer got so popular, he was elected mayor of the town. But then the newspaper noticed it was having some negative impact on local politics, and the garbage collection for the print shop was suffering, so they decided to entirely stop publishing the nutjob. The writer cried out that it was a violation of their freedom of speech.

But none of it has anything to do with freedom of speech because they don't . I'd 100% support the newspapers' decision to stop publishing them (while also criticizing them, since it was their choices that created the issue in the first place). I'd also applaud anyone who felt strongly enough to cancel their newspaper subscription, or even start their own local competing paper!

Social networks are specifically not publishers. They do not have editorial control over the content of their users.

They work under that exemption, but by having an algorithm that preferentially shows certain material to each user, they are exercising editorial control. Worse, the editorial control is a black box from the outside.

internet and social medias pretty much emphasized problems that were already existent, and made them much harder to ignore. For example, I truly believe gay marriage wouldn't have been a thing worldwide without social medias. I think Americans need to have a talk about what they want to define as protected free speech, and what consist speech that endanger others or doesn't move the world in a better place (perhaps this needs a definition of what "a better place" is as well).

>>" I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore."

Appropriate. Currently, freedom of speech is this climate technological sphere is freedom to amplify hate, lies, conspiracy and fear in seconds.

I don't have the answers, but you're not asking the right questions.

Time to have a word with your tech overlords, methinks.

A large portion of liberals convince themselves that woke capitalist censorship isn't really censorship and that it's fighting "the good fight" so long as it's hurting their enemies.

A large portion of conservatives convince themselves that the media has a left bias and therefore it's reasonable to ingest even trashier garbage uncritically. Very similar position - so long as their media is confirming their biases / hurting their enemies, they're cool with it, even if it's based on fiction.

We're in desperate need of a nationwide media criticism education and the free time for average people to actually engage in it. We should all be aware of various journalists, publications' biases, the think tanks they cite as "neutral" (often Koch-backed, e.g.), etc. The problem with garbage "news" in social media is that it convinces people of nonsense.

That's not really a problem of media outlets so much as a public that has no real response to it. Little familiarity with media criticism and no way to effectively push back outside of something like Twitter. Everyone tries to work within their extremely limited frameworks, many of which are systematically hampered by the forces that fund and profit from these camps.

The first steps to getting the boot off of our necks are (1) vastly improved public education with practical political courses that include media criticism, critically responding to statistical claims and graphs, and questionable forms of argument, and (2) a strong enough economic floor so that the average person can justify spending the time to actually pay attention to this stuff. If you're worried about your next paycheck and avoiding the stress of bills and incoming financial woes, you'd rather watch some TV than spend several hours learning about why Bari Weiss kind of sucks.

The problem is not free speech, people should focus on the monetary aspects which is the root cause of this. Social media and ad revenue are the driving forces. Free speech would still be not an issue weren't it for those conflicting interests of the social media companies.

What happened during the early 2010s is that colleges and universities started implementing Stasi methods like anonymous reporting on professors and making professors write humiliating self-criticisms.

All this to appease a fragile and spoiled generation.

The effects now show on the Internet, where "open" source projects implement similar oppressive tactics in the name of attracting new "contributors" (who rarely do anything useful).

Unfortunately, the boomers, who first raked in all the money and leadership positions in SV companies, support this cultural revolution in a last attempt to preserve their power.

[1] former East German surveillance apparatus

If you believe in free speech then you must believe that Twitter has the free speech right to choose what they want to host on their privately owned servers, the same way a homeowner has the free speech right to choose what lawn signs they want to display on their yard, and a newspaper has the free speech right to decide what editorials they want to publish.

If you think free speech gives you the right to force your speech onto other people then you don't understand the concept of free speech.

You reminisce fondly of the old internet, but the old school forums were all heavily and completely arbitrarily moderated according to the whims and egos of the mods. Unrestricted free speech was never a thing there.

I fully agree with you regarding free speech. Where we probably differ is that I also uphold the rights of private companies, however large, to set their own standards of what can be posted to their platform. Now, if we want to have the debate about whether the platforms are too large, have too much power to shape the conversations we have, etc, we can have that debate. But it isn't censorship for a private company to remove information it believes violates it's standards (whether because it's false, misleading, or for other reasons).

If anything, the first amendment explicitly protects a private organization's right to curate their own platforms the way they see fit.

Twitter could declare support of Donald Trump a bannable offense today, and those people can promptly sign up for a site like Parler.

And Parler has even more censorship. Adult work is completely legal in the US, and pornography is a form of constitutionally protected free speech, yet Parler strictly prohibits it on "Decency" grounds.

I see no problem with social netoworks drawing a line in the sand. The big ones can draw a line at violence, hatred, and fascism. The little ones can draw the same line and stand shamefully on the other side.

And nobody loses their right to speak.

Same and i miss our people.

I'm with you. Rather than censor "disinfo", I'd really prefer to just break up the damn networks so it can't spread so easily.

What’s stranger to me is that people who spent their whole lives distrustful of the US intelligence apparatus suddenly found the CIA and FBI above reproach in 2016.

The entire Russian hacking the elections in 2016 narrative should be a black pill to every technical person in 2020. Did you ever even find out what that “back channel from Trump Towers to Alfa Bank” ever was?

I think the fundamental issue with what you're saying here is that it assumes that privately owned social networks are places where free speech matters.

These are curated spaces, and they are not run democratically, they are run capitalistically. Twitter isn't even in the business of providing a forum for speech. They're in the business of serving ads.

Your free speech cannot be infringed by a corporation, as the corporation does't gatekeep anything but access to their platform that they own. Your right to speech exists separate from their platform or their permission to use it.

And if you believe in the free market, you can't complain that the largest social networks gravitate towards political ideologies that are most friendly to their profits. You also have no obligation to participate in those networks if they don't offer you a space that you enjoy participating in.

Just because the social networks that cater to you are smaller doesn't mean your rights are being infringed upon. It just means your ideas are less successful in a free and open marketplace of ideas.

It becomes an issue when people do try to start their own networks, those networks get smeared and service providers (credit cards, hosting, dns) start cutting them off.

What could go wrong from empowering biased corporations with the ability to control a national narrative of what constitutes misinformation and hyperbole? I'm noticing a wide spread lack of the ability to weigh the pros and cons of policy in order to arrive at a rational decision based on due consideration of legitimate data analysis. I guess we should've been concerned when today's young adults couldn't discern real from fake news sources. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK284782/ Makes me wonder how well equipped the next generation of underprivileged and minority children will be, among whom illiteracy will be a serious issue because they and their parents were never able to catch-up socially after being thrown to the wolves of self preservation and unchecked puritanical shaming. Sure a website like hacker news is well-moderated and I am appreciative, but it's a matter of scale. A for-profit corporation granted with the ability to control the political narrative of an entire country is neither, "moderated content", nor, "news". If time has anything to tell it works fine, until the narrative is wrong.

The most interesting thing about this comment is that this is precisely how things have been for a very very long time.

If you would like to know "what could go wrong" you need simply take a look and see what is going wrong now.

Yeah, I think the "what could go wrong" line was more hyperbolic than anything else. It's been happening for a long time now.

A private company stopping people spewing misinformation to huge numbers of people using their private platform isn't "censorship".

The problem with "some people only use facebook for news and so this means they are effectively censored" is "some people only use facebook for news". Fix that, don't try to force services to broadcast obvious harmful nonsense to people.

The idea of truly unfiltered free speech on a global scale is impossible, because you have to be heard and we can't let everyone broadcast to everyone: there is too much noise. Free speech does not—and has never meant—the right to every platform.

> A private company stopping people spewing misinformation to huge numbers of people using their private platform isn't "censorship".

How does this relate to Twitter blocking private messages between two people for including the NYP article?

> because you have to be heard and we can't let everyone broadcast to everyone: there is too much noise.

How does this relate to Twitter blocking people from seeing an NYP article shared by people they explicitly chose to follow?

I can answer this one -

1) Old school free speech advocate, changed positions since

2) Had to figure this out practically, so not just theory crafting.

Context: Part of a mod team for a forum, and we were torn between ideals of free speech and what was actually happening on the forum.

Important note, moderation may be the main service the internet/SM platforms sell - curation, removal of trolls, the cleaning and keeping viable an environment for exchange of ideas. Earlier ideas from 2000, web 2.0 etc assumed this would happen naturally. "The better ideas bubble to the top". The market place of ideas.

This metaphor doesn't work when someone is selling goods that destroy the market. If you have a vegetable market, and someone starts selling crack cocaine, then there really isn't something an egg plant vendor can do about getting people to buy the healthier vegetable/argument.

And thats what is happening. On our forum, people were introducing material that short circuits logic. Any long intelligent answer was displaced by an emotional outburst, or cat videos, or jokes, flame wars - on serious topics.

This makes the exchange of ideas moot, and replaces it with the exchange of emotions.

The market place of ideas does not work at the internet scale, even for web forums, unless someone is moderating.

---------------

Additional random thoughts:

First, things are much worse than you feel, because the act of speaking is almost entirely the act of being online. Censorship means you don't get to be heard (although you can speak), so it is, in internet terms, pretty serious.

1) This worked when the network didnt have centralized forces (as value collects in a network, activity increases, and the network will create some version of filters who become gatekeepers.)

You're not describing free speech, you're describing the challenges of moderation.

Thank you, I’m great full for the input. Yes. Moderation is needed for free speech to work. Without it, the effective exchange of ideas breaks down because the communication medium happily amplifies noise.

Viral and malformed ideas will beat facts every time. Counter speech fails.

Moderation is what FB/twitter are doing.

"Man Who Agrees With The Media, Universities, Corporations, And Hollywood Thinks He's Part Of The Resistance" - https://babylonbee.com/news/counter-cultural-rebel-believes-...

I was born in 89, I don't remember things being this way. It feels artificial and forced, like some foreign state is having their way with public influence in our country and by extension the world. Sickening. Free speech should be free, and I'm surprised people in the tech industry feel opposite.

I wonder, do they really feel this way? Or do they pretend, to go with the flow and not be labeled a racist?

Your 90ies must have been very different from mine. IRC operators, forum moderators and what not happily banned people back then. It’s not like you could even take your bullshit to your own channels or sub forums if it was bad enough, because you’d get network banned.

Things have changed though. In the 90ies you would have been laughed off the internet if you seriously suggested the earth was flat. Conspiracy theories back then weren’t making people shoot up pizza places or plan to kidnap governors. Today we’re seriously seeing diseases we defeated come back and kill thousands of people because of anti-vaccine Facebook groups.

So yeah, people around you have likely changed, because free speech doesn’t work when it has no consequences. And I’m not talking about putting people in prison, I’m talking about laughing them back to their caves so their infectious collective stupid doesn’t ruin democracy. If it’s not already too late.

I used to be right with you on that free speech hill, but like so many other people I just got sick of all the anti-vaxxers, Holocaust deniers and whatever scumbags who cause harm, abusing it. And it’s not like they don’t have freedom of speech just because they get banned from popular platforms. Just like the 90ies, they are free to set up their own.

We always used to disagree on topics, and argued passionately over these. But we (mostly) agreed on facts and what is true and what is not - and then argued conclusions or actions.

What is different these days is that we simply deny the facts, provide "alternate facts", or simply lie about facts. As a result we no longer agree on a basic basis of truth, truth has become a belief or a choice.

That is toxic, since it is used to simply avoid meaningful discussion. It is a fundamental change in how we conduct our discourse. And so new measures are needed.

Rather than censoring speech, I'd prefer fact checking, which may or may not amount to the same.

I was born in the late 70s and also was there and ready for the heady birth of the web—as a teen and then a college student, it was great. I subscribe to the free speech, anti-censorship ethos.

But this ain’t censorship; free speech is alive and well for anyone willing to find the right platform. This is a platform provider [belatedly] denying access to lies (they aren’t opinions) that have been weaponized to exploit those platforms’ recommendation algorithms for the liars’ own gain. It is more like how the internet started to develop defenses against spam in the late 90s, with spamsum, SpamAssassin, etc.

I am probably your same age and I have a totally different position. This does not mean I am wrong and you are right, it just only mean your opinion is just an individual take, not a generation voice.

Yes, there are many platforms, but what is happening now is the 90s equivalent to be banned from MSN messenger, MICQ, IRC and Usenet at the same time, sure you could go to an obscure geocities page to express yourself there but it is not the same. Thankfully that did not happen then.

In this specific case is not about lies, it is just unsavory emails and pics, highly unethical but not very different from what all the rags do all the time, it's very disingenous to think Twitter acted on good faith and not because it was politically convenient for its CEO. If the leaks would have been about Trump people would be crying bloody murder about the censorship.

Humans, humans never change.

2010s aside, in the context of this article and discussion, there has been no infringement on freedom of speech.

When you engage discourse within an institution, you are subject to an informal, sometimes formal social contract. If you entered a christian church in 1789 making certain statements, you would be removed (censored) from the church at the minimum. That still holds true today. Only today, this private institution is no small church with a handful of people, but billions. Still, under our current framework it is a private institution with a social contract that its users have agreed to, formally, or informally. There has been no violation of free speech because it is not a public institution. If you feel there's a moral violation, you can either choose not to participate as is your right, or you can petition, as is your right, to have the state get involved with how this private institution conducts itself.

The information in question was obtained very clearly illigally, where linking and consuming the source information is illigal. Twitter has a legal obligation to not allow people on their platform to use their service to do this.

Its not a black and white world. Its a shades-of-gray world. Hill to die on is a figure of speech. The problem is, some people have taken its metaphorical strength to very odd places: Pizzagate, is turning it into a hill to kill from.

I love free speech. I hate the outcome. I wanted a more literate connected world to empower truth, and did not realise the compelling power of falsity. It spreads faster.

We're in a power transition where the Left is now in control of major societal levers: Academia, Hollywood, sports entertainment, the mainstream news media, large government bureaucracies, and big tech.

Once the loudest champions of free speech because they were trying to break down the old power structures, the Left is now consolidating its power and sees no need to allow upstarts to criticize the new order.

To call this "the left" is ridiculous. What you're talking about is the "multicultural mainstream", the neoliberal center.

Essentially, it's the ideology of those major corporation that want to ban all sexist and racist discourse because this sort of thing makes it harder for teams of people scattered about the world to work together. It's an ideology that's still OK with tremendous wealth disparities but which want those disparities to not be reinforced chauvinistically.

My POV is from American politics where the left is in lockstep with the censorship going on at Google, Facebook, and Twitter. This very story is about how Joe Biden is being protected by those tech giants. Those tech giants also are the ones protecting leftist movements like Antifa and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Maybe there's a part of the left outside of the USA that still stands up for free speech? Not here in the USA. That game is over. Except for a few voices in the wilderness like Brett Weinstein and Sam Harris, the left is comprised of those whose interests and actions now align with the tech giants.

Is it ‘pro censorship’ or pro ‘companies should have the freedom to run their company the way they want’?

I don’t understand how the government enforces private companies to (re)publish content in a way that doesn’t infringe on the companies first amendment right.

You can (and I personally do!) say that Twitter should have the freedom to make censorious decisions while still encouraging them not to do it. It's like saying "everyone should eat healthy meals" - that doesn't mean the government should force them to!

So if someone takes the extra step and says they endorse Twitter's actions here, I think it's fair to call that pro censorship.

The question is: Does the news media (which includes Facebook, Twitter, and other social media) have a duty to objective reality? In the old days major news organizations had a public obligation to stick to the truth as much as possible. They had fact checkers, independent editorial boards, and other firewalls against false information.

Without such protections people end up believing convenient lies at a much greater rate, which is destructive to society. We've tried the big experiment with unfettered flow of information and it resulted in people being less informed and more radicalized. Clearly it doesn't work, at least not at scale.

The problem is this isn't a Freedom of Speech issue except from Twitter's point of view. They can delete whatever they like on their platform. People are free to leave the platform if they don't like that policy. Everyone gets what they want (as reasonably as possibly!) in the end.

people are strong believers that if they are in the side of "good" they can voice their opinions freely as long as they don't hurt "others opinions" note that this others opinions will change every day/months/political agenda make sense just like when Amy said "sexual preference" and the dictionary deemed it as offensive the day after. we are living in an idiocracy of the good equal to the one of the Z movie demolition man.

Also from the moment you not in this axis of the good anymore you'll be deemed nazi, fake news, banned by social media. it is crazy to see that all the newspaper took the russian collusion seriously at first (and even do it know while many investigations couldnt find it) but their first reaction to a biden article is to ban it.

We are living in a democracy of the good where the good is defined by a minority of overly violent only entitled personalities

Over simplified version: free speech advocates of the bygone era started hearing too much that they disagreed with.

The reality is that people were always saying what is being said today, but there were many more checks that reduced how far and how quickly the message would spread. You may have had right and left leaning media outlets, but they were typically closer to centrist views. This is more due to them having to maintain their reputation by checking facts than censorship, so the main thing that differed was their spin on a story. That pretty much left word of mouth and fringe publications. Fringe publications are just that, they had limited distribution. Word of mouth was pretty much restricted to social circles. Anything too far from reality (or people's perceptions) quickly died off.

Online business models changed that. Fringe publications are no longer fringe, at least not in the historic sense. Word of mouth is no longer word of mouth, since people have access to publishing platforms. Reputation is no longer a restraint, so fact checking is irrelevant. Rather than settling on more centrist views, we tend to focus upon the extremes. A lot of disagreeable stuff is being said at those extremes, which is why (I suspect) that a lot of the old-time free speech advocates have reevaluated their positions.

(And all of that is before considering how some people are actively manipulating what we are exposed to.)

People are purposely spreading misinformation on these platforms and dumb people are eating it up. It is causing an intelligence crisis in the country because anyone can register a $20 domain, throw a WordPress blog on it, post some fake partisan smut and have it go viral.

You have freedom of speech. You don't have freedom to build a cult out of gullible people. Back in the 1990s when we were kids the only people on the internet were people smart enough to be there. Misinformation didn't have the reach it does now because the surfing public was mostly techie people with above average intelligence.

The bar has been dropped and now everyone is on the internet. There's "proof" of every concept on the internet. And no central repository for truth that everyone trusts.

There's a difference between being pro-speech and being anti-weaponization-of-falsehoods.

And then there's the issue of Facebook spending billions of dollars on code and infrastructure. How would you like it if you developed a social network, discovered that terrorists were using it as part of their deception campaign, and then have the government FORCE you to participate in the terrorist plot that you, your shareholders, and your engineers don't agree with? How is that fair to Facebook, who invested their resources into developing the entire platform? Maybe before the GOP wants to use disinformation campaigns they should have thought about developing their own distribution network beforehand? I mean you can't seriously be mad at Facebook for being good at capitalism, can you?

Just wait until dang comes and censors you for inciting a flame war about free speech.

(Just kidding dang, please don’t ban me. I’m just salty about previous incidents.)

> I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies.

And with this specific case, I'm with you on your hill.

But more broadly we're usually not talking about the web from the late 90s. We're talking about a handful of modern social networks most of which use of anti-democratic dark patterns. And algorithms that are known to push a given percentage of users down a rabbithole, who can then be weaponized for who knows what purpose by who knows which nasty actors.

In essence, we're talking about factories which-- if there were a market for it-- could produce a version of the internet from the 90s with the slight difference that a sizable proportion of your 90s internet acquaintances happen to spout racist rhetoric and becoming walking, talking bioweapons this time around.

I know that's not the topic here. But that is a much bigger problem IMO and the answer of "more speech" is at most helplessly incomplete wrt it.

>But that is a much bigger problem IMO and the answer of "more speech" is at most helplessly incomplete wrt it.

Why? Why can't the leftists push people down rabbit holes and make them rabid communists? Serious question.

Two answers.

One utilitarian-- it's a smaller market.

E.g., there was story on the intercept sourcing leaked FBI documents that showed the FBI's awareness and concerns about white supremacist infiltration of local law enforcement[1]. This was to the point that the FBI was cautious about sharing access to its surveillance tools for fear that they could be used by some local LE to target and harass minorities. (Not sure if that's in the same article or a different Intercept article.)

Racist rabbitholes can draw on a pre-existing audience of racists, which make them more widespread and effective, and that attracts more ad dollars.

Two-- emphasis on "rabid." There are racist groups where the membership is people from various ethnic backgrounds spouting the stereotypical white-supremacist rhetoric. The draw is apparently aggression and violence.

If someone on the left wants to "counter" that, the video content is going to need to be equally irrational and aggressive to sufficiently capture the audience's attention. Again, you've got a smaller audience here. But the smaller audience you gain is going to be equally irrational to the far right group.

So you've got a system that optimizes for irrational, rabbit-hole ideologies (hell, it could be bigfoot or flat earth for all they care), that tends to filter out more reasoned, thoughtful content. Hell, I can't even listen to a movement of a Brahms symphony without commercials interrupting a section. Even television isn't that fucking allergic to reasoned reflection.

Talking about free speech inside such an unhealthy, anti-democratic system is about as coherent as adopting one of that system's rabid, rabbit-hole ideologies.

1: https://theintercept.com/2020/09/29/police-white-supremacist...

One of my best friends from high school (in the 90s), highly conservative back then, asked me two years back, about how he was rethinking "this whole free speech thing"

I've lived in 3 countries. I've visited over 15. I had problems with America's foreign war involvement, and the corruption that bled from the Bush years into the Obama years. But I still came back, because despite all our issues, the Freedom to Speak is the bedrock of America and it is the only thing that can truly fight the type of corruption we are seeing today. I wrote this a few weeks ago:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-amer...

A lot of us spent a fair bit of time on hardcore free speech platforms and "saw what that got us" with cesspools like the various internet chans. A society that doesn't police itself is anarchy, and that really isn't helpful for any civil discussion or learning. While there should be no rules in private between friends etc, public forums need restrictions in order to have some level of functionality without descending into flamewars.

The hill I'd really worry about with free speech is when punk hacker types turn on encryption, the current ultimate guard ensuring free speech.

Edit note: I'm not pro the twitter blocking of the article, especially not in DMs as some have noted is occurring. I'm just slightly disillusioned to unlimited speech on the internet superhighway thanks to trolls, flamebaiters, frauds, and more.

But were you ever a member of a forum that didn’t moderate? Even bbs’s had moderation (although slightly less necessary).

The internet I remember had “host your own website” type freedom, not “you can say whatever yo want anywhere you want” freedom. But then, people back then didn’t equate using some company’s platform with publishing. No, publishing meant setting up your own thing.

>But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

It turns out being able to lie at scale is a more credible and more immediate threat to society than nuanced restrictions on the flow of information.

If you play any Town of Salem style game, you know that being able to call out and dissuade low effort, poor quality information is a way to improve pro-social discourse. Are there issues with selecting what counts as anti social information? Yes. Which is why restrictions are typically exceedingly narrow.

However the ambit of what restrictions are justifiable runs along a spectrum; even amongst western democracies, there is a dramatic difference in what is acceptable and what is not. Germany, for instance, has exceedingly strong restrictions on pro-nazi speech. The US, by contrast, places a far higher immediate value on freedom of speech, to the point that it struck down campaign finance laws as being of lesser importance.

Times change and people are noticing that the result of the pendulum being so far swung in one direction on this issue has caused tremendously deleterious effects.

>> It turns out being able to lie at scale is a more credible and more immediate threat to society than nuanced restrictions on the flow of information.

This is so spot on.

It’s pretty easy to confuse principles for tactics and vice-versa

What internet were you a part of? We banned trolls, nazis, and conspiracy theorists all the time on early Internet forums and irc channels. It’s only in recent years that this behavior has been tolerated on large platforms. The fact is that newer platforms just serve to promote bad behavior rather than expose it.

putting on my asshole hat maybe it's because the internet in the 90s was mostly above average intelligence techies who statistically had a better chance of doing thorough research. But now everyone's on the internet and those same techies are trying to come up with ways to prevent false information disseminating among the uneducated or at minimum unwilling-to-do-research masses

I miss the old internet.

> I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s.

Web monopolies happened.

The more a platform has members (including HN) the harder it gets to have meaningful conversations.

Then come the rules.

You are still surrounded by people with the same ideologies, it's just harder to hear us because of the noise. The people who are pro-censorship and regulation have never been a friend to the internet or its philosophies.

I agree with this. One thing I’ve also come to realize is that a lot of people simply believe everything they read on the internet these days.

This is the Streisand effect in practice.

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

Here in Czechia we mostly concentrate on our outrageous Covid numbers of late, but this story about Twitter pulling down a NY Post article made it through into our local news.

If it stayed up, no one would have cared enough to write about it.

Exactly - blocking it just brought it to the front page.

You're assuming Twitter's intent is to bury the story. Their intent is to not be involved or liable.

But they are explicitly not liable, that's why their position makes no sense...in fact their curation/censorship for this news event could make them liable for -other- posts that are completely unrelated.

One of my takes is that Twitter leadership is completely incompetent. Facebook didn't censor the story completely, Twitter did. Twitter is arguably one of the most valuable (if not the most valuable) platforms for news in the entire world...yet they can barely make any money. This isn't the first time Twitter has massively botched something so simple. It really comes down to a detached CEO, and incompetent leadership.

They may not be legally liable but they are desperately trying to avoid alienating too many users by being party to questionable actions.

A client of mine recently asked to divest from Cloudflare because they have the Proud Boys as a customer. As much as Cloudflare has no legal obligation to police the content they host, customers can vote with their feet.

They alienated a solid 40-50% of their entire user base (within the US) because of their decision. I doubt Cloudflare would miss an investor given their current equity status.

Big citation needed on that. I highly doubt twitter's user base is 40% Republican-trump supporters. Only 20% of their use base in is in the US. And Republicans need to remember that because of the electoral college their electoral wins do not mean there is a silent majority of supporters out there.

I clearly meant within the United States, and even with popular vote the country is fairly 50/50, 40/60 at worst.

If I recall correctly, the last time Republicans won the popular vote was 2004. Last time before that was 1988. The Republican party is massively over-represented in American politics at nearly every level and has been for decades.

Not sure that has anything to do with what I said "a solid 40-50%" being Conservative/Republican leaning. Obama didn't even get close to 55% in his best year. I wouldn't call a ~.5-2% difference "massive" (especially when most Americans don't identify with either party) but anyhow your opinion of the electoral college and the Senate is completely off topic and not even related to what I just said.

This is a bit misleading since Republicans focus on winning the electoral college. If republicans needed to win the popular vote they would campaign harder in high population urban centers and the popular vote counts would be much closer.

50/50 of a voter turnout around 50%. If half the country doesn't bother voting I doubt this is alienating them.

While I do agree that a citation would be useful, just because this decision alienates people doesn't make the alienated group just Republican-Trump supporters or even just Republicans. As it is more a freedom of spreading information issue.

(I don't care what Biden's son does in his free time and it doesn't affect my opinion of Biden much at all).

>yet they can barely make any money

That's true of most of the other "valuable" news platforms too. Probably because people want entertainment not news ;)

A large part of the news/money problem is the practical, space-and-time-saving desire to reduce an almost hopelessly complex, point-in-time decision to a single, overarching, global statement, such as "It really comes down to a detached CEO, and incompetent leadership." And when you boil this desire down to Twitter's level of brevity, it gets completely untenable.

Someone else in this thread argues that Twitter may be the most-important news service going now, and I agree. The fact that the platform itself is specifically engineered to be so antithetical to honest fact and debate really demonstrates our societal values about money versus truth or social cohesion.

“The mission we serve as Twitter, Inc. is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve – and do not detract from – a free and global conversation.”

Not really. I think most people take a glance "Biden, Hunter, Burisma" and tune out -- they decided long ago what they think of the matter.

The only news here is Twitter/FB's policies -- which is what people are actually discussing.

So, respectfully, I don't think this is the Streisand effect at all in this case.

Well, I think you underestimate the gravity of this. A thoroughly corrupt money laundering Biden family machine (which also involves children of other previously high profile politicians) -- may become the presidential family of US.

And the social networks in the country, have chosen to do what they have always done with anti-left news -- they censored them.

My view, make the execs accountable now.

They have to be ones explaining why they apply one set of rules to one side of political opinion, and then another set of rules to the other side. [2]

If they are biased, than they are not a neutral platform.

A person who establishes a Charity non-profit, to hide taxes, launder money -- will be held accountable in a just system.

So should be Twitter, Facebook, and others for hiding behind 'neutral platform and section 230'.

Bring them to justice is the only solution. And do it now, before they buy/lobby their way out...

[1] See my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797602

[2] https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/if-unreliable-is-the-issue-why...

I don't see how it is big news that both sides of American politics are profoundly corrupt. If I were American (thankfully I am not) I would be thinking about the upcoming election as a choice between a corrupt arsehole whose rhetoric does not move your country towards a race war, or a corrupt arsehole whose rhetoric does move your country towards a race war.

Which is which ?

Are you basing those positions on an article by a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch that was released 3 weeks before an election?

I don’t see how the information revealed by these hackers backs up any of the accusations you just made. This whole thing (along with your reaction to it) reminds me of 2016’s “but her emails!”

i remember during the BLM Riots, we had stories going around that jacob blake was just "breaking up a fight" between two women. when it turns out he had just finished robbing someone he'd previously sexually assaulted with her kids in the house. and twitter let it trend

i remember they had a video of gunshot sounds trending with a description saying that an innocent 16 year old girl was shot by police when in reality it was an armed 30 year old man who had just killed someone else.

i think its finally time to #deleteTwitter

You might as well delete most liberal media as well since anytime they mention a crime being committed and they omit the race of the perp you can assume they aren’t white. If they are white they will shout it from the rooftops.

I watched Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and I’d assume that for some reason these journalists thought that they can fix racism just not mentioning the race of the perpetrators.

I haven’t seen what you’ve seen, so I’m not going to deny your experience/impression, but my opinion is that the only case where the races of those involved in a crime matter are when the crime is racially motivated. And that’s the standard I’ve seen major media adhere to, but obviously there’s grey areas. If you want every crime tallied up against the race of the perpetrator, I’ve got bad news for you; that’s what the kids are talking about when they take to the streets against good ol’ racism, my friend.

Well I am not going to deny your experience/impression, but my opinion is that news is valuable to the degree it has actionable information that is accurate.

e.g. Knowing which areas are more likely to be dangerous means I can avoid those areas. If an area is regularly the site of dangerous altercations, I know to be more careful around it. But if the news white-washes that actual factual information it becomes much less useful as actual actionable information.

What a wonderful racist analogy. Know the color of people is like knowing which areas are dangerous.

That's for explaining.

Pretending the problem doesn’t exist isn’t solving the problem.

Maybe fixing the crime and poverty is more important than calling it racist.

> There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps... then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved ~ Jesse Jackson

Maybe the crime and poverty are direct results of centuries of racist oppressions. Slavery, segregation, denial of voting rights, economic opportunities... and maybe, the solution to racism isn’t more racism? How do you think we got here? And how do you propose we address the issues? You yell “look at the crime” and smugly pretend that the other side is blind to it; well, what’s your solution?

> and maybe, the solution to racism isn’t more racism?

So we are agreed that affirmative action should go.

If your conscience hasn’t been forcing you to face the fact that you thought “my kids can’t go to yale, and I blame minorities” was a badge of victimhood you can hold up against slavery and segregation... fellow human, you’ve got some reckoning to do. But it proves my point that you either have no solution to contribute, or you yourself know that your solution is wrong and are afraid to say it out loud. When I find myself in that fork, I take it as a signal that I should question my assumptions and values, before getting in the way of those who’ve come out with and committed to theirs.

I didn’t realise we were here to discuss a solution (universal basic income). I am here to point out institutional racism and leftist hypocrisy.

It's a web site so you can't delete it ;)

Wipe it, like with a cloth?

> BLM Riots

This is a harmful characterization of an important movement. No protests on that scale are going to go without a hitch. That shouldn't minimize their importance.

> Researchers at the US Crisis Monitor analyzed over 10,600 nationwide protests between May 24 (the day before George Floyd was killed by police) and Aug. 22, and found that nearly 95 percent were peaceful [1]

Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back children while his children watched. He was unarmed. Even if the alleged sexual assault charges are found to be true, this is not how justice should be carried out.

Also. He is charged with sexual assault and trespassing. I can't find any source that he's been charged with robbery. These are serious charges. But it should be up to the courts to determine his guilt. Not the police or the court of public opinion.

1. https://mashable.com/article/black-lives-matter-protests-pea...

>He was unarmed

He was armed, and he admitted to it, and it is documented in the DOJ statement.

Please don't speak facts.

Can someone actually point to those "facts" y'all claim to have? Because I'm the only one actually citing sources right now.

Google search "blake knife screenshot"

Can you provide a source for this? The best I can find is that he had a knife on the floor of the truck. But was otherwise unarmed. This is consistent across all the main sources I've checked.

1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/28/fac... 2. https://en.as.com/en/2020/08/25/latest_news/1598382234_23093... 3. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2020/08/26/jacob-b...

https://www.doj.state.wi.us/news-releases/update-kenosha-off...

5th paragraph

>Mr. Blake admitted that he had a knife in his possession.

From the USA Today article in regards to the paragraph:

> The DOJ has not clarified whether the knife was on the floorboard throughout the confrontation, or if Blake may have held it at some point. Spokeswoman Gillian Drummond declined to answer that question when asked by USA TODAY on Aug. 27.

We can discuss what kind of armed he was, but the fact that he was armed is not controversial, and that it the one and only point I am making.

I'm also making it in good faith, because it's entirely possible that all of the bad reporting on it would lead someone to believe that he was unarmed. That's the only reason for any of these replies.

That’s just it. I don’t think it can be stated that he was armed at this point. We know a knife was in the car. That’s about it.

Personally, I wouldn’t consider him to be armed unless he was actively brandishing it. Which the USA Today article says he was not.

Regardless. They shot a man in the back seven times while his children watched. The standard for that kind of force should be much, much higher than “he may or may not have had a knife in his possession”.

He was armed. That is not in dispute. See [here](https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/kenosha-police-union-gives-its-...). You could also see the knife in his hands in the video and hear the officers tell him to drop the knife.

The fact that you thought otherwise illustrates the problem precisely. Social and traditional media companies had no issue allowing this misconception to spread unfettered because aligned with their political beliefs.

so >500 riots then?

No.

> When destructive protests by demonstrators did take place, the "victims" were often statues of slave owners, Confederate leaders, and colonial figures.

I agree. We have no reason to give our data and power of speech to these shit companies. We need a decentralized authority in charge of social networks. Nothing these companies provide is of any substantial value that cannot be open sourced and decentralized.

How do you go about decentralizing it? I'm fairly new to the industry and have career aspirations in this direction, so please fix what I'm missing:

1. Build out a good FOSS alternative.

2. Market the snot out of it until the unteched masses use it.

3. ??? open a foundation with that niche's leaders, or something?

4. FOSS is the new normal for that niche.

(edited for line breaks)

my question is how we decentralize it without allowing child exploitation etc. it seems like you need moderation at some level but the second you add it, they have the leeway to abuse that authority for political reasons

That question could be rephrased as "how much entropy should a system have?"

Specifically, I refer to "chaos/evil" as a type of entropy. It's a perversion of virtue. We live in a world system that always seems to have self-interest in there somewhere, but self-interest taken to extremes becomes evil.

So, "Freedom v2.2" is a system that allows for some entropy to motivate independent decisions that affect the public good (e.g., an entrepreneur), but are also punitive toward the public bad (e.g., child porn).

The real battle here that becomes political is the quantity and scope of controls. Generally, in the USA, the Republicans are presently leaning away from more controls and the Democrats toward it. The voter decides based on whether they think the system is self-correcting.

Or, to put another way, the entire essence of free information is either a self-correcting negative feedback loop (like the stock market) or a holy-crap-let's-stop-this-train-before-we-all-die positive feedback loop (like a horrifically dysfunctional family).

> However, it is highly unusual for an article published by one of the mainstream popular newspapers to be treated in this way.

That's a bit of a stretch. The NY Post is a tabloid [1]. Tabloids are technically newspapers, but they aim primarily to sensationalize [2].

Tabloids are nothing like the NY Times or Washington Post, which attempt to present objective, unbiased news. (Now you may argue that they fail at that -- but they do profess at least to aim for it, while tabloids don't even try in the first place.)

So seeing a tabloid article flagged doesn't seem all that different from a blog post being flagged. Seeing the NYT or WaPo flagged, on the other hand, would be highly unusual.

(I'm neither defending not criticizing FB/Twitter here, but just pointing out that the NY Post shouldn't be held up as even remotely a trustworthy source of reporting.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_journalism

I don't see how anything you said should contradict or even relate to the BBC statement you quoted--the statement seems perfectly fine, accurate, and objective.

Who decides if a newspaper is a newspaper or just a tabloid?

You mean a broadsheet vs a tabloid?

Some newspapers are in a broadsheet format, others in a tabloid format (and some, in other less common formats).

The tabloid format is often used to shock.

Is any of this in dispute?

I don't think anyone's debating your claim. It's a fascinating point of view, and reflects closely to the conveyed image of the matter.

What people are disputing, though, is more closely tied to the story. Right now, many people see NYT and WaPo as NYPost-likes regarding their journalistic rigor.

If it feels like Windows and runs like Windows, but has a different-ish UI, people will treat it like it's Windows-esque even if it's Linux.

Sure - and that's a totally reasonable view. One that I share in large part, in fact.

But there's a reason that publications adopt the tabloid UI, and it's almost always to do shocking, sensationalist journalism. It's a UI that is suited for that format.

Additionally, many other publications do shoddy journalism in different ways, with different formats, and different UIs.

Interesting point of view. So as long as a paper is "non-tabloid" it should be more trusted. A Chinese or Russian state owned non-tabloid is then more trustworthy than NYP? Propaganda is everywhere and the definition of what and when something is sensationalist is fuzzy.

What is the point of your comment? The author is stating that the mainstream view has been that tabloid papers sensationalise while broadsheets profess to not doing so. This is not their opinion, it is context for their argument that blocking a link to a tabloid would not be unusual for twitter considering the other links they have blocked in the past.

It reeks of being fabricated too. Who uses v.pozharskyi.ukraine at gmail when vadym.pozharskyi at gmail is unused? Is there a cultural thing where avoiding the first name in an email address would be normal? I grabbed the latter about an hour ago.

I think it's sketchy to have `ukraine` in the email address given the effort to push the "ukraine scandal" as a thing.

https://pastebin.com/yF7ZvS3m

Google isn't exactly known for their privacy. Why would he not have used his Burisma email account?

If the paper is well-known for being a tabloid, they would just yawn and feel no need to block it.

And if the email is a fake one, it isnt personal information.

So why did they block it?

>Tabloids are nothing like the NY Times or Washington Post, which attempt to present objective, unbiased news. (Now you may argue that they fail at that -- but they do profess at least to aim for it, while tabloids don't even try in the first place.)

Both of them are explicit about their support of Biden.

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

>> Tabloids are nothing like the NY Times or Washington Post, which attempt to present objective, unbiased news. (Now you may argue that they fail at that -- but they do profess at least to aim for it, while tabloids don't even try in the first place.)

> Both of them are explicit about their support of Biden.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_media_endorsements_in_the...

This doesn't really contradict crazygringo's statement.

I just don’t get it, what is Twitter so afraid of? It’s already a cesspool of flame wars and misinformation, I’m growing deeply concerned about their need to interject themselves into news stories like this.

The other side is people get mad at them for allowing legitimately fake news to propagate.

I wonder if FB and Twitter are in contact with some of the national intelligence agencies. US intelligence officials talking to NYT suggest that this "leak" is a forgery by the GRU.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

So, you're listening to the people to said Iraq had WMDs?

I don't take anything the three letter agencies say at face value. But if I were Twitter leadership and legal and I got a call from the CIA or NSC saying my platform is being used right now for a massive GRU disinformation campaign, I would panic and attempt to shut it down.

No, the Republicans have definitely lost credibility. I think it’s a safe prior that anything a Republican says about weird convoluted plots this close to an election should be discounted.

Why would a well thought out plot be more credible? Is it inconceivable that a crack addict forgets his laptop at a repair store and that the staff recognize him?

If I made up stories they would be mundane and logical to not make people regard it as improbable.

You're saying that the more outlandish a story is the less likely it is made up, because anyone making up a story would just make it boring so as to be believable. Have you never talked to someone who was making up a story?

One example of an outlandish information story is how the passport(s) of 911 hijackers was found on the ground in NY. I mean you can't make this stuff up.

It should mostly be the information on the HD that indicates the validity, not the fantastic way it was recovered.

This is incorrect. The 3 letter agencies refused to say this, which is why Paul Wolfowitz had to create the Office of Special Plans inside the Pentagon so that there was an intelligence agency that produced the sort of analysis results that the White House wanted.

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

No, the CIA said there was

> High Confidence:

> • Iraq is continuing and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.

https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-full-version-of-th...

Then what’s preventing them from stating this?

The agencies have vast powers over tech companies, and tech companies do not want to cross them. Tech companies are also regularly legally barred from disclosing the mere existence of national security investigations.

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

A big tech company openly saying "the CIA just called me up and told me to do something" would be suicide.

I don't see that claim anywhere in the article you linked.

> The Times reported last January that Burisma had been hacked by the same Russian GRU unit that was one of two groups that hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Last month, United States intelligence analysts contacted several people with knowledge of the Burisma hack for further information after they had picked up chatter that stolen Burisma emails would be leaked in the form of an “October surprise.”

> Among their chief concerns, according to people familiar with the discussions, was that the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt Mr. Biden’s candidacy — as Russian hackers did when they dumped real emails alongside forgeries ahead of the 2017 French elections — a slight twist on Russia’s 2016 playbook when they siphoned leaked D.N.C. emails through fake personas on Twitter and WikiLeaks.

Right, but this leak didn't come from Burisma.

Now, it could still be a GRU operation, but it's not what the article was talking about.

The article says that US intelligence believes that the GRU was planning on releasing something relating to Burisma and Hunter Biden. Something relating to Burisma and Hunter Biden with very sketchy provenance was just released by someone with known affiliations to people working for GRU. The inference is that this is the disinformation campaign that US intelligence agencies have been worried about.

OK, "forged materials" was in ciarannolan's quote. So, if this is forged, that would still fit. I stand corrected.

This is a fair concern, and it is a tricky issue because if true Twitter might not be able to disclose this fact.

But if it were true, wouldn't Joe Biden have come out already and said "These emails are fake and I never met with that person"? Instead, all we get is the campaign saying that those meetings do not appear on his calendar.

It might be the same problem. Candidates get national security briefings so they might have been advised not to deny it.

I could imagine national security reasons for not saying specifically where one believes the laptop to have come from, but why would the campaign be prevented from simply saying that the emails are fake and that the meeting definitively did not happen?

Well, hypothetically, it could be that the CIA or NSA was spreading misinformation, then tracking its spread, to detect where leaks/spies were. That seems highly unlikely in this case.

Saying the emails are fake would be a direct acknowledgment of the incident that the agency is trying to investigate. This is similar to the “Glomar Response”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_response.

Could be a mix of real and fake emails, or real but slightly altered. They could not have any copies of the originals so they can't say which are real or not.

Plus oh my god if we go into 'but his emails!' and Trump is elected again I will leave this country. Keep 'hacked' 'email' ten thousand miles away from Biden campaign's mouth

Biden was the Vice President; what if he did meet this person in passing and the GRU has a photo of the brief head to head encounter, or there is a doctored photo ready for him to deny a meeting.

“Intelligence officials” means “unreliable politically motivated federal apparatchik”, or at absolute best it means “limited hangout”.

This must be it. Facebook has been hand wringing about censorship for the past few years and all of a sudden, Facebook and Twitter immediately act in lockstep? It might explain why the Biden campaign can’t deny it as well.

they’re scared of hack journalists blaming them if a republican ever wins again. like 2016

I don't understand why this is so controversial. You cannot reveal personal details of someone on Twitter (email, phone number etc.) The article contained unreacted personal info so should be blocked. You also cannot link directly to hacked/obtained without consent material on twitter. The article contained screenshot of the material so should be blocked. You CAN link to material that discusses hacked/obtained without consent material on Twitter as long as it does not contain the material. eg. Trump Tax Return story by NYT.

The Biden campaign have hired a Twitter exec and a Facebook exec recently. There’s a reason for this. This gives the Biden campaign access to people inside those companies.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We've been watching this happen for a few years now, and some of us are actively paving the road.

Recently I've seen people invoking the term "slippery slope fallacy" to describe this phenomenon.

It's really frustrating to see this. I think there was some stupid "list of fallacies" infographic popular on Reddit a few months back that spawned this notion that there's no such thing as a "slippery slope" and calling anything a "slippery slope" means you're wrong and your argument can be tossed out.

But... that's exactly how rights are eroded. It is, in the purest sense, a slippery slope of gradual change.

I'm not sure how I feel about this specific instance (the Twitter/Biden thing) but I think the "slippery slope fallacy" fallacy is relevant here.

It is stupid especially considering that the people who are for this sort of censorship (or moderation, if you will) usually also agree with the notion that we are heading towards fascism. Which one is it then? Is it possible to take on step forward and stay put, or does every step forward indicate more steps in the future?

You can't have it both ways, it's either a fallacy or not. History tells us that it is not a fallacy, and that we should use all the warning signs we can find before it's too late to go back.

Indeed, when done on purpose, it has another name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing

"slippery slope" is not a fallacy. It happens all the time. It happened with privacy. Do you not remember when a printer driver phoning home with usage stats was a national news story? Now you are a a bad company if you don't do this.

The "unchecked misinformation" alternative hasn't really been working out so well either, for what it's worth.

I don't think it's working nearly as badly as you think.

If only the dead in the US could talk.

President Trump. I think it's gone pretty fucking badly.

Hits and misses. It worked great for Galileo.

Could you clarify what you mean by "it worked great" here?

I would assume he was referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair, where the "unchecked misinformation" was heliocentrism.

I'm pro-management of information on platforms but anti-this sort of management for these purposes.

Public health misinformation, sure. News articles? Hm.

I think it is stupid to not vote for Biden over something like this. But, I also don't think the articles I've seen "debunking" the NYPost article have been very compelling.

whimsicalism says >"I think it is stupid to not vote for Biden over something like this. "<

IMO Biden's likely to pass away before he's elected and so I think it foolish to vote for him. He looks like a dead man walking - a paper cutout that Democrats move from one empty rally to another.

BTW who becomes the Democratic party nominee should Biden

a) die or fall very seriously ill before the election?

b) die on the eve of the election (i.e., halfway through the voting, when some votes have already been cast for the deceased)?

c) die after the election but before he's sworn in as President?

I see Biden's health as extremely precarious.

It's not good intentions. The tech giants are attempting to throw an election and they don't care who knows at this point. For the 2012 election Facebook execs bragged about illegally assisting the Obama campaign by giving them practically the entire FB social graph, for free. That violates federal campaign finance laws. Nothing was done about it and you'll never get anyone on HN to go near talking about that fraud, which was entirely out in the open.

The media ran every possible baseless story they could about Trump the past four years, often with zero supporting evidence to the story in question. Every time they turned out to be fake stories, the media conveniently ignored it, refused to run retractions and moved on to the next fraudulent story. Twitter allowed max distribution in every single instance. Now a story blows up about Biden, and they go in to hyper overdrive to stop it, colluding with Facebook. You've got people inside of these companies directly working for the DNC and using company resources to violate federal campaign finance laws.

There is a growing list of people in big tech that need to go to prison for election interference.

How is it you're able to see this collusion with only one side, and not the other? I'm genuinely curious.

If there were illegalities, you would think the Trump justice department would have gone after them. Do you have theories as to why that didn’t happen?

It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to pretend that one side of the political spectrum is being oppressed even as they control 2/3 branches of government.

Obviously you've never worked in a bureaucracy.

You gonna cite some of these outlandish claims? Particularly interested in:

> The media ran every possible baseless story they could about Trump the past four years, often with zero supporting evidence to the story in question. Every time they turned out to be fake stories, the media conveniently ignored it, refused to run retractions and moved on to the next fraudulent story.

>You've got people inside of these companies directly working for the DNC and using company resources to violate federal campaign finance laws.

I mean the first one is well established fact. No one could argue in good faith that the quality of report first, fact check later stories on Trump is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. But it’s all just flame-bait I guess.

As for the second point, the people making these decisions at Facebook and Twitter factually did or do currently work for the DNC; for the DNC, on the Biden transition team, or worked for Harris.

Here you go. [1]

[1] https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-w...

> Facebook execs bragged about illegally assisting the campaign

I'm sure Chinese tech companies would brag about illegally assisting the CPC. And be happy to have the chance to do so.

BigTech is preparing us for a Chinese-styled political system. They've decided it's inevitable and "if you can't beat 'em, be the first to join 'em".

This has nothing to do with liberal vs conservative. There will be one party left standing and right now it looks like it will be the blue one not the red one, that's all it is.

It cuts both ways, though.

The road to hell (totally censored internet) is paved with good intentions (trying to clamp down on misinformation). But the road to hell (a society full of dangerously misinformed citizens) is also paved with good intentions (trying to keep the internet free of censorship).

I guess my point is that none of this is actually easy to navigate. Anyone saying "censor the story, it's no big deal" is missing the bigger picture. But IMO, so is anyone saying "disinformation is not a problem, it shouldn't be tackled".

All roads lead to hell?

The road to hell is littered with "free ice cream this way =>" signs.

Oh noes, my beloved hacker news has sunk down into the political morass.

I think the bigger picture, and meta topic here is that private companies have become the arbiters of what is and what is not appropriate social discourse.

We as a society have chosen to let the Marks and Jacks of the world decide what is appropriate to publish.

I think the bigger part of the problem is that while we sit and argue about whether the policy was fair or not or was biased or not, we are not asking the question of are the right people setting those policies?

Should private companies with no accountability to the public they serve/sell to the highest bidder, be the ones to decide what constitutes valid social discourse?

We all thought social media was a good idea, when we were young up and coming geeks. We thought it would be a force for good and allow people to connect and talk.

What we as geeks actually invented were a bunch of brain washing machines that profit by selling the minds of their "users".

I have an opinion about whether or not there was bias, but I don't think it's as important as the bigger question this story brings up.

We now, in this thread are fighting about how the brain washing machines are being used, instead of the IMHO, the more important topic of, how can we turn off the brain washing machines and put the genie back in the bottle?

This is a rare case where the political class actually has a better grasp of the root cause of a social problem, and is further along in solving it, than the people at large.

In the past year, we've seen both sides of the aisle clamoring to repeal CDA 230, while the public is split between either not caring or recoiling in horror at the thought.

I don't believe for a second that the repeal of the CDA is really on the table in Washington. If they wanted to do it, they would have done it. But that would nuke Google, Facebook, and Twitter, all at once. (I personally don't think that would be all that bad for the internet or society in general, but I digress.) But they (meaning the swamp creatures, Trump included) realize now how much power they hold over Big Tech via this law, and how much influence they can exert over the world with this power. And they realize how bad it would be for the US stock market (which all of Washington worships as their god) if the tech giants failed all at once.

I believe Techlash will either kill these companies or transform them, and I think that much is inevitable. That is why Zuckerberg straight up asked for regulation. He wants the government to save his company. We will probably see a series of regulations that places these giants under the control of Washington. Maybe it's time to put forward some kind of tech Bill of Rights now to limit what the government can do with our data beyond what's already prohibited in the actual Bill of Rights. Things like "No about queries." "No recording conversations in the home." etc.

European here, but I can definitively see how someone would come to that conclusion.

Both platforms bans anyone mentioning the supposed "whistleblower" (whom actually only had newspaper articles as 'evidence'), bans anyone mentioning Bidens kid, bans anyone mentioning the death of Clintons ex-staffers, Wikileaks content related to Dems is blacklisted, and they remove videos of Bidens gaffes for being "manipulative" when it's just clips from livestreams.

While no action is taken if you post conspiracies about Reps, fabricated videos of Trump (for humour or propaganda), discredited 'leaks' such as the infamous dossier, that ICE is running concentration-camps and engaging in genocide, or pictures of you vandalising Trump-supporters property.

EDIT: Even on HN, a site that usually is for free speech and discussing alternative theories, the posts about bias in tech are near instantly flagged and users praising media companies for removing "bad information" while people not following political narratives get downvoted; seems to indicate larger issues.

A few things I realized in the past few years:

1. Elite class does exist in the society, and they exert tight control on the flow of information in traditional media, e.g. TV, newspapaer etc. Their control is loosened in the Internet age initially, which led to the rise of Trump. Trying to correct this, a narrative of blaming "fake news" was used to pressure leading companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to toe the elite line.

2. Censorship of "effective" speech, which is speech that can reach vast audience, always exists in any society. Just think back about the "mask is useless" than "everyone should wear mask" media campaigns in the in the past few months, on traditional media. Internet weakened the traditional guardians of "effective" speech. With the multiple challenges faced by the elites today, e.g. COVID, class and racial conflicts, disruption to internal orders, the elites are trying harder to take control of important nodes of Internet, so they can build consensus and move the society to a direction they desire.

> which led to the rise of Trump

Trump is just a middle finger to the Democrats woke policies coming from social science university labs and generally more artistic people, which indeed tends to be over representated in the entertainment industry.

>Both platforms bans anyone mentioning the supposed "whistleblower" (whom actually only had newspaper articles as 'evidence'), bans anyone mentioning Bidens kid, bans anyone mentioning the death of Clintons ex-staffers, Wikileaks content related to Dems is blacklisted, and they remove videos of Bidens gaffes for being "manipulative" when it's just clips from livestreams.

This is just plainly false. I've seen much of that discussed on both platforms.

You're just making stuff up to support a narrative.

> Even on HN, a site that usually is for free speech and discussing alternative theories,

Big Tech employees are the largely the same demographic as HN readers, which are a large proportion of would-be white knights, most making $150k or above, thinking they're gonna save the world from itself "because they know better".

so many stories about trump are later proven to be fake or unsubstantiated such as the russian bounties, that he owes money to russia, the steele dossier etc... and his tax returns were also stolen or hacked

yet ofc they aren’t censored

I hate trump and can't wait for him to disappear but I can still admit that he was unfairly smeared and severely attacked by the media. It just backfires and leads to people not trusting both sides

ffggvv says >"so many stories about trump are later proven to be fake or unsubstantiated such as the russian bounties, that he owes money to russia, the steele dossier etc... and his tax returns were also stolen or hacked"<

By now you should understand the Democratic Party's news cycle:

a) Make up a message (something, anything bad) and present it to the press as a Presidential abomination,

b) Get Democratically-favored media to repeat/embellish the rumour,

c) Get Democratic - favoring prosecutors, government spokesmen, bureaucrats, college professors, or outside "experts" to repeat the rumor and to fabricate supporting "evidence",

d) Call for investigations in the House of representatives [which the Democrats currently control],

e) Ask representatives to go on record to news media concerning the fabricated messages,

f) Invoke every right under the sun in support of the false message: e.g., "free speech is being violated", "trial w/o jury", "conspiracy", etc.

g)When a new fabrication is concocted, drop the current claims or say they were a Russian or Republican conspiracy, and go to the new fabrication. Never follow-up or complete investigations into past false messages.

Rinse, repeat;

IOW lie, lie, lie and lie again.

Recently Democrats have added to this recipe the following:

Bring out the mob, shout and scream, burn down the police station!

Every Democrat, from the lowliest Antifa street slug to Nancy Pelosi follows the same formula. They're political thugs who give the Thuggees:

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

a bad name. Why? b/c their behavior will kill entire societies of people and their governments, not merely individuals as did the Thuggees.

Can you add some more steps to the flow chart? wondering how insane we can sound here.

I think I captured the essential steps of the process. Yes, parts of it (in particular, mob/group behavior) I would characterise as manifestations of insanity, but most of the steps are very rationally planned and executed. You could add Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" if you want more detail on the "how it is done" part:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals#The_Rules

Really interesting, thanks. I didn't realize my fellow democrats were using a formula - must have missed that brief from Soros.

So where are you finding out the truth about all this stuff? I'd love to have an unbiased news source to rely on.

You say in another post you're not American. What is your investment in the situation?

what?

Russian bounties and Trump's knowledge of it is fact, so is that Trump saying “I have never discussed it with him [putin]”

Maybe getting rid of professional journalism, and crowd sourcing the news via secret algorithms, isn't such a great idea after all...

We as consumers should be valuing real journalism and actually paying money for it. Otherwise this carries on going downhill. Journalism, at least some of it, should not be about clicks and sound bites.

The idea of free journalism sounds great until it's all ad driven and click bait-y. A digital news subscription cost less than $1 daily and it's still a challenge to convince people to commit to one. I'm glad some long form journalists are moving to substack.

I have subscribed to like seven newspapers this year and i have to say their use of technology is awful. They should get a revenue sharing system like ASCAP for music - I pay so much per year and then they distribute it amongst the sites I view. I only want to check Houston papers when they have flooding but I don’t want them to die out. I only want to read Wilmington paper when they get a hurricane or a spike in Covid cases in the nursing homes, but I can’t see paying $1000 per year for all of the places I click in on from time to time.

They don't want this. Most of today's journalists are activists and they want the widest audience possible, whether it pays handsomely or not.

having watched the media landscape over the past two decades, the market for real journalism is apparently small and shrinking. there's not enough such money available to support it at its desired size.

"real news" loses to social media because it can't compete on the novelty dopamine feedback loop (otherwise known as popularity): being the first to bring up new info or make a novel comment about it, getting a dopamine hit (esteem), then going back to the trough for more. old journalism is comparatively too slow and sparse at this.

so traditional news, seeing the writing on the wall, decided to join the fray instead of being crowded out. this won't change until good journalism can compete for (enough) attention without being subsumed by the social novelty feedback loop.

it's not so much about value or even actualizing journalists' activist stances (as others seem to be arguing), but the competitive dynamics of the market they're in.

We need to consider that some things are a public good that must be paid for as such, not as merely a commodity. Public broadcasting is the model that works best and achieves the correct balance between public good and market forces.It can be neither entirely one (state controlled media) nor the other (click bait drivel).

I tried paying money for it. I fought with one newspaper's website for an hour to figure out how to buy one year of access without recurring charges to my credit card. When I finally figured out that I needed to buy a gift subscription for myself it turns out their credit card form only has the next four years as expiration date options (my credit card expires six years from now).

The media isn't interested in financial support from their readership. Too many of us to deal with. They prefer a few powerful interests and a small number of big checks written.

The “professional journalists” aren’t that great either. The field has been overtaken by 20 year olds. Even Matt Yglesias, who has spent most of his career to the left of Democrats as a whole, has been grumbling on his podcast about journalists these days failing to respect the difference between journalism and advocacy. Matt Taibbi (who I don’t like as a person but who is at least a real journalist) has written an entire book about it: https://intpolicydigest.org/2020/02/19/review-matt-taibbi-s-...

The field being taken over by 20 year olds is a consequence of the field's revenue being eaten by tech. There's not enough money to make a decent living on now, so those filling the void will be more ideologically motivated.

Many journalists today come from wealthy families and have went to schools like Harvard and Princeton. They don’t need the shitty pay (although many are well paid) and are driven by the desire to be influential (i.e. power) more than any coherent ideology.

It's about hiring people that will blindly follow orders, hence young and impressionable 20 year olds. Same thing that's been happening in Silicon Valley for years now.

You can quite easily judge the quality of a workplace by how young the workforce is.

It is super weird to read a comment about the difference between advocates and journalists holding Matt Taibbi out as a "real journalist". Taibbi is the apotheosis of the journaladvocate you're talking about. He's also a lot of other things that you don't like about journalism; for instance, see his coverage of financial engineering topics during the "sucking blood funnel days" of the 2008 crisis, for some Crichton Amnesia Effect fodder.

As always I'll point out that the real controlling law for all this stuff --- the quality of journalism, the quality of advocacy, the quality of software engineering, law, medicine, whatever --- is Sturgeon's.

Completely disagree. You just don’t like like Taibbi because you wear your politics on your sleeve and you just don’t like some of the things he’s uncovered in recent years. He’s just part of the prior generation of journalists with the old goals and a great writer with a great sense of humor. The “blood funnel” line about Goldman Sachs was both creative and hilarious.

Sturgeon’s law (most stuff is crap) does little to shed light on the massive CHANGES to journalism in recent years. Of course 90%+ don’t even realized it like you.

I couldn't have made my point better than you just did.

This response shows the quality of your discourse: quickly declare victory and walk away. Would have been great to know even a single specific issue you have with Taibbi.

I'll just add that Rayiner's politics are extremely similar to mine (we identify with different parties but have an almost identical set of positions), so your "politics" rebuttal is not the persuasive mic drop you're hoping for.

I'm not debating Taibbi with you because we don't share premises, so there's no point. You can feel free to declare victory to those who share your own premises!

My mistake. I forgot it is pointless to engage with you. Have a great day.

That’s fair. I was going to add in a comment about how Taibbi presaged the phenomenon that he’s now complaining about but that seemed like an unnecessary dig.

The change in journalism is one of the most important developments in recent decades. While always a business the economic incentives have completely changed and thus the product has been reshaped to best profit from the new environment. Things like accuracy and objectivity are now counterproductive both increasing costs and losing revenue.

Taibbi’s book does a good job of explaining these changes but the situation is still evolving and the definitive analysis has yet to be written. Much like the news today the story has to be pieced together from multiple sources with varying biases including outright misinformation.

I’m starting to think that this is the actual “normal” information situation. It’s everyone’s responsibility to determine the truth for themselves by comparing multiple sources, getting primary information and thinking hard about what’s going on.

> The “professional journalists” aren’t that great either. The field has been overtaken by 20 year olds.

Is ageism really a valid critique on professional journalism?

Works for me. Ill allow it.

Another part of the problem of journalism/advocacy is cancel culture. Some people want to deny that it exists, or that it's problem, even if it does. But it's precisely the reason that you felt the need to virtue-signal that you didn't like Taibbi (whoever he/she is; I don't know). Everyone feels the need to "take sides" in whatever is being discussed. All of this tribalism is part and parcel to the problem you're decrying. It's the thing that's blurring the line. The twenty-somethings have been raised in this culture, and it is a normal function of society to them. Only people in middle age or better can readily remember what the world looked like before the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, and opened the gates for pure advocacy. We're all living in Rush Limbaugh's media world now, and Twitter just gives everyone a platform, and takes it to the extreme.

No one's saying why I'm being downvoted, but Antonio Garcia-Martinez is making similar arguments about the media being fractured at the middle-age bracket in his latest piece: https://pullrequest.substack.com/p/twilight-of-the-media-eli...

> Maybe getting rid of professional journalism

That is why we are in this mess. Social media was fun before "professional journalism" started getting involved.

Think about it. The toxicity on social media is entirely driven by the news media. The culture wars and everything from smollet to "culture of rape on campus". The news blames social media but it's actually the news traveling within social media that is the problem.

To add to this Trump's official campaign Twitter had it's account locked this morning and a video Trump uploaded was promptly deleted. This is new information from today. The thread yesterday was about the initial wave of censorship. I posted about the new actions this morning but it got flagged as a dupe of yesterday's discussion. It was not a duplicate, Twitter has taken new action and decided to go further this morning than they did yesterday.

Do you think its correct to delibrately spread a false story about Hunter Biden? Is this type removing false information censorship?

Is the story demonstrably false? I don't know if that is the case. It's certainly a smear story. In the past they've fact-checked Tweets from the President and his party but, I've not yet seen them straight up delete them and lock their accounts until now.

I mean knowing what we know about Rudy and his technology abilities, it's not that difficult for me to dismiss anything he or related cronies suggest out of hand.

I agree, Rudy Giuliani has spread quite a bit of disinfo over the past 4 years. The claim here that is supposedly supported by a receipt is that Hunter left the computer at a repair shop and never paid the bill. In adherence with the store contract they took ownership of the laptop after some time. When they looked at the hard drive they thought they saw illegal activity and turned it into the FBI after making a clone of the drives which is what Rudy claims he has.

If Rudy was not behind the last October surprise he was at least in the loop — he openly boasted about having advance knowledge of the Comey letter.

Yes. Yes it is.

This is blatant disinformation meant to destabilize the election and disenfranchise voters with blatant lies. This action is exactly the kind of thing everyone blamed social media for not taking last time and they're finally doing the right thing.

This is exactly what they tried to do in the 2016 election by getting Comey to announce a new investigation that, surprise, turned up absolutely nothing. There is no substance to these allegations. At all.

Before you get up in arms about a slippery slope about arbiters of truth keep in mind that these sources have burned any credibility they have. Their ideas do not have a right to a fair trail in the public discourse because they are all acting in bad faith.

Well Twitter just poured jet fuel on the fire now that they locked the account deleted the tweet and now it’s back on Twitter.

That’s the amazing thing. The NYPost article was making the rounds Wednesday night and it was mostly crickets.

Twitter bans any posts about it and now it’s taking off like a firestorm.

No, it’s not fake. You can’t provide proof that it’s fake. You’re going off a political agenda. There’s a picture of hunter smoking a crack pipe!

To preface my comment, I think using Hunter's drug problem for political gain is tasteless. Despite that I find it abhorrent that Twitter is not allowing users to post the photo instead it is instantly causing accounts to get locked. https://twitter.com/search?q=hunter%20locked%20pipe&src=type...

Wow! Bad news for Hunter’s election campaign!

Do people really fall asleep with crack pipes in their mouth?

I’ve done it before.

I believe it's a meth pipe actually

A core assertion in the article is demonstrably fake. Biden did not pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor that was investigating Burisma. It's something Trump has repeated countless times and something that's been proven false countless times, but the Post still stated it as fact in the article.

Besides, the burden of proof applies here. "You can't prove it's not fake" is not a sensible approach. The burden is on the accuser to prove that the story is true, and the Post story does not do that.

I don't know much about this situation but is Biden not describing exactly this situation here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jyT1rnW9fA

No.

No. Biden did push for a prosecutor to be fired, something that the administration and other governments agreed on (the prosecutor was corrupt). But the prosecutor was not investigating Burisma.

Well, he was definitely investigating Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky. The prosecutor's office seized several of his houses and other property in February 2016 [1]. Ten days later, Biden urged Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor. Another four days later, the prosecutor was asked to resign.

[1] https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/322395.html

People claim Biden didn’t pressure to fire the prosecutor (even Twitter lied about this yesterday).

When presented with the video of Biden admitting to it in his own words; he pressured to fire the prosecutor, but the prosecutor wasn’t investigating Burisma.

When shown that the prosecutor was actively investigating Burisma; well he pressured to get the prosecutor fired who was investigating Burisma, but it was in the national interest!

I’m not sure if there’s another round in the typical exchange. Best to just skip to the last phase to move the conversation forward.

> A core assertion in the article is demonstrably fake. Biden did not pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor that was investigating Burisma.

Biden did pressure Ukraine to fire that prosecutor, that's not in dispute, he's on video saying he did it. What is in dispute is whether he did it out of a corrupt motivation to benefit his son and the business he was working for. That's not asserted in the article. It merely lays out the timeline of events -- granted, in an order which is meant to point the reader in a given direction. They even include a section with the Biden campaign's take on the prosecutor's firing.

Your political agenda is quite clear.

Do you have actual proof that this article is "blatant disinformation meant to destabilize the election and disenfranchise voters with blatant lies"?

Because that implies something far worse than the censored article's accusations about Hunter Biden.

Is this really the first you are hearing about it? Intelligence agencies have been trying to tell people for multiple years now that russia is actively doing things like this.

I am talking specifically about the NY Post article that has been censored.

“Glow in the dark McCarthy CIA types said Russia was doing something bad one time, therefore every single piece of news that is politically inconvenient for me is Russian propaganda”

Actively doing what? Hacking U.S. officials and their contacts and releasing the information they obtain? You can argue that's dirty pool but I fail to see how it's "disinformation."

The meta-story about how Giuliani got the emails aside, what portion of the actual story (related to Hunter's dealings) do you consider disinformation?

What do you mean by disenfranchise, while we're at it? Even if we were to stipulate it's a lie, is it your position that to lie during campaign season is literally the same as taking away the right to vote?

So far, there doesn't seem to be much that hasn't already been confirmed. One new piece of information is the email that implies a Burisma exec. was at least introduced to Joe Biden. The Biden hasn't issued a categorical denail of this, only to say that such a meeting "wasn't scheduled."

What substantive allegation against Hunter Biden are you disputing, exactly?

It's not demonstrably proven, despite being easy to do so.

NY Post doxxed their own source when put under scrutiny, who went on to do an interview yesterday. What John Paul Mac Isaac is saying isn't adding up.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...

> It's not demonstrably proven, despite being easy to do so.

In that case, all articles that include "sources say" etc should be banned from Twitter, shouldn't they?

News orgs do that to protect the anonymity of sources.

In this case, NY Post threw their source to the wolves when they couldn't verify any of the information, so this story is not congruent with "sources say".

> Throughout the interview, Mac Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation that contacted him. At one point, Mac Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop. At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device’s existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for “help accessing his drive.”

He can’t get something as simple as who initiated contact over the device straight? If I was a small fish about to source a story of this size, I’d have every single detail rehearsed and committed to memory. This guy doesn’t come across as legit at all.

Is it possible to demonstrably prove false a made up falsehood?

What if I accuse someone of something, and then post that I accused them. The accusation maybe bogus but the post is technically not false.

That is the type of laundering language Twitter itself uses regularly in its 'Trending' tab editorializing: 'People angry at X', 'X accused', etc.

Pre-framing a topic is malpractice.

This is often the nature of stories in the public interest. No one ever proved a single portion of Christine DeBlasey Ford's accusations against Brett Kavanaugh but the fact that she was making the accusations were newsworthy enough.

In this case, the following are true: (1) Hunter Biden was a highly paid board member of Burisma while his father handled Ukraine policy for the U.S. (2) A computer repair store owner claims to have his data and to have given it to Rudy Giuliani (3) There was a Grand Jury summons to seize the computer as evidence in an unknown investigation.

This is far more than is usually needed to cover a story.

I think it was more about the fact that she was making credible accusations.

It seems that the Biden campaign isn't denying that the emails are authentic. That would be strong evidence that they are, assuming this hasn't changed in the last 24 hours: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1316461339842289664

For what it's worth, NY Post (sorry for the link) is reporting that the Biden campaign isn't denying most of their claims: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/notice-biden-campaign-not-deny....

To be clear, this is a separate question from how the emails were obtained. That story is beyond weird and surely bogus. To be fair, it also seems to me an indication that Biden is more honest than Trump. Trump would just say the emails were fake whether they were or not.

The absence of a denial does not at all constitute "strong evidence" of anything.

Of course you're right in a logical or philosophical sense, but in a political sense it certainly does. If the emails were fake, it would be politically insane not to say so. The Biden campaign can easily find this out from Hunter, so the fact that they haven't said it means either that (1) the emails are authentic (though they may still have been altered), or (2) something else is going on that we don't know about and is unusual.

or 3) they dont want to "promote" it by refuting it. Refuting it, also give prudence to it...

But they are refuting it, just more weakly. In any case, not to refute it would be gross political malpractice and I'm sure Biden has better advisors than that.

Why are you apologising for a link?

Some people expressed horror over previous NY Post links, and I didn't have a different one handy.

They haven't denied it yet because they have to ask his son, who is not involved with the campaign, what happened. They probably want to get all their facts straight before denying anything.

They would have done this immediately upon seeing the story; checking the veracity of a single highly significant fact which purports to originate from a known source doesn't take a week. Anything more than a half-day delay in responding is significant; they could have produced a repudiation video by now.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the story is true, just that the campaign has made a deliberate choice.

Not to mention that the source for the story gave a follow-up interview with several contradictory details[0]:

> He appeared not to have a grasp on the timeline of the laptop arriving at his shop and its disappearance from it.

He owns a computer repair shop and doesn't keep basic records of the devices he services? The moment he knew what he had, he didn't start taking any kind of notes?

How does he not remember who contacted who regarding the device? Also, how would the FBI know that he had to device to reach out to him first? This inconsistency is absolutely damning.

> Social media postings indicate that Mac Isaac is an avid Trump supporter and voted for him in the 2016 election.

> Mac Isaac refused to answer specific questions about whether he had been in contact with Rudy Giuliani before the laptop drop-off or at any other time before the Post article’s publication. Pressed on his relationship with Giuliani, he replied: “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.”

Seeming to realize he’d said too much, he added: “Ah, shit.”

So Rudy was your lifeguard? the reporters asked. “No comment,” he replied.

He wasn't comfortable admitting he had been in contact with Giuliani, even though it's pretty obvious at this point that he was? That doesn't sound like a citizen fulfilling their civic duty if he was in contact with a political operative.

This story absolutely stinks to high heaven.

0: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...

Actually sounds exactly like a regular person would sound in this situation, being interviewed by national media about a story that could be pivotal to the election.

Completely disagree. He fails to answer basic questions about why he chose to also communicate directly with a presidential advisor instead of just talking to the authorities, he changes his story throughout the interview, and he fails to confirm critically important details about the device, who gave it to him, and how it wound up in the hands of the authorities and a presidential campaign advisor.

Being nervous in an interview is one thing, trying and failing to wing it through basic questions is entirely different. His comment about the lifeboat particularly stood out to me because he very obviously didn't want to explicitly talk about Giuliani, but he was comfortable speaking in hyperbole about it. If you're so uncomfortable to answer a question, how would you then be comfortable enough to "say it" without saying it? If I was concerned that a question could threaten my safety or legal standing, I'd stay as far away from it as possible. This guy clearly wanted the reporters to know that he had been talking to Giuliani, and once that's out there, the context of the entire story changes.

If it's a legit scandal, there's no reason that a whistleblower should reach out to a political operative in addition to the authorities. The very fact that he did this says so much about his state of mind, that he was acting in support of a candidate.

Refusing to comment on something is also about ignoring things of no substance and not letting an opponent control the conversation. If you read "The Ass Is A Poor Receptacle For The Head: Why Democrats Suck At Communication, And How They Could Improve" by Barry Eisler, he actually talks about how traditionally Democrats fail heavily at this. They respond to every distraction their foes throw at them, no matter how nonsensical. This let's the people on the other side control where the conversation is.

Instead of responding, I would hope the Biden campaign talks about policy.

There seem to be a genre of books by Democratic party partisans which talk about how their main failure is that of communication. I personally doubt that either side really controls much; some narratives are just more convincing to certain groups than to others.

If I was Biden I wouldn't talk to any Murdoch owned property either.

Surely Biden's strategy is to wait it out and deny it if there appears to be no further evidence and the veracity of the existing evidence can be attacked, otherwise give a cover story. I don't think that's more honest than blustering a denial no matter what: it's just more calculating.

>It seems that the Biden campaign isn't denying that the emails are authentic.

Not denying something doesn't make true any more than not confirming something makes it false.

I neither confirm nor deny that I have a bank account at a large commercial bank. What does that tell you?

Nothing.

The story makes no sense and falls apart under even the most cursory inspection; most of the news is around how bogus the story is and social media's reaction to the bogus story.

Slinging unsubstantiated mud at your opponent is an old trick in politics and relies on the idea that you can make your opponent look bad just by having them address it at all.

The fact that Biden isn't addressing it is strong evidence that the story isn't getting the traction the hacks that put it out there wanted. It is not strong evidence of its truth.

From the article, I'm seeing this:

>"We have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place," it said.

>"Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as 'not legitimate' and political by a GOP colleague, have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official US policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing," said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr Biden.

>"Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath."

I'm not sure what there is to deny.

The Biden campaign has admitted that the meeting described in the NY Post article "might" have taken place even though it wasn't on the official schedules. This was the most newsworthy part of the article because Biden has been strenuously insisting throughout the impeachment and his presidential campaign that he never helped his son in his business dealings.

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1316521338295783424

Political communications like that must be parsed extremely precisely if you don't want to be tricked. The phrase "as alleged" is a huge loophole. The thread that the sibling comment linked to goes into this: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1316442180358213632

> It seems that the Biden campaign isn't denying that the emails are authentic. That would be strong evidence that they are

That's absolutely ridiculous logic.

Is it? This is a statement about realpolitik, not absolute moral values.

How is the story demonstrably false? We have yet to see any counter evidence.

Have you read the story about this laptop? While I agree it's not possible from here to prove it's false, it's borderline lunacy and is clearly a fraudulently created attempt to firebomb Biden's campaign at the last minute just like what worked with Hillary last time. The Republicans wouldn't care nearly as much about this story that the FBI itself dropped if they weren't so panicked about losing the election and reaching for yet another vote manipulation tactic.

The FBI has the hard drive and they have not denied any of the allegations. Biden’s lawyers haven’t denied the allegations. Biden’s campaign has not denied the authenticity of the emails.

Your argument is “I don’t believe it, so it must be false”

I think it's not correct. I also think it wasn't correct to deliberately spread a false story about President Trump disrespecting marines, but social media sites didn't take the same precautions with that story.

The story was independently verified by pretty much all media sources when followed up by their own journalists

Indeed. If the NYP allows other organizations to review and fact check the primary documents themselves, I'll start to think there's something to this. Otherwise, all I see is that known Trump associates provided info of unknown providence and accuracy to a former Fox News employee now working as a journalist at a Murdoch owned known unreliable news source.

That “independently verified” part was that they talked with the same source and were told the same thing.

I think the NY Post is probably getting played. But the media has gotten behind plenty of stories about Trump that turned out to be false: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/h.... This sloppiness is a general symptom of the need for media organizations to beat the Twitter cycle.

The question is whether this standard of reliability is one that they can actually apply evenly. This is a far higher standard that what was pitched. This content moderation was pitched as being limited to Russian bots and “vaccines cause cancer” and the like. Moderating articles from a publicly listed brick and mortar news organization, even if it’s a tabloid, based on the perceived credibility of the underlying facts, is a whole new level. It’s dramatically raising the bar. And maybe that’s where the bar should be, but I absolutely do not believe that Facebook and Twitter have the resources or integrity to apply that high standard fairly.

I think they have the resources but that the corporate model may prevent the resources from being properly distributed (eaten up by executives before getting where they are needed, for example, and who's to say the executives are operating in good faith...)

The posts should be allowed particularly if they're false. If people are allowed to say true things, then that's not particularly valuable information. However, the content's of someone's lies usually says more than the truth (which can often be obtained elsewhere).

Why should Twitter be forced to take actions based on your preferences? Make a distributed messaging/publication system and use your power to say what ever you like. Twitter has a lot of power and they are free to use it. The internet wasn’t designed with a winner take all philosophy and the technical infrastructure still supports end user as publisher model.

So they should be free to be regulated as a publisher despite claiming they are a platform

Are you saying publishers can’t arbitrarily decide what to publish or not? I think you will find that publishers have a lot more say so over their content than e.g. phone companies.

Publishers can be as arbitrary as they want, but they are held liable for what they publish. Section 230 gives civil immunity to "information service providers". If someone libels you on Twitter, you can't sue Twitter. But if Twitter starts making editorial decisions as to what is fit to publish and what isn't, then they could lose their section 230 protections and open themselves to tons of lawsuits.

This will help you with future Sec 230 hot takes: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

That was a very good read. Thanks for linking that!

I've read that before and I've discussed it with a lawyer (among other related articles & topics). He rolled his eyes at much of it, but he also rolled his eyes at the "platform vs publisher" distinction that so many naive people make. Still, he agrees that social media companies are tickling the dragon's tail when it comes to Section 230 protection.

Before you dismiss my anecdote as one mistaken lawyer, note that the chairman of the FCC (who is a lawyer) and Justice Clarence Thomas both think that Section 230 doesn't offer nearly as much protection as social media companies seem to think it does. In response to recent events, the FCC plans to issue statements clarifying the meaning of Section 230.[1]

1. https://twitter.com/AjitPaiFCC/status/1316808733805236226 "Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters."

I think what he said is if twitter wishes to be a publisher they should be treated as such. What they want to be is NOT a publisher but a platform since different rules apply to platforms than are applied to publishers.

I wouldn’t mind if people could sue Twitter but if your goal is unregulated speech then removing section 230 is counter productive.

I do not think that that's what will happen.

Section 230 will NOT get removed. ISPs and email service providers, and blog platforms, will still be able to use it.

But companies that add/remove/replace/gray-out/delete/hide/push-to-bottom content that they claim they did not editorialize -- will be called Publishers.

So these businesses will not be able to use statutory protections that are available for non-publishers under section 45.230.

An analogy might be: a for-profit-business cannot claim tax benefits available for a non-for-profit organizations.

So the tax-code does not get removed, just because somebody was actively abusing it. It stays the same, but the abuser would face criminal investigation.

And if the abuser was found to systemically and purposefully avoiding to be recognized as 'Publisher' (or as a for-profit business in this analogy), then the criminal penalties would be more severe, then otherwise.

> Are you saying publishers can’t arbitrarily decide what to publish or not?

Publishers can do this, yes. They just are not offered the legal protections of being a platform, if they act as a publisher.

The point is, that someone is acting as a publisher, then they should have these legal protections taken away form them.

This platform/publisher dichotomy is made-up bullshit. You have to write and publish something yourself to be called a publisher. Moderation on an internet forum doesn't make you a publisher. Is HN a publisher too? dang pretty actively moderates the conversations here.

But editing, rearranging, and deleting someones words can make entirely new meanings of it. In music they call that sampling. In social media they call that 'feed'. In politics they call that propoganda. In reality we call it bias.

The Biden campaign explicitly did not dispute that the emails are real when asked (only that the meeting mentioned in the emails took place, which is... an odd distinction). Twitter does not claim that the emails aren't real. In short, the emails are real and everyone admits this... except the people who have fallen for social media giants' propaganda in this case.

Twitter claims that the justification is that the emails are "hacked" and/or "leaked" (they're inconsistent), even though (1) this is patently false since they were found on a hard drive which became property of the repair shop; and (2) Twitter has no problem with, say, Trump's tax returns and other "hacked"/"leaked" materials.

Just curious, what do you make of the Biden photos with a crack pipe found on the laptop too. Are those fake?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8842709/Joe-Bidens-...

Do you have any proof they came from the laptop and not a hacked icloud account or insert many other possible sources?

Pretty obvious the guy who claimed to have obtained the laptop is fabricating the whole story: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...

For all I know the laptop could have been teleported by aliens into Rudy's greasy ass. Still would be irrelevant on the merit of any of the facts.

Hunter smoking crack is 1) not news and 2) not relevant to the current election. If that was all that was released, we wouldn't be talking about this right now.

Everything else in the release is 1) far more damaging than the above and 2) far harder to verify as accurate with what we've been given thus far.

So we censor everything that is not news and not relevant to the current election? What are you trying to say?

I'm trying to say that right now, as far as I'm concerned, there are only a few confirmed facts. One of those facts is that there are newly released pictures of Hunter smoking crack, which isn't particularly interesting. All the other stuff about emails, provenance of said emails, etc., has not been verified by anyone but the NYP, who, contrary to typical reporting practices, are not sharing their info so other venues can confirm the accuracy. So, as far as I am concerned, that is unverified and quite likely inaccurate info and Twitter and Facebook has no responsibility to disseminate unverified and quite likely inaccurate info.

They have no responsibility yes, but why choose this particular thing to censor when theres and endless stream of millions of other tweets that are also not related to the election and less fact based than this?

Perhaps we're talking past each other. In my opinion, they are not censoring this to prevent incriminating pictures of Hunter Biden from spreading, they are censoring this to prevent unverified emails that could potentially sway the election from spreading

That’s real bad news for Hunter’s 2020 election campaign!

I think we get stuck with him making more deals, if Biden Senior wins. Oh well. I'm looking forward to a crackhead's version of "Art of the Deal" from junior.

I would be surprised if he was in the administration at all. Most administrations don't appoint a bunch of their family members to positions in the government. That itself is corruption.

The provenance of the documents is fishy. They could have easily been hacked. But, what portions of the actual story are false?

The Biden campaign's refutation was not to say that the emails were doctored. They only said that they have checked the official schedule of Joe Biden from the day in question and there is no mention of a meeting with the Burisma executive (they don't say categorically that he did not meet with him, just that it is not present on the official schedule).

Other then the meeting w/ Biden, I'm not sure there's a detail that has been specfically contested.

Your priors are wrong - the evidence and the people presenting it have the burden of proof not the people saying this is more bullshit from a desperate group of people who have consistently lied for years.

What burden of proof are you talking about? You're saying that a burden of proof needs to be met before what, exactly?

I am not saying they have met a burden of proof, I'm saying that we don't censor news articles (even sensational or thinly sourced ones) because they haven't yet met a burden of proof.

A group well known for lying is pushing a story with poor provenance and you are engaging it as if it has a decent probability of being true. That is a sign your prior belief of the lying people is off - with the more realistic prior belief that liars keep lying the question is why this made up story now? Or how did they execute this lie?

And yes, the key to using the internet effectively is to filter things out that are garbage. I individually try not waste my time on bullshit, truth based organizations filter out a lot of crackpots: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2019020... and Twitter itself is free to try to do this filtering as well. I applaud them for trying to remove BS rather than trying to push addictive content but whatever. This very news site is interesting because they spend a lot of time trying to filter BS in favor of productive and informative conversations.

So basically exactly the same as the whole Russia influencing Trump theory cooked up by Hillary's campaign that the media ran with hook, line and sinker? It also had poor provenance and an unreliable source yet the media ran with it unrestrained for years.

Huh? The Mueller Report, Deutsche Bank, Trump Tower meetings, Russian influence in the NRA, Paul Manafort's lobbying, Trump Jr's claim of Russian funding, Trump's push for G7 membership.

I don't doubt some things have been exaggerated, but I feel were pretty far past a theory right now. The question is just how much their influence affected policy.

The average HNer doesn't think those things constitute proof. In fact, the mainstream thought here (always upvoted) is that Trump is unfairly hated by the Left due to their Agenda.

SV is full of .. something. idk what to call these people, but reading this forum makes it clear they are all around me in my career domain.

On the contrary, the story of Russia contacts with the Trump campaign had excellent journalistic provenance - multiple sources from within intelligence agencies as well as a former MI6 agent willing to vouch for information he had collected.

The story received additional sources as it ran, and eventually grew into an investigation that yielded multiple criminal convictions.

Are there names of people from any of these agencies that said this in public? What was with the "All 17 agencies claimed Russia interference" line? It was clearly not true and used as propaganda.

The coordinating body of all 17 agencies did say there was Russian interference in the election, but not all agencies would have been relevant to such a statement. Politifact rates the 17 agencies line as true - they go into some detail as to why. At the worst, the line is a slight exaggeration/misspeak during a live event. https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/jul/06/17-intelligen...

The DNI publicly put out a report. I recall statements by the FBI Director, CIA Director, and NSA Director referring and promoting the conclusions drawn in the report (those 3 agencies were principally involved, in addition to being the three most important and largest intelligence agencies).

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

The Senate Intelligence Committee (which is GOP controlled) has also put out several reports concurring with Russian interference in the 2016 election.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

The initial news cycle would have been from highly valued and proven anonymous sources, which is typical for national security matters. If you are expecting a bunch of CIA analysts doxxing themselves on the front page of the NYT, you will be disappointed. That’s not how national security reporting (or reporting in general) works.

To be of excellent provenance doesn’t necessarily require a named source - if the paper and journalist have a good track record with unnamed sources in an area of expertise.

>false

Citation very much needed.

How can you say its false. The FBI took it seriously. If we said the same about wikileaks or trump taxes we'd all flip out. Twitter shouldn't be the people who get to say whats false or not.

and the FBI dropped it. This stunt is so obviously an attempt to manipulate the election at the last minute. Just like they did in 2016. That's really what the media companies are internally considering here: attempts at election fraud.

I can imagine a dystopian future in which three weeks before every election there's an explosion of insane bombshell claims about the candidates, with ever increasing effort put into them and no time to refute them before the vote. A misinformation arms war will ensue.

What you talking about thats been a thing since before the internet was a thing is called the October surpise. Its allowed. It's legal. Youre not allowed to suppress your political opponent in the last moment cause that could escalate to poisoning like in other countries or worse.

It’s not false though. Yes it’s censorship.

@Jack thinks China is going to win the war, and already picking sides.

There are reasons why being Neutral is a bad option, if you read Machiavelli.

"Do not be Neutral"

https://www.obtaineudaimonia.com/do-not-be-neutral-prince-ni...

That's why this election is so important. It will chart our paths for next 100 years.

If that's true we were already doomed, being given the choice between two very crappy paths.

Kudos to BBC for covering this. All US outlets other than FoxNews(obviously) are keeping quiet. Which is a shame, this is history in the making

Fox News has plenty of articles on the matter. Can you explain?

>> All US outlets other than FoxNews (obviously)

> Fox News has plenty of articles on the matter

Right.

> Can you explain?

Not 100% sure, but I think you wrote your reply without reading the complete comment you were replying to.

I read it, and it reads confusing so I asked for clarification, what is it you think I missed maybe I did miss some context that is implied but isn't so obvious to all readers (in this case myself).

It's a slightly complex sentence, but when AzzieElbab says "All US outlets other than FoxNews(obviously) are keeping quiet", they mean that Fox News is the only outlet that is covering the story, and everyone else is not. Thus when you reply that Fox News has "plenty of articles", you are agreeing with their claim. Since your response seems to imply disagreement, Const-me presumes (I think correctly) that you misread the original.

Oh I totally misread that not sure why, thanks for clarifying, man sometimes I miss the really obvious stuff. Thank you for bringing me back down to earth haha

The Galileo Principle. If you and everybody else is trying to silence something. You probably are on the wrong side of history.

this is like thinking because everyone is against what you are doing you must be doing the right thing. it could be what you are selling is just bullshit and everyone knows it is bullshit.

> this is like thinking because everyone is against what you are doing you must be doing the right thing

It's not, because silencing something is very different from being against something.

Indeed. If everybody ignores you then you're probably selling bullshit.

If they try to silence you, you're probably on to something.

There are far, far, far too many bullshit-peddlers to even attempt to silence them all.

Eh. Try to walk down a liberal city with a nazi flag. Plenty of people will tell you to screw off.

Eh this doesn't apply in tons of modern cases.

Seems like only a few groups tried to silence this because it was demonstrably fake news. Others are happy to play it up. This is more like the type of journalism that put Hitler into power than, say, the smear campaigns against Snowden.

Most of the time, information shutdowns like this are targeted at antivax, flat earth, and holocaust denial claims.

Ridiculous.

Galileo was persecuted and could have been killed for his "crimes."

That is not comparable to Twitter refusing to allow your content on its platform. It is not "silencing" when you can publish it elsewhere or make your own platform.

It is of course dangerous and fallacious to automatically assume the majority is correct, But it is even more absurd to assume an idea is correct because it exists in the margins.

- Lots of folks said it was absurd that there were canals on Mars, presumably populated by little green men.

- The vast majority of people mock the idea of a "Flat Earth"

- The majority of people think the antivax movement is dangerous and dumb

- Anybody with even a minimal science background understands that a perpetual motion machine is impossible, and that anybody who thinks they've created one is delusional or fraudulent.

- etc. etc. etc.

I feel pretty confident I'm on the right side of history. At least as far as those examples go.

I think the key mistake was that the NY Post didn't cite "anonymous sources." That would have made it bulletproof.

Instead of Guilianni, they could have just said "persons familiar with the contents of the emails."

That or "anonymous sources" wouldn't have helped. That works with papers that have a long earned reputation of mostly reporting facts. They may have biases in their selection of which stories to run, or what angles to approach those stores from, but what they report as a fact is in fact a fact far far far far more often than not.

(Pause for people to jump in to cite examples of such papers getting it wrong. This will be the small set of examples that is always cited).

The Post is not such a paper.

Let's see Twitter's list of trusted newspapers. No way such a thing exists.

Papers with long-earned reputations do themselves tremendous discredit when they hire full blown political activists with no regard for the truth, as the WP, NYT etc have done for at least a decade.

Serious question - How does that make it legitimate? In our eyes (the viewers) or twitter's terms&cond?

Twitter allows all sorts of garbage claims about Trump from mainstream media sources which simply cite "anonymous sources". Most recently the NYTimes claimed to have Trumps tax returns - without evidence verifying the authenticity. Over the last few years, Russiagate relied almost entirely on "anonymous sources" - and we all know how that turned out.

> and we all know how that turned out.

With a bunch of Trump campaign and administration officials admitting in federal court to collaborating with Russian government?

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

These anonymous sources you mention are only anonymous to the readers. Typically a story from an anonymous source will be verified with multiple other sources, perhaps also anonymous, to make sure that the media source is not getting played. Here we have Hannity's former assistant writing a "sensational" story in a tabloid rated as the least credible news outlet in NY. Also, they apparently tried to keep their source anonymous but messed up. Really going to fall for this? Again?

I've long-since stopped listening to anonymous intelligence officials. Any time you get their quotes, you've got to flip a coin to decide whether it's a legitimate leak,or an attempt to direct the media narrative without putting the organization's reputation on the line.

Anonymous officials ready to support any given narrative seem to be a dime a dozen anymore.

Unless the leaked information is accompanied by an insurmountably huge collection of documents outlining a complex tapestry of affiliations, interests, and events such as the alphabet agencies are want to produce, I typically assume it's the latter.

The NYT doesn't get a pass from me just because it used to be great, and do the work requisite to earn its sterling reputation.

I honestly wish I could provide citations where they've fallen here, but most of them come from The Intercept's podcast (Intercepted, I recommend it), where Scahill's opening rants regularly take aim at publications across the spectrum's use of anonymous officials, and the questionability of the claims they cite, and it would be far too exhausting and disheartening to record them all. As petty as some of them have been, it's just background noise, anymore.

It's frustrating Twitter and Facebook won't just say the truth:

"This is a blatant attempt at disinformation by politicians who have repeatedly attacked our employees, and we don't want it. It's our web site, stop trying to tell us what our own rules are. Go spread your nonsense somewhere else.

If you think this is a 230 violation sue us."

Reading through these HN comments, it is amazing to me how many people have already concluded the NY Post story is either obviously true or false.

But I agree with the gist of your point. Social media platforms should stop pretending to be unbiased disinformation watchmen. It's their platform and they don't have to justify squat. If people want free speech, they can go somewhere else.

On that note, I really do think distributed social media networks are the future.

Let us ignore the question of whether or the story is true. Twitter and Facebook clearly think it is false.

The contradictory statements by the so-called shop owner, who provided the emails, and the past behavior of Guiliani all points towards it very likely being false. And them holding this information until 3 weeks before the election points, after having it for over a year, further points it to being false informations.

And the nail in the coffin is the simple fact that they decided to release a PDF-image of the emails instead of simply giving the raw email with its metadata which would allow us to instantaneously confirm it. Literally all they have to do is post the metadata.

On the other hand that Biden doesn’t deny the meeting or that the laptop is real strongly points to it being true.

> And them holding this information until 3 weeks before the election points, after having it for over a year, further points it to being false informations.

While I'm not arguing whether the allegations are true or not, I don't think timing your most valuable opposition research findings makes things automatically false.

And in my opinion, these huge platforms that are basically monopolies should not be censoring things based on whether they think something is true or false. It's tempting to believe that every issue is either clearly true or clearly false, in most fields that is not the case and I don't want @jack deciding what's "safe" for me to see.

The go somewhere else thing doesnt end well. If half the country has to recreate their own social networks, web hosting, payment processing, banking, and even retail locations you end up with two separate societies competing for the same physical space and thats not going to end well for anyone. This is the very thing we should be trying the hardest to avoid but we are already moving down this road.

Half the country isn't going to out looking for conspiracy theory garbage. They just want to see pictures of their grandkids. But if you expose them to the conspiracies they can get drawn in.

> On that note, I really do think distributed social media networks are the future.

I think they could be the future, but any social media platform is only as strong as its underlying social graph. A flawless platform which checks every box will still fail unless you can convince a significant amount of users to join. Or, more to the point, a certain amount of graph edges need to be formed.

How do you do that? That’s the question floating over the graves of dozens of Facebook clones.

Sure, but all we have to do is wait. Once a distributed platform finally takes off, I doubt we'll ever go back to centralized ones. I don't know how long it will take or how many platforms will rise and fall in the mean time, but it's just a matter of time.

Incredibly disappointed. I had never seen such a concerted effort to hide information in the USA. Is this how it feels to live under the CCP’s control?

> Is this how it feels to live under the CCP’s control?

This is an overly dramatic comparison that trivializes the Chinese surveillance state.

Agreed. The CCP is fucking terrible. We wouldn't be having this conversation in China. Well we might; tech people with VPNs and encrypted comms. But most normal people would no be able to see it.

But I do fear the US is headed that direction. When you seen BLM protestors telling people to raise their fists and kiss their feat and people saying you must denounce racism over and over and over again no matter how many times you may have before. Make to mistake: These are American Struggle Sessions.

We have people in major outlets, publications, tech .. all saying Trump people are universally racist and evil. 60+ million people voted for him. That's the most insane thing I've ever heard.

I knew we were headed this way years ago. I wrote about it:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-fallout-of-american-a...

I never thought it would get this bad. I don't think we'll turn into the CCP, but we are in danger of having dramatic shifts in what Americans consider morally right.

> Incredibly disappointed. I had never seen such a concerted effort to hide information in the USA.

Go read some history. Lincoln shut down hundred of newspapers during the civil war. Or the Red Scare/McCarthyism. The jim crow south for 100 years.

> Is this how it feels to live under the CCP’s control?

If the "CCP" had any control how come they allow so many posts about "CCP" all over social media?

If russia or china had the level of control people are claiming, they aren't doing a good job exercising that control. Now israel and saudi arabia...

Try find something negative about CCP leaders on any Chinese website.

Hot take: they should do more of this, not less. As a medium it’s fundamentally distortionary, what is popular on Twitter is as much a function of the peculiarities of its ranking algorithm as it is of the material significance of the information. The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is, and the more diverse the online media ecosystem can be.

Mandating something to be unimportant probably won't have the effect you desire. But allowing them to dig their own hole is probably the best outcome, allowing people to see the consequences for themselves. Hopefully the side effects are not too disastrous in the process.

The idea that Twitter and Facebook can do this in a “non-distortionary” way is unrealistic. Peoples’ personal biases are too strong.

The “fact check” websites used to be great. Now, they wander way over “fact checking.” The worst abuses are when they provide “context” or challenge assumptions. Conservatives and liberals are not working from the same assumptions, and have a different set of contextual facts top of mind on different issues. The fact check organizations are pretty good about checking the actual assertion, but reveal bias through what contextual facts they provide and what assumptions they do or do not challenge. Another way they cross the line is “fact checking” obvious rhetoric: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/10/trumps-exaggerated-claims-...

> At a rally in Sanford, Florida, President Donald Trump made the exaggerated claim that his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, “voted to obliterate” Puerto Rico’s pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.

As Biden would say, “c’mon man.” How many times has a politician said stuff like “they sent your jobs to China?” Did anyone fact check Biden’s assertion that Romney would “put [Black people] back in chains?” They explain the vote by saying things like: “at the time, eliminating the provision was seen as striking a blow against “corporate welfare.” Seen by who? They also note that the bill “also raised the minimum wage.” This isn’t “fact checking,” it’s the counter-narrative from the Biden campaign.

I don't think it's the sites wandering that's the problem; it's that they're all inexorably pulled from being color commenters to being refs, and once they become refs, people start to work them. It's hard to think of a way you could run a fact checking site without this dynamic playing out, because the better you are, the more people will depend on you as a referee.

How can a site that calls itself a fact checking site possibly be called a color commenter?

I'm probably just using a bad term, but there's a difference between an observer and a referee, and that's all I'm getting at.

The Puerto Rico bill had good support from both parties.

The vote in the House to send the bill to the Senate was 227-0 among Republicans and 186-10 among Democrats.

When the Senate's modified version came back to the House, the R vote was 160-70 and the D voter was 192-2.

When it got back to the Senate in final form, the Senate vote was 76-22. The stupid senate.gov site does not tabulate vote by party and I'm too lazy to do it by hand, but the Senate at the time was 55 R to 45 D. I do see that all 22 Nay votes were from R, and two D did not vote, so that would give the R vote as 33-22 and the D vote as 43-0.

Among the Yea votes in the Senate I see several current R Senators: Grassley, McConnell, Shelby, and Murkowski. I think Inhofe is the only current R Senator who was in the Nays.

I bet someone running against whichever of those first four Senators are up for re-election this year could put together a pretty good ad featuring Trump's talk of the bill "obliterating" Puerto Rico's pharmaceuticals and then calling out that Senator for doing so. How is the Senator going to respond? Say it was a bipartisan bill that was widely supported by both parties, which risks highlighting Trump's misleading use of it?

If 22 Senators voted against it, it’s fair to argue that Biden was in the wrong side of that vote. The fact that the parties might agree on something doesn’t immunize a Senator who voted for that thing of responsibility for the vote. NAFTA was bipartisan too (61-38 with 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats) and Trump strongly opposed that. The Iraq war was nearly unanimous and it would be totally fair to criticize Biden for that.

I actually have no idea whether this was a good bill or not. But who else voted along with Biden doesn’t really tell you anything. And that’s why it shouldn’t be the province of fact checking. It’s political defense of Biden’s vote.

> they should do more of this, not less

> The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is

How exactly will Twitter doing "more of this" result in "less people trust[ing] twitter popularity as an indication of importance"?

If anything, I think Twitter should just wear their bias on their sleave and stop pretending to be an open platform. Same goes for all social media.

There is no such thing as an unbiased disinformation watchdog. These are not public spaces with rights to freedom of expression. Distributed social media networks are the future.

> Twitter should just wear their bias on their sleave and stop pretending to be an open platform.

This is kind of what I was getting at.

I think the issue with social networks like Twitter and other, claiming legal benefits of 'platforms' while acting as publishers and crowdsourced-publishers.

It is like having a for-profit business that claims tax umbrella of a charitable organization.

All we have to do is simply recongize, that these social networks are publishers of political content.

So they can choose to continue editorialization by crowdourcing, but comittees, by AI, by whatever they want.

And they can live happily but as publishers.

The ISPs (for which section 230 really was meant) -- can continue to be impartial and claim the protection benefits of that section.

Ahhh: 1. We must censor terror propaganda and child abuse to avoid harm & because it's the law

2. We must censor stormfront and the far right because it's the right thing to do

3. We must censor covid misinformation because it could kill people

4. We must selectively censor news reporting for political candidates we are aligned with because it's probably false.

---- we are here now

5. We must remove all news critical of our position .

6. We must actively force people to be re-educated to avoid harm.

7. We must exterminate dangerous elements.

The mental gymnastics used to justify this kind of censorship are frightening. Most news is full of inaccuracies and outright lies, from all sources.

Woke people think they're Galileo but they're really the church

The book burning going on lately is insane

Everyone thinks they're Galileo. Who would ever stay with the side they think is wrong and cruel? History (i.e. future opinions) will assign the labels.

Galileos tend to work alone or almost alone.

If someone joins a mob against a single person, odds are that their self-identification as Galileo is ... unsound.

Yeah.. you don't normally see mob's carrying out justice very well.

Really, very few people are Galileo in modern America for the reason you listed. There are two massive groups of people against each other much more than there are individuals who almost everyone is against. Much more Red vs White army than Galileo against the Church.

everyone at twitter or FB content moderation roles, or execs -- think they are ethics luminaries and moral compases of the 21st century. Sort of the Supreme Court of ethics and moral judgment.

Really the problem is not with liars, it is with liars that wield lots of influence, power -- and try to actively and systemically circumvent existing law.

Twitter is not the government. Support decentralized messaging and publication platforms if you don’t like big winners having too much power.

Yes. And unlike the Government, I an individual have no say in how Twitter operates. I have have no say in how Facebook operates. I have no say in how Google operates. Those three combine account for the overwhelming majority of the public square that is the internet.

I cannot vote out the CEO of Twitter, Facebook, or Google because I think they are doing the wrong thing. This is worse, because individuals are powerless.

And before you argue that people can go to their own websites, how is meaningfully different from Chinese citizens who use VPN's. After all they can still access information.

In both cases it is near impossible for a message, movement, or anything else to grow without the use of the core popular platforms. And any message which could grow in other spaces would have the counter narrative pushed on the core platforms.

Ummm the early web is a counter example. Any one can publish a website. And a lot of the content that makes these monoliths popular is user generated - it could easily be captured by decentralized system. Put an Insta UI on email and make it cool.

The whole American system says it is ok for successful companies to grow large and powerful. I personally wouldn’t mind some anti-trust actions, but even better would be for people to prefer non-mass media. Visit my website and listen to the guitarist at the local bar and watch indie films and read good books rather than popular books. But others have other preferences.

Making real change is society is not the same as propagating memes or conspiracy theories - it takes time and effort and a lot of eyeball to eyeball persuasion. If you don’t like what Twitter is doing you can create a competitor, and make it popular. The difference is competition - if you persuade enough people, you can replace Twitter. If Twitter is anti-competitive then there is a legal recourse. If you fail to persuade people that twitters method of trying to encourage truth and virtue are bad, that is a fact of your social world. Try again or give up.

> And before you argue that people can go to their own websites, how is meaningfully different from Chinese citizens who use VPN's. After all they can still access information.

If you're going to write out a response centered on "anyone [being able to] publish a website", at least respond to OP's point. How is that a solution that's in any way better than telling CCP citizens that censorship is totally fine because they can use a VPN?

Distinction without difference. Twitter has the capability to whip up a sizable mob and inflict violence anywhere in the world, on a spectrum from cancel culture to corporate cowering to violent riots to color revolutions.

The principle of free speech is enshrined in the constitution at a time when the only thing powerful enough to constrain speech to this degree was the government.

Times have changed. Twitter is more powerful.

The "news" being censored is political misinformation being pushed by the NY Post of all places. I'd be alarmed if they were preventing anyone from posting about Donald Trump's sudden NBC townhall, not some obvious con thrown out by Giuliani to a tabloid of ill repute.

Some, like Keith Olbermann are jumping straight to between 6 and 7:

"Olbermann called for a wide range of Trump's "enablers" to be "prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society.""

Including 'enablers' like Amy Coney Barrett.

https://popculture.com/trending/news/keith-olbermann-raises-...

Bush the elder wanted atheists deported so both sides have their share of lunacy.

Unhinged entertainers is one thing, but it gets pretty scary when similar language is coming elected officials.

"A county prosecutor has again denigrated constituents, this time with the alarming claim that we must “cleanse society” of the “diseased thinking” of Trump supporters."

https://mynorthwest.com/2231869/rantz-county-prosecutor-clea...

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/a-prosecutors-anti-trump-post...

Out of curiosity, where do you think the line SHOULD be?

No, seriously. You have to draw the line somewhere, right? If your answer is "no, these platforms should be perfectly neutral", then are you okay with child pornography and terrorist beheadings in your feed?

If you say no to this, and the answer is based on the law, what happens if the law is unethical and for example the Trump/Republican administration passes a law saying "Acknowledgement of the gay lifestyle is illegal" (a la Russia).

Regardless of any political division there is a general humanistic "ethical line". It varies from person to person, but if you discount outright nazis and child pornographers generally we can find where that is.

Why should a private corporation not choose where that ethical line is for it?

1. We can't censor because of slippery slope

2. Idiots elect clown because of propaganda

3. Hundreds of thousands of people die from preventable catastrophe.

I don't disagree with you but this is not an acceptable answer.

Is Cuomo a clown elected by idiots who killed tens of thousands of people for his decision to have nursing homes take in COVID patients?

>Is Cuomo a clown elected by idiots

Yes. Is he the same type of clown as Trump? No. But Cuomo's an idiot.

Cuomo is a center-left Democrat, how does that compare to Trump's alternative in 2016?

Really it sounds like tens or hundreds of thousands of people could die during a pandemic, regardless of what effort goes into paving a politician's way into office with censorship.

Cuomo and DeBlasio made terrible decisions. But NY only accounts for 15% of US covid deaths. This is a nation-wide problem.

Why is the percentage important? The principle is the same - bad decision, preventable. If the 15% was everyone you cared about perhaps you would not see it that way.

I think maybe you are reading something into my statement that wasn't there, as people I do care about were in that 15%.The point is that this is a problem across the entire country - in red states and blue states, in states with Republican governors and with Democratic governors. America as a whole is experiencing this problem in a way no other country is, and I don't think it's Andrew Cuomo's fault.

So dimissive, people selected who aligned with their needs.

Their vote is as valid as yours.

It's actually more valid unfortunately because I live in a highly populated state. If hundreds of thousands of people dying needlessly aligns with anyone's goals I want them out of the country. The reality is they got tricked because they're too stupid to make rational decisions and too entitled to realize it.

Who is we? Fox News has been at 6.5 since Bush Jr.

And now we're at the flip side where the Clinton News Network, The Washington Compost and MSNBSee are all blatantly partition and have gone so far off the rails, they have news anchors who are saying that a protest is peaceful, while buildings and car dealerships are literally burning behind them .. on multiple occasions.

Please keep the Slashdot-era cutesy nicknames off HN.

They undermine your argument, degrade the discourse, and have no place here.

The Murdoch news empire has fluctuated between 5 and 6 on that scale for as long as I can remember.

Not trying to excuse Facebook and Twitter's behavior here, but let's not let social media become a scapegoat while News Corp continues to run rampant.

They're a publisher that edits content, plain and simple. Take away the platform status and let them play by the same rules as other publishers.

You realize this helps them right? The tech companies now become engrained, they'll enact chinese style mass deletions of content, and nobody will be able to enter the market without a similar massive investment in heavy handed moderation.

>they'll enact chinese style mass deletions of content

They already do that.

I think that would entrench the current tech giants because the liability to any startup entering the space would be huge and they wouldn't be big enough to partner with anyone.

On the flipside, you'd have Facebook, Twitter, etc. partnering with media companies big enough to negotiate an indemnification clause into a contract that allows them into the recommendations engine(s).

As soon as you start forcing liability onto those platforms, the content is instantly going to morph so it only includes "safe" publishers. The ToS will get updated so regular people agree to indemnification via forced arbitration and you'll only be able to post content that's widely seen if you're verified.

TLDR; It would be Digg v4, but mandated by the government.

Also, a lot of the current content is created by companies that are already considered publishers and nothing happens to them when they publish misleading news. So how does considering Twitter the publisher instead of Fox or CNN improve that?

IMHO the big media companies would love to see some type of alternate publisher label affixed to big tech because it would detriment big tech to the benefit of big media.

> how does considering Twitter the publisher instead of Fox or CNN improve that?

People don’t register on Twitter to read Fox or CNN. They register to read other people.

Making Twitter a publisher increases costs a lot. Especially portion of the cost that’s proportional to count of users and volumes of content.

On-line ads don’t pay much per view, the only reason these companies are making so much money is they got crazy count of views with very low (in comparison) costs. They’ll have to find other sources of income.

They can charge readers, like newspapers did for centuries.

They can charge for publishing, I remember couple decades ago I was paying some reasonable subscription fee for a paid livejournal account, just to get rid of ads.

Either model is fine. They both fix the current outrage culture, by removing the incentive. These companies will stop optimizing content for count of views, and will start listening to users who became their customers.

> People don’t register on Twitter to read Fox or CNN. They register to read other people.

So if I follow an influencer that retweets a libelous news story from CNN, who's the liable publisher? Twitter, CNN, or the influencer? What if I retweet it? Am I a publisher now that I piped that into my feed?

The only way Twitter would be able to cope IMO is with a _massive_ increase in censorship and a _massive_ reduction in the ability for the average person to publish opinions. And I think the biggest beneficiaries of that are large media companies that already have their own platforms.

And what I meant when I asked how making Twitter the publisher is any different is how would having the ability to sue Twitter for libel be any different than suing CNN or Fox right now? The only way it's different is if the law treats them differently and makes Twitter beholden to government so the government can sanction them. Who decides what's true then? That sounds like a dictatorship to me.

I completely agree with your sentiment though. The misinformation is out of control and it needs to be reigned in. I just think it's much harder than pointing the finger at someone new and calling them the publisher. I haven't seen any really good solutions either. It's a really hard problem to solve.

> I follow an influencer that retweets a libelous news story from CNN, who's the liable publisher?

I don’t know, but I think lawyers should know answer to that question. Pretty sure newspapers were re-publishing other media for quite some time now, centuries.

> with a _massive_ increase in censorship and a _massive_ reduction in the ability for the average person to publish opinions

I don’t think they can do that. People will just leave. I don’t read twitter, but I do use facebook. I don’t subscribe for influencers or other media. I personally know vast majority of people I read there.

> how making Twitter the publisher is any different is how would having the ability to sue Twitter for libel be any different than suing CNN or Fox right now?

Increases costs to run Twitter by orders of magnitudes. I think the only way forward for them is charging users. When users will become paying customers as opposed to product, this change incentives of twitter.

Currently, a public outrage like this or any other might be a PR and political nightmare, but financially it’s a gold mine for social media platforms. In the current model, their profit scales with page views. If the profit will only scale with count of users, I believe they gonna do many things completely differently. For instance, will be no point in tuning their algorithms to promote controversial content, quite the opposite, it would then increase their servers load for no good reason.

You realize that this also applies to Hacker News, right? Browse with "showdead" on and see what has been killed by centralized and/or community moderation.

(I happen to think the HN team and community do a fine job of it)

As a former New Yorker the thing I can't wrap my head around is how the Post ("Headless Body in Topless Bar") is now apparently being referred to as a respectable publication.

It's not. It's that lurid tabloids sometimes break important stories. This comment expresses it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24784836.

(I'm not saying this one is an important story.)

Ok, as a former New Yorker, what do you think about this explanation of the outrage with the behaviour of social networks executives:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/if-unreliable-is-the-issue-why...

Don't care, sorry.

Keep aside the accuracy of the NYPost story for a moment. With this move, Facebook and Twitter have effectively backed one political side over the other. Even if in the nitty-gritty they might not have, this is the perception that is sent out and is the perception that will be played to the hilt by the Trump camp. And timing of this is damning as well, with distrust of big tech and social media rising even before this on all ends of the political spectrum.

If by any chance Trump wins next month, this will be the end not only for Facebook and Twitter, but for the wider Internet in general and Social Media in particular. Because if Trump wins, he is not going to let it slide. The destruction of Facebook and Twitter will most certainly done by removing the safe harbors by citing this incident in particular. That will be a bloodbath with a lot casualties of innocent bystanders in Silicon Valley.

And the knock-off effects of this will be even more damning. Even if Trump loses, many other countries will take a big, hard look at the possibility of regime change and political interference being done by a bunch of Western Activists. Especially in Asia and Africa, where the memories of Western Imperialism have not yet faded and the wounds are still raw.

I am really surprised by the fact that the shareholders, investors and the board of Facebook and Twitter haven't stepped in to stop this or at-least deescalate this, considering they will be loosing a whole lot in this scenario. Or is everyone in Silicon Valley just too drugged out with activism to care about even themselves?

I think this is one of the damned if you do, damned if you don’t situations. Twitter and Facebook were largely blamed by traditional media for being a vector of misinformation that harmed the American public in 2016, and suffered a lost of trust then. When they try to combat that, whoever would have benefited from the material being censored will cry fowl, and it was a doomed venture from the start.

Russia was blamed, not Twitter or Facebook. They were victims ...

They’ve certainly changed my vote. Wow.

Oh please. Taking steps to fight disinformation is enough to drive you into the disinformation camp?

Your dismissive of OP’s reasoning. That tends to reinforce people’s position.

My wife is a registered Democrat who’ll be voting for Trump in a swing state. As recently as six months ago she loathed Trump.

Her stated reason is that she doesn’t feel like she can be herself, have her own opinions, among Democrats anymore.

> And the knock-off effects of this will be even more damning. Even if Trump loses, many other countries will take a big, hard look at the possibility of regime change and political interference being done by a bunch of Western Activists. Especially in Asia and Africa, where the memories of Western Imperialism have not yet faded and the wounds are still raw.

Awesome point!

You're talking about backing one side or the other, but are concepts like truth or fact a factor in this argument at all?

Political interference isn't new or particularly hard. We decades of playbooks dedicated to that courtesy of the CIA, KBG/FSB, etc. In more modern times, we have the Obama State Department (led by Secretary Clinton) working with Twitter to support the protests and overall idea of regime change: https://www.mic.com/articles/10642/twitter-revolution-how-th...

The goals and tactics aren't different, just the target.

Pre- political cults, white nationalism, weakness, incompetence, immorality, corruption, laziness, and pettiness were not a "political side". If you want to call the Republican party a "side", then you need to disentangle these things first. Otherwise opposition to Republicans by any decent/educated person is easily explained.

Eloquent.

You are probably aware then, that conservatives think of the Democrats as the global Cartel, consisting of - bribe takers and money launders - protege of sexual predators - systemic racists

And that claiming that this is a party, and they have a paritcular platform -- is like claiming that Mexican Mafia is a party with platform.

So you can imagine how suprised a conservative is, to learn of how many people lack even mediocre critical thinking, that is meant as immunity against manipulative and conniving propaganda machine.

Removing safe harbor will increase this sort of thing, because Twitter would be exposed to more law suits for not taking down harmful speech. (And yes, harmful speech is a legal concept in the US). And the internet is not social media - the internet and decentralized digital technologies don’t need Twitter to link people together.

It depends what happens in congress. Trump might win the whitehouse, but lose congress. congress makes the rules around social media and breaking up big tech.

Remember all those "Build a Twitter Clone" coding tutorials? They'll all have to be updated to now include legal teams and should probably include a primer on the political process as well as a primer on the history and continued evolution of free speech.

The NY Post is not a serious news organization. Whatever the implication politically, this is more akin to limiting the spread of a headline like "Lizard-man found at UFO landing site." And a naked political hit job.

Lizard-man should not be censored either.

I think the outrage is not at NY Post for posting the alligations or at ABC townhall anchor for ignoring them.

Instead the outrage is about Twitter, FB and others who claim to be 'platforms' and therefore protected under section 230, but instead, systemtically and actively, acting as publishers (that are not under 230).

Perhaps an anology is the outrage and legal consequences , when a for-profit-business uses non-profit charity tax code.

This reads like slut-shaming.

What I find most shocking about this, was that they banned the Press Secretary to the White House's Twitter account - That's the part I cannot get my head around.

You can't get your head around which part? The idea that the White House Press Secretary would tweet ban-worthy remarks? Or the part where Twitter banned the account?

If the Press Secretary makes ban-worthy remarks, the people have a right to know what those remarks are.

This is basically secrecy, not ban-worthy remarks. She said something that the public is not allowed to know.

The moment she started speaking on behalf of the Trump campaign she stopped acting in her role as an agent of the government, and became a spokesperson for the campaign.

Election meddling is a little more than bias.

Tax returns are an interesting case, because even revealing that information could constitute a federal crime. You also can't reveal someone's protected medical information (HIPPA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvYNfsAgJY

Maybe this is a naive take, but I don't see why platforms such as Facebook and Twitter bother. Just let the marketplace of ideas flourish. Isn't that ostensibly why they were created? Why put your thumb on the scale? In this case, they are inadvertently bringing more attention to the subject. How many more people are aware of the story now? Seems counter-productive.

Putting their thumb on the scale is their business model.

AXIOM: Inherent bias will always prevail, proportional to self-interest.

CONCLUSION: In this case, we know there's self-interest involved. Who, what, where, and why is relatively unknown to us, the pseudo-washed masses, so we must resort to our preconceived views.

And, naturally, FB/Twitter make good money on all these preconceived views, so there's something recursive here.

Anyone remember how Twitter was giving Trump a pass for gross and flagrant violations of it's overt rules, then responded to the ongoing outcry over that by changing the rules to officially give a pass to any user it deemed sufficiently politically connected?

Live by Twitter favoritism,...

I think both Facebook and Twitter have realized their shenanigans over the past 4 years might look bad in a new government's view

As an insider I see the distinct apathy of big tech towards this single issue which I see as their Achilles heel. Big tech has failed to lay out the foundational principles they will use to perform moderation and have deliberately kept everything pretty shaky. I suspect this is because the tech companies themselves face following problems.

1. Workplaces are increasingly progressive and does not respect the diversity of thought. Reasonable conservative and libertarian groups are on fringe in most large companies.

2. Leadership is increasingly immigrant driven who often do not understand full implication of their policies and decisions.

3. Company is trying to feed the same propaganda they feed to their employees to the rest of the world without realizing rest of the world is very very different.

4. Rest of the media, political parties etc. constantly crapping on big tech does not help either. (If you hate success in your country, that success eventually will move out or will be born outside your boundaries e.g. TikTok).

5. Big tech has failed miserably to highlight all the good they have been doing through their moderation policies. Toolbar malware is a thing of past, you don't have to install Adobe Flash anymore anywhere and email spam in my gmail is zero. Big tech and their walled gardens have saved millions of hours and resources wasted on other rent seekers and instead diverted it to themselves while improving use experience for my grandmother and her brother.

Big tech needs to play the same games that Big pharma and Big oil have been playing. They need to align themselves with various political groups, provide explicit platforms and assistance to everyone from far left to far right and make everyone feel included. This is not going to be simple but they have to do it.

“ Leadership is increasingly immigrant driven who often do not understand full implication of their policies and decisions.”

As an immigrant myself... spot on. It’s taken me a decade to understand a bit of the US, appreciate it’s branches, and I’m from Canada!

If you run a service like Twitter or Facebook, you just can't win.

Your systems are being gamed by huge nation states with almost unlimited budgets. Your services are being used to spread disinformation and propaganda under "free speech". People also assume that, not only do they have a right to read this disinformation, but also a right for it to be broadcasted and amplified.

If you block these sources, people hate you. If you allow them to exist, people hate you and you might destabilize elections and democracies.

What a terrible position to be in.

If it were terrible, they wouldn't be doing it. I imagine the billions of dollars make it quite pleasent

Amidst all this chatter, the deafening silence regarding the veracity of that NYP article.

Knowing the facts would really put this discussion in focus: preventing spread of misinformation vs censorship.

What nyp article are you referencing?

The one this is about? https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden...

and their view on censorship:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/if-unreliable-is-the-issue-why...

Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. I believe this is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to YouTube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, adversarial nations were spreading fake news to influence who gets elected, and others were even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. Enough is enough! There needs to be limits. Communities started imposing limits to free speech. Society — as opposed to governments — have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was a reaction to the excesses and abuses seen in social media. Some censorship, by private parties such as Twitter, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal. We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply.

The idea that speech should have limits was driven by the same think tanks that spread the lies and propaganda on social media. You are being played on both sides. The establishment is threatened by free speech since it is now accessible to everyone so they are painting it as dangerous.

So these individuals are malicious and misleading, but what you believe is pure and good and right and holy?

How do you know you're not the one being deceived or are believing a lie? The freedom of speech allows people to talk about things that might be true, but unpopular.

> have decided that some censorship is in order

Freedom of speech is not absolute. It doesn't include images of child abuse, lying to Federal Agents, lying under oath before a Court or Congress, or speech that advocates for immediate and imminent harm of a person.

Those seem like decent limit breaks. Americas freedom of speech is very strong, stronger than German, Australia, the UK, NZ .. the US and Japan probably have the strongest free speech laws in the world (although Japan's is crippled by insane copyright law, which is another mess).

People who are on the wrong side of history, rarely know or realize it, while they're in it.

Free speech is about acknowledging someone else could be right and you might be wrong.

Why couldn't twitter say "we will delete any tweets that are critical about a certain person"? is there a law against that? is it morally wrong?

It seems that if they wanted, they could say "we want Candidate X to win and will do whatever is in our power to make that happen". What would people do then?

Equal time laws don't apply to twitter any more than they do to your blog. There is nothing stopping them from acts of outright censorship for any purpose they choose.

The nature of social networks is that some platforms will have more users and exponentially more value than others, so it seems like there isn't choice in the market. We as a society have to decide if "having the most users" is equivalent to the physical infrastructure connections that currently designate utilities and monopolies.

Having to tolerate political censorship is an obvious tradeoff. But if we go full Section 230, we could wind up with a situation where US companies are hobbled and replaced by foreign competitors. Or where American companies stop improving their service because they enjoy the advantages of a utility/monopoly.

It's actually a new and difficult social question that requires a lot of thought. I think I know what side I'm on.

Human information sharing has changed so much in such a short time. In the history of the US, the transitions from newspapers to radio took roughly the first ~150 years of the country. In just 30 years we've gone from TV->Social Media. Social media and the internet are just so different from anything we've had before.

1. Local newspapers (controlled by few)

2. Mail (1->1)

3. Radio (controlled by few)

4. Phone (1->1)

5. TV (controlled by few)

6. Internet (1->Millions)

7. WhatsApp/Texts (1->Few)

8. Social Media (1->Millions)

My first reaction to the social media companies is one of fear that a private type of "ministry of truth" is being setup. However, it would seem that in the vast majority of our history that is the same setup we've had. Of course newspapers, radio and broadcast TV all had small groups of people determining truth and what was worthy news. That gives me some comfort that maybe these problems aren't that dire or new.

My big fears are:

-Internet infrastructure companies blocking access to content they disagree with[1]. While yet that blocking has started with the most egregious content, will they continue to block less egregious content?

-The lack of trust in institutions and the differing priorities and truths pushed by different institutions. Why should the people trust any facts coming out of any of these major institutions when they appear so biased? Yesterday (when I looked) on the homepage of FoxNews.com Hunter Biden was referenced >20 times. Completely missing on CNN.com or MSNBC.com.

-How can these companies maintain a semblance of neutrality when their employee bases are so skewed and seem to have such a huge level of groupthink?

[1]https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/05/0323200/cloudflare-...

Twitter and FB did a HUGE favor to Republicans and personally to Trump. Hadn't they blocked the story, would we see 1159 comments here? Instead of "oh, not that again!.." story, that would have died two days later, we have fireworks that will last until election and will have significant impact. Many of who were mildly leaning towards Biden will reconsider.

I hope this incident of systemic bias by Twitter and others, will not just end in 'amplification' of the story.

I hope the result of this outrage, is that the companies that claim to be 'plaforms', but instead are systemically and agressively -- are 'publishers' when it comes to political content, will face legal system.

Just like a for-profit business would face, when they claim 'non-profit charity' taxation rules.

In case anyone doesn't want to read through all the pages, here are the prevailing themes of this discussion as I see them.

- the facts of the case are irrelevant, what's important now is how the tech companies reacted

- the facts of the case are extremely relevant, because that would obviously inform how Twitter/Facebook deal with the content on their website

- Twitter's response was severely mismanaged (or not, some think it was wise) because it will invite further accusations that they "censor" conservative voices

- The usual, and completely unsettled, debate about publisher vs platform for social media companies

- "How did we get here? When I was young, the internet was a free for all and it was cool. Can we go back to that?"

- Some interesting discussions about if democracy can survive in the social media age

- At times, some philosophical discussions about what is a "fact"

- An interesting discussion about what it means to have "anonymous" sources

- A great discussion about if the "slippery slope" actually is a logical fallacy

There's a few more.

To be quite frank, HN really is a good community. These are all worthy things to talk about! Within the horrorshow that is 2020, it's kind of cool that there's a place where a (mostly) civil discussion can be had about these extremely complex topics.

> "How did we get here? When I was young, the internet was a free for all and it was cool. Can we go back to that?"

The biggest difference IMO is that trolls were simply trolls, not paid adversaries or guerilla marketers or influence peddlers, so ignoring the trolls was an effective response. The bots nowadays also makes the volume of everything so much greater and harder to deal with.

The good old days aren't coming back.

I was just talking w/ someone about the good old days (and farting some dust) and back in the day, if someone was trolling hard, or spamming or running bots that should not be run, they got hacked, and hard. Your servers would be a smoldering ruins.

Then there was that case of the spammer who got hacked for being an ahat and he sued and got the hackers sent to big boy prison. That was back in the mid to late 80's (I think... it was so long ago.

Back then we were setting up uucp, and uudecoding alt and we were all alt.binaries.gifs.sex.freaky.youdontwanttoknow

Aol wasn't even a thing yet, but after Gen Pop got let in to the Intenet and that spam guy got someone put in jail, it was all downhill IMHO..

Whenever topics like this are discussed, there is a very circuitous discussion around the crux of of the true issue: the culture war.

If you accept the U.S model of capitalism then you inherently agree that free-speech on the internet is fine, anyone is free to make a website and put it on the same internet as everyone else. Content moderation is NOT in any way an anti-trust issue, if anything, "editorial bias" facilitates more competition because it creates an opening in the market for competitors to service those who have a problem with the existing options. Still, if you believe a public commons on the internet is something that is necessary then the solution is to have the government fund a literal public commons social media site that automatically inherits all the strengths of the vision of free-speech enshrined in the constitution. Problem solved...

Except not, because the unspoken goal is to co-opt the audiences that these big tech businesses have invested billions in building and maintaining. Yet, these websites do not even "own" their users, all of whom capriciously interact with a multitude of different websites based on their various interests with a tendency to migrate to different communities as abruptly as the seasons change.

Politicians turning social media sites into publication houses holding them accountable for content on their platforms. Politicians can now control the narrative by penalizing social media sites for non compliance. Social media sites have their moats widen.

Is Twitter down? I don’t know where to look to check if everyone can see if Twitter is down...

Are you using Firefox? There's been a bug affecting Twitter the past few days.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1665368

No it really was down it turns out: https://status.twitterstat.us/pages/history/564314ae3309c22c...

It’s amazing the timing of this coming out just before the election isn’t it. So so unlucky!

Luck has nothing to do with it.

Free lie amplifiers cause more harm than responsibly “vetting” and filtering blatant lies.

Who cares, the censoring ended up spreading the story. If you are all so unbiased, why can't you just read both sides of the story - it is not like the article has disappeared from the internet...

because we do not want corporations claiming protections that they do not deserve.

Editorializing content by twitter's own employees, or by crowd-sourcing, is still editorializing.

So Twitter and FB, HN and others are publishers, not platforms.

Claiming legal shields that apply to platforms, therefore, is not legal.

This is like claiming taxable deduction of a charity, while being a for-profit-business.

Replace "Hunter Biden" with "Donald Trump Jr".

Under that circumstance, does Twitter & FB censor the story?

Not a single mention of these leaks on the CNN homepage

In the first post about this, people were like, how come they didn't do this to the Democrats in 2016.. Uhhh because they were not taking ANY aggressive actions in 2016 against anyone, that's why we are here. They are trying to correct a wrong. I applaud them for trying.

Also it's unfair to say they are doing this for political favoritism. Democratic politicians are the loudest ones calling for their breakup, ie. Bernie, AOC, Warren.

Reading this story without understanding the entire political landscape is as dangerous as the misinformation itself.

> Democratic politicians are the loudest ones calling for their breakup, ie. Bernie, AOC, Warren.

Incidents like this may make Republicans a lot more interested in breaking up Facebook and Twitter...

If the populace as a whole thinks large corporations have too much power and want to spread the power out more, that’s certainly a coherent position. Run your email servers and lobby for anti-trust suits. The internet can certainly support a distributed model.

Well, I was thinking of it more as politicians playing politics than as them caring about what the populace as a whole thinks.

But certainly we can handle a distributed model. There's plenty of people who think it would work better (socially, not just technically).

Instead of blaming fake news and misinformation for the 2016 elections outcome, maybe the Democrats should look themselves in the mirror.

I have yet to see a clear decisive causation link between the Russian interference (e.g. bot farms) and the outcome of the election. Of course there was interference, nobody denies it. But show me that these trolls swayed the election. There is none.

Is there a word for the typical arguments that you see where there are 100 false premises and to even make your case you have to dismantle each one?

The Russia conspiracy theory is laden with these. So many conversations are very tedious because of the number of falsehoods you have to break down before you make any progress. Many folks seem to accept it as a given that troll farms were successful. The posts themselves are laughable.

Gish gallop comes close https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

> Instead of blaming fake news and misinformation for the 2016 elections outcome, maybe the Democrats should look themselves in the mirror.

Uh, that's not what left-leaning people are blaming the election results on. That's what right-leaning people claim left-leaning people blamed it on.

Left-leaning people blame the election result on racism, sexism, xenophobia, and intolerance. Donald J. "Grab 'em by the pussy" / "look at my large hands" / "birther in chief" / "interrupting cow" Trump is the direct result of the hatred that has been pouring out of talk radio and Fox News for the last several decades.

> Democratic politicians are the loudest ones calling for their breakup, ie. Bernie, AOC, Warren.

Censoring Bernie's/AOC's political rivals (carrot) could be a better move to avoid being broken up than punching back directly (stick) which may only motive them further.

Could someone explain, from Twitter's perspective, how reading data from a legally obtained hard drive constitutes "hacking"?

It doesn't. This is a pure excuse and it's a sad one. The NY Times posted financial information, which is actually illegal for whoever leaked it to divulge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVheQQ2sNM0

The tax leak was a big nothing burger too. If you read any accounts blog looking at the leaked information, nothing was really out of the ordinary for big real estate people. Did Trump use a lot of loopholes to avoid taxes? Yes, but everyone who makes over a million a year pays people to do this.

The Hunger Biden allegations are much much more serious. We're talking about a family member who was allegedly involved in key meetings with foreign states.

Bias is demonstrated with privileged accounts. Get rid of the privileged accounts would be a good way to take care of the issue.

Please explain Twitter's view on the following:

I don't care about what is in the article. The NYPost is the #3 newspaper in the US. This story is not from Guccifer 2.0. If NYPost publishes something, it is shareable. It is not up to Twitter to "re-edit" major news sources. If they start doing that, they are a "publisher" and no longer a "platform."

David Foster Wallace on “Politically Correct English” in the essay, “Authority and American Usage” (particularly note the sentence on censorship):

“ There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact--in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself--of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were. Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed using taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth, I would be delighted to watch PC progressives spend their time and energy arguing over whether a poor person should be described as "low-income" or "economically disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous" rather than constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates. [...] In other words, PCE acts as a form of censorship, and censorship always serves the status quo.”

> However, it is highly unusual for an article published by one of the mainstream popular newspapers to be treated in this way.

BBC coverage routinely, and correctly, classifies publications like the Daily Mail as tabloids - yet the NY Post is a "mainstream newspaper"? That's inconsistent.

> It did not provide evidence that the meeting ever took place, and the Biden election campaign says it did not.

This conflicts w/ a report by Politico:

> Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory.

I wonder if Twitter is also going to block links to this BBC article...

Twitter: "The policy, established in 2018, prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization"

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1316525307441147907...

And yet, there is information all over twitter about the presidents tax returns, which were illegally obtained.

Twitter did not censor the Ayatollah's tweets about genocide of Israeli people.

Twitter did not censor illegally leaked classified information in many instances.

The Steele Dossier was a collection of unvetted opposition research, which has since been shown to have no basis in reality. When will twitter block this misinformation?

So now, just before an election, we're supposed to believe that they're not acting in a partisan way?

This tempest in a teapot is why I am an advocate for RSS. Why do people depend on Twitter or FB for their news? Curate your own news feed with RSS. Read widely, read things that challenge your belief systems, pick quality reporting. If the NY post is your jam spend 2 seconds actually setting up an RSS feed for their site, Reggie their reporting, and click through to read about Hunter Biden.

I hate misinformation strategy and I think it's nasty. But, I don't support censorship of any kind. We should find a better solution to fight misinformation. Perhaps the law system should hold politicians and their campaigns accountable for their lies. Currently it seems just an effective tactic that has no penalty.

The only thing worse than writing unit tests is writing tests for destroying free speech.

TLDR: Twitter and Facebook regulating platforms causes more backlash, this time from Murdoch linked sewer press.

There have been some comments here about censorship and I think they are coming from a good place. However, I really think people are only looking at things from their perspective. I think a lot of people here are skeptical in a healthy way and can use inference to figure out if something written on the internet is truthful and correctly framed. A lot of people do not have those skills. I think these platforms need some form of censorship because clearly people are taking things they read randomly as fact and it's clearly having a damaging effect on society (see qanon). This specific instance definitely straddles the line between necessary/unnecessary removal (I think the content should be published) but let's please not act like this is the norm. It's an outlier. People are abusing these platforms to spread hateful and dangerous ideas and it's working because most people aren't internet literate.

It is scary to see this (my parents lived through communist Romania), but I think to act like a lot censorship/removal of content on these platforms is unjustified is clearly disingenuous.

Forget Twitter and Facebook bias, I'm here for the confirmation bias.

Reading so many comments here quoting the Biden campaign that the meeting did not appear on the official schedule and therefore the story is complete debunked.

At this point I don't even know what to say honestly.

That wording is the main reason I think it’s true (though other info points to it being false).

Why wouldn’t Biden just simply deny the story if the meeting never took place?

The campaign's original response was the nonsense about the official schedule. This politico reporter managed a better response:

"Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory. Pozharskyi did not respond to a request for comment."

Isn't it amazing? Speculative past tense! "Would have been"!

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lash...

The United States 2020: All the downsides of Chinese censorship with none of the upsides of 18,000 miles of high speed rail, a peaceful society, and a growing economy because neither party is competent.

I miss the internet being a libertarian place. Now it just sucks.

Ignore the NYPost for the moment.

A US government website put the details on their website. Twitter is now blocking the US government webpage hosting the details. They are blocking actual politicians linking these details. https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/13167418079595724...

Worse yet, they have highlighted the exact opposite story. They are featuring washington post who are calling it false.

https://twitter.com/i/events/1316398754883272704

I'm not an American. Any Americans want to weigh in on your views of this?

Well, if it is false, then they are performing the stated goal of stopping the spread of “fake news”, which need not discriminate on whether the entity pushing it is associated with a government or not. Whether or not I want Twitter to be an arbiter of truth, some very basic research does seem to make it seem this story is a bit on the order of a conspiracy theory.

Just out of curiosity, what is your political persuasion? Do you tend to lean more democrat or republican?

>which need not discriminate on whether the entity pushing it is associated with a government or not.

I was ignoring the NYPost, to judge action taken by Twitter. Twitter should never ever censor a government website regardless for what it says.

>Whether or not I want Twitter to be an arbiter of truth, some very basic research does seem to make it seem this story is a bit on the order of a conspiracy theory.

Do you want Twitter to be the arbiter of truth?

My usual source of Democrat/Left news is Msnbc. For whatever reason they are not covering the story at all.

Can enlighten me on why it seems to be a conspiracy theory?

The "arbiter of truth" argument is weak. I want the people at Twitter and other platforms to be able to make decisions about whether something is a fact or misinformation.

If they get it wrong, fine. We can use other platforms if we don't like the decisions one makes. But I'm tired of the idea that they should NEVER be able to even try to recognize the difference between truth and lies.

> But I'm tired of the idea that they should NEVER be able to even try to recognize the difference between truth and lies.

But that's not what they are doing, is it? They are recognizing the difference between potential truths that would benefit whomever they are politically aligned with from potential truths that would benefit whomever they aren't politically aligned with.

They don't ask for truth, proof or anything similar, they ask for consequences, and whether those consequences appear to be good for their political agenda.

There’s a photo of Hunter Biden with a crack pipe in his mouth, and emails discussing his father while he was vice president and the exchange of money. That’s not a conspiracy theory.

Follow up. Twitter has come out saying they blocked this because of personal identifying information.

Not because it's false, fake, or a conspiracy.

Which is odd, since they've also made definitive claims that they blocked it because it's "hacked" and yet more definitive claims that they blocked it because it's "leaked". They can't even get their story straight; and with their audience who will support their every move, they don't need to.

If they are blocking it because it was "leaked" why did they not have as similar stand on Trump's taxes? That one was actually illegal to leak. They don't have a good excuse for what appears to be a wholly partisan action.

Would not be the first time the US government has transparently tried to lie about and smear families of government critics.

>Would not be the first time the US government has transparently tried to lie about and smear families of government critics.

While the leak is obviously timed to directly impact the election. They no doubt have been sitting on the information for months or longer.

What do you think about Twitter outright censoring the entire subject? It only makes me want to know more.

I know the actors who advanced the theory into the public sphere, and I'm familiar with their past work. I'm content drawing my own assumptions about their bad faith.

Note that the link you posted does not support your claim that twitter is blocking it - it shows a warning before posting but allows one to continue and post the link.

I have been pretty vocal about being against censorship from social media companies. But with the stakes being as high as they are this close to an election (not just this particular election, but any election in general), I see no problem with social media companies deciding they will not be a party to the spread of misinformation intended to sway the election.

These companies are not neutral communication platforms; they have no duty to neutrality. Although I agree they should remain neutral as much as reasonable, drawing the line at election manipulation is perfectly reasonable and consistent.

With the stakes being as high as they are, wouldn’t we want to know if there’s a crumb of truth to the allegations? A President beholden to shady foreign actors doesn’t sound like a good idea. Likewise if it’s false then let that come out.

The bigger problem is that journalists/newspapers are no longer the arbiters of truth, and instead the distributors are.

>With the stakes being as high as they are, wouldn’t we want to know if there’s a crumb of truth to the allegations?

Sure, but this will not be adjudicated on twitter. Letting the unverified and extremely suspicious story spread on twitter does nothing to bring us closer to the truth. On the contrary, the truth is harmed by the unchecked spread of misinformation because the truth doesn't have the same viral quality as lies.

> Sure, but this will not be adjudicated on twitter.

I agree with this, but I think Facebook & Twitter shot themselves in the foot by allowing rampant & salacious accusatory headlines to run across their platform unhindered during the past 4 years. There are numerous examples from alleged pee tapes to collusion, and general he said she said.

That's the issue I see at least.

I agree with that. But the issue is how do you stop people from talking about an alleged pee tape compared to stopping the spread of a specific story from a handful of sources. These are two very different problems. So I have sympathy for the position they are in and the difficulty in being consistent with their policies given the vast range of ways manipulative information can be spread.

Super weird, was suddenly downvoted on both comments twice, but anyways

> So I have sympathy for the position they are in and the difficulty in being consistent with their policies given the vast range of ways manipulative information can be spread.

I think the true test will be how this is held up in the future. Of course we're in the middle of an insane political divide, but eventually we'll be past it, and next time there will be new candidates, and each time beyond that. So the litmus test will be whether the rules are fair and applied equally as time goes on.

Is it meaningful whether the story is true or not? The existence of Trump's presidency says Americans don't care about corruption or whether the president is beholden to shady foreign actors. Maybe that's a good argument for the natural born citizen ship requirement to be removed from the presidency?

If there was a crumb of truth you'd get to see the raw emails with DKIM signatures that a novice sysadmin could confirm in 15 minutes. At least that would prove they aren't a total fabrication that was typed up in Word.

The entire purpose of a campaign is to manipulate the outcome of an election. A rally manipulates the outcome, as does a debate. As does a news article that raises question about one of the candidate's integrity.

No. "Manipulate" in this context carries the connotation of unscrupulous control. The purpose of a campaign is to demonstrate to voters that you're the best person for the job. There is no need for "manipulation" to accomplish this. Manipulation is used to convince people to vote for you despite the truth.

That's also inaccurate. The purpose of a campaign is to ensure that more people vote for you than anyone else.

Convincing people you're the best person for the job is only one approach. Another approach is to convince people that don't like you to not vote, or to split their vote across multiple candidates.

If agree that the manipulation happens outside of the campaign. Once you've won, you can choose who gets to vote in the next election, whether they are allowed to vote at all, or if their vote counts in your next campaign vs somebody elses'

Eg. Gerrymandering, allowing/disallowing felons votes (and moving more people in/out of felon status), adding/removing rules on how voting is done etc

If the US government wants to they could host their own ActivityPub[0] compliant application and do whatever it wants from its server infrastructure.

The technology exists for the public sector to disentangle itself from these commercial platforms. I don't know why pols and journos are so blind to this.

[0] This is a W3C Recommendation -- a protocol, by the words of Wikipedia that is in "the most mature stage of development. At this point, the standard has undergone extensive review and testing, under both theoretical and practical conditions. The standard is now endorsed by the W3C, indicating its readiness for deployment to the public, and encouraging more widespread support among implementors and authors." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium#W3C_...

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1].

The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition that prevented him from actually seeing who dropped off the laptop but that he believed it to be Hunter Biden’s because of a sticker related to the Beau Biden Foundation that was on it." [1].

Then, it gets passed off to Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani back at the start of the year when Guiliani is already trying to get Ukraine to stir up a story on Hunter Biden. They then sit on it for most of the year and release it 20 days before the election.

Something like this, even as absurd as it is, will take weeks to thoroughly debunk. Meanwhile, people are literally in lines voting and stuff like this has an effect. That's probably why it was released right now, because even though it's most likely false, by the time it has flown around the internet unimpeded the damage will have already been done.

[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...

Doesn't matter if the story reeks or not. This is about censorship and even application of "community standards."

Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign.

Also, your criteria for this story to reek shows your bias. It's not like Joe Biden himself bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired with the threat of holding back a billion dollars. It's on video, just Google it. And Hunter Biden is an admitted drug addict. So nothing that has been exposed from that laptop reeks too much.

You want to say Hunter was set up? Okay, I'll go down that rabbit hole, but to say this is all false? Well, again, your bias is showing.

> Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign.

Of course not. It's selective interference. They're just getting more brazen about it as we get closer to election day.

Also telling is that they have a pinned story at the top of the empty search page with the link titled, "Joe Biden did not push out a Ukrainian prosecutor for investigating his son, The Washington Post reports"

EDIT: Here's a link showing the WaPo headline that Twitter is adding: https://twitter.com/RepLeeZeldin/status/1316523575373893632

Worth noting is that WP have officially endorsed Biden.

I'm sure nobody saw that coming!

You don't get to jump up and down and claim that corporations should have the same rights as citizens and then turn around and say they don't have a right to control what they own.

Literally the same thing that happened with the FBI announcing that they were "reopening" the Clinton investigation right before the election and then promptly deciding that they found nothing afterwards.

History might not repeat, but it does rhyme.

So? Other fake stories are certainly not censored in this manner. To demand the White House press secretary delete a tweet? To censor the U.S. House Judiciary Committee? I mean all parties hold their hot stories to close to the election for the greatest impact, but Twitter is certainly not even trying to appear partisan at this moment. It's quite clear this is not "hacked information", and if it wore, then it would be also an admission of guilt from Hunter Biden.

> So? Other fake stories are certainly not censored in this manner. To demand the White House press secretary delete a tweet?

Frankly, they should do this much more when officials lie (which the current administration has demonstrably done ad infinitum for four years). There's no reason at all for them to help officials lie about important matters.

As a private platform, it's certainly a matter of whether or not they are helping you do something rather than whether or not they are preventing you from doing something. If we want a reliable avenue for public communication, Silicon Valley ain't gonna give it to us, and they shouldn't.

It would be another thing to prevent people from stating that someone else had said something (given that the statement did actually happen). Sometimes, Twitter does block all posts that even mention a topic. This is definitely a bad approach, and I think they do tend to rectify it when this happens, but they still screw it up pretty often.

I think we're seeing Twitter and Facebook draw a line in the sand about behaviors that cause damage. Note that Twitter and Facebook removed comments hoping for the worst when the president was diagnosed with Covid which they hadn't done for AOC or other liberals who were receiving death threats.

Things are changing, I don't think we can point to prior behavior of these companies as the line they're going to hold in the future.

> It’s quite clear this is not “hacked information”

Setting aside the speculation at the end, this summarizes the issues with the story: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/14/suspect-provenance-of-hunt...

> Something like this, even as absurd as it is, will take weeks to thoroughly debunk.

It's hard to learn when you've already made up your mind.

The media has been pedaling the Russian collusion story for 4 years and you don't seem to care because it fits your priors and political agenda. The bigger lesson here is that everybody is ready to accept censorship as long as they are not bearing the (immediate) costs of it.

Well, multiple members of the Trump campaign have literally pleaded guilty to lying about involvement with Russia; that story does have that going for it :)

You sir are the problem.

Lol. Although I guess that’s true in a “not letting Trumpers forget he is a Russian stooge” kind of sense.

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. We're trying for curious conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Telling the truth is a problem? What times we live in!

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. They're tedious and we're trying for curious conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You're right. Sorry dang!

Appreciated!

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines.

If you don't want to be banned, read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html over, and you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

You'd think that after 4 years of intense scrutiny by the media, with a 2-year Special Counsel Investigation, people would finally let this go. If you don't see the parallel between this pipe dream and the QAnons of the world, I can't help you.

Well, it doesn’t help that the “infamous dossier” literally states that a sitting President can’t be charged for the crimes that were investigated. And the author explicitly stated that he did not find Trump or his campaign innocent of the described crimes.

You don't have to be found innocent of the crimes...you are presumed innocent until proven guilty (except in the court of public opinion).

Note: this opinion is independent of the current president, and I'm not stating any opinion on President Trump's conduct.

This seems like a really bad standard to apply to the president. I'd argue that morally there are two relevant factors when it comes to finding someone guilty: the damage that would be done to others by failing to punish the perpetrator, and the damage that would be done to the alleged perpetrator by punishing them. We choose different standards depending on those two factors. For example, in civil cases, someone specific has lost something and someone else has gained at their expense. And you're not seeking to imprison someone, but to take away some of their wealth. So we pick a standard of evidence (preponderance of the evidence) that's lower than in criminal cases (with a very high injury to the perpetrator and typically lower injury to the community).

In contrast, an impeachment is not a prison sentence. It would injure a president only insofar as that president would no longer keep the most prestigious title and position of power in American society. And failing to impeach for serious corruption or crimes (say, if a president were conspiring with China to weaken America's standing overseas) could be catastrophic. So I think a much weaker presumption of innocence is in order.

We had like what? 6 congressional committees over finding Mr. Ben Ghazi for years? And what, we can't have our own go at it?

If you're talking about Flynn, he was entrapped by the FBI, his lies weren't material, his lawyer had a conflict of interest, when his new lawyer uncovered all of that in discovery, the prosecutor moved to dismiss (because they had committed misconduct), Sullivan, in AN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE, appointed his own Amicus to say they couldn't dismiss the case.

Flynn was then charged for lying when he plead guilty, because ht wasn't actually guilty. Seriously. This is a Kafka trap.

On top of that, it's now clear Sullivan was getting e-mail, exparte, and ENTERING THEM into evidence!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFMk48KA608

Exactly all the sheep follow and believe what their side says.

To me from pizzaGate to RussiaGate to the impeachment to this Hunter Biden thing is all junk ... arbitrary distractions to the issues that are important ... the economy, healthcare, equality, etc.

Each side will do whatever it takes/strategy to try and win and too many sheep follow along/get soaked up in the soap opera drama.

For me it's all transparent and tiresome!

I'm not American, but the same thing is happening in many countries. A stable country where the citizens trust the government and judicial systems is resistant to corruption. If you can destabilize those countries by spreading lies, hate, disinformation, etc. there's an opportunity for the most corrupt morally bankrupt scumbags on the planet to come in and seize control of important assets and infrastructure.

Just watch closely for a while and you'll see it happening everywhere. There are lies and misinformation and hate and fear directed _everywhere_ no matter what "side" you're on and the volume of it is massive. Then the media and influencers and regular people amplify it and spread it and debate it until they all hate each other and don't trust anyone.

It's working too. America is imploding. The UK got duped into Brexit. Several countries have a growing following of citizens that think immigrants and minorities are the cause of their misfortune even though those tend to be vulnerable groups that are exploited the most. Cancel culture is dialed up to 11. It's crazy and scary.

There's a conflation of issues whenever someone comes along claiming the "Russia collusion" story is fake news. Russia did meddle in the election and did hack the DNC. Russia also had close ties to high level members of the Trump campaign. It is not reasonable to dispute these facts. The question of whether Trump personally colluded with Russia is in doubt. But I don't see this specific claim made much at all from legitimate news organizations. The dishonesty is how people want to cast doubt on Russia's efforts to elect Trump by conflating it with the issue of whether Trump personally colluded with Russia.

> But I don't see this specific claim made much at all from legitimate news organizations.

You really missed all of 2017-2018. My wife is a never-Trumper and this issue got her to tune into Rachel Maddow and all the podcasts and the idea that the collusion was two-sided and went to the highest levels in the Trump campaign was pervasive.

See: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russ...

Yeah, I meant to add 'recently', as in after the Mueller report didn't find any specific evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia.

The evidence that there was some kind of attempted coordination between the Trump campaign and various Russian individuals is actually stronger than you give credit for. I feel like you didn't actually read the Special Counsel report.

"The media has...", really? There's no coordinated media, there are several media corporations (like Twitter, BBC, News Corp (NY Post owner)) with their own bias and their own audience.

>there's no coordinated media

Ahem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=x6U2Un5kEdI

Yes, it's sketchy. I'd rate it as slightly more plausible than the gang rape allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, which Twitter had no problem with.

Unlike the Kavanaugh accusations, no one has yet testified under oath to Congress to any of this.

Did you see the photos?

A modern macbook pro has a T2 security chip and disk encryption on by default. It's possible that a random repair shop owner could read your emails if you turn off disk encryption or disable password auth, but that's even more far fetched.

edited It seems this particular mac doesn't have the T2 chip. It would still have disk encryption on by default.

I thought of this. The serial number of the laptop is included in the grand jury summons docs released by the New York Post. The serial number can be used to lookup the model. It was a mid-2017 macbook pro, the T2 chip started shipping in 2018 models.

> even though it's most likely false, by the time it has flown around the internet unimpeded the damage will have already been done.

"A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots." — Mark Twain

Probably an FBI agent that dropped it off. Could even be a copy of the one they have. There's a lot of people that would be motivated to leak something like this, especially since Trump got impeached over this.

Anyway, would not invalidate the story, just because of the way it was leaked.

And it is Twitter and Facebook’s role to censor it? I don’t remember appointing these guys are the official fact-checkers.

1. That the FBI subpoenaed the laptop is sort of interesting. That usually requires a grand jury, doesn't it? But this is really weird:

>During the subsequent summer and fall, Mac Isaac said he became alarmed after browsing through the computer's files. He claims he then spoke with an associate more versed than him in the law and in current events.

>That unnamed person then contacted the FBI, Mac Isaac said.

>Federal investigators from Wilmington and Baltimore then subpoenaed the laptop in December, Mac Isaac said.

>Shortly after, they called Mac Isaac asking him to assist them, technically, in viewing the files on the damaged hard drive, he said.

>Mac Isaac admitted that the request raised his own suspicion, given that the FBI has its own technical staff.

2. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing a reputable shop would be doing with someone's property (poking around inside, sending it to Giuliani). Could it have violated the law?

3. The stories tell what we already knew: Hunter tried to cash in on his dad, while living the loser life of an addict. Won't change my vote.

Racists will do what they are wont to do.

racists?

lol the world we are in now...

I honestly was just trying to understand what the person was trying to get across.

And, soon after:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/feds-exam...

>Federal investigators are examining whether the emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The story is light on details.

Giuliani said the computer shop guy was a fan of his and given he saw the Biden sticker on the laptop, probably led him to be interested in what was stored on the computer.

An "October surprise". A time-honored tradition in US presidential elections. Done by both sides. In the past, covered by all major news outlets.

Now if Twitter wants to not allow tweeting of October surprises, I suppose that's their business. But if so, block it for both sides.

I also think it's totally counterproductive for them to (try to) do so. Block links to the NY Post article? Great, but then what? Block links to the BBC article? To the HN discussion? To every random blogger who writes up a post about it, with links to the BBC article, the NY Post article, and the HN discussion? Twitter might be able to stay on top of that, but it's going to be hard, it's going to leak, and it's going to look really bad. It's going to give the story far more legs than it otherwise would have had (Streisand effect). It's going to spawn a whole bunch of new conspiracy theories, with Twitter as part of the bad guys. The net effect of all this is not going to be what Twitter wants...

1) Ad hominem

2) Conspiracy theory

3) Lie by omission (it was sent to the FBI in December, he sent a copy to Giuliani)

Your debunking is objectively poor

Giuliani says they have a receipt with Hunter's signature on it

Hunter's lawyer has allegedly emailed the store asking for the laptop back

If those two things can be corroborated and they aren't forgeries, it should dispel all speculation about who dropped it off and who it belonged to.

Here's a list of various hoaxes/leaks/etc. that the big tech social media companies allowed and did not censor, even though they took action in this instance: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax... This list seems like strong proof that the we cannot trust these social media companies to be neutral actors. They shouldn't be given controlling power to the digital public square.

Who thinks any corporation is a neutral actor? And did the government make Twitter popular? The people that use Twitter granted that power as is their right. The people are free to setup decentralized publication systems if that is better. Twitter doesn’t really owe you an explanation of the different standard they use at different times.

Ah but Twitter claims to be a neutral actor [0]. How dare we uphold it to its own standards.

[0]. For the purposes of section 230

For the 500 millionth time, section 230 says absolutely nothing about impartiality. And about moderation all it says is "Do as much as you like, even more than the government requires. You won't be liable."

Seriously, actually go read section 230 instead of relying on Internet commenters to tell you what it is.

To me, "It is the policy of the United States ... to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services" implies impartiality, as does the description of the internet as, among other things, "a forum for a true diversity of political discourse".

Companies that control what information users can receive in order to allow only one side of a political discourse are in opposition to the policies being implemented in section 230.

A provider of information services is not liable for "any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected"

You asked people to read section 230 and you claimed that section 230 says absolutely nothing about impartiality.

I read section 230 and mentioned parts of it that I think are relevant to impartiality. In particular, I don't see how you maximize user control over the information they receive if information providers are going to be partial to one political party. And I don't see how you have forums for a true diversity of political discourse if forums are going to be partial to one political party.

If you can tell me, I would love to know, how do Twitter's actions in this case maximize user control over the information they receive? I don't think they do, I think it is quite the opposite of that, but go ahead and make a case if you have one.

Now it is true that the implementation of section 230 lacks an enforcement mechanism to enforce the policies that it advocates. That's a problem with the law, and it is what some people are advocating that we fix. I agree with those proposals, I would like to see section 230 amended so that companies that don't maximize user control over the information they receive lost section 230 protections. And the same thing for companies that don't allow a true diversity of political discourse.

> I read section 230 and mentioned parts of it that I think are relevant to impartiality.

I don't think the part you highlighted is relevant to impartiality. It sets an aspirational goal of Section 230 and the safe harbor is the means to promote that goal. Without the safe harbor, providers would be forced to strictly police what users post. Smaller providers who aren't able to bear the burden of strict moderation would be forced to shut down entirely. This would have the consequence of reducing overall user access to information.

> I don't see how you maximize user control over the information they receive if information providers are going to be partial to one political party.

By using a different information provider.

> description of the internet as, among other things, "a forum for a true diversity of political discourse".

You said it yourself. The Internet is neutral, according to Section 230. Not individual information providers. If you don't like what one information provider does, go make your own. It's all based on free tools and open standards. No one's stopping you.

Believe me, no one of any political stripe should want to take away ability to moderate Internet forums. It will turn all forums, regardless of political, religious or other affiliation, into spam-filled, unusable messes. That also reduces "user control over the information they receive", since the garbage will drown out anything useful and platforms will have no power to remove it.

>> By using a different information provider.

That doesn't work when network effects are involved. Just like there aren't going to be hundreds of cell phone networks, there aren't going to be hundreds of networks with the reach of Twitter or Facebook.

Any time Twitter or Facebook don't allow certain information to be sent, users have less control over the information they receive.

>> Believe me, no one of any political stripe should want to take away ability to moderate Internet forums. It will turn all forums, regardless of political, religious or other affiliation, into spam-filled, unusable messes

The question is where the moderation happens, at the corporate level or at the user level. If a user who creates a space on a discussion board gets to moderate it, and anyone can create a space on that discussion board, that's perfectly usable and it puts the control in the user's hands.

So now you're demanding companies build specific features (user moderated boards) to accommodate what you think the law should be, regardless of how those companies' products already work?

If the companies actions aren't advancing the stated policies for which the law was enacted, then the law should be strengthened so that it promotes those policies.

Companies currently are acting in ways that are in direct opposition of those policies, so if you believe in those policies, you should want their actions to change.

you can be neutral about this political party or that party and still seeks to encourage truth and goodness and discourage lies and badness, as you see it.

Section 230 has nothing to do with neutrality. Indeed, the whole point of 230 is to make it easier for sites that host user content to not be neutral.

I don’t expect people who are lobbying on behalf of a candidate to be unbiased. They’re clearly not and they admit it.

But if an org is going to fly the flag of neutrality then they’ll get called out for crap like this.

Politically neutral but not neutral on truth or virtue. Also why don’t more of the people not agreeing with Twitter’s use of power push for more decentralized networks?

Presenting lists of things as "evidence" people should or should not trust things is the work of a troll.

While I agree that the liberal-run tech firms are biased against conservative news sources, I think it is only fair to point out that the list you link is compiled and presented by a conservative organisation that has apparently been under criticism for its own approach to covid reporting (see the wiki page; and yes, I think wikipedia seems often liberal-biased), and can not be considered a neutral voice in this particular discussion.

That doesn't mean the list isn't valid; but it can't be assumed it is balanced.

I would encourage folks to resist the urge to put up blinders based on the URL. Particularly where, as here, the source is just collecting publicly-available documents and links. You’re not being asked to trust the author’s synthesis of a bunch of facts. You can check the underlying links yourself. Obviously conservative organizations have more of an incentive to compile this sort of thing. That doesn’t make it in and of itself unreliable.

Also, “conservative” and “liberal” are relative terms. Journalists are vastly more liberal than the public as a whole, so any news outlet that covers things from a middle ground perspective is labeled “conservative.”

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/media-bias-lef...

In an ASU study of financial journalists, people who labeled themselves “very liberal” or “liberal” outnumbered those who labeled themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” 13:1.

I’m not saying that this makes liberal reporters bad, or biased in the sense of willful prejudice. But liberals and conservatives have different assumptions, have different sets of facts they consider salient to different issues, etc. When a liberal reporter covers Sanders’ suggestion of $60,000 minimum teacher pay, the facts that come to mind might be things like how the income gap between teachers and other college-educated professionals is bigger in the US than in other countries. To a conservative, the first thing that might come to mind is that US teachers are already paid well above the OECD average. Both facts are true (American teachers are paid more than British teachers, but American programmers are paid a lot more). These differences inevitably come out in the reporting. Just because an outlet is writing from a conservative point of view doesn’t mean it’s trying to manipulate or deceive people.

I agree with most of that, but wrt "blinders" was careful to word my comment so that people had eyes open...

Yes, I didn’t take your post as encouraging people not to click on the link. But I think people have a tendency to tune out links based on the URL.

This article literally has

>Twitter's technicality is a fig leaf to enable continued control of public discourse by an unelected private industry that is 9-to-1 in the tank for Democrats and can decide what Americans are allowed to know.

in the headline. Yes, thank you, I reject this authors "fact synthesis".

OP isn’t citing it for the top-line conclusion, but for the bulk of the article that collects various references together.

It’s The Federalist. No one needs to read further than the URL to know how separate from reality everything the piece is.

The Federalist is like a conservative version of Mother Jones or HuffPo. Not what I’d consider reliable but it can collect together facts that can be verified that other organizations won’t necessarily put together. For example, there’s an article right now observing that, while we’ve had a Supreme Court with a majority of Republican appointees for 50 years, for a lot of that time it’s been appointees confirmed by a Democratic Senate. (Democrats held the Senate almost without any gap from 1936-1982.) So candidates that ended up getting wobbly like Souter and Stevens were compromise candidates. The NYT just isn’t going to highlight facts like that.

>You’re not being asked to trust the author’s synthesis of a bunch of facts. You can check the underlying links yourself.

This argument doesn't work in this specific instance because for most of the items on the list the only links are to other articles by The Federalist.

You can look at the source for each link included in the list sure, but how to I find the content they haven't included in the list? The unreliable part is verifying whether the sample provided is an accurate representation of the population

> digital public square

I don't know if you know this or not, but the technology exists for anyone to participate in a "digital public square" without use of the incumbent services (Facebook, Twitter, et cetera).

These services are not the digital public square. They are private spaces (like a shopping mall.) it would be wholly incorrect to make that assumption.

The technology may well exist, but is it being used by a sufficient amount of people?

Just like if all people happen to congregate in a private mall for one reason or another, if someone's excluded from that mall it doesn't matter all that much that there are public parks where anyone can go if no one actually goes there.

> but is it being used by a sufficient amount of people?

yes, it is. It's a pretty healthy and vibrant ecosystem (I'm referring to the W3C ActivityPub ecosystem here because I didn't mention it in the grandparent comment)

While I think that it would be great for people to use decentralized alternatives to FB and Twitter, I think that at least as of today they are very, very far from having the same kind of reach, despite the ecosystem being healthy and vibrant.

So again, even though I think that we as a society would gain a lot from using these technologies, in the year 2020 they really don't have the same "public square" effect that FB and Twitter have, simply because most "regular" people (as in "not in tech") have probably never even heard of them, whereas everybody and their grandma is on Facebook.

Also, the fact that FB and Twitter aggressively attempt to bring people to their platforms likely blurs the line between them being a private venue or a public square.

At the shopping mall they dont hand out as much Dopamine, as FB and Twitter have.

People don't even realize what is going on. The addicts are getting cut of from their favorite drug. A drug that has conditioned their behavior for 10-15 years.

FB and Twitter, every time they make these moves all over the world, need to check out how good ol Alex Jones is doing. Cause thats where a lot of ppl who get cut off will be in a year or two.

Funny that you mention public squares vs shopping malls. In many places in the US the shopping malls have replaced the public squares and stores.

Maybe shopping mall alleys should be considered public space instead.

Censorship is a can of worms. If you do it for one side, you have to do it for the other side as well. Or don't do it at all.

It's not so much that I'm against censorship. It's more that I don't believe it can be implemented successfully.

"Politicians who value privileges above principles soon lose both" --Eisenhower

This list seems like strong proof that the we cannot trust these social media companies to be neutral actors. They shouldn't be given controlling power to the digital public square.

Censorship is when the government, not private enterprises, stifle speech. When it a private entity, it’s called free market.

This is a difficult concept for whiners to accept.

Actually, the title refers to it as "bias" rather than "censorship". "free market" is a larger concept than "bias", although you can be biased while still operating within the context of a free market. Still, censorship doesn't have anything to do with the government, although the U.S. explicitly forbids government censorship.

You mean bias like Rush Limbaugh or FoxNews bias? Where other ideas are not only never presented, they are openly mocked?

And that happens mind you, on the PUBLICLY OWNED airwaves and spectrum....

"airwaves and spectrum.... "

If we really start considering media, a lot of taxpayer money worldwide went to broadband Internet infrastructure, so Twitter and friends do not play on a completely private field either.

That’s literally not the definition of censorship: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship

Otherwise the phrase “government censorship” would be redundant. And that’s why the Hollywood Production Codes were a kind of censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code

And the idea that criticizing censorship when private organizations do it is “whining” is quite odd. Not everything bad is illegal. Lots of people criticized the Hollywood Production Codes as bad censorship, even though it was voluntary. Except back then it was liberals complaining that the Hollywood companies that controlled distribution were using their power to entrench conservative ideas and suppress liberal ones: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/17/cens-m17.html

You do realize that the literal meaning and the legal meaning are two separate things, right?

Censorship in a privately owned entity is 100% legal. As is bias...

rayiner answered you decisively and now you're just repeating part of his point.

I thought you said private entities can't censor? Now you're saying they can, but it's legal. So which is it?

They obviously can choose what content they choose to host and display. That is their right as long as it is not discriminatory or in violation of US law. While that is the literal definition of censorship, the issue is not about a free market is it? Nope. Is about the Right whining that their hate is not allowed to be amplified, hence they call it censorship. They, not me, are the ones stating that this is a free speech issue. I state it is not. Explicitly not.

Its a really simple concept. I am surprised you dont understand.

"Is about the Right whining that their hate is not allowed to be amplified, hence they call it censorship."

I kinda anticipated Twitter and FBs actions vs. "hate speak" would come down to this. The extremists were never the target they were just the excuse.

No one ever stopped people from making the films, they only disallowed the distribution and showings via their operations. The Gov, banning a film (porn)was censorship by the Gov and thus was struck down by the Warren court. But you know that right?

All the crazy stuff about Trump is true and all the crazy stuff about Biden all appears to be made up by the Trump/GOP camp.

So we don't have an apples to apples comparison

Why is everyone accepting the unstated assumption: that a child's actions (if the dubious allegations were true) should reflect on the parent?

Corruption of blood is even prohibited by the Constitution and for good reason.

Eve if Hunter Biden did something wrong that doesn't really have anything to do with Joe Biden. There also isn't even a tiny hint that Joe Biden's position on Russia vs Ukraine has changed at any point.

Is Trump liable for everything his kids say and do? Or the obvious influence peddling they're doing right now?

The whole premise of this is to smear someone by familial association. So in that light it's garbage from the start. In my mind the connection to Giuliani makes it even more likely to be entirely fabricated, but taken at face value it's a worthless conspiracy theory story clearly dropped at the last minute to attempt to sway the election.

I don't understand why this is so controversial.

You cannot reveal personal details of someone on Twitter (email, phone number etc.) The article contained unreacted personal info so should be blocked.

You also cannot link directly to hacked/obtained without consent material on twitter. The article contained screenshot of the material so should be blocked.

You CAN link to material that discusses hacked/obtained without consent material on Twitter as long as it does not contain the material. eg. Trump Tax Return story by NYT.

This is a reasonable enough comment, but adding it four times into the thread makes it spam. Please delete some of the copies.

Having a bunch of replies on the thread that don't bother to read the terms of use or the explanation of the ban is spam as well. Spam fighting spam? Spamalot?

This story, with its --ahem-- questionable provenance and its utter lack of any actual dirt on Joe Biden (as opposed to on Hunter Biden, whom no one already has any illusions about), would be a nothingburger, forgotten after 2 weeks, if not for Twitter and Facebook choosing to die on that hill. And now I guess it won't die down until spring, because even if 90% of media hate Trump, enough of them hate Facebook and/or are worried they're next on the black^H^H^Hocklist. Well played!

Whatever solution the GOP wants needs to also apply to Fox (Faux) News...

Fox News isn't in the business of censoring free speech. But nice try.

Quite simply it's worrying. Social media has become our voice. It's how we communicate to others on nearly every subject. If that medium is heavily biased, our democracy, our freedom, and our very way of life is threatened. Either they stay impartial or they must be regulated.

The fact that they censor everyone including the press secretary so quickly is scary. Like the voice of the president got twitter ban like a commoner with the snap of a finger.

They'd go mask off eventually. Much easier when it's hundreds of small influential 'thought leaders' and other high volume conversation. No on asks twice.

Surprised they went for such a high profile piece (Not that NY Post is high profile, but the accusations are significant and the places that would run such an anti-Biden piece are getting thinner).

And I say that not giving a shit who wins the US election but as someone worried about these unchecked and extremely powerful censorship power we're giving these big firms. The trendline has been very apparent to anyone paying attention, and its not even classically partisan but certainly of a certain ideology.

Most people are pragmatic. Simple, axiomatic principles can be very intellectually appealing (probably more so amongst the STEM-crowd than the general population), if they don't produce good outcomes, they will and should be discarded.

In our field we constantly see languages with stronger intellectual foundations (Haskell, Lisp, Scala, Perl6) constantly lose out market share to pragmatic, practical, messy and oftentimes ugly languages/libraries/tookits etc. We often knowingly choose the latter set knowing full well what their downsides are, because we still come out ahead.

If you're wondering why someone would support Facebook/Twitter/YouTube's recent moves, it really is that simple. Their foundations don't have to be perfect, or even particularly good or fair. They just have to be better the deluge of toxic sludge that's currently overwhelming these systems. That is to say, there is no answer to the Paradox of Tolerance and you don't need an answer. If you feel people are taking advantage of you, you will (and should) crack down, and if you crack down too much eventually people will (and should) rebel.

Haskell loses because it takes 2000 lines just to write a logging statement. Scala loses because you can’t even write a fast for loop. Lisp loses because it disrespects 100 years of math.

I’m exaggerating a bit but not by much.

I don’t get the lisp thing? I thought lisp lost because of lisp weenies and worse (simple) is better as far as writing maintainable code bases?

Instead of writing 1 + 2 as in mathematics, in Lisp you write (+ 1 2). I'm not sure I get the second statement of yours, but personally I find Clojure in particular very inspiring and amazing, if only it had a better syntax...

The Washington Post tried to verify the authenticity of the claims made by the blocked article... and so far they have found ZERO evidence supporting the story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-bi...

This bit, in particular, suggests that the blocked article actually deserves to be blocked:

> The New York Post published PDF printouts of several emails allegedly taken from the laptop, but for the “smoking-gun” email, it shows only a photo made the day before the story was posted, according to Thomas Rid, the author of “Active Measures,” a book on disinformation. “There is no header information, no metadata.” The Washington Post has not been able to independently verify or authenticate these emails, as requests to make the laptop hard drive available for inspection have not been granted.

EDIT: After some thought, I flagged the OP, because the more we upvote or comment on any story about the original blocked article, the more free exposure it gets -- which is exactly what the author of the blocked article wants. I hope the mods delete or hide this thread.

I mean they didn't break the story and it's based on something physical I'd be surprised with those conditions if they could "independently verify" anything in <24 hours.

> There is no header information, no metadata.

It has been a day that the article is online. We'll have these soon enough. Biden hasn't say this email is not real when asked. Which is a better proof than header information which can be faked as email sending can be done from any email to any email.

Thanks for the explanation. I can half-agree, but think the meta-discussion about the role of Twitter and Facebook in shaping the US politics is worthy of discussion even if the NY Post article turns out to be a wholesale fabrication.

You might be interested that I also posted this article [https://blog.erratasec.com/2020/10/yes-we-can-validate-leake...] which talks about the relative ease of validating the emails using GMail's DKIM header. Unlike this one (where I think the first two pages of comments are actually pretty good), that one got very few votes and no discussion.

Thank you for taking the time to respond :-)

Hmmm... I cannot disagree with your reasoning... so I must change my mind. I unflagged and upvoted the OP. I also upvoted your other post. Hopefully this thread won't get too uncivilized!

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