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Comment by SilverBirch | Hacker News Reader

I think there’s a massive difference between correcting something that is untrue, and just deciding you want to have your own say because the truth isn’t representative of what you feel is the broader issue.

Sure, we can say it’s due to an old law passed by republicans. But then the dems can argue that the modern GOP no longer support that… so really this just turns into a mess. Was the fact true? Yes. Was it representative of the broader argument? Depends who to you ask.

I think there are prices of fact check you could’ve put in there - for example nominal vs real terms, but this wasn’t that.

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If truthful context makes you retract your claim.. you may be a bit less than truthful.

I think if the White House knows that in the days leading up to the mid terms anything they post on Twitter will get a right wing talking point attached to it they’ll quite rightly stop posting at all whether the “context” is true or not.

I'm confused how this was a right wing talking point? In this case it is an actual fact. Are you suggesting we ignore facts if they make the left look bad?

I also want to point out the white house straight up lied and said biden was responsible when he was not (hence the deletion) and you are upset this lie was called out?

Also just an fyi the feature is not something musk added. It was being worked on long before he took over.

Talking points can be facts. In fact they mostly are. I’m saying that Twitter, intervening in the conversation to post a technically true (republican law from decades ago) but misleading context (policy not actually supported by the modern GOP) is bad. Here’s a question: if Trump had been president, would this have happened, given the GOP want to cut social security? Debatable, probably not. So is Biden as president due credit for this rise? Sure. I think you can make a credible case for that.

My point is what you can’t credibly do is present this as a debate between Biden, and Twitter the official arbiter of facts. Also, the problem with saying this isn’t to do with Musk… Musk owns Twitter. So he owns it. It really doesn’t matter what happened in the past. Today, we’re coming up to the mid terms and Elon Musks company is intervening to push right wing talking points.

I think I see what your saying but I disagree. Before Musk twitter was heavily pushing left wing talking points. They would ban right wing people for threats yet let left wing people make death threats all day long. There so called arbiter of facts was massively politically bias. Jack at one point even said conservatives “don’t feel safe to express their opinions” in the company. Pretty hard to argue with that kind of statement.

So my question is did you have a problem with that bias also? Because half the country has watched twitter push left wing talking points before elections for numerous years. In fact I remember them banning several true stories about the left.

This is pretty much dead on. All social media platforms, especially Twitter, have a hard leftwing bias. Musk has signaled that he intends neutrality for Twitter, which has triggered a meltdown from the left.

What is it they always say? "When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression."

I would put it this way- I agree with you that Twitter had a left wing bias before. It has a right wing bias now, and so far neither is enough for me to leave the platform. I don’t think this crowd sourced fact check makes any sense as it operates today, whereas I think it’s fine to point out literal factual inaccuracies.

I think I see your point. I agree that neither bias is good. The crowd sourced fact checks I am not so sure about yet. I think it could still go either way.

> Today, we’re coming up to the mid terms and Elon Musks company is intervening to push right wing talking points.

I don't understand this line of thinking being so certain[0]. Why is it definitely not the case that Elon Musk's company is simply concerned with correcting false[1] statements made by the official White House account?

You're seemingly trying to imply that this decision was made solely because of right-wing bias from Elon Musk's company and I don't see why that connection would be made without prior (ostensibly left-wing) bias.

(I don't exactly want to make this point because I don't think it necessarily matters but these context blurbs are seemingly often added by community members rather than Twitter staff. Given how high-profile the official White House account is, it's likely this decision was made by Twitter staff, which is part of why I don't think this point matters.)

[0] People are entitled to their opinions but it doesn't make sense to me that I would know that this was totally only done for a single reason which I don't like.

[1] I think you make a strong argument that the statement is not necessarily false, but certainly that argument has counter points. The statement given by the White House did not attempt to argue in any way your point. Indeed, no mention of what Trump would have done had he been in office at this time. I have to say it's very reasonable to think that the statement made was plainly false.

You're denigrating the law requiring social security benefits to increase with inflation as a "republican law." Then you suggest the republicans now want to pass a law with the opposite effect?

I'm not denigrating it, I'm saying attributing this years rise to a republican from 50 years ago when the republicans who ran in 2020 have largely voiced opposition to it, is at best misleading - since if the GOP had won in 2020 it's perfectly likely this rise wouldn't have happened.

That’s not a right wing talking point though is it? The increase was solely due to high inflation. The administration has no decision in the matter.

The administration can pass laws, do you think the GOP may have had something to say about Social security if they had won the election? I think so. Ted Cruz thinks so.

This post and comment section is about things that are happening now, not things that might have happened if other things would have happened.

I think politicians are entitled to contrast what they’ve done to what their political opponents would do. In fact I think that’s like 90% of political campaigning. Here’s Obama getting loads of media coverage for exactly the same argument 4 days ago https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

>I think politicians are entitled to contrast what they’ve done to what their political opponents would do.

I’ll be blunt—I absolutely hate this mentality.

No, politicians (or anyone for that matter) are not entitled to contrast what they’ve vs. what their opponents *would* have done, unless they happen to be mind readers or time travelers.

If you’re fortunate enough to get elected, you’re in the hot seat. The guy (or gal) you beat, they don’t get to make the decisions. You do. You don’t get to win, make the wrong decision, and then say, “oh well the other guy would have done it way worse”.

Or unless their opponents have literally said what they would have done, which I hope you don’t object to, such as the many GOP members who support a national abortion ban. Mentioning that desire is absolutely fair game, even if they don’t get an opportunity to pass it. I don’t see how it wouldn’t be. We saw the same thing during the Obama years - “If we were in control there wouldn’t be an Obamacare/if we have control we will repeal Obamacare [our opponents won’t/wouldn’t].”

Speculation and inference are often totally reasonable.

If the Biden admin wanted to make that point, they could have made it explicitly.

No, I don’t think so. The GOP had the house and senate in 2015, including Ted Cruz, and they didn’t pass or even vote on abolishing social security.

I mean the left can just as easily post their "context" on right wing tweets as well. If the White House can't handle a bit of debate on Twitter, it reflects poorly on them imo. Let the public see both sides

The context makes it clear that the increase wasn't due to good leadership, but instead was due to high inflation. I find that helpful even though I support the current administration.

With context, it sounds like they were trying to take credit for high inflation. That probably wasn't the intention, so I think it's clear that the original statement was misleading.

It didn't claim it was passed by Republicans, it explicitly stated it was signed by President Nixon and made no claims about which party controlled Congress nor did it mention Nixon's party affiliation. Not even a (R) after his name.

So your claim here is that people don’t know Richard Nixon was a republican?

looked to me like the take away was that the rule was 50 years old. would you have been happier if the context didn't mention nixon, but noted that it was because of a law that had been in effect for 50 years?

I would’ve been more comfortable if they’d mentioned the current republican candidatss for house and senate oppose this rise despite it being a GOP policy?

You keep repeating they would abolish this inflation adjustment mechanism, but where's the source? Less claims, more evidence.

I mean... do you want me to google "Republican social security plan" for you. It's not really controversial that they want to cut it.

I can only find opinion pieces and no official republican statement promising they would cut social benefits. In any case I believe those are empty electoral promises. In my country the right wing campaigned on the promise of cutting social benefits, now that they are ruling they simply can't do it unless they want a rebellion. That's because we are in such a bad situation since we blindly followed the orders of our master Biden. The US is also in a bad place after the delusional democrat foreign policy, the last thing the republicans could do now is cut social benefits at a time where quality of life standards are dropping for everyone. Again, thanks to the bankrupt policies of your governments.

Multiple republicans have said they will not support raising the debt ceiling unless Medicare/social security receive cuts. Smith and Arrington I think? Pretty sure I was reading about them and other members of the house vocalizing this just a few weeks ago.

It's user-supplied commentary, so can't you just add that info you want it there?

This is exactly the point I'm making - it's basically down to whoever can game the system to get their politicla point annotated on to the white house despite not having earned the following of the whitehouse themselves.

I don't really get what you're upset about. The algorithm seems pretty sane to me. If the Whitehouse wants to hold a press briefing, they can, but when they post on social media they invite engagement.

I didn't know that, and I suspect many others wouldn't.

> I think there’s a massive difference between correcting something that is untrue, and just deciding you want to have your own say because the truth isn’t representative of what you feel is the broader issue.

Well stated. I think the job of the platform should be limited to calling out actual falsehoods, which this is not.

Additionally, a great platform could surface this kind of additional context effectively, but only as provided by the users of the platform. That's something I would love to see.

> a great platform could surface this kind of additional context effectively, but only as provided by the users of the platform

I guess Twitter is a great platform then - FTA:

According to a description under the annotation, “Context is written by people who use Twitter, and appears when rated helpful by others.”

Well I said "could surface this... effectively", and I don't know if this primitive experiment achieves that, but point taken

Malinformation is info that’s true but presented in a disingenuous way. Misinformation is false info that’s stemming from a person who truly believes what they’re saying. Disinformation is false info spread purposefully.

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