The Biden team never asked Twitter staff to “handle” anything. They forwarded tweets that [violated twitter’s ToS][1], a Twitter staff member forwarded them for review, and at that point the reviewer said they “handled these.”
That’s what content moderation is supposed to do!
[1]: https://twitter.com/parkebench/status/1598841731763810304
Pretty sure “playing ball” helps build goodwill with the people who decide whether to break your company up or not.
The Taibbi tweets clearly indicate that "connections" buy influence within Twitter. So clearly Twitter sees some benefit to "helping" those in power.
Edit: It's specifically called out in Taibbi's tweets. "NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it's a "tipping point,""
[1] The tweets referenced by the biden team were Hunter Biden dick pics, you can check yourself in the Wayback Machine
I mean Zuck must be the devil himself by now then... Or is it Musk's ideological views creating such consternation? In which case, also interesting to see the federal interest.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/intimate-medi...
This page goes back to 2018, too, so it’s hardly new: https://web.archive.org/web/20180103200035/https://help.twit...
> Sharing explicit sexual images or videos of someone online without their consent is a violation of their privacy and one of the most serious violations of the Twitter Rules. In addition to posing serious safety and security risks, it may also result in physical, emotional, and financial hardship for the person whose media is shared.
> Sharing explicit sexual images or videos of someone online without their consent is a violation of their privacy and one of the most serious violations of the Twitter Rules. In addition to posing serious safety and security risks, it may also result in physical, emotional, and financial hardship for the person whose media is shared.
The hacked content in general is covered by this. Given the contents, it doesn’t appear that the news exemption covers most of the material:
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materi...
Here’s the history on the above quote for those that missed the allusion: https://englishhistory.net/middle-ages/will-no-one-rid-me-of...
I mean, I guess it's ok to expand the definition, but let's be clear that's what we're doing here. Also, it isn't particularly rhetorically effective.
Moderating content isn't the goal. Moderating behavior is.
EDIT: In fact, let's not rely on our memories. Here's the original NY Post story, the one which you weren't allowed to share on Twitter:
https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden...
This article doesn't make any kind of allegations about CP. Why are you making things up?
"The conservative radio host Wayne Root claimed without evidence in a tweet shared tens of thousands of times that Hunter Biden's laptop contains videos of him sexually abusing Chinese children."
That's just one article, I remember seeing many YouTube comments and 4chan posts about it, which could suggest they were bots pushing a narrative.
The Hunter Biden story is, and has always been, about him selling access to his father to Ukrainian powerbrokers so that what we're seeing unfold now over there would be possible. His claims to be saving "10% for the Big Guy" clearly allude to money being kicked back to his dad the Vice President at the time, and current man in charge of delivering billions of dollars to those same powerbrokers in Ukraine now.
This is what the investigation is about. Nobody cares if Hunter was a drug addict or a douchebag it's always been about the above.
Posted today:
https://twitter.com/JoanneRansing/status/1598963377984135183
"Hunter Biden had sex with his niece Natalie. His dead brother's underage daughter - he was also banging her Mom. Will they manage to keep this video secret forever? Lots of people have seen it including me."
https://twitter.com/kuckieman/status/1598895748636372992
"One question, Are you ok with the pictures of Hunter Biden and clearly underage girls? You and Hunter are the problem."
https://twitter.com/wokeantag0nist/status/159901527380973568...
"Hunter had sex with underage girls and used his dad to broker deals against America’s best interest, “ what’s the big heal lolz” congratulations you’re dumb and pathetic enough to be Biden’s next diversity hire"
Me: shows credible proof demonstrating that's not the case
You: feigns confusion
Why are you playing dumb?, sure seems like you get "confused" a lot.
Well, I think we've identified the issue. Please don't look up flat earth tweets, it will break you heart.
It drives me mad that the right somehow turned this into a persuasive argument to people.
You could also summarize the findings as “no evidence of tampered emails or hacking was found on the laptop”. But you didn’t (and I wouldn’t) as that too would be disingenuous.
Neither summary is a fair framing, particularly for techies.
For at least some of the details, see the march 2022 Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-... or https://archive.ph/b1Ser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...
But let me guess Wikipedia is also part of the fake news media?
Third parties on the emails have come forward to verify some of the emails.
> No criminal activity by the Bidens was ever found.
Hunter Biden is guilty of lying on a federal firearms application. For starters they should throw the book at him for that since Democrats are “tough on guns” right?
The corruption angle has never been fully investigated either. The whole Ukraine do nothing job was clearly payment for access to his father. We’ll see what comes up when they finally look into it next Congress.
> It should be impossible to look at this objectively and conclude that this wasn't a carefully timed misinformation campaign.
Just because something has a political angle doesn’t mean it’s immediately false.
> It drives me mad that the right somehow turned this into a persuasive argument to people.
The blinders worn by the half the left, and forced onto the eyes of the other half, are a much worse problem.
Hunter is being investigated by the FBI. If the house wants to spend it’s time investigating a single individual fine I guess. But if influence of someone not in office being investigated is going to open the door wide to Trump and his kids.
Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t mean the public cannot discuss the matter or present it’s opinion on the legality.
The laptop isn’t meaningless. It’s a data dump of evidence of guilt. Everything from brandishing an illegally obtained firearm while under the influence of narcotics to admitting to taking a cut of deals on behalf of his father (“10% for the big guy”).
> Hunter is being investigated by the FBI. If the house wants to spend it’s time investigating a single individual fine I guess.
The House absolutely should look into these allegations. Because till now nobody had taken them seriously.
> But if influence of someone not in office being investigated is going to open the door wide to Trump and his kids.
The Trump hate is so strong that the left cannot even admit an investigation of corruption should be done into a meth addict who was clearly selling influence to his father without some kind of whataboutism.
If there was actual Trump corruption, him and his whole family would be in prison by now. They’ve been investigating him non stop since 2015. But they haven’t found anything worthy of charges.
Then you go on to list a bunch of meaningless things to me. Hunter Biden brandishing firearms and taking drugs is meaningless. He’s a private citizen. His problems are well known. The brandishing of the firearm thing is especially hilarious, because the people who are most concerned about taking down Hunter Biden wouldn’t even consider that a crime.
Actually I take that back, Hunter Biden allegedly trading on his fathers name and giving kickbacks to “the big guy” has been normalized by the Trump family as standard operating procedure for top political families in this country.
How are any Republicans even mad about this? Oh right, they are not. What’s really going on here is that Republicans hope the laptop will be to Biden as Whitewater was to Clinton, and Benghazi was to Hillary — the pretext that allows investigation, which will hopefully reveal or cause the other prey to make a mistake.
That’s all this is, which is frustrating, because a total of 0 people involved in pushing this care about the things you listed as not meaningless and evidence of guilt. It’s just a political playbook that’s been run nationally 3 times already, at least. The fact not everyone can see through it is worrying.
> the left cannot even admit an investigation of corruption should be done
And yet, the FBI is investigating and Biden isn’t pressuring the AG or firing the director of the FBI as Trump did.
But regardless, you say it’s about “Trump hate” and whataboutism but it’s really about normalization. Republicans shouldn’t be surprised people yawn about accusations of nepotism and self dealing after they told people for years it’s not a big deal. Why should anyone care about Republicans suddenly crying about self dealing now, after brushing it off for so long?
> If there was actual Trump corruption, him and his whole family would be in prison by now.
Trump was President since 2016 and was not only immune from prosecution, but it was found he used his position as President to obstruct the investigation into himself. People thought the system would be capable of quickly removing such an obvious tumor, but apparently only voters have enough power to do that. Apparently controlling the AG and DOJ is enough to keep one from being indicted, who knew?
With most prosecutions of the scale that would be needed to take down someone as powerful as Trump taking years, Trump probably won’t see a courtroom for another 12-18 months.
That's completely bullshit. Legal gun owners are the number of advocates for actually enforcing gun laws on the books. Not creating cockamamie new ones that go after cosmetic features or make criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens.
Being a drug addict and purchasing or even being in possession of a firearm is a serious crime and it should be investigated. I guarantee you that 100/100 legal gun owners would endorse prosecuting drug addicts illegally in possession of firearms.
The true hypocrisy is that while the left wants to disarm the populace, will not endorse doing so when it's one of there own that clearly should not be in possession of firearms. They want to throw the book at legal gun owners for some newly created minutiae, but won't endorse charging a literal meth addict brandishing a firearm with a felony.
> Actually I take that back, Hunter Biden allegedly trading on his fathers name and giving kickbacks to “the big guy” has been normalized by the Trump family as standard operating procedure for top political families in this country.
Great talking points with zero actual evidence. Like I said, if there was any actual evidence, there'd have been some charge in some jurisdiction by now. But there isn't.
> How are any Republicans even mad about this? Oh right, they are not. What’s really going on here is that Republicans hope the laptop will be to Biden as Whitewater was to Clinton, and Benghazi was to Hillary — the pretext that allows investigation, which will hopefully reveal or cause the other prey to make a mistake.
You see no issue with Hunter taking a cut on behalf of his dad in exchange for shaping policy? You don't see anything worthy of investigation in the $250K/month deal he was getting from that Ukraine gas company for his "expertise"?
> That’s all this is, which is frustrating, because a total of 0 people involved in pushing this care about the things you listed as not meaningless and evidence of guilt. It’s just a political playbook that’s been run nationally 3 times already, at least. The fact not everyone can see through it is worrying.
Clearly at least I care and the House majority that is going to take up the investigations.
> And yet, the FBI is investigating and Biden isn’t pressuring the AG or firing the director of the FBI as Trump did.
You mean the FBI that asked Facebook and Twitter to scrub the laptop story?
> But regardless, you say it’s about “Trump hate” and whataboutism but it’s really about normalization. Republicans shouldn’t be surprised people yawn about accusations of nepotism and self dealing after they told people for years it’s not a big deal. Why should anyone care about Republicans suddenly crying about self dealing now, after brushing it off for so long?
I've yet to see you point to any actual corruption. It's just the same, "Can't you see it! It's everywhere!!" over and over again. Show some actual corruption. Show an investigation that went somewhere. Show a charge that actually stuck.
> Trump was President since 2016 and was not only immune from prosecution, but it was found he used his position as President to obstruct the investigation into himself.
Immune from prosecution is not immune from investigation. They've investigated him non-stop for years and it has lead to nothing. If not, point to something meaningful.
> People thought the system would be capable of quickly removing such an obvious tumor, but apparently only voters have enough power to do that.
Referring to a human being as a cancerous growth is disgusting. You're clearly incapable of any kind of unbiased analysis.
> Apparently controlling the AG and DOJ is enough to keep one from being indicted, who knew?
Apparently absence of an indictment can only mean rampant corruption and the additional crime of a conspiracy by Trump to prevent an indictment. Read up on Occam's razor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
> With most prosecutions of the scale that would be needed to take down someone as powerful as Trump taking years, Trump probably won’t see a courtroom for another 12-18 months.
They've had all kinds of investigations for years. The truth, or I guess "sad truth" for you, is that there's nothing there to actually charge him with.
I don't know who you've been talking to, but my family members who are very mad about this Hunter Biden laptop also believe there's no such thing as an illegal firearm, and anything labeled as such is a violation of the 2nd amendment. That's the basis for my amusement.
> the left wants to disarm the populace, will not endorse doing so when it's one of there own that clearly should not be in possession of firearms.
Again, don't know who you've been talking to, but I'd challenge you to actually produce an instance of someone on the left who would defend Hunter Biden's guns. The general line I've seen is that if he did something wrong, Hunter Biden should go to jail. No one on the left (that I've seen) is defending him like the right is imagining. Again, show me. I'm not seeing it.
> Great talking points with zero actual evidence. Like I said, if there was any actual evidence, there'd have been some charge in some jurisdiction by now. But there isn't.
There have been charges in jurisdictions. The first charges landing so far are that his namesake company is actually a front for massive fraud. The trial for that is currently under way. Trump was also named as an unindicted co conspirator on a crime someone else went to jail for. The only reason Trump himself wasn't indicted was, again, because he was President and his Justice Department couldn't do anything to indict him. In fact, political appointees in the DoJ worked to scrub Trump's fingerprints on the Cohen case as much as possible. Really all you're saying is that the other shoe hasn't dropped yet, and we should take that as evidence it never will.
> You see no issue with Hunter taking a cut on behalf of his dad in exchange for shaping policy?
Sure, investigate the hell out of this claim. But no one has been able to show that any of what you say is even remotely true, and in fact the opposite is true. The biggest claim made I've seen so far is that Hunter somehow influenced Biden to go after a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son. But this claim completely falls flat on its face when you realize that Joe Biden's actions were supported by the entire government, including Republicans. Why does Hunter Biden need to use back channels with his father to get him to do something that literally everyone agrees needs to be done?
No one can answer that without the entire narrative collapsing, so all these other unrelated conspiracy theories are added onto the pile about child porn and other nonsense. No matter what the results of this investigation are, they're already tainted to the point that no one will listen. So investigate all you want, but it's so partisan now that no one who doesn't care already will be paying attention.
> Clearly at least I care and the House majority that is going to take up the investigations.
I wonder if you were just as concerned with Whitewater and Benghazi and Durham. I wonder if you will be disappointed yet again when Republicans fail to deliver on their claims, and they resort to "well no laws were technically broken but we feel it was improper!"
> You mean the FBI that asked Facebook and Twitter to scrub the laptop story?
Yes, I mean the FBI that is traditionally staffed by very conservative people, and has always been run exclusively by conservatives. Indeed that one. They've shown evidence, and given Jan 6 and recent events, I'm inclined to believe them.
> I've yet to see you point to any actual corruption. Show an investigation that went somewhere. Show a charge that actually stuck.
Okay, the first and most obvious would by Trump's charity, which was found to be a self-dealing grift instead of a non-profit and was directed to be shut down by New York. So there's no question Trump and his entire family (they were guilty of the charity fraud too) are not above committing fraud to enrich themselves. Republicans cheered this behavior enthusiastically.
If you want to talk about Trump's government corruption, look no further than his grift with the Secret Service, where he charged them astronomical rates to stay at his own properties, while telling the public that he was only charging them at cost. Or take Trump's lease of the post office, which was found by the GSA Inspector General to have violated the Constitution's emoluments clause. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I don't want to be here all day.
All of these instances were met by yawns and shrugs by conservatives. That's how they normalized it. If they had pushed back against Trump's grift, they would have more of a sympathetic ear from me today when they complain about a supposed Biden grift. But they didn't then, so I can't take their outrage seriously now.
> Immune from prosecution is not immune from investigation. They've investigated him non-stop for years and it has lead to nothing. If not, point to something meaningful.
The Republican-lead Senate Intel Committee investigated his campaign for colluding with Russia, and found that his campaign manager was coordinating strategy with a Russian intelligence officer. The Mueller report found that Russia attacked the 2016 election and Trump welcomed their help. They also found Trump obstructed justice into this investigation 11 times. Further it was found by the House that Trump extorted a bribe from Ukraine, but although the Senate didn't disagree, Senators from his party were swayed by Trump's argument that he did so for the good of the country. Which... okay, sure. Then the House found that Trump incited insurrection, and while the Senate agreed with the facts, they didn't agree they had the power to impeach.
Notably the investigations that got the furthest were mostly beyond Trump's reach to impede. Also notably, none of the investigations have come up as empty as Whitewater, Benghazi, and the Durham probe. For every single investigation into Trump, where there was smoke there was fire. Republicans don't have the same track record.
> Referring to a human being as a cancerous growth is disgusting. You're clearly incapable of any kind of unbiased analysis.
Kindly, I noted the former President was corrupting the system he was supposed to run, as a tumor might. If you don't care for my analogy, move past it. No need to police my tone. I didn't claim to be unbiased, and I'm not pretending to be. Although I'm curious now if you think you're behaving in an unbiased way, because that's clearly not the case.
> Apparently absence of an indictment can only mean rampant corruption and the additional crime of a conspiracy by Trump to prevent an indictment.
Trump's untoward influence on the DoJ and the lengths went to to protect him are not hypotheticals. Read the Mueller report, it sells it out. Read the accounts of the USAGs who resigned under political pressure from Trump and Barr. I mean, the whole fact that Barr was appointed in the first place is evidence of this. The whole fact there was a need for a Special Counsel after Comey was fired is evidence of this.
> They've had all kinds of investigations for years.
I don't know why you keep harping on this point. "For years" the investigations have been in the hands of Trump's political allies. Until "recently" i.e. the last two years, during which said investigations have rapidly progressed after political influence was lifted. Since then Trump's company has been in court and looks about to receive a death sentence, and his home has been raided by the FBI, where they found clear evidence of a crime. But despite these recent developments, because some arbitrary time has elapsed, by your estimation he's squeaky clean?
Trump's FBI.
Chain of custody is a problem.
> Everything from brandishing an illegally obtained firearm
Conservatives supporting denying American's their right to bear arms. Gotcha.
> while under the influence of narcotics
So?
> to admitting to taking a cut of deals on behalf of his father (“10% for the big guy”).
Private citizen not in government.
> The House absolutely should look into these allegations. Because till now nobody had taken them seriously.
Gotcha. The FBI and Trump never took this seriously.
> The Trump hate is so strong that the left cannot even admit an investigation of corruption should be done into a meth addict who was clearly selling influence to his father without some kind of whataboutism.
Private citizens vs Government officials. Conservatives and their big government overreach and policies and their anti-1A stance.
> If there was actual Trump corruption, him and his whole family would be in prison by now.
So Clinton wasn't corrupt. Gotcha.
Also, the investigations are still ongoing. See Taxes, for example. And all the previous charges filed against him and case after case he lost.
But sure, Manafort, Papadopoulos, Flynn, Stone, and Cohen are nobody related to Trump.
> They’ve been investigating him non stop since 2015. But they haven’t found anything worthy of charges.
They've found evidence they could charge, but not enough they want to risk a trial on as it's not a "slam dunk" case.
But hey, the Clintons are not corrupt, and the elections weren't stolen! Those are interesting points of view for you.
To me, the bigger issue is the white glove treatment, and the appearance of preferential moderation.
But I think that’s where political realities come into play. I don’t doubt that these companies feel the need to make lawmakers feel heard or risk legislation/regulation that will harm the platforms.
I think this is touching on something much bigger, in that these kinds of government/company relationships are everywhere, and have been for decades.
The difference with the Twitter situation is one of public visibility and direct impact on individuals trying to do something as seemingly innocuous as post and share links on social media.
Which is absolutely not to excuse the behavior. If anything, I hope this wakes up more average Americans to the kinds of quid pro quo and shady handshake deals that have been going on forever.
I think it's a good thing that we're having a discussion on when the Whitehouse is applying pressure for tweets to be removed, and how nicely asking is or isn't pressure. I actually think that these actions were entirely legal. The Biden campaign and the Trump administration can and should be allowed to ask for posts to be reviewed.
But I think we'd damn well take a close look at when and why they do choose to do so.
Removing blatantly violating content isn’t controversial, nor is a member of the concerning party’s staff emailing Twitter asking for a prompt review.
What is the news story regarding photos of Hunter Biden? That he's naked like the rest of us under his clothes?
Let the news come out and let everyone decide for themselves what the value is. Censoring it is the issue
It’s been years since the “Hunter Biden laptop” non story, and the vague unsubstantiated accusations are still flying. Zero work seems to have been done since then to substantiate any of the claims, which says a lot about how much those making them care that what they’re saying is true or accurate. The vague claims and conspiracy theories do the job just as well it seems.
You’re right after all; the only reason anyone cares about the Hunter Biden laptop is because they think it will take down a different Biden.
The problem is it actually doesn’t. Despite your innuendo, the shadiest thing that can be pointed out is vague notions of influence peddling, which has been effectively normalized after the last administration’s blatant and gratuitous influence peddling. It’s hard to get people fired up about something you’ve been claiming is totally cool and legal for the past 6 years. So no surprise that no one cares to hear about influence peddling and shady deals from the team that brought us Jared Kushner’s $2billion Saudi fund and Trump’s first impeachment.
The laptop story is a dud. Republicans will spend years investigating it and find nothing. Maybe they’ll find something like an affair or a violation of IT policy and try to make it into a huge scandal, but after living through Whitewater and Benghazi, we all know the drill. They most recently tried it with Durham and that failed miserably. It’s a long tradition in Republican politics.
The faster you get over and move past the laptop, the better (for you that is… the longer Republicans cry about this non issue, the better it is for Democrats politically, because only the most rabid partisan Republicans care about this at all).
You can argue it is minor in comparison to, say, impeachment proceedings re: Burisma, but did Twitter do the right thing in suppressing the laptop story? Probably not. I don't think most people want private citizens like Gadde tampering with elections in the future.
Thank God.