Twitter permanently bans Project Veritas account | Hacker News Reader

Twitter permanently bans Project Veritas account

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45 pointsreddotX59 comments

The deafening silence in these comments is telling of how boned free speech proper actually is.

Hope you all are enjoying the "free speech for me, but not for thee" attitude of this neo-feudalism that we live in.

We don’t let the democratically elected government ban speech but unaccountable private corporations are free to censor.

These problems aren’t easy, and while I’ve lessened my free speech absolutism a tiny bit, I’m still quite concerned. We have to find a better way.

Considering the media propping up stories about how free speech is unnecessary and barbaric in our new and modern society, and making censorship a cultural norm - giving an inch is more than giving a mile.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

Yes, we don’t let our government, with the tools of state violence and the exclusive right to imprison us, ban speech.

However, groups of private citizens, whose powers over the marketplace are/can be heavily limited through existing laws such as antitrust law, enforced by our democratically elected government have no requirement to carry speech they disagree with.

It’s surprising to me how quickly the Big Business/Small Government Republican Party switched as soon as they realized that big businesses don’t always have their interests in mind. I suggest looking over to the far left, as they have been discussing ways to curb power of large businesses for decades and also have a healthy respect of the dangers of giving the government too much power as the frequent target of said powers.

Seems like the roles have switched...far left is now in bed with big corp and the right has drifted towards curbing restrictions on free speech by recent surge of big tech social platforms. Makes sense if you think about it. Secular shifts in society away from religion and traditional family structure are more acceptable to far left but less palatable to the right.

Far right is 100% in bed with corporations as well. Free speech arguments by those in power on the right are mostly symbolic, and will never get close to _actually_ threatening capital in any way.

“100%” and “never” are quite unconvincing.

The center of the democratic party has been pro-business for decades now (see neo-liberal), albeit with republicans using stronger rhetoric. Another way of looking at it, the center of both parties have been extremelly pro-business, with both the far-left and far-right having some anti-corporate tendencies. Due to recent trends the centers of both parties have lost influence, even more so on the republican side due to a recent far-right presidency. It seems logical that there would be a shift in perception but I think it's really more of a shift in the Overton window.

I'm personally very pro free speech but the wrong way to go about it is to give the government more power to compel speech from third parties. Use the tools available to prevent mega corporations from sucking up all the air in the room, then create your own platforms to spread the speech you want to enable.

The easy approach of just trying to use government to compel these companies to carry your speech has too many dangerous second and third order effects to seriously consider, especially if your goal is free-speech.

When we actually use antitrust laws to limit these massive private companies I may be more on board with letting them do as they please with censor. As it is right now, they’re the lifeline and public square for much of modern life. As you clearly point out, the government can and should hold these companies accountable for their size and actions.

The left has plenty of respect for the dangers of both private and public power, but our system doesn’t listen to them because it requires a reflection on the bad parts of capitalism.

Twitter and Facebook profit off of speech on their platforms, and actively drive users to content that increase engagement. Furthermore they have no accountability when they cancel people and businesses, which again, the left knows about. We can change the incentives and repercussions without encouraging them to censor speech they unilaterally don’t like.

"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."

https://investor.twitterinc.com/contact/faq/default.aspx

This is just corporate doublespeak which clarifies nothing.

To be fair, I'm seeing so much bullshit on social media that I've probably reached the threshold of apathy to just don't care and let it all burn.

I don't feel confident enough to actually represent any group, but what you are saying is wrong, it's just that no one wants to listen when "we" say that the grip of megacorps on the internet is too tight and that we need more support for free software and open protocols instead of walled gardens.

We are here, it's just that this is only a part within the things we have been talking about for years, even if it might come as a surprise to the kind of people that probably cheered when things like net neutrality were crippled in the US.

I certainly won't defend far right and conspiracy portals that make a career out of harassing people and that don't know the difference between free speech and "freedom of consequence no matter what I say"/"everyone should be forced to listen to me". However at the same time Twitter does not deserve any praise for such a decision.

The part we all should agree on (and hopefully do) is that Twitter/Facebook/Google apply their rules pretty much arbitrarily at this point, they might as well remove them because in prominent cases they clearly don't matter.

Majority of discourse on the internet should not be subject to the pure arbitrariness of only a few corporations.

Civilizations have fallen before, and I worry that this trend of attacking free speech will be looked back on as an early stage in the fall of our current world. It's becoming a cliche now that cyberpunk dystopias more and more resemble our current world

Would you feel bothered if Wikipedia banned Project Veritas as a source, and also banned IP's related to Project Veritas? In many ways the stakes are much higher on Wikipedia.

How would Project Veritas's freedom of speech translate to Wikipedia's obligation to host and broadcast?

Project Vertias has been at the forefront of free lying for a decade[1]. They have been manipulative, entrapping, dissembling corrupt foes of information & democracy seemingly their entire life.

Good riddance. Part of free speech is the public forming an opinion that some voices are wrong, and malicious. The public has a right to defend itself against it's foes, of which Vertias is one, one of a radical extremist & underhanded bent. It IS unfortunate that our public spaces are all operated by a couple communicative-capitalist super-entities, and I wish people would try more to use freer places, devise their own defenses. But here, the private companies made the right call, and protected democracy & the value of speech, by banning some particularly flagrant opponents of civic decency.

Beyond simply too much of the public being run by corporations, it is also deeply unsettling that getting kicked off a corporate network is determined based on single incidents. It is a wide array of behaviors that makes Vertias entirely unsuitable to have their voice supported & hosted by these communicative-capitalist giants, makes them an ill voice to carry. More honest assessments are due, their being kicked off should reflect a broadscale misbehavior, not a single incident.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas

I am in awe at people who say “market forces should rule everything “ and then in the same breath say “government has a responsibility to enforce that a private organization must allow everyone to use their platform in an arbitrary way”.

No one was arrested. No one was silenced. Project Veritas could send an email out with the information to all their subscribers completely legally (assuming they weren’t breaking federal law by doxxing people).

If I was mod of a knitting forum and had a public policy of never allowing people to talk about Tom Brady, and someone did so, I could ban the person. That’s not censorship, that’s me kicking someone out of my (and only my) community. They can still talk all they want.

I completely agree. When Twitter acts like this, it leaves money on the table for competition. You don't need to give the government more power. The rich will just hook into that power.

Imo, the real story is Parler getting banned just as it was poised to become competition.

Sure, until Gmail decides to block emails from Project Veritas.

I don't think it makes sense for governments to pass laws saying tech firms must serve everyone. It would be too hard to word such laws properly, and there would inevitably be many bad side effects (e.g. making it harder to build new services). What we're seeing here is a slipping social consensus that ideas and debate are valuable and the fix is to re-establish that consensus.

It's hard to know if this is really some sort of creeping authoritarianism taking over the world, or if it's more like panicked and flailing scattergunning by social classes that are losing control of the global narrative, whose corruption, shallowness and stupidity are being increasingly exposed by people demanding higher standards than those classes feel they can meet. Their old approach of simply assuming that people in positions of authority are competent and correct is falling apart, as anything those authorities say or do is immediately dissected by an army of contrarians who are frequently better informed and sharper than they and their media defenders are.

The things I associate with Veritas are recordings with Googlers revealing things the firm would prefer to keep hidden, and the recordings where they revealed that some US news reports on COVID were faked (e.g. the news channel got staff at a COVID clinic to get in their cars and make fake queues to make it appear the clinics were busy). These are things that should have been brought to light, and bringing them to light was a valuable public service. I'm sure Twitter have some excuse for this, but I feel no surprise it's come to this. Tech firms are increasingly dominated by people who don't respect their own users, people who believe the world would be a better place if the clock could be rewound to a time when everyone believed everything said by the New York Times or the BBC. I'm doubtful they can pull that rewinding off.

Did you feel the same way about Greenpeace and their tactics?

Such as?

I'm all for free speech. But do we really need to confront public figures in front of their own home and post it on the Internet? I think everyone would be concerned, especially if you have a family. I do think people have right to some privacy especially concerning their own home.

How is this different from paparazzi and celebrities? Why should Facebook executives who work hard to remove privacy from their users, enjoy the same from comfort of their home?

Yes, these people make decisions that effect a huge number of lives and they should be held to account, if they will not respond to electronic communication or talk on the phone then it is traditional journalism to track them down and put those questions to them.

That depends on who you ask. The left thinks it’s perfectly OK to a cost someone at dinner, and harass them out of the restaurant. The right does not seem to believe in this tactic. Personally I think that we should all be able to sit and eat in a restaurant in peace, and should not have pitchfork mob standing outside of our homes, but that is a video absolutely rejected by the left and I think it’s very dangerous.

The Panama Papers have personnel information. I wonder if they will ban CNN next.

I guess journalists will have to practice the art of [REDACTED] a little more going forward when they reveal details around corruption.

The mayor of [REDACTED] was found to have sent mr. [REDACTED] wire transfers in an attempt to keep a lid on exposing her relationship with [REDACTED] while being married to [REDACTED].

They already banned the New York Post for content they didn’t like.

How long before hard hitting independent journalists like Greenwald and others who publish regardless of who it exposes and inconveniences start seeing their voices silenced and only approved voices get to tiptoe and publish banalities along with special daggers for non conformers?

Twitter needs to be renamed Pravda unironically.

Greenwald's already been booted out of his own media org that he founded. Private corporations & all that.

He resigned after they refused to run one of his articles as written. I think this is an important distinction because other journalists have been fired for their speech, but he wasn't one of them.

A media corporation that doesn’t want the bad PR around firing their most recognized employee (and co-founder in this case) need only make the life so difficult for that person that they quit in protest. The ol’ “cold shoulder” routine.

Some people would say “Yep! No foul play! He left totally of his own volition!” while others, not playing this corrupt PR game, will see it as the same thing as firing.

> Twitter needs to be renamed Pravda unironically.

Equating Twitter to Pravda is the same extreme hyperbole as people who equate GOP to Nazis.

Last I checked Twitter is not a state-run operation that will arrest or kill people who report information that it doesn't agree with.

> Last I checked Twitter is not a state-run operation that will arrest or kill people who report information that it doesn't agree with.

This isn't Pravda, that was KGB. Pravda is a better analogy as it was a newspaper. Your comment just flamed with additional hyperbole. There's no need for that here

> Pravda is a better analogy as it was a newspaper. Your comment just flamed with additional hyperbole. There's no need for that here

I don't think I inflamed anything. You are correct. Pravda did not employ actors who assassinated or arrested other individuals. They were the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. If Pravda was an independent organization that mischievously drove a specific agenda, I would wholeheartedly agree with you.

Stating that Pravda's and Twitter's actions equate to the same is implying that Pravda, CCCP and KGB only worked towards ensuring dissenting voices did not have a platform, but otherwise left them alone. Completely disconnecting Pravda from the CCCP is a disingenuous view of the role Pravda played in its presentation of the Soviet state and its actions.

Twitter isn't an invisible arm of the US government. So yes, I still believe it's extreme hyperbole.

Twitter at the core represents an ideology. Pravda (of yesteryear) represented an ideology.

Looks like selective enforcement.

It's either selective enforcement, or AI-based enforcement.

Considering they have overrides in place for the AI-based version, I think only one of those enforcement options really exists.

I’m sad to see this happen. I don’t know what the right answer is for undercover and hidden cameras, but exposing possible corruption should be a mainstay of all journalistic endeavors.

I can't wait until social norms change again down the road, and the right uses this newfound power of consorship and control to dominate.

I mean, it'll suck, no doubt. But it'll also be just desserts for the destroyers of freedom.

You mean it’s now a right-wing idea that private companies aren’t allowed to decide who they want to do business with?

This isn’t really a right vs. left issue: it’s not like they lost their account for tweeting about lowering the capital gains tax rate or something. This is an organization which weaponized bad faith attacks. The only reason it seems politicized now is that there isn’t broad support for that kind of dishonesty outside of far-right circles.

They're doing exactly the same type of yellow journalism that the NYT and CNN is doing, just with a bend you happen to not agree with. Nothing far-right about that.

And that makes it ok? Do you happen to know for sure that OP is accepting of the things that the New York Times and CNN do as well?

Either you have free press and open platforms, or you don't.

That's not my point. My point is that you're assuming OP is on board with those things as well, which is something you can't prove. You've made a strawman argument about someone you've never met and know nothing about.

That’s a very big claim conspicuously made with no supporting evidence. In particular, misleading editing and entrapment is all Project Veritas does.

You can find individual journalists who betrayed their audience’s trust, although rarely so badly, but you know about them because they get fired, not promoted. This is true across the political spectrum – CNN, Fox News, NPR, NYT, WSJ, etc. all have their biases but they’re all qualitatively better than someone whose business is based on deliberately editing video to mislead in service of a political narrative. The fact that some right wing people see ethics rules as an attack on their politics is disturbing but it’s only saying something about their values.

Citation Needed. Project Veritas has successfully challenged 331 "news reports" of misleading editing and gotten those report retracted[1] . Further, they have sued and been sued in court and claim a record of 7 wins, 0 losses[2]. Finally, PV has a page dedicated to the admitting where they were wrong[3]. Please support your claim of "misleading editing and entrapment" with evidence of retractions or court losses by Project Veritas that are not listed on their "Mistakes" page (i.e., events that they are attempting to hide or mislead the public about).

[1] https://www.projectveritas.com/wall-of-shame-retracto/ [2] https://www.projectveritas.com/news/legal-victories-pv/ [3] https://www.projectveritas.com/mistakes-that-project-veritas...

This is why you generally want to find third-party sources rather than relying on someone to tell you whether to trust them. Start here:

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

First, it is interesting that Wikipedia lists 2010 as the formation date of Project Veritas, but then goes back two years ("Planned Parenthood recordings (2008)") to start the list of "Content" produced by that organization -- would you consider that misleading?

To avoid a claim of cherry picking examples, I'll look at each "Content" claim listed in Wikipedia from 2010 onward since we're discussing Project Veritas...

* Senator Mary Landrieu (2010). Claim: "charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony." Outcome: Those involved plead to a misdemeanor. Addressed by PV: https://www.projectveritas.com/news/pleading-guilty-to-misde...

* Abbie Boudreau (2010). Claim: "planned a staged encounter with the CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau." Outcome: PV settled with a former employee, according to Politico.

* New Jersey Teachers' Union video (2010). Claim: "a calculated attack on [the New Jersey Education Association] and its members." Outcome: No legal action taken by NJEA to assert misleading or falsely edited video.

* Medicaid videos (2011). Claim: "released videos of his colleagues' staged encounters purportedly showing Medicaid fraud in offices in six states." Outcome: No legal action taken by any state against PV for misleading or falsely edited video.

* NPR video (2011). Claim: "Schiller's remarks were presented out of sequence and that he said that he would speak personally, and not for NPR." Outcome: No legal action taken by NPR. Addressed by Veritas: https://www.projectveritas.com/news/project-veritas-provided...

* New Hampshire primary video (2012). Claim: "associates obtaining a number of ballots for the New Hampshire primary by using the names of recently deceased voters." Outcome: The New Hampshire Attorney General's office later dropped its investigation of O'Keefe for potential voter fraud in 2013. (Again, no claims of improperly edited or misleading videos in this event.)

* Patrick Moran (2012). Claim: "video was released showing Patrick Moran, son of then-U.S. Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), and a field director with his father's campaign, discussing a plan to cast fraudulent ballots" Outcome: Arlington County Commonwealth's Attorney, had concluded and that no charges would be brought [against Patrick Moran or Project Veritas].

* Attempt to solicit voter fraud (2014). Claim: "attempted to bait staffers for Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) and then-U.S. Senator Mark Udall, as well as independent expenditure organizations, into approving voter fraud" Outcome: Push back from staffers that the claimed actions were illegal.

* Attempted sting of Open Society Foundations (2016). Claim: "attempted to call Open Society Foundations under the assumed name of "Victor Kesh", describing himself as attached to "a, uh, foundation"[sic] seeking to "get involved with you and aid what you do in fighting for, um, European values."[sic]" Outcome: Poor opsec by Project Veritas resulted in the undercover nature of the call.

* U.S. presidential elections (2016). Claim: " alleging a connection between the videos and the Trump campaign" [note: the "videos" are not identified in the Wikipedia article] Outcome: no clear claim of fraud in this section.

* Americans United for Change videos (2016). Claim: "that apparently showed former national field director Scott Foval of Americans United for Change discussing planting agitators" Outcome: On June 1, 2017, Creamer's firm, Democracy Partners, filed a $1 million lawsuit against Project Veritas, claiming Project Veritas had lied to gain access to the firm and violating anti-wiretapping laws. PV won this lawsuit in a Directed Verdict ("JUDGMENT: The Plaintiff shall recover nothing from the Defendants in the form of damages. This action is DISMISSED WITH PREJUDCE in its entirety, and the Defendants shall recover their costs of the action from the Plaintiff. Signed by District Judge Martin Reidinger on 6/7/2019. (maf) (Entered: 06/07/2019)" [1])

* New York City elections official video (2016). Claim: "video taken at a United Federation of Teachers holiday party on December 16, 2015" Outcome: No legal action pursued by targets of video.

* CNN undercover videos (2017). Claim: "Jones said that O'Keefe had deceptively edited the video to take his remarks out of context" Outcome: lots of public protestations by targets of videos, but no legal action taken by CNN or individuals to force a retraction or demonstrate claims of deceptions were true.

* Failed attempt to sting The Washington Post (2017). Claim: "released a video which he claimed exposed the newspaper's liberal bias." Outcome: Videos were seen as being the opposite of what PV claimed, and earning PV criticism from more conservative outlets. (Perhaps you could consider this to be "misleading" but if both conservatives and liberals criticized the product, it is not so successful at doing so.)

* New Jersey Teachers Unions Officials (2018). Claim: "video allegedly showing a New Jersey teachers union administrator discussing a teacher alleged to have struck a student" Outcome: no legal action against PV for false or misleading videos.

* Internal Google documents (2019). Claim: "released internal Google documents to Project Veritas regarding the 2016 presidential election" Outcome: no legal action against PV for false or misleading claims about the documents.

* Minnesota videos (2020). Claim: "alleged that Project Veritas had edited and combined the videos to take them out of context." Outcome: The Minneapolis Police is "looking into the validity" of the allegations. There has been no legal action taken by anyone targeted by PV to force a retraction or defend against the allegations.

* Pennsylvania postal worker video (2020). Claim: "a Pennsylvania postal worker in Erie claimed [mail fraud had occurred]". Outcome: the worker has not recanted his claim, despite reporting to the contrary. No legal action by the Post Office has been taken against PV.

I've reviewed the 18 cases listed in the source you provided. Despite protestations of the targets claiming "misleading", "out of context", or otherwise fraudulent editing of material by PV, only one listed attempted to sue PV to force a retraction and their claim was dismissed with prejudice by the judge. So the "evidence" presented does not support a fact of "misleading" editing by PV, but only an assertion by those targeted by PV, which is why you generally want a third-party (I'll take the courts in a he-said-they-said case) rather than relying on someone (like a target of PV) to tell you whether to trust them.

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6156641/teter-v-project...

Unorthodox journalist tactics or not, they catch the elite saying horrible things on camera when they think they are speaking amongst friends.

Yes they do go against the left a lot in who they go after. But you can’t argue against the video footage. I consider myself on the left on many things but what they capture people saying is absolute appalling. Why focus on their tactics instead of what they uncover?

They like to present themselves as undercover journalists but their history shows that they don’t meet that standard: unlike journalists they actively manipulate the videos to mislead their audience – if you remember their rise to fame attacking ACORN, their videos were edited to be successful political propaganda but the subsequent legal investigations didn’t find any wrongdoing by ACORN and Project Veritas had to pay damages for defamation. This also was hardly “elites” - they heavily edited video to misrepresent what low-level employees did, and attempted to portray that false narrative as the organizational policy.

They’ve also been known to produce complete fabrications like their unsuccessful attack on the Washington Post. That was straight up entrapment, not journalism.

“... unlike journalists they actively manipulate the videos to mislead their audience”

Are there any journalists left? This behavior is rampant in virtually all forms of news.

No, it’s not. The people hawking that claim do so knowing that it’s a good strategy for getting low-information voters to tune out, but that makes it a useful political tactic rather than true.

I would argue people making your claim are being selective with their standards and not being skeptical of their own information sources. Similar to people re-electing their Congress people, but complaining about the ineptitude of the incumbents in Congress. It’s a common effect that we as individuals suffer from.

>You mean it’s now a right-wing idea that private companies aren’t allowed to decide who they want to do business with?

What's legally allowed is very different than ethical and in good taste.

The idea that the line for what it legal and the line for what is moral/acceptable should be anywhere near each other is one of the big issues people have with the authoritarian left (and the authoritarian right, but I don't think they're a big threat at present, their push for moralizing policy seems to have mostly faded out in the early 2010s, though we still need to be vigilant).

how can they promote bitcoin

and on other hand play the censorship card

the amount of propaganda from the USA and the big tech companies is infuriating to be honest

we are heading towards a very very bad and unhealthily long and dark road if you ask me

Twitter has become a joke. literally a twisted bastardized joke that only communists and fascists like.

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