X scraps tool to report electoral fake news | Hacker News Reader

X scraps tool to report electoral fake news

bbc.com

20 pointsvinni272 comments

Report to whom? Who are the Fake News Police and why are they more qualified than Community Notes?

To X. You know, X runs a website, X has some responsibility that what it presents on that website isn't actively harmful to democracy. Both a moral responsibility everywhere it operates, but a legal responsibility in many jurisdictions. And if they don't manage the content on the website themselves in many jurisdictions they open themselves up to fines and regulatory penalties.

To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view to say "Well yes, Elon owns the website, Elon runs the website, Elon personally intervenes to boost and endorse wild disinformation and conspiracy theories, but I just don't think you could possibly expect Elon to be held responsible for that".

> To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view

Interestingly, my comment was sitting at 3 points all day in European Time, and quickly got downvoted to -1 when America woke up this morning. So I agree there is some geographical/culture disparity in views on this topic.

> X has some responsibility that what it presents on that website isn't actively harmful to democracy.

Yes, that's why the team that pushed false narratives about the Biden laptop being "Russian disinformation" have been removed.

There's no general responsibility to not "present" things "actively harmful to democracy". And there's nothing uniquely American about that. I'm a European living in Europe and there's no such obligation or responsibility here either. Please don't insinuate there is.

That's especially important because a significant chunk of the left no longer use the dictionary definition of the word democracy, so there isn't any chance of agreement on what it means. They seem to be using it either to mean the unelected institutions (courts, media, academia, civil service agencies) or sometimes to mean left wing policies. So if a conservative politician wins an election then that's a "threat to democracy", example:

The AfD has achieved top municipal office for the first time in Sonneberg, Thuringia [...snip...] Green Party leader Ricarda Lang has interpreted the result as a warning to all supporters of democracy. [...snip...] Robert Sesselmann’s win is an alarm signal for democracy, said Martin Schirdewan, co-chairman of the Left Party

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/afd-sonneberg-...

In the US there is specifically Section 230 - which legally absolves X of any liability from user generated content. That is unique to the US, in Europe, social media companies don't enjoy those same legal protections and field all sorts of requests for removal of content from government.

As a European living in Europe, presumably you're aware of the passage of the Digital Services Act which puts legal requirements on large platforms to have systems in place to tackle disinformation.

I'm aware of the DSA but fortunately am not required to follow it, being in one of the parts of Europe that's not a part of the EU.

Section 230 doesn't have anything in it about being "actively harmful to democracy" so what's your point?

Mentioning Section 230 is to back up the "To be honest it's a pretty uniquely American view..." part of the GP comment.

It's really not that American. Americans didn't invent the concept of free speech, not by a long shot. The idea that it's somehow "un-European" to allow people to say things "harmful to democracy" is wrong legally and culturally, but the cultural affinity so many Europeans have for authoritarianism is exactly the reason Europe has no tech industry to speak of.

Americans did not invent the concept of free speech, but they take it to an extreme that is extremely far out of the mainstream in Europe and always has been.

It's clearly not that extreme, given that Europeans overwhelmingly express strong preferences for American-built communications and information tech.

They don't have that preference because of American free speech principles; they have that preference because software is generally better in the States and there aren't European competitors.

You can make all kinds of arguments about what the root causes of that are, but none of those are the actual reason Europeans use US social networks.

There aren't meaningful gaps in software quality here, most of the "American" services and sites are half built by European workers anyway. There aren't competitors for a bunch of reasons, but the far more restrictive EU laws around speech are a big one. Europeans don't actually like or support those laws which is why they then flock to platforms that aren't so beholden to them.

They may be a factor in where the services are built; they are not a factor in consumer choice.

It's not like there was a European Facebook competitor that users shyed away from because of European speech restrictions.

There were such sites actually. Germany used to have one, it even looked just like Facebook and had some modest success for a time, but soon disappeared. I can't quite remember the name.

Mostly in Europe people just don't set up social networks at all. The laws just aren't compatible with the concept.

So how equally has Digital Services Act been used to tackle Disinformation? Twitter community notes seem to equally applied left or right. Are Europeans equally suing people who say the vaccine is making kids transgender as equally as they are punishing misinformers who said the State only needed 14 days to slow the spread or that if you get vaccinated with both doses you can no longer catch Covid?

Isn't Community Notes a system to tackle disinformation?

I’ve had a pet theory which I don’t take too seriously but which is comedically difficult to empirically dismiss.

Musk recognises Twitter for the albatross it is. Unfortunately, he has too much reputation tied up in it. He needs a way for someone else, preferably a bogeyman, to kill it. The perfect bogeyman would be an unelected bureaucrat.

Cut to Musk systematically disbanding Twitter’s electoral guardrails, including by laying off its European team, right after the European Commission told him not to [1][2].

[1] https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1662194595755704321...

[2] https://www.disinfo.eu/advocacy/how-the-digital-services-act...

Musk doesn't need a bogeyman to make his decisions for him. He regularly makes widely-derided decisions. If he wanted to ditch Twitter, he would.

I think everyone is giving musk to much credit. Here's a dude who lies through his teeth from his credentials to what companies and products he represents can deliver.

The dude isn't smart the dude is a grifter born to money. The only thing musk is a great example of, is the fact inheritance tax is way to damn low.

SpaceX is years ahead of the competition, utterly dominating the field even when said competitors receive billions from powerful nation-states. Musk makes many questionable decisions, but you can't argue with that level of overwhelming success.

How much of that success can be attributed to musk though? That's like saying selective schools are better because students perform better but also they only admit high performing students. If you correct for a student's expected grades/outcomes, selective schools are detrimental to a child's education outcomes, not better.

Musk bought into space tech which showed a lot of promise and called it a company. Spacex invented the things it is famous for like Apple invented the iPhone. How are we to know his presence hasn't actually crippled progress instead of helping? Sure his money helped make some things happen but I'd argue just taxing people like musk properly so funding for research isn't so slim we'd have seen the same maybe more.

People who work/have worked at SpaceX pretty universally cite Musk as instrumental to the success of the company. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-elon-musk

One time could be a fluke, sure.

But if a guy meets with engineers all day in rocket companies, robot factories, car factories, biotech research labs, and software teams, tells them what to do, fires people who don't do it... and largely succeeds in all of the above and remains years ahead of competition, then the burden of proof that he's "not smart" or "a grifter" is on the accuser.

I don't use or own any Musk products, other than X, so I don't have a horse in this race.

But I do have eyes.

Doesn't seem like a very good theory given that Twitter's political bias was one of the driving motivators for him to acquire it in the first place. He's done some unpredictable stuff but this is entirely expected and consistent with everything he's said.

As for the EU killing Twitter, lol. Twitter has very little staff footprint in the EU now Musk has done so many layoffs and recentralized things in SF. He can just tell the EU to take a hike, publicize all their ham-fisted attempts to censor their ideological opponents and ignore any fines that are levied. The EU can then try to escalate with payment blocks or outright internet censorship, which in turn will just lead to people in the EU getting a worse Twitter experience. The EU doesn't care what Europeans think of course, that's part of its appeal to a certain type, but "we are breaking your Twitter access because we want to censor the internet" isn't going to go down well.

But isnt Musks inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose the reason he ended up in this kuvafle?

> Musks inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose

Twitter’s LBO followed a few weeks of poor impulse control followed by frantically trying to reverse course. If a court would have let him out of his deal to buy Twitter, he’d have taken it.

That's because the value of Twitter dropped remarkably after he agreed to buy it, and he had some concerns - warranted or not - about actual use compared to bots.

Sure, but evidence he doesn’t have an “inability to let his megalomaniac illusions loose.” The market changed and he attempted to correct course.

What is electoral fake news may turn out to be true. Kinda foolish to ask platforms to decide what is true and what is not.

Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? Was it fake news?

I tend to agree with your first point, and feel that for user-driven content, allowing users to submit context to be displayed below the source is a good middle-ground.

As for the second point, I think that most critical thinkers understand that the laptop changed hands several times, undermining the "news" of the matter.

As far as I am aware, the laptop's original owner has not denied that the content that's been made public is genuine. If the info had been tampered with, I think Hunter Biden would have said so.

He actually recently filed a lawsuit claiming that Giuliani et al altered data.

https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-laptop-lawsuit-94fbf...

"The suit filed in California also claims Biden’s data was “manipulated, altered and damaged” before it was sent to Giuliani and Costello, and has been further altered since then."

the biden laptop story was temporarily banned for less than 24hrs as it violated various twitter rules for hacked content and nudity. The “Twitter Files” (cue x-files theme) show us this - it was certainly not banned because users reported it as fake news using a tool like this.

From Twitter yes. But NYPpost being banned and 50 intelligence agencies saying it had all the hallmarks of Russian Disinformation kept the ball out of the court until after the election.

How was/is Hunter Biden "electoral news". He never ran for office.

His father did, and was involved in his son's business deals.

But, Jared is fine... right?

No he's not, I can't stand the guy and Trump 160% deserves major flak for letting him within 100 miles of power.

Twitter scraps tool to report electoral fake news.

FTFY

The owner of the company changed the name. No one's opinion changes that.

It's now called Xitter (with the X pronounced 'sh')

You want to give any pseudoanonymous actor in the world access to the thoughts and desires of anyone else - you got it! Thanks Big Tech!

Honestly, China has more like the right approach when it comes to allowing its citizens access to the internet.

> China has more like the right approach when it comes to allowing its citizens access to the internet.

Really?

It is kinda fascinating is it not? A person genuinely clamoring for the state to carefully control what they they can say/do/think.

You mis-read. I think a government has a responsibility to limit who can influence what I (and those around me) decide to do/say/think, whether that's through maintaining a physical border, implementing domestic law and order, or limiting remote access. After all, I don't want to live in a country where significant numbers of my fellow citizens have been unduly influenced by external propaganda and misinformation.

If the government published a browser extension that self censored your view of the internet (according to a regularly updated government blocklist), would you use it? Or does this scheme only work when everyone is equally suppressed from reading the same information?

Just wondering if your desire for censorship is borne out of an idea of keeping intrusive thoughts out of your own mind, or if it's more about other people's minds.

"limit who can influence" is a form of control.

Why are you also qualifying "external" propaganda and misinformation? You're fine with both of those things as long as its "internal"? Can you define what source of misinformation you're okay with?

>"limit who can influence" is a form of control.

Sure is, and govenments also control what kinds of goods can be sold to me, what kind of transport I may drive, places and buildings I may enter, and so on. Are you advocating for no government? Or are you saying that all (most?) of the controls they currently exert are ok, but they must allow completely free transfer of data in and out? If so, why is the internet so special?

>Why are you also qualifying "external" propaganda and misinformation?

Assuming I live somewhere half-decent, I have greater trust in the government and culture that I know.

>Can you define what source of misinformation you're okay with?

None, really, although defining "misinformation" gets very tricky when you start breaking it down to local specifics. After all, we all knowingly and unknowingly spread some form of misinformation just going about our lives. In any case, why is it a good idea to allow the world's misinformation in, in addition to what we have to sort through from a bloke in the pub / my town's micro-politics / my government's constant battle with the opposition party?

<<defining "misinformation" gets very tricky when you start breaking it down to local specifics

Would you not agree it is a strong argument against government wielding that kind of enormous power?

I'm arguing in defence of limiting external data inputs, not filtering by "misinformation".

In practical sense, how would one differentiate one from the other? The end result is the same: data is missing.

I understand your point, but I can't help wondering if you considered what could happen if that approach was adopted.

What's so precious about "data"? I don't argue that "things are missing" when the postal service refuses to carry certian things, or when shops refuse to stock certain items, or so on. These are restrictions imposed for our own good, as we apparently can't be trusted with unfettered access to all life has to offer. There is naunce here, but my point is - why does the internet get a free pass when we consider the balance of high ideals of free transfer of stuff against what the stuff is and what it does?

>if you considered what could happen if that approach was adopted

People wouldn't waste time, energy, and soundness of opinion from taking inputs and arguing with unknowns on the internet. Kids wouldn't be able to download abitrary apps that have overall negative impacts on their health.

<<What's so precious about "data"?

No one knows except the deciding party since someone else decided that you do not get to evaluate whether it is precious. There is a deep distrust in me for anyone who: 1) engages in that 2) argues that it is kosher.

< People wouldn't waste time, energy, and soundness of opinion from taking inputs and arguing with unknowns on the internet.

Right. Them proles should be working instead of entertaining ideas different feom what politburo in US is trying to ram through.

< Kids wouldn't be able to download abitrary apps that have overall negative impacts on their health

I want to be with you, but I worry that you wouldn't really solve apps issue. Would you be willing to elaborate on what exactly you have in mind? Absolute ban? Online id check?

It is pretty clear that we are diametrically opposed on the subject. I am continuing this conversation, because I think it is an important one to have.

>No one knows except the deciding party since someone else decided that you do not get to evaluate whether it is precious.

Yet there are plenty of other ways to get "data", that until recently were the only ways to get data, that are relatively heavily censored and controlled. We didn't complain that libraries didn't give unfettered access to all information, or that we were not able to start a conversation with an aribtrary human. It's a crucial part of my argment that, thanks to the presentation of (hugely more) data on the internet, it's not possible for even the recipient to understand what's precious and what is not. Take a look around you at people consuming content on the internet. Is that "precious" data?

>Right. Them proles should be working instead of entertaining ideas different feom what politburo in US is trying to ram through.

Interesting take, given that the largely US-centric internet technolgies are being used to push a largely US-centric view of the world on the rest of the world.

>Would you be willing to elaborate on what exactly you have in mind? Absolute ban?

I would not be permitted, as an app developer where I live, to develop something like TikTok and allow kids of all ages free access to (in my opinion) mind poison. Again in my opinion, it's an insane state of things where we allow things we know are bad from external sources to be freely used and accessed. I also think this time will be remembered like we remember the late 1800s, where newly-discovered potent drugs were widely and legally distributed.

The state has motivation to self preserve, so is unlikely to suck a population dry. Making the state the only source of fuckery then means fuckery won't kill us. Opening up access to population wide fuckery to the highest bidder however is different. The highest bidder does not care for the life and well-being of the livestock, they care to see their investment pay off.

While I don't agree china has it right, both approaches are wrong as humans are not livestock, we shouldn't even treat livestock the way we do, the Chinese approach is like choosing to sell 50% of all children born while Twitter is like selling as many children as buyers will take.

>Making the state the only source of fuckery then means fuckery won't kill us.

Quite right. No government has ever killed anyone, directly or indirectly.

I wouldn't say anyone but they certainly haven't killed everyone

As opposed to the tech companies, which have done?

Tech companies haven't been around long enough to have that level of impact but if corporate behaviour in general is any indication, then big oil for example is a pretty strong example of why we cannot let private entities act without strict oversight.

Yes, in that they don't allow unfettered access to the internet outside their borders. As a soverign nation who cares for their citizens' state of mind as well as physical security, why would you not do this in addition to defending your border?

Would you want physical borders defended by locking all the citizens in as well?

Where did I say that is how I think physical borders should be defended?

In any case, even in a largely "free" country, I'm not entirely free to leave when and to where I might want.

>Where did I say that is how I think physical borders should be defended?

Where did I say you said that? Indeed, had you, I wouldn't have asked. But surely you see the similarities: Blocking non-domestic Internet stuff is imposing restrictions on what information/systems citizens are able to access, effectively curtailing the digital equivalent of a right to travel.

>In any case, even in a largely "free" country, I'm not entirely free to leave when and to where I might want.

What "free" country imposes routine restrictions on its citizens leaving? That you may be denied entry anywhere else is a related but separate issue.

>Where did I say you said that?

In your previous comment:

>>Would you want physical borders defended by locking all the citizens in as well?

The answer is no, but I don't know on what basis you asked the question. Unless, that is, you mean "If you compared the data access policy of one country to another, you must also be in favour of the physical access policy of that first country". Which, frankly, is an absurd stretch. I was very careful in the wording of my original comment.

>What "free" country imposes routine restrictions on its citizens leaving?

The analogy between free physical movement and free flow of data isn't perfect, but no analogy is. There are places in the world I can't go. I must carry certain paperwork if I wish to travel at all. I am limited to certain entry and exit locations. I certainly can't invite an aribitrary human to visit me in my country.

It sounds like this tool was produced by the previous "Trust and Safety" team which is known for attempting to manipulate public discourse and was sacked.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707147926789554422

Obviously this article is the BBC, a competing media platform.

It is not known unless you take every attention-seeking word of Musk literally and at face value. As they released the whole mess that was the "Twitter Files" they repeatedly lied by omission and disproved themselves with the fragments of actual files they released.

The NYTimes has confirmed the laptop is real. So have most other media outlets.

Do you think the letters from the FBI pressuring Twitter to remove the story are false? What evidence do you have to support this theory?

Didn't say anything about any laptop. I said Twitter's own files contradict their statements and are dishonest attention-seeking.

You raised the matter of the Twitter Files. The biggest revelations in the Twitter files, which you discussed, were the FBI tampering with reporting of the Biden laptop story.

I can’t discuss any other matter you may be concerned about because you have been incredibly vague in specifying what it is you are actually concerned about. You have mentioned lying through omission, Twitter being dishonest, and attention seeking but have given zero examples of any of these behaviours except saying they have something to do with the Twitter Files.

The only concrete information you have conveyed is that you dislike Elon Musk very much.

Who was running the FBI at the time of this story? (Hint: Biden wasn’t in government at the time)

The Deep State, unelected bureaucrats who run the organizations no matter if it is a Republican or Democrat in office?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com