Politics requesting censorship is always partisan.
Extremely general statements are always applicable.
Let's say you have a newspaper spreading misinformation that is hurting an important social institution. What do you do? Close it down? Sue the editor for defamation, then close it down? There must have been precedent.
The idea that the press should be politically neutral is a pretty new one -- historically there were highly partisan newspapers, alongside "impartial" ones.
But I think the lies, etc., were more likely to be litigated on charges of slander, defamation, etc., at least when they were about individuals.
Now they're all about "socialism" or whatever, and unfortunately socialism doesn't have any lawyers.
Later on, once ads became a major source of revenue, most newspapers realized that being completely one sided hurt ad revenue. After all, if you want to advertise your furniture store, don't you want to sell to everyone in your area regardless of their party?
Now with intelligent/micro-targeted ad systems and minimal geographic limitations, those previously "too small to matter" niches are suddenly worldwide and large enough to be a useful segment on their own.. so many organizations can say/do what they want up to the line of defamation/slander protections, if any.
You can say that it's the Democrats who want censorship, but the other side of the coin is that Republicans want to freely spread a false narrative.
1. Try this sushi, it's mostly fresh.
2. Sure, I'll give you a ride, I'm mostly sober.
3. I know what I'm doing, I'm technically a doctor.What I've seen this last election on Facebook is partisan fact checkers hunting for that one bad grain of rice so they can use it to label the whole article as "false" or "partly false" in an effort to protect Biden/Harris. I'm having trouble finding them now because facebook isn't super searchable but I remember thinking a lot of them were really nit-picky, similar to this one from 2018[0]. It got so bad I started seeing various viral memes complaining about it[1]
[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-smash-phon...
(Context: Trump tweeted that "crooked Hillary destroyed her phones with a hammer", Snopes labels his tweet as partly false because Hillary personally didn't destroy her phones with a hammer, her aide did)
And yet, you were able to read on Snopes why they flagged something as "partially true", and you were able to make an informed decision.
When someone says "Hillary Clinton is using private email servers and unauthorized phones," that's technically true, and it sounds really, very bad. But when you learn that previous officials, like Colin Powell, and current officials, like members of the Trump family, did the same thing, then it provides more context, and it makes you wonder just how egregious the original charge is.
The point is, "technically true" things are often intentionally misleading; the fact that something is "technically true" should arouse more suspicion than trust.
I hear you calling out fact checkers that provide insight into why something is flagged true or false, but I don't hear you calling out officials that make misleading "technically true" statements, or totally false statements. What's up with that? Are fact checkers really the root of this problem, or are they a symptom?
YouTube had security camera videos posted by members that showed taking mail in ballots from under the table rather than the counting bins. Stuff like that was called false or inaccurate. I cannot say if this mail in vote did the same across the USA, but it shows that the voting process is flawed that and the Dominion software flipping votes from Trump to Biden by mistake.
These workers announced that they're closing the count for the night and that everyone must leave. You can see them in the video just sitting still not doing anything until everyone leaves. Then when poll watchers leave they spring into action pull out the ballots from under the table and start counting for three more hours.
>state officials told us that the full video shows the supposed “suitcases” were actually standard containers used to secure ballots, and that the ballots in question were opened and prepared for counting earlier in the night in full view of observers.
>On Dec. 5, Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, said in an affidavit that after reviewing the video and conducting interviews, her investigators found “that observers and media were not asked to leave” but “simply left” after they saw workers, whose job was to open the ballots, leave. She said the investigation remains open.
We investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.
The Secretary was DIRECTLY involved in the purchase and deployment of the Dominion machines. He is refusing any signature audits. He is now being sued by GA Legislature members.
Despite what FactCheck dot org says (and how could that possibly not be trustworthy!?) I don’t think a statement from this office is going to sway anyone.
How about this, here is footage from a GA official showing just how ridiculously insecure and awful the dominion software is.
This changed my opinion on the whole mess:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46CAKyyObls&feature=youtu.be
No evidence will sway someone who's accepted one side as truth before hearing all the arguments.
That's a futile affidavit. Where are affidavits from the investigators and the precinct staff members themselves, where they say that observers and media were not asked to leave.
"Covid19 is a lie!1!!" isn't an opinion. It's ignorant non-sense at best, likely malicious, indirect interest-driven misinformation. It absolutely does not deserve the same, attention, platform and range as scientific, or reasonably political debate.
Naive unconditional free speech, "attention communism", if you want lol, is an ignorant and anti-democratic idea. The only reason that hasn't hurt us like this before, was the cost of spreading information effectively, pre-www.
This whole fact obsession has gotten completely out of hand. Presiding over disputed matters of fact is pretty much the core purpose of our entire court system. You can’t just call something a fact and be done with it. What you’ve actually described is a collection of opinions, and then declared them settled facts by referencing some of the people that hold them.
I know people get terribly riled up by politics, but they’re just losing sight of any form of reasonableness. Having an unaccountable central authority decide what’s true and what’s not is literally one of the most canonical forms of dystopia that exists.
How is it still "quite clearly in dispute"?
> Having an unaccountable central authority decide what’s true and what’s not
This part of your comment is highly ironic.
I'm not at all sure why you think my comment is so ironic either, so please feel free to explain.
> Pennsylvania’s top court on Nov. 28 dismissed the challenge, saying that the lawsuit was not filed in a timely manner when the mail-in voting law was first enacted. It threw out a lower court ruling that had ordered the state not to certify the election pending a hearing.
But this is not about widespread fraud, this is about mail-in voting laws.
I don't know what's a reputable website for USA political news, feel free to tell me if I'm reading overly biased junk:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/12/09/nevada-...
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-court-pennsylva...
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/...
> I'm not at all sure why you think my comment is so ironic either, so please feel free to explain.
Trump calling it a win the night of the election is, no matter how you spin it, very close to your "unaccountable central authority" deciding what’s true and what’s not. So your final point seems correct, just pointed in the wrong direction.
> Trump calling it a win the night of the election is, no matter how you spin it, very close to your "unaccountable central authority" deciding what’s true and what’s not.
Your mistake to presume that I am defending Trump really backs my point here. I have made no comments defending him or any of his court action, or public statements, or any action or statements from his allies. I have only made comments in defence of reasonableness and common sense, and against mega-corps like google using their influence to control the internet in a way that suits their political agendas. The merits of his claims will be decided by our justice system, not by Google. But if you’re ok with Google dictating to the internet which sides of a political debate are allowed to exist on the internet, then I guess you and I just have very different values. It's also a bit of a false equivalence, as the president is accountable to both the law and the electorate, opposed to Google, which is accountable to what exactly? Shareholders (theoretically)?
You're the one misrepresenting what I've said. I'm not ok with a corporation "dictating to the internet which sides of a political debate are allowed to exist" and whatever else you're accusing me of. I'm telling you, widespread fraud is not "quite clearly in dispute".
Also, criticizing somebody for something that you think other people are also guilty of isn't Irony. Even if both parties in this matter were equally despicable, that doesn't make either of them right. Your comments highlight a lot of issues we currently have with political tribalism. You're just proving that facts and misdeeds don't matter as long as they have the correct political context.
Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that.
The scary part of this is that elected officials, who were presumably elected by people that thought they were going to protect the freedoms granted to them by the Constitution, and who must take an oath upon taking office to "support and defend the Constitution," sat down and wrote a letter that gleefully trampled all over one of our most fundamental constitutional rights. Since they were successful in this endeavor, it will happen again, on other, more expansive, partisan issues. Down the slippery slope we go.
The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. The only problem is that now we have politicians who believe that those rights should only be extended to those who are on their side. Both sides of the political aisle are acting this way, and it does not bode well for our future as a country.
The premise here is that both sides are just as likely to push misinformation on behalf of their team. The Democrats aren't perfect, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they would engage in the exact same tactics and rhetoric as the GOP if the shoe were on the other foot.
I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.
I just listened to 4 years of CNN, MSNBC, and virtually every other media outlet claiming that the previous election was rigged, with similarly sparse evidence. So yes, not only do I believe that they would, but they have already done it, 24/7, for the last 4 straight years.
What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason.
The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives.
But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.
The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference.
So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.
That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.
It was a well funded and coordinated effort by a nation state. Not a few thousand dollars on bad english ads.
The alleged Russian actions are by themselves criminal. It makes no difference whether they had any impact. An attempted theft is still a crime.
There is no evidence of electoral fraud or whatever nonsense is currently being claimed. It did not happen. It is, in fact, a deliberate lie.
Someone saying stuff on CNN is not reliable information. Are you really going to compare that to the Mueller report?
In fact, what is reliable right now is how courts have been deciding these ridiculous claims. And they’ve all been universally rejected because the claims have no evidence, make no sense, and are basically asking for something that’s actually illegal.
So we are talking about two completely different things. Something that really happened, based on evidence, and something that is a bunch of lies and distortions. That is my point.
And, I’d really encourage you to learn how to better judge things. Or, to stop participating in this anti-democratic bullshit.
After his win in 2016 we had Russia collusion claims about election collusion that is still ongoing, it even led to the Mueller investigation that extended beyond the 2018 election, so yes absolutely the Democrats would do this.
There is much that is puzzling about the judges treatment of this case considering: 1) The FBI agents in charge of the Flynn case wrote a 'case closure memo' on Jan. 4, 2017, concluding he had found "no derogatory" evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. 2) In an extraordinary interview with prosecutors this fall, the FBI agent who led the Flynn case, William Barnett, admitted there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team was obsessed with punishing the president. [2]
And there are a long list of other odd facts about the case that put into question Judge Sullivans extraordinary actions by acting as a prosecutor in this case. [3]
[1] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn...
[2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073...
[3] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
My "favorite" example of this is Carter Page, whose name was raked over the coals for years because a FBI lawyer intentionally altered evidence (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report...) showing that far from being a Russian asset, Page had for years briefed the CIA every time he met with suspicious Russians. (Got to love how the Times describes said altering evidence as a "serious error".) For those who want an actual Russiagate-related indictment and guilty plea by an American, Kevin Clinesmith—said FBI lawyer—is your man.
This partisan dichotomy about all this is extremely hard to credit. For two years we were subjected to Rachel Maddow dropping one “bombshell” after the other about how Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. What was proven in the Mueller Report was a fraction of that, with scant evidence linking Trump himself to wrongdoing.
What’s worse, a story that’s 90% made up or one that’s 100% made up? The latter, obviously, but I have zero sympathy for partisans trying to make hay out of that distinction.
Look at what Democrats said just this year. Nadler asserted that if he wasn’t impeached, Trump would “rig the 2020 election.” They ran with a conspiracy theory that USPS would manipulate mail delivery to delay mail in votes. Numerous outlets ran articles on voting machine security and how easy they are to hack. You don’t think all this primed voters to believe our elections were easily manipulated? If you consistently piss in the pool, it’s fair to complain when someone takes a dump in it. Like yes, I’ll acknowledge it’s not the same. Yes, one is worse! But my sympathy is minimal.
Separate rant: As to Republicans being a “minority party”—Democrats thinking they’re the “silent majority” is a misperception that causes them to overplay their hand. They imagine that if only we had a popular vote, or higher turnout, or whatever, they’d win decisive majorities. We just had an election with mass mail-in voting with historically high turnout and Trump increased his percentage share of the vote from 2016. If you look at the data, Biden’s margin is built on (1) Republican-leaning suburbs in Phoenix, Atlanta, etc. (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/gop-wom...). Mine went +14 for Biden, but +38 for Hogan. (2) the collapse of the third party vote from over 5% to about 2% (https://www.vox.com/21561230/libertarian-party-third-party-2...). And (3) Trump suppressing his own vote by telling his supporters not to vote by mail in an election conducted primarily by mail: https://twitter.com/JustinGrayWSB/status/1328782492913033219...
When you’re the liberal party and you have to cash in Romney Republicans and Gary Johnson voters—while running against Donald Trump of all people—how smug can you possibly be?
It’s also worth looking down ballot. Despite historic turnout and the easiest voting ever, Republicans held Democrats to a razor thin House majority. They’ll finish within a couple of points in the Congressional popular vote. They regularly win the Congressional popular vote outright (in 2016 by a point, in 2014 by 6 points, in 2010 by 8 points). If we had a parliamentary system like other countries, that would allow them to regularly form the cabinet executive branch and select the prime minister.
Also, while I’m ranting, if we had a “popular vote” like France, Clinton never would have won because it would have gone to a run-off with Perot eliminated. And Trump may still have won, in a run-off with Johnson and McMullin eliminated.
How can you possibly say this is mere paranoia in the face of an active, ongoing attempt by both the President and a huge portion of the institutional GOP to do exactly that?
What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason.
The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives.
But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.
The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
If so, the facts around it should be freely discussable like the Russian collusion case was. Censoring the opposition seems fishy and anti-freedom.
And actually, when the facts are discussed in courts of law what we find every time is that there is no evidence of fraud in any meaningful way. And, that the legal arguments being made don’t make any sense and may actually be asking for something illegal.
The question of a private company choosing to censor right wing anti-democratic propaganda (I think that’s a precise description even if it’s an unpalatable one to you) at the urging of some politicians is a different and tricky question.
I think it’s important to note that there have been threats of violence against state-level civil servants and their families. Threats which YouTube videos like the ones we are discussing foment.
But to say it’s not being discussed is just another lie.
Here is the declassified note of the agents in charge of case trying to close it from Jan 4 2017. [2]
[1] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
[2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-chal...
...
> Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.
Is there a word for someone or something that mirrors your sins back at you, but in a grotesquely amplified manner?
Of course it's not clear if Hilary would have won if there was no such interference, but her claim is not nearly as far-fetched as all the baseless crazy batshit stuff being thrown around by republicans nowadays.
I’ll grant you that Clinton’s allegations are less “far-fetched” than Trump’s. But that shouldn’t be the standard! We shouldn’t be trying to draw distinctions over claims that are totally made up and ones that are only mostly made up.
To use a legal analogy, I don’t see political discourse as being something where there should be judges excluding unreliable or prejudicial materials. Information is fair game.
I was against impeachment (I still think it was stupid), because it was a political stunt with no hope of actually removing the president. But just morally, Trump richly deserved investigation. "Where's there's smoke, there's fire", and Trump's campaign and administration put out a burning oil well's worth of smoke. He lost his National Security Advisor to a foreign agent violation within weeks of taking over. Senior members of his campaign coordinated with Julian Assange. I don't think you can pretend like this was all fake.
(Just to calibrate: I also think Clinton should have been impeached).
There is something seriously wrong with the republican party watching the destruction of core values -- I for one will never vote for them again. But I guess folks like me who were life long republicans until Trump are just silly dems.
The fact that Trump has the party on a leash is just insane. Republicans watching idly as he actively subverts all norms of transfer of power and millions choosing to grasp at theories that would be espoused by drunkards on city corners 5 or 6 years ago is insane.
0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but
1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?"
In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts?
2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia.
I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here?
Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3
Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much.
> Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it
She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday.
Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...
As a pragmatic matter, running any party on Not As Bad As The Other Guys™ rules will not earn you respect, at least not outside those who were already voting for you; it's impossible to send virtue signals if they don't meaningfully cost you.
"They have a couple of scenarios that they're looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting, so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the electoral college, on election day."
Bush won Florida in the first machine count. There was an automatic recount, and Bush won again. Gore then proceeded to create a cluster—k by demanding a hand recount of under votes only in counties he had won.
> Bush won the initial count by 1,784 votes, and he was still ahead by 327 votes after the automatic statewide machine recount. Gore then filed “protests,” demanding a hand recount of the ballots in four heavily Democratic counties, only three of which are relevant to the following discussion: Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade. Gore apparently chose these counties for one or both of two reasons. First, to the extent that errors by the counting machines were randomly distributed, Gore could expect to be a net gainer in these most heavily Democratic jurisdictions. Second, the hand recounts would be supervised by local elected officials, and the chances that such officials would be biased in Gore’s favor (or at least not biased in Bush’s favor) would be highest in the most heavily Democratic counties.
It’s a simple trick that leverages the large number of under votes (1-2% of all votes) generated by these punch machines. The machine can’t read cards that aren’t fully punched out, so there is a large pool of potentially discernible but uncounted ballots. If you only recount ballots in counties that went say 2-1 for Gore as the base rate, then when hand counters look at markings on the ballot to identify “voter intent” you’ll get 2 new Gore votes for every new Bush vote. Not only that, but there was some insane maneuvering by Gore to include partial recounts in the results. The Florida Supreme Court found this unconstitutional and ordered a statewide recount. 7 to 2, the Supreme Court found that recount unconstitutional as well. (The Court split 5-4 on what to do with the mess. But people overlook that Gore precipitated the mess, burning a ton of time before the safe harbor deadline, with his partial recount strategy.)
Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.
Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election.
Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: -
"J. Alex Halderman:
By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code.
Miles O’Brien:
And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase.
Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch.
J. Alex Halderman:
I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day."
For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...
Democrats on the House Judiciary committee released a report claiming that claimed Republicans cheated in the Ohio recount: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/something-rotten-o...
A fun thing about the 2004 theories is that they were based mainly on exit polls showing Kerry won. (Bush was ahead by 2 points in the actual vote.) Today we know that exit polls are probably unreliable and may well underestimate conservative votes.
Just to keep this from noodling, I'll ask directly: are you really claiming that the Democrats seriously challenged the results of the 2004 election?
Jerry Nadler is a tool.
There was Russian hacking, — as best we can tell, that’s where the Podesta emails came from. No one serious alleges that they tampered with the vote tallies, but we can credibly say they swung the election.
“Asset” is frustratingly vague word for Democrats to use, but a lot of the collusion narrative has panned out. The Mueller report revealed that the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference, stopping just short of alleging outright collusion.
Meanwhile — basically everything Republicans allege now is laughably false, and many are outright calling for a coup.
https://evidence2020.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/strong-evidenc...
Hillary is still going around claiming they stole the election from her.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...
You're making it sound like a witchhunt but it was in fact extremely fishy.
"The investigation found there were over 100 contacts between Trump campaign advisors and individuals affiliated with the Russian government, before and after the election, but the evidence was insufficient to show an illegal conspiracy."[1]
I'd encourage you to at least read through the Wikipedia articles on the Mueller report before shouting "zero evidence" so loudly.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Russian_interfe...
> The Mueller Report did not find any evidence of collusion, but did find two main efforts by the Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign.
If you read the report, note that they found multiple cases where people were interested in colluding (e.g. the Trump Tower meeting where they wanted to get dirt from some Russian lawyers) but did not find enough evidence proving intent to bring formal charges, in part because the administration was successfully able to prevent testimony and evidence collection. That’s very different from exoneration.
Mueller himself disagreed with this summary, saying "the attorney general had inadequately portrayed their conclusions" and "the Barr letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the findings of the special counsel investigation that he led. "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation""[1]
Causing confusion was, of course, the point. It allowed everyone in the President's orbit to say "See? No collusion", knowing that the media would amplify it. Everyone who was already inclined to believe the President would rest assured that this whole thing was a Democratic witchhunt. And when the real report came out later they would disregard it.
Of course when even the redacted report came out, it had some key differences with the summary that Barr wrote:
"The New York Times reported instances in which the Barr letter omitted information and quoted sentence fragments out of context in ways that significantly altered the findings in the report, including:
Omission of words and a full sentence that twice suggested there was knowing and complicit behavior between the Trump campaign and Russians that stopped short of direct coordination, which may constitute conspiracy."[2]
It wasn't just a politically motivated probe. Just because evidence "beyond reasonable doubt" could not be found doesn't mean the crime never happened. And it certainly doesn't mean looking into it was "pysops" or "political hysteria" or "Trump derangement syndrome".
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Mueller's_react...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report...
Here's Mueller lying to the world to justify a war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDO-kuOGTQ
Dirty tricks and psyops. Fooled entire nations, they just need people to swallow it down and they maintain power.
But at the same time you linked me to an NPR article about the initial summary of Mueller report that said "No collusion", which you believed. But then the actual report came out and it said "Quite possibly collusion" and therefore Mueller's a liar? That's some pretty impressive doublethink.
It's clear no amount of evidence matters to you so I won't try any more.
What makes you so sure you aren't the one being psyops-ed by whichever media source you trust?
You hold diametrically opposing opinions simulataneously ("No collusion!" && "Mueller's a liar!") to fit your image of a charismatic leader. You believe in some amorphous "they" who are silently manipulating everyone behind the scenes. These are all classic signs of being psypops-ed.
Many outside of the US political circus viewed the whole Russiagate affair as a joke, independents who don't have strong adherence to any party can see the farce.
Even some of the most ardent journalists who pushed the collusion narrative admitted that they were not practicing real journalism, they called it 'meta-journalism' I'm not joking. They actually said that they don't have time to check facts and counter narratives need to be spun quickly to combat Trump lies... regardless of facts. (Seth Abramson)
I really don't blame people for being so twisted on this. It was 3 years of nonstop misinformation blaring from every major news outlet. The CIA/FBI officials leaking to the media as anon sources should have been a clue, but not everyone is keen to this.
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're misinformed." - Twain
Who said anything about a typo?
> Many outside of the US political circus viewed the whole Russiagate affair as a joke
"Many" is a weasel word. Who? Why does their opinion matter? Do they have subject matter expertise?
> Even some of the most ardent journalists
More weasel words. What's an "ardent" journalist?
> Seth Abramson
I don't know who that is, so I had to look him up. He's not a journalist. Wikipedia describes him as a "political columnist". The Atlantic, that bastion of lefty liberalness, called him a "conspiracy theorist".[1]
You still haven't addressed my central point. Either the Mueller report is false. Which means saying "the Mueller report says 'No collusion'" is incorrect, but AG Barr tried to say that nonetheless. Or it's true. Which means there quite possibly was collusion and the media attention was warranted.
You seem to simultaneously believe that the Mueller report said "No collusion" and that's true (and therefore the media are idiots), but also that Mueller's a liar and can't be trusted. Which is it?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Abramson#Claims_about_Pre...
You said both of these things. Please explain how they can both be true.
Why would you use quotes when I never said that?
If you didn't imply "Mueller can't be trusted" what did you mean by this comment where you said "Here's Mueller lying to the world": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25381931?
On the other hand, if you agree that Mueller can be trusted please refer to my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25377886 I showed how Mueller disagreed in very strong terms about "no collusion" as a conclusion. And how "no collusion" was the lie (Barr's summary letter) spread widely before the truth (the actual report) could come out.
You're either a troll arguing in bad faith. In which case, I hope you find better things to do with your life. Or you can't see the logical fallacies in your own worldview, which is a sure sign of being brainwashed by your news sources. In that case, I hope you are able to see the truth one day.
Specifically, he demanded recounts of under votes, where the machine hadn’t registered any pick for President. But he did so only in counties where he had won a large majority. Theoretically, this wouldn’t help. Statistically, Bush voters should have been as likely as Gore voters to fail to completely punch a ballot. But by only requesting recounts in counties he had won solidly—I.e. the base rate in the data set heavily favored Gore—newly discerned votes would break in heavily his favor. If he had won the county 2-1, he’d get two newly discernible votes for every one that Bush got.
This was an obvious attempt at cheating. So obvious that the Florida Supreme Court smacked Gore down and ordered a statewide recount. And the Supreme Court agreed 7-2 that recount was still unconstitutional because under votes were being counted using different standards in different counties.
Imagine if Trump had demanded hand recounts of under votes in this election in Wisconsin, but only those votes that were made in person on Election Day. This would be obvious cheating, since the pool of Election Day voters went heavily for Trump to begin with, so newly discernible votes would break for him as well. Gore did the exact same thing. And it would have been a huge news story if the media understood basic Bayesian probability.
Pot meet Kettle.
This is important, because you could get an idea of what has to be done to fix the issues and what repercussions it might have by looking at historical precedence.
The current attempt to steal the election is bound to fail, but it's setting up the GOP playbook for stealing a closer, more plausibly contested presidential election.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...
What if a man comes home, and says to his wife:
“Susan, you didn’t take out the trash!” he says.
“Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your life,” she replies.
Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a copy of The Economist, and say, “Susan, this is not about me. I can’t believe you are doing whataboutism”?
... getting in before the "maybe they've only been married a couple of days and this is the first load of trash" - then how does she know he's never taken the trash out in his life?
I call shenanigans.
A better argument would be to point out that a non partisan motion should gain some Republican support and it has not.
Additionally you could point out that it would be unlikely to gain support from the right due to the current incarnation of right wing politicians tending to support freedom of speech and would be opposed to this action on a partisan basis.
You've never had a constitutional right to a particular platform for your opinions. E.g., if a magazine or newspaper published an opinion that disagreed with yours, you do not have a constitutional right to have your opinion published in that same magazine or newspaper.
Further, one of the big problems here is that YouTube didn't do this of its own accord. Agents of the government - Democratic Senators in this case, who signed the letter in their official capacity - pressured the company into suppressing free speech that they simply didn’t like. That is a clear violation of the Constitution.
Speaking of contracts, when someone sign up for YouTube, they agree to their terms of service, which don’t say “we’re an open platform where opinions of any kind can be published”. They say “YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve Content” and “you understand and agree that there will be times when we make […] changes without notice” and “If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion”.
I don’t want to be pedantic about anything. The terms can say whatever they want - they write them. But regardless of what the TOS say, when you advertise yourself as an open platform for free speech, which YouTube certainly does, it opens you up to liability when you prove not to be that open platform. Further, if they go too far with moderation and begin censoring content over and above clear, previously set guidelines, they can lose their immunity to libel/slander lawsuits under the CDA (Communications Decency Act).
Section 230 (which is essentially the only surviving part of the CDA; the rest was found to be unconstitutional in 1997[0]) gives interactive computer services immunity from civil claims (not just defamation) when removing material that they find objectionable, regardless of whether or not it is constitutionally protected, so long as it is done in good faith. The law is short and unambiguous[1]. There is no provision that says providers lose immunity if they go “above clear, previously set guidelines”. That is some straight made up garbage.
If what you were saying were true (again, it is not!), the “clear, previously set guidelines” are right in YouTube’s Terms. Those Terms explicitly say that they have no obligation to host your content, might change the rules, might remove your stuff, and you’re OK with that. And, even better, the issue of whether or not a provider can lose their S230 immunities through harm due to the reliance on misrepresentation of material fact was adjudicated in Green v America Online[2] and the answer was no! In that case, AOL’s member agreement was clear and binding. YouTube’s member agreement is similarly clear and binding. YouTube cannot lose their immunity in the way you claim.
[0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/whats-name-quite-bit-if-youre-ta...
We aren’t talking about AOL. We are talking about a group of partisan senators pressuring a company that has a de facto monopoly in online video distribution into suppressing free speech for no reason other than “we don’t like it”.
Your analysis, even ignoring the fact that it has nothing to do with the present case, is also entirely incorrect as it relates to my comment. The CDA requires that the removal be “in good faith”. Removals that aren’t in line with “clear, previously set guidelines” can be ruled to not be in good faith. We essentially said the same thing, but you managed to hurl insults at me - saying that my “sources must be garbage” - while you said your version of it. Well done.
Yes, I didn’t reply to that part because I couldn’t prove that a letter from four senators “pressured the company into suppressing free speech”, whereas I could conclusively prove that the claims I did reply to were false.
If you want me to opine on the “senators sending a letter equals government censorship” angle too, fine. It was a pretty typical letter from the senate. They make some claims, they ask some questions. Senators send letters like this often. YouTube had the option to say ‘we won’t commit to that’ and explain why, but they chose not to do that, despite having a pretty bottomless pit of lawyers and PR agents to throw at the problem. They also could easily have suggested that they were making a change due to inappropriate pressure from the senate in the press release, but they did not do that either. Any suggestion to the contrary is speculative at best.
> We aren’t talking about AOL.
You were claiming that YouTube could lose their legal immunity through some estoppel claim, and I gave you the relevant case law which explicitly rejects that interpretation of the law.
> Removals that aren’t in line with “clear, previously set guidelines” can be ruled to not be in good faith.
Please show me a single case where a court has accepted this interpretation of the immunity clause of Section 230. Please show me where in the law it says anything about “clear, previously set guidelines”.
> We are talking about a group of partisan senators pressuring a company that has a de facto monopoly in online video distribution into suppressing free speech for no reason other than “we don’t like it”.
Setting aside how there are actually quite a few places where people can post their videos (Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Periscope, their own $5 VPS, etc.), the letter[0] is actually quite clear on the senators’ concerns, which were not “we don’t like it”:
> These videos seek to undermine our democracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s incoming administration. Moreover, because the current president has not committed to a peaceful transition of power, misinformation and manipulated media content on your platform may fuel civil unrest.
> you managed to hurl insults at me - saying that my “sources must be garbage”
It was not my intent to insult you personally and I’m sorry if you took it that way. I didn’t say you were garbage, I said your sources were garbage.
If you can’t accept that both the law doesn’t say what you say it does, and that courts have explicitly rejected your claimed interpretation of the law, I don’t know what else I can say. Which is, of course, the problem with misinformation and the reason why removing it is sometimes an unpleasant but necessary course of action: people latch on to falsehoods which reinforce their pre-existing world view, then refuse to accept that they might be wrong.
And to be fair to that point, I could be completely full of shit too, but it’s on you to prove that by bringing facts to this discussion and not just repeating refuted claims and making it sound like I somehow proved them by giving evidence against them.
[0] https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/YouTube%20Lett...
The fact that Youtube is removing content about election fraud while leaving up much more egregiously false information is a huge red flag about their bias.
Have they taken down videos that blame George W. Bush and the federal government for the 9-11 attack?
You keep saying this over and over but you're wrong.
According to Section 230 they're allowed to "censor" all they want. It doesn't make them a publisher. That's literally the point of Section 230.
Repeating a lie doesn't make it true.
While this is true, it's a distracting non-sequitur.
US senators (of any political persuasion) asking any platform to take down any information, correct or not, is chilling. That's not their role in government. That's not their job.
Also distraction: the content is false and misleading
Also distraction: the content is "political"
The important part, that I wish every American regardless of party would understand deeply in their bones, is that once it's easy for "our guys" to do this illegal, rights-trampling thing, then it becomes easier for "their guys" to do it.
This is creeping authoritarianism. Not Trump, not Obama, not Democrats, not Republicans, not this or that party engaging in skullduggery.
Someday, a group of senators will ask the platform-du-jour to take down something that you agree with and that you think is important for people to know. Perhaps about actual election fraud, on a candidate you like. Imagine it. Inhabit that idea.
American complacency in the face of "our guys can use this new awesome power for good, so it's OK" is how we have secret Presidential assassination lists (Disposition Matrix), secret courts where the accused cannot see the evidence against them (FISA courts), gag orders on civilians, and so forth
Do not applaud senators using the weight of the government to suppress speech that you do not like, even if you believe that speech is false. It's about protecting your rights.
The answer that it feels like I would have is, "No"; but it only feels that way because I can't even imagine them doing that in the first place. In order to even enter your thought experiment, I must put Biden and the Democrats in the shoes of Trump and the Republicans, and imagine that they have done something I don't believe they would do; and that is where the entire thing falls apart.
> The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them.
False. Everyone has the right to express whatever they want, but they don't have the right to do so using someone else's platform. For example, I have the right to express my criticisms of The Bible, but I don't have the right to walk into a church, walk up to the pulpit, and start a TED talk about the lack of evidence for Noah and the great flood, Moses and Hebrew slaves in Egypt, New Testament authorship, etc.
What keeps getting called "censorship" here is really "moderation". The reason it's such a big deal is that YouTube is a huge monolithic platform, so moderation on that platform is inherently a big deal.
If we want to remove the power YouTube has over public discourse, we need to create real competitors. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, et al.