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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

It's much easier to have a rule that says "no public posting of internal communications" than "make a judgement call about whether an internal communication is vital or not". And with an upheaval going on at Twitter at the moment, nobody has the time to do the latter.

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It seems far more likely removing this tweet was a response to the publicity it was getting, and was an effort to keep such dissent from being aired publicly (and thus a contradiction with Musk's stated principles and goals for this takeover), than that it was an ordinary moderation process that just happened to produce this outcome. The disruption you cite makes it far less likely that this is by the book, not more.

What makes that explanation more likely than the other? Imagine there was no optics problem here, and it was just a highly publicized tweet of some internal comms with no PR consequences, it would still obviously need to be removed, right?

That's not obvious to me, no. What I'd imagine is something like this being escalated, and that there would be reasonable cases to be made either way; that all internal information should be removed on principle, and that removing this tweet would harm the company without improving it's security posture. Twitter has historically been pretty reluctant to remove tweets, so I wouldn't be surprised if, under normal circumstances, they ended up keeping it up. But I wouldn't be surprised the other way either.

But closing our eyes to the optics of the situation would be a mistake. These are not normal circumstances by a long shot. Given the turmoil Twitter is going through and the heavy handed approach the new management is employing, it seems likely to me that very little work is being done through the normal channels (who's to say there's even someone on the other side of that channel?), while much is being done by direct instruction from the new management.

Isn't it more likely that organizational inertia is the culprit? Elon doesn't have the capability to change the day-to-day activities of 7,500 people following established policies and procedures in the amount of time that he's had the authority to do so.

There are some coarse-grained things that he can do, like fire the the top execs. The idea that he can strategize and effect change at the fine-grained level of emergent phenomena like a picture of an internal comms channel is bonkers, conspiracy theory stuff. He's got to lay off half the company to begin to even get some kind of handle on all of the machinations going on outside of his team's review.

I'm not suggesting he orchestrated a conspiracy, or even personally ordered that this tweet be removed, who knows, it's more likely someone else on his team, but the new management sure does seem to be able to change the day to day activities, given that they've laid many people off and eliminated the entire data science team. Why wouldn't they be able to say, remove this specific tweet, or perhaps, investigate this tweet for violations of our policy? That's not a conspiracy, that's what a company is; management is able to give instructions to the people who carry out the work.

> eliminated the entire data science team.

That was completely fake news indspired by a comedian calling himself "Rahul Ligma [Balls]"

On cursory inspection I'm not finding the articles I saw on HN about this, so I'm assuming you're right. My bad; thank you for calling it out. I'm barely over the time to edit my post, or I would remove that part.

> The idea that he can strategize and effect change at the fine-grained level of emergent phenomena like a picture of an internal comms channel is bonkers, conspiracy theory stuff.

You're right, but Elon himself is pushing this narrative. Remember when he pretended he was going to personally review the code of a bunch of Twitter engineers? There's also the Twitter blue pricing exchange and a number of other topics he's trying to appear deeply involved in the details for.

Draining the swamp is another way to put it.

But it's one thing to have that rule and punish people that leak and another to delete the leaks from your platform. Particularly if you profess to be pro-freedom of speech.

Leaking confidential information that you agreed to not leak is actionable as a contract violation.

It's not a free speech issue.

Of course it is. The contract is merely an agreement that you won't exercise your right. It's actionable in a civil court obviously. That however says nothing about your right to publish or that the content must be removed just that changing your mind might have repercussions.

It isn't.

Are you suggesting that Twitter will similarly remove leaks of other companies' confidential information? Or is this just a special case where they will be free speech absolutists for everyone else but carefully curate what people are allowed to say about Twitter?

Twitter has a responsibility to its shareholders to protect its information. Why on earth are people jumping to the conclusion they would take on any similar responsibility for another company??

Because not doing so would fly completely in the face of everything Elon claimed he wanted Twitter to stand for. They would be putting their finger on the scale to censor speech critical of Twitter, and Twitter only. (Or maybe other favored groups and politicians too, who knows? Starting off like this on day 1 kills any trust in neutral moderation immediately).

Edit: that said, I'm not sure it's been confirmed yet whether the employee just deleted the tweet themself - which would be a very different story.

Twitter is a beast. I think it would be a mistake to evaluate what it "stands for" based on some edge case of who/what/why behind a single tweet. Consider the fact that most execs at the top of this thing we call capitalism, are routinely caught in ethical dilemmas. Even the individuals you have decided are on your "side" morally, are forced to occasionally compromise their ethics in the short term, to achieve a longer term goal that is far more complex than people are giving credit here when they use terms like free speech so casually.

Wow. Who besides Trump and Musk gets this treatment of "no reasonable person would believe what he says, yet what he says should be taken seriously"

uhm, paul pelosi?

> They would be putting their finger on the scale to censor speech critical of Twitter

That's an entirely different issue. The issue at hand here is Twitter removing Twitter internal confidential material that Twitter employees agreed to not publish as a condition of employment.

This is contract law, not free speech law.

Does Twitter have an NDA with other companies that says Twitter will remove other companies' confidential information?

If they don't, they have no obligation to remove it.

They already do that with video game leaks

Will Twitter apply that standard to other leaks of data?

They do that with video game leaks, and I'm sure they do it for movie leaks, music leaks, etc.

It makes sense to punish or reprimand someone internally for leaking confidential information. Something like a firing could be appropriate.

But banning someone or their Tweets on Twitter for posting an internal corporate communication is wrong (at least, it's not the Twitter I want to see). That's using one's privileged position as steward of a public platform to enforce internal rules in an extraordinary way. If how Twitter moderates users on its platform is a free speech issue (I believe it is), this is just as much of one.

I don't believe this is always true. For instance, whistleblower cases, or NDAs that can be broken by supeona.

Considering there is already some legal questions being raised about the firings - and I'm not arguing in favor of the merits of those cases - there is some possible scenario where an internal leak may be justified.

Again, what information was leaked?

Being banned from Twitter for breaking their TOS agreement is just a contract violation too.

Are the Twitter terms of use different for employees than they are for other users?

Cause if they use the service under a personal agreement with Twitter that is separate from their employment, then removing the Tweet isn't really so actionable under their employment agreement.

I mean, I guess it probably isn't separate, but I'm also not sure why people are so eager to pat Twitter on the back for using their position to control the public communications of employees/former employees.

> "no public posting of internal communications"

If you're really a free speech absolutist then this is a violation of that principle (not of a law, but of a principle).

Workers should be able to freely talk about their condition with other workers, both internally and externally to the company. And as an absolutist, then the ability of individuals to freely speak without any chilling effects must take precedence over the companies concerns. The employees are effectively being "cancelled" and much more effectively than the people who most complain about that actually have their ability to speak being impaired.

Contracts are not laws. Contracts are an exchange of value. The civil court system enforces those contracts.

For example, failing to pay your mortgage is not theft. It is a contract dispute.

If you freely accept payment in exchange for not revealing certain secrets, that does not violate your free speech rights in any way.

> If you're really a free speech absolutist then this is a violation of that principle (not of a law, but of a principle).

I literally wasn't talking about free speech rights.

This! Sometimes it’s not bad behavior, it’s “we just don’t have time for this sh!t.”

Their HR and PR people are busy enough today.

This isn’t a broad defense of Musk or Twitter. Just a comment that there doesn’t have to be a conspiracy around any corner.

Whether it is malicious or lazy, it shows where "free speech" ranks among their values.

You have time for the things you really care about.

There is no expedience exception for free speech. If they want to claim to value free speech, they need to actually do so, and that includes making that kind of judgement call.

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