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Comment by Festro | Hacker News Reader

1) The laptop scandal is old news 2) It's not buried, nobody cares about minor updates to old news 3) Freedom of Speech is a US concept, this is a global site 4) Freedom of Speech doesn't apply to private companies like you think it does 5) No collusion was shown to exist beyond the official channels that both top parties in the USA used at times - the twitter thread literally states this very clearly 6) We're talking about dick pics and hookers here, from someone who isn't a politician. It's like saying Tom Hanks is unsuitable as an actor because of Chet Hanks' latest antics. Grow up.

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I am not interested in the laptop story, but I am very interested in political parties having contacts on social media sites to promote or hide content. This isn't trivial fact at all. People suspect this to be the case in the media too and hence have very low trust. As they of course should!

Your explanation of freedom of speech is very insufficient, even for non-US standards. Of course a company can do what it wants for that matter in a legal sense.

You are not concerned that the two parties in your country have influence on the topics shared on social media? To me this is the most essential part here. Yes, pundits made it about the laptop story. They are not the brightest star in the sky and will never amount to much. If you don't understand why such a story is not important in the grand scheme of things, there is little hope for you ever grasping anything complex. I doubt the republican media needs any more criticism here. But this wasn't restricted to them.

For the laptop story specifically there is even reason to censor it in my opinion. Why should people be interested here in the first place? Even the family of a president deserves privacy. Still there was collusion between officials and Twitter and you should expect this to be the case for most media publications aside from a handful with more integrity.

Political parties do no have contacts at social media sites to promote or hide content. The White House has contacts to discuss content that relates to national security.

Suspect? It's public fact. And of course that should erode trust. No citizen should trust their government 100%. That's just sensible. But have they overstepped any sensible line here? Not that I can see, not that most people can see. General consensus is that this is a nothing burger.

My country? Nope. This is media theatre from another country.

Of course governments should have influence on topics shared on social media. Child pornography is one topic they should have influence over for starters. Hacked materials. Revenge porn. Those last 2 are the ones that are important here specifically. Not that the White House actually made any kind of request to influence Hunter's hacked dick pics on Twitter - Twitter did this all by themselves, fearing legal repercussions. No government body, or political party, ovestepped any line - AND your entire premise is terrible. Of course government should influence these topics.

Good you think privacy is important.

There was no collusion. The Twitter officials literally say this in their thread. Twitter made the decision by themselves.

Have they overstepped any sensible line here? On the internet? That is a very suggestive question. That doesn't mean the criticism about media honesty is not relevant or a "nothing burger".

Do you think these interventions were because of child pornography? To answer with another suggestive question, you don't believe that yourself, do you? And another one that I already stated, don't you have a problem with political parties curating content on social media? It isn't relevant if that happened or not, just for the sake of the general argument. You probably wouldn't like that, would you?

Some of the messages in the Twitter Files are Twitter employees blocking content at the request of the DNC.

> Freedom of Speech doesn't apply to private companies like you think it does

The problem here is going to be the private company censoring users at the behest of the state. There may be arguments made as to why some feel that is acceptable, but the distinction is important. This is not the same as a private company invoking freedom of association via content standards.

it wasnt at the behest of any state what are you talking about

https://nypost.com/2022/12/04/fbi-warned-twitter-of-hunter-b...

>"MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, I would say first, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that we’re in regular touch with social media platforms — just like we’re in regular touch with all of you and your media outlets — about areas where we have concern, information that might be useful, information that may or may not be interesting to your viewers.

You all make decisions, just like the social media platforms make decisions, even though they’re a private-sector company and different, but just as an example.

So we are ma- — regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans seeing — are seeing across all of social and traditional media. And we work to engage with them to better understand the enforcement of social media platform policies."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...

>These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship is ‘private’ – as the documents show collusion between a whole group of government officials in multiple states to suppress speech about election controversies.

>The document shows that California state officials contacted YouTube directly to remove the video on September 24, 2020, and that YouTube seemed to respond by deleting the video on September 27, 2020

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/ca-big-tech-biden-cen...

At the time of this "scandal", Biden was not even President. All campaigns have lines into major social media companies to take down quickly the content that violates terms of service. What is the issue?

It's not that easy. Social media platforms have a special status under USA law [1] - they get immunity from consequences of their user's behaviour but have to implement platform neutrality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

>they get immunity from consequences of their user's behaviour but have to implement platform neutrality.

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

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