Ask HN: Are there valuable insights from the Twitter files?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34070376

by mind-blight • 4 years ago

29 43 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been reading the Twitter files, but I'm struggling to find anything that's much of a revelation in them.

Twitter removes pictures of Hunter Biden's penis, and US three-letter agencies meet with top social media execs seem pretty weak.

I'm fairly left-leaning though, so I may be glossing over something. Objectivity, are there details that are valuable outside of scoring political points?

h2odragon2• 4 years ago

Flip it round. If the Trump White House had ordered social media to suppress reports about their involvement with russia, would that be "ho hum that just happens?"

It's not just the penis; it's the emails detailing "10% for the big guy". Just like it wasn't the "pee tape," but the komprmat; right?

mind-blight• 4 years ago

We're those emails actually scrubbed from Twitter though? My understanding is that the scrubbed material was actual photos of his genitals.

It's have no problem with Trump getting the actual "pee tape" scrubbed. I definitely have a problem of discussion of it is scrubbed

mjthrowaway1• 4 years ago

They temp banned the whitehouse press secretary for linking to the NYpost article about the Hunter laptop.

jacquesm• 4 years ago

Yes, let's flip it around: what do you think are the chances that if such evidence was present that it would have been released to the journalists doing their 'investigation'?

throwaway23597• 4 years ago

Uh, extremely high? It just wouldn't be Musk doing the evidence releasing, instead it would be leaks from other employees.

constantcrying• 4 years ago

what do you think are the chances that if such evidence was present that it would have been released to the journalists doing their 'investigation'?

With a 100% chance it would have been broadcasted by Twitter to the entire world, from where it would have been become the biggest "news story" of the months. Journalists would have unanimously declared solidarity with twitter, lawsuits would have been launched and investigations would have been performed.

Do you actually believe that anybody on Twitter would have taken it and covered it up that Trump was forcing them to censor? What world do you live in?

jasonhansel• 4 years ago

You do know that most of this happened during the Trump administration, when Trump was ultimately in control of the FBI, right?

h2odragon2• 4 years ago

Well that's kindof the question, ain't it? Is anyone in control of the FBI? If so, they appear to be unconcerned about things like the limits to their powers articulated in the Constitution.

faeriechangling• 4 years ago

Depends on what you consider valuable or surprising. Nothing revealed so far shocks me all that much. A few people at a company with a very much centre-left culture had it out for right wingers, sometimes for less justifiable reasons, sometimes because the person they disliked had been skirting around the rules for years. What a shock.

Jack as expected generally was pretty consistently seen pushing back against such notions but not very strongly. One thing the Twitter files did reveal to me is that Jack is exactly the sort of person I thought he was, mostly a voice of sober second thought relative to those reporting to him.

The thing I've found most interesting about the Twitter files is how Musk insisted on a selective leak honestly. Because this leak was so selective, I don't have much choice but to presume what he isn't leaking is exculpatory evidence. I don't see how Twitter was run under Agarwal to be any worse than how it's run under Musk honestly, it just sucked in a different way, and mostly wish Jack was still in charge. Because you know, he actually believed in Free Speech and wasn't a phony like Musk.

someNameIG2• 4 years ago

The target audience for the files seem to be right wing Americans, and I'm neither of them so haven't paid much attention.

But they seem to be a bunch of half-truths, only releasing information that Musk wants. @jack asked Elon to release all his email yet that wasn't done, so it's very possible there's a lot that either contradicts and/or puts in context that goes against the narrative the files are trying to push.

puffoflogic• 4 years ago

Just curious, how did you determine the released data is "a bunch of half-truths"? Do you have access to more complete data sets which contradict what we've seen? Why are you keeping this additional data private if so?

jamesboehmer5• 4 years ago

I would think the "half-truths" refer to the difference between the content in the twitter files vs taibbi's and weiss's reporting of it. The FBI emailed twitter safety to report violations of twitter's own terms of service. It's not clear twitter actually did anything with those reports. But to read taibbi and weiss, it was as if the FBI threatened twitter to ban nypost because of the hunter biden laptop article, which never happened.

someNameIG2• 4 years ago

Half-truths in that it's only part of the truth. They haven't published all internal Twitter files have they? Like I said they haven't even published a previous CEOs email, despite him asking them to.

meepmorp• 4 years ago

No, it's ginned up nonsense that appeals to people who are looking for a justification for their anger and sense of grievance.

mythrwy• 4 years ago

Government agents looking to control narrative outside of calls to illegal behavior is ginned up nonsense?

It's unsurprising for sure, but still improper and disturbing in a nominally free and democratic society.

lesuorac2• 4 years ago

The great think about twitter is that it lets you direct link to messages. Which of the tweets in the twitter dumps actually show "Government agents looking to control narrative outside of calls to illegal behavior"?

jonfw2• 4 years ago

You don’t see an issue with members of congress and us intelligence pressuring social media companies to suppress political speech?

A private company censoring speech is one thing- it was widely known that Twitter was moderated with a bias towards liberals. But the government doing so seems like a violation of the first amendment, doesn’t it?

jamesboehmer5• 4 years ago

I keep reading statements like this saying that the government pressured twitter to censor speech, but never really describing exactly what happened. Can you point me to the place in the twitter files where this happened?

tanseydavid2• 4 years ago

Did you read it first before asking? Serious question.

jonfw2• 4 years ago

The twitter files are not that long

colpabar3• 4 years ago

All the responses from “left leaning” people claiming that this is all no big deal has fully cemented the notion that the left I signed up for is dead and gone. I thought free expression and not trusting the government and not trusting corporations and recognizing that when governments and corporations work together it’s almost always a bad thing for regular people.

What the hell happened? How is this a nothingburger? The latest drop reveals that the pentagon was involved too, and it was using special access to promote US propaganda in the middle east. Now that it’s not about “hunter biden’s penis” anymore, can we start getting upset? I feel like I’m losing my mind!

https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1605292454261182464

lostdog• 4 years ago

The Twitter files emphasized stupid things and ignored real issues, and that's why it's being treated as a nothingburger overall.

The real issues are (1) What government requests are reasonable and what should Twitter respond to outside of subpoenas, and (2) Should certain groups, such as celebrities and political campaigns, have their review requests prioritized.

However, the Twitter files are trying to convince you that Twitter threw the election to Biden, and that any moderation discussions are inappropriate. These are stupid and highly biased points of view. It's no wonder we cannot discuss it meaningfully. The Twitter files themselves poisoned the discussion.

It's very similar to the lab leak theory? Should we check whether the virus had origins in a lab? Of course! However, the real question being asked by its store supporters is "Can we blame the Covid crisis on the scientific community, and also maybe democrats?" Again, how do you even address the important question when it's drowned out by a ludicrous and biased political question?

That's the thing about the Twitter files. They almost purposefully sank their own message. It's so frustrating.

colpabar3• 4 years ago

That’s not how I’ve interpreted the reporting on it so far. I haven’t read anything that explicitly claims twitter “threw the election” for biden, at least not in the actual twitter files. What I have read is that a lot of the moderation requests at the behest of the FBI were favorable to biden and democrats in general. Whether that swayed the election isn’t exactly clear, but the coverup happening right before the election makes it impossible to ignore.

I also think you’re being a bit disingenuous and assuming bad faith from the get go. I’m sure there are tons of replies to the original tweets saying the things you’re claiming are being said, but the original tweets don’t make such bold claims. The main message I got from everything so far is that the feds had a lot of influence over twitters moderation decisions, from inside and out. As a leftist, I think that’s a bad thing.

I do think that the hunter biden laptop story is a massive scandal and I detest how it’s been reframed as “it’s just dick pics bro.” That was a coverup of pretty clear cut corruption and it seems that the FBI ordered it, and I think that’s bad.

I do really hate that they were forced to release this stuff on twitter, and I’m optimistically hoping that’s the main reason it isn’t being discussed as much as I think it should be. (I almost never click twitter links on hn.) It could absolutely have been done better and I know it’s just to drive traffic to the site. I’m hoping mainstream outlets actually cover it once everything has been released, but I’m pretty doubtful.

Frustrating indeed.

tanseydavid2• 4 years ago

No one said "threw the election."

But "Election Interference" has been a very popular term in past few years and that seems to describe what was done quite accurately.

Dudelander2• 4 years ago

All privately owned business work with the government. Ownership of private property means that armed people who work for the government will enforce your claim. If no government employees are enforcing your claim, then you don't actually own the thing you think you own.

Businesses get favors from the government whenever they call the police or are involved in a lawsuit. They help the government when they pay taxes, and when they give information to the police. The BTK killer was busted because T-Mobile shared his information with the FBI. This was considered normal at the time, and is considered normal today.

None of this should be surprising to anyone. It's how capitalism works. If you don't like capitalism that's fine, but you shouldn't be surprised when the capitalist country you live in does capitalism.

colpabar3• 4 years ago

Ah my bad. I didn’t realize you understood my position better than I do. I’ll stop questioning things!

wen_1k_btc• 4 years ago

Thanks, I had never heard the follow up excuse that comes after

"but Twitter is a private company, they can censor whomever they want"

"well actually they were getting paid to censor whatever the government told them to"

And a pivot to capitalism at the end too, nice

throwawayCAF• 4 years ago

It seems a bit unfair to summarize it as removing pictures of Hunter Biden's penis. They willingly suspended news organizations at the behest of the FBI for something the FBI knew was legit, and as a result they (and other social media outlets) directly influenced US elections.

It's easy to ignore that point when you're happy with the outcome, but it should give you the heebie-jeebies to see that kind of political collusion between the government and big tech.

jamesboehmer5• 4 years ago

Which news organizations were suspended?

mtmail• 4 years ago

Best summary I've read so far is https://mastodon.social/@malwaretech@infosec.exchange/109547...

"Certain foreign governments have been known to engage in hacking to obtain dirt on politicians, which they then leak around election time to influence voters (remember the DNC leaks? That was Russian Intelligence). Social media platforms are aware of this, and are actively working to try and limit foreign intelligence agencies ability to influences the public via these 'hack-and-leak' operations. [...]"

keithalewis• 4 years ago

The FBI meddled with the 2020 election. Who needs the Russians when you've got the FBI?

tatrajim• 4 years ago

Well, I like the part about the ex-FBI agents at Twitter having their own slack channel. Reminds me of the CCP committees now required at every Chinese private corp. Who doesn't love a secret police network at one's workplace?

Ask HN: Are there valuable insights from the Twitter files?

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