X (Twitter) blocks links to hacked JD Vance dossier
theverge.com
theverge.com
Update: I guess someone at Twitter reads Hacker News, because they finally forced me to delete the posts containing those links, a few hours later.
"it's just code after all"
(Could you replace e.g. an "a" with %61 and keep the URL working?)
> It began as a joke, one of the people said, given the close spelling of the Muppet's name to Musk's own and the irony of Musk's temperamental personality in contrast to that of the kind and curious "Sesame Street" character.
> However, use of Elmo to discuss Musk has become more commonplace in recent weeks, as Musk has turned Twitter into "a dictatorship," one former employee said. There are potentially fewer repercussions from criticizing your billionaire boss if you can argue you were discussing a puppet, not the CEO.
> Elmo is also gaining traction as a nickname for Musk on Twitter itself. Thousands of recent Tweets and comments clearly discussing Musk only mention the Muppet by name. Discussing Musk under his new nickname keeps the CEO from trending and it keeps critics out of his mentions.
"The president XXxed (formerly tweeted) yesterday on X (formerly Twitter)..." sigh
authority: https://user:pass@host/[..]
anchors: https://[...]/path#anchor
path params: https://host/path;param/[...]`
port: http://host:80/[...]`That’s fine, block whatever you want. Just don’t whine that others have a different view on what “free speech” means.
If you don’t believe that’s what free speech is, then that’s fine too (and you’re right), but then stop using that as a cultural cudgel.
“Free speech” does not mean “carte blanche protection from any repercussions from anything I say, everyone is still obligated to like me and be nice to me and do business with me.”
> everyone is still obligated to like me and be nice to me and do business with me.
That takes force. You can't ask the government to protect you from the consequences of your speech, because that violates the free association of others.
>Because at least in America “free speech” refers to 1st Amendment protection
Which I took to be the part that tried to answer why 'whining that others have a different view on what “free speech” means' is somehow bad behavior in a way that other political speech isn't.
I really had no intention of discussing my position on free speech, but briefly: It is morally good for an entity to permit freedom of speech and it is morally bad for them to suppress it, but I don't think the government has any business pushing them in either direction.
Maybe pick a different term?
“This content moderation is a violation of my personal content preferences!” has a nice ring to it, and won’t delude people into misunderstanding how our society works.
I really do not get why "it's okay if a corporation takes away our rights" is such an important point to you that you are enforcing your vocabulary in service of it. It doesn't cohere for me when you suggest it's a right worth fighting for, but if anybody other than the government takes it away from you it's just a preference.
Given how public this story was, if what he did was illegal, local DA would have prosecuted him.
Hunter Biden abandoned the laptop. The Intel agencies and the corp media tried to cover it up.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/politics/hunter-biden-laptop-...
When someone talks about "free speech absolutist", one expects they will include everything. No exceptions. After all, that's what the "absolutist" is supposed to be doing here.
If you want to add exceptions to free speech, then you're not an absolutist. You just have the same lame relativist free speech definition as everyone else. Except your criteria is different than the others. Which, I mean, no problem, but at least be honest.
Fun fact: I do agree, but I haven't said that in my previous comment.
As for my data, you're free to post it. I'm not going to sue you or anything. Maybe the HN staff wouldn't like it, but that's out of my control.
Among others it prohibits sharing:
>home address or physical location information, such as street addresses, GPS coordinates, or other identifying information related to locations that are considered private
> X suspended Ken Klippenstein after he shared the Iranian-hacked dossier on J.D. Vance, which doxed his home addresses, phone numbers, emails, and social security number.
https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1839382777223164033
Official message from X Safety,
> Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance’s physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number.
they also blocked the laptop stories
Most of the information can be found online, this is just complied into one PDF file.
All the real stories about this piece are going to be from people like Klippenstein and Musk beclowning themselves over it.
Presumably newspapers will have more to say about the dossier now that it's already public.
And I guess that's possible, but I think the simpler explanation is just that they're lazy. Trump himself was going to pick whoever he wanted, everyone knew it. There's no point in going the extra mile to support a process you know is going to be ignored. So check the boxes you need to and move on.
The dossier doesn't matter. The fact they are blocking it does.
compiled
Duck Sauce - Barbara Streisand
(It's just a really catchy song. And I suspect this block will backfire.)
In last month’s interview with the BBC, Musk said, “the rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of a country … If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws.” At another point in the interview, Musk said: “If people of a given country are against a certain type of speech, they should talk to their elected representatives and pass a law to prevent it.”
Twitter, before it was bought by Elon Musk, had a policy regarding hacked materials — but the page is no longer available. A pre-Musk version of the policy, dated 2019, stated that posting or linking to hacked content is prohibited. Under this policy, links to a story by The New York Post about Hunter Biden, the current president’s son, were banned. But in October 2020, Twitter changed its policy to say that it would no longer block hacked materials, after an outcry about how the company had handled the Post story. “Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix,” wrote then-CEO Jack Dorsey.
Musk was one of the people who was unhappy with the decision to ban links to the Post’s story. “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk wrote of the decision on the story in April 2022. He even invited former Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi to examine internal documents showing how Twitter handled the decision. (In the course of tweeting his conclusions, Taibbi exposed the email addresses of Dorsey and Representative Ro Khanna.)
[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/29/tech/elon-musk-twitter-govern...
Per X, the links were blocked because they included un-redacted personal information such as address and SSN.
If there was no private info - obviously the block is b.s. But considering they’ve mentioned privacy details in the doc I’m prepared to give them the benefit of doubt for a few days or ask the initial poster to send a redacted version.
In the United States, the addresses of politicians are public records.
It's how journalists and the general public verify that they live in the districts they are elected to represent.
For comparison, Elon previously leaked "the Twitter files" to reporter Matt Taibbi, who posted the address of prior Twitter executives. Needless to say, Taibbi was not banned.
“If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws.” in 2023.
Here he is on Brazil just a few months ago [1]:
“We are lifting all restrictions. This judge has applied massive fines, threatened to arrest our employees and cut off access to in Brazil.
As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there.
But principles matter more than profit.”
If we have to risk employees going to jail, then we will follow the law.
We risk employees going to jail, so we will ignore the law on principle.
Literal opposites. He is just a free speech opportunist who realized that you can say “free speech” to get people to overlook your selfish goals and get the benefit of the doubt when you deserve strict scrutiny.
The article you link shows that his subsequent actions are inconsistent with that claim, but not that he's 'retracted' it.
Musk has repeatedly said that Twitter will allow 'all legal speech'. There's nothing illegal about sharing links to this document in most jurisdictions (certainly not in the US).
But (2) is definitely not (1). He used to say he supported (1), now he says (2). I guess you could say that that isn’t retraction, and that he still claims he’s a free speech absolutist, but as much as I think he’s a hypocrite I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and allow him to change his mind.
It’s also legal to post flight tracker information, but Musk opposes that in contradiction to (2) as well. That’s also incredibly hypocritical.
I get the feeling you and many others didn’t finish reading my comment before concluding that I’m an Elon Musk fan when in fact I’m the opposite :P I’m guessing people stopped around the first quote, before I point out that what he’s doing here is also hypocritical: blocking documents on JD Vance while having been vocally against blocking documents on Hunter Biden.
Such is HN!
Even if we accept the alleged retraction, it doesn't really make sense in this context to say that it's unfair to come after Musk for saying (1) because he's subsequently said (2), given that (2) is equally inconsistent with banning posts sharing this dossier.
Yet Brazil's speech laws he publicly flouted and attacked.
As a theory worth exploring: Is it because India's government matches Musk's far-right politics (or do they have any direct relationship), and Brazil's does not? Are there other data points we can use?
Yes, he has censored information on Erdogan's request as well. He never calls out the censorship from strongmen authoritarians but loves attacking nations with strong democracies.
I think people that take such position care very little about free speech and a lot about hurting people who have different politics than they do. And they are part of what is wrong with the politics today.
But things that attack or are damaging to him or his beliefs are frequently censored.
The issue is not what he chooses to censor or not censor. The issue is that he claims that the reason he chooses not to censor horrific abuse and attacks on minorities is because he’s a free speech absolutist and all censorship is bad.
He hides behind the claim of the sanctity of free speech as the justification for what he allows, publishes, and promotes, when he very clearly holds, and enforces, no such belief.
Posts like this that claim that people are just disagreeing about politics, when the political viewpoint on one side is that the other side has no right to exist are entirely demonstrative of people who are so bigoted that they don’t see their own bigotry as that, because it could only be bigotry if the targets of their bullshit were people, which to them they aren’t.
Yes. Because all these people, however unpleasant their speech may be for you or me, have the same right to speak their mind on the questions of public importance as you and me. Yes, even racists.
However, publishing somebody's private information that can easily lead to deadly attack on him or his family is in entirely different class of speech. It does not contribute to any public discussion or does anything positive, just endangers people and enables violence. It is not severe enough to make the law involved, but it is going far enough that restricting it on social media is summarily a positive thing.
The owner of the social media platform has to draw the line, which speech is allowed on the platform and which is not. Some would draw it on "anything legal is allowed". Some would even do "anything is allowed" but those will find themselves in trouble with the law pretty quickly. Some would say "some legal speech - like porn - is not allowed", or "some legal speech - like revealing private information of public figures and their relatives - is not allowed", etc. These are valid choices (as it is valid to criticize them), and they are not inconsistent at all. You can support free speech without supplying your platform to organize attacks on public figures or hurting their families. You do not have to be "all or nothing" - and in fact, nobody has advocated "all or nothing" policy towards Twitter or Facebook or any of the social media platforms ever, before Musk. Now, because Musk is also not "all or nothing" - as is everybody else - how is he any special? His line is such that publishing private information about people that can hurt them is not ok, good for him I say.
> when the political viewpoint on one side is that the other side has no right to exist
Yes, I know, you only have to be bad because your opponents are so much worse. Always a good excuse. It is totally OK for good people to be bad to bad people, after all, we are good people and they are bad people, that makes it right when we do it to them, but wrong when they do it to us!
Got it, encouraging people to execute gay and trans people is completely fine, and is clearly nowhere near as bad as publishing information sent by a person running for vice president. I get your point, on the one hand the people saying "LGBT/black/hispanic people are not actually people and don't have the right to exist" are only causing harm to people who aren't really people. On the other hand you have the emails and information about a major public figure running for political office with secret service protection who is running on a platform of "brown people are illegal and killing your pets, and lgbt people should be illegal" while encouraging bomb threats against minorities.
> The owner of the social media platform has to draw the line,
His entire justification for not restricting attacks on minorities is free speech, he actively promotes false information about political groups he does not like, while actively censoring things like this that are, again, a dossier about a public figure running for a major office.
So his line is "anything, no matter how wretched, gross, false, or fraudulent, as long as it doesn't attack my political friends".
Stop pretending these are equivalent.
> > when the political viewpoint on one side is that the other side has no right to exist > Yes, I know, you only have to be bad because your opponents are so much worse.
The idea that a leaked "dossier" about a public figure is somehow "bad" is so fucking bullshit.
The fact that you consider this equivalent to promoting violence against minorities tells me everything I need to know about your world view. The fact that you think leaking a dossier about a political candidate is "bad" tells me that your opinion is free speech ends once it hurts political figures, which means I don't give a shit about your position.
I'm glad I'll never meet you, and I hope you're never in a position where someone vulnerable depends on you.
Please stop it. Nobody advocated executing gay and trans people here, and nobody said it is "completely fine". Stop lying, please.
> on the one hand the people saying "LGBT/black/hispanic people are not actually people and don't have the right to exist"
There are no such people, at least not in the numbers worth mentioning, in the US (there are in other countries, but curiously you don't care about that at all, do you?). You are just whipping yourself into a frenzy by imagining something that doesn't exist but it would be nice if they did because that would justify you hurting your political opponents - after all, they are so, so bad!
> So his line is "anything, no matter how wretched, gross, false, or fraudulent, as long as it doesn't attack my political friends".
Again, this is a lie. X prohibits a lot of content that has nothing to do with "attacks" on supposed Musk's "political friends". I just recently personally saw one prominent political article "restricted" on X because it mentioned (in a quote) certain slur word, for example. And I witness a lot of fraud deleted (not 100%, true, but that's impossible). Again, you are being completely false here.
> The idea that a leaked "dossier" about a public figure is somehow "bad" is so fucking bullshit.
Yes, it is bad, in this particular case. It does nothing but hurting people, including people that are not related to any political involvement, and does not contribute in any way to the society. You can not name any cause or any group that would be better off by the fact that these private details are public. How would publishing Vance's SSN be useful? Does it protect "LGBT/black/hispanic people" somehow? No. The only way one could use them is to commit personal attacks on his person and the persons of his relatives. I am hoping you would at least stop before advocating that. Though these days one can't be sure anymore.
> The fact that you think leaking a dossier about a political candidate is "bad" tells me that your opinion is free speech ends once it hurts political figures,
And again, you keep ignoring the fact we're talking about private information, like home addresses, SSNs and so on. You try to present it as if it a purely political dossier of political nature that has some societal value. It might be the case if the leaker bothered to redact out the private information - but they didn't, and they probably didn't because beyond that, this document contains pretty much nothing interesting. It's as boring and mundane as the content of my "old bills" drawer. The only purpose to publish something like this could be to personally hurt a political opponent - no other goal is achieved by it. And the fact that you are consistently refuse to address this issue - the issue of publishing private information, having no significance in public discussion - makes me suggest you are actually ok with it. Your belligerent tone and baseless false accusations confirm it quite nicely. If you want to know what's wrong with the politics today - look at the mirror, it's you and your hate. I hope you find a way to move beyond it one day.
That is literally a campaign point for multiple candidates. Maybe the problem is you're a delusional bigot.
And guess what, I do care about what happens in those countries as well, but this article is about someone in the US and involves a candidate for US political office. I feel the same way about bigots in other countries, and make the same complaints about them, just not in a context where they aren't relevant.
> The only way one could use them is to commit personal attacks on his person and the persons of his relatives.
You mean the dude, and family, with secret service protection? None of which required this magic dossier.
Also, I looked at that dossier, the overwhelming majority of which was details about his variable political positions and personal history - all of which seem super relevant to a political candidate.
But, I understand, there is much more danger in a leak that happens to include information about where he lives and his family - which are not secret - than calling for criminalization of and violence LGBT people.
> If you want to know what's wrong with the politics today - look at the mirror, it's you and your hate
I'm not the person saying "these people don't have the right to exist", you're trying disingenuous "paradox of tolerance" bs. Claiming the problem is "my hate towards people that deny the rights of others to exist" is classic white surpremacist BS.
Again, I hope no one vulnerable ever needs you for anything, because you're the kind of person who would ask a victim if they've considered the harm that speaking up would do to their abuser.
We don't need to continue this thread. We clearly disagree on some fundamental issues, I think that bigotry has no place in a civil society, and you think I'm an evil hater for not lovingly accepting people's choice to decide who has a right to exist.