The Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven, but more and more often, it seems that they release primary sources of information (especially videos) much earlier than other news outlets will, if the other news outlets do so at all.<p>There have been multiple times when I've seen an insane video of something happening spreading around Twitter or WorldStar or some other "raw video" aggregation site, and then I'll see it on the NY Post, and that's it. The other major news sites will only show edited versions of the raw video with their own commentary playing over it, or they won't release it at all.<p>As a theoretical example-<p>Immediately after event:<p>Twitter: OH MY GOD look at this kid driving a schoolbus! <35 second video of a kid driving a schoolbus><p>Two hours after event:<p>NY Post: Child seen driving school bus <35 second video of a kid driving a schoolbus><p>Twelve hours after event:<p>NY Times: Child Arrested for School Bus Joyride <3 minute video, containing 18 seconds of footage from original video with expert analysis diagrammed on top>
Twitter's lack of transparency is depressing. If they're going to lock the NY Post account, they should put a notification on the page (and perhaps a reason why).<p>Right now if you go to the NY Post Twitter it just looks like they voluntarily decided to stop tweeting, which is misinformation.
To the people constantly saying that twitter is a private company and should be allowed to do whatever they want:<p>Would you support the same idea around electrical power? If the power company providing the power to the office at the NyPost decided that they had a political disagreement with them, would it be okay to just cut off their power?<p>NyPost could just make their <i>own</i> power, of course, by purchasing a generator.
Honestly, I see this kind of action as good. The sooner the population at large realizes that Big Social aren't neutral players in the marketplace of ideas, the better. We need decentralized solutions, ASAP, and the only way that's going to happen is when normal people start caring.
What a hot mess.<p>I am imagining those years of looking at terrible National Enquirer headlines at store checkouts. This kind of terrible reporting as always existed, but for some reason (luckily I guess) they never crossed over into national discourse the way that stories do online.<p>I never begrudged the store for carrying them and selling them. If Wal-Mart suddenly felt the need to arbitrate on the accuracy of every periodical they sold, I'm not sure if I would feel better or worse.<p>I also don't know how to handle the people who are saying the story is fake or terribly reported, but we have a right to be misinformed if we want to be.
The Post still hasn't deleted the offending tweet. Those are the rules: on a first violation of posting someone's personal information without permission you get your account locked until you delete the tweet.
Stoped reading after the author made an equivalent comparison between NYT and Brietbart...I mean, you're not fooling anyone with the "un-biased, unaffiliated voter just searching for the truth" shtick. It's 2020 buddy, we see what you're doing.
This doesn't look all that surprising after Twitter blocked the account and all web links to Bret Weinstein's Articles of Unity initiative 1.5 months ago without any explanation, and it still remains blocked.
Personally, if [company] wants to filter or censor, go for it <i>if and only if</i> a) they disclose it and b) I can turn it off.<p>We have a model for this already, it's called "safe search"<p>When you filter without disclosing, you're stealing my agency and creating a situation for near-undetectable abuse.
The big problem with Twitter and Facebook is they have massive incentive to encourage lightning fast viral content. But there are big societal problems with viral content which contains lies and incites violence (or voter harassment, etc).<p>So now they are trying to blame the individual sources which is effective to some extent except when the sources are hugely popular with certain segments of society.<p>IMO the real solution is to massively slow <i>all</i> viral content's spread. That of course would damage the platforms, particularly if their competitors don't implement similar limits. So all the platforms are playing this kind of cat-and-mouse game and doing a piecemeal approach fraught with ethical and potential legal issues.
This is unacceptable in any democracy or a so-called public platform. In Latin America there's many newspapers, compared to the US, there are newspapers that still publish very bloody images in the back-page (drug cartels hits, accidents, etc), others which publish naked girls, others about anarchism, religion, local news/events mostly free. As a citizen you understand the spectrum of what quality journalism is vs the kind of crap that comes in all those publications mentioned before. Government or official journalist groups don't block them, just because the information is mainly false. This is a basic value in a democracy. Problem I see is that online platforms want to fight disinformation as a problem when is not a problem is the way the world operates. Humans have something called intelligence and people can distinguish a quality publication vs another one and even if not, is ok to read all types of things (as long as they are within the law). Problem is that Google and Twitter just publish what fits in their agenda. (Check PragerU case vs Youtube)
Old maxim:<p>> I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it<p>(due to Evelyn Beatrice Hall, biographer of Voltaire)<p>new maxim:<p>> I disapprove of what you say, and will defend through your profile's death against your being able to say it.
That’s their normal courses of action for account freezes.<p>They programmatically freeze your account with the message “Twitter freezes accounts that violate Twitter Rules.” which criteria is just a /dev/urandom that apparently any average script kiddies can trigger at will.<p>They don’t bother dealing with your complaints, but don’t bother with ban evasions either, so people either keep sending complaints until it reaches a human, or just create alternate accounts and try to spread your word that this alt is now your main account. You have to have built a network or position in a group that can handle these transitions.<p>Isn’t that how Twitter works? That won’t change without some social media account rights movement and legislation.
<i>Apparently unverified and unreleased tax returns are important for the public interest, but direct evidence of high-ranking US politician’s family member receiving a highly paid position without prior credentials is not of concern to the American public.</i><p>There has been plenty of widely reported, direct evidence of the latter, it's not even a matter of dispute. The NYP piece was not 'direct evidence' of that. This is a pretty unserious piece of analysis, if you can call it that.
> You can publish tax returns without exposing your sources<p>There's no reason to think this. It's increasingly common for security-conscious organizations to watermark documents to identify who accessed it. See, for instance, how the Intercept "accidentally" burnt a source by publishing her raw documents about Russian meddling in the 2016 election.<p>That said, the New York Times has some level of credibility, and the Post doesn't. You can't simply demand that the Post be treated with a level of respect just because you agree with its slant. Perhaps if the Post published the email metadata which would instantly prove authenticity I'd feel a bit worse for it. Until then, though, I'll continue to assume it's just trying to launder a smear campaign, whether that smear campaign originated from foreign intelligence services or domestic slimeball political operatives.
Moderation on Facebook and Twitter can be solved by letting us choose our own moderators and moderation rules.<p>Twitter has a toggle for obscene material. Give us a toggle for misinformation.<p>Aether does this. You can choose your own moderator.<p><a href="https://getaether.net/" rel="nofollow">https://getaether.net/</a>
Twitter should be careful as they curate more and more content. If you start curating content so much, at one point people will start expecting that from you and you will be liable for way much content than they can handle.<p>I for one cannot wait for Dorsey and his crew to get a taste of their own medicine, since it doesn't matter if I disagree with GOP (let's face it, this is again a right vs left issue), I still believe they have a right to free speech.
Here's the NY Post on Twitter's update to their own hacked materials rule, which suggests that NY Post is not in violation of Twitter's updated policies: <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/twitter-changes-hacked-materials-guidelines-after-post-controversy/" rel="nofollow">https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/twitter-changes-hacked-materia...</a><p>As a reminder, there are numerous past instances where Twitter did not apply the same policies that were used to shut down NY Post: <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoaxes-that-twitter-and-facebook-didnt-throttle-because-they-hurt-trump/" rel="nofollow">https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax...</a><p>This selective application of policy is evidence of Twitter's bias, which I assume results from the bias of their leadership team and employee base. A company this big, which this much influence, cannot be trusted to operate the digital public square for an entire nation, let alone the world. It is a threat to speech, since the reach of these platforms is such that speech effectively doesn't exist if it isn't on these platforms. We need competing platforms badly, but it is hard to challenge the first-mover advantage of network effects of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Perhaps we simply need to instead regulate them so that they do not deplatform/censor content that does not break the law.
This is fine - they are going to make an example out of Twitter, continuing to keep the Post’s account locked plays right into it. My guess is that we’ll see a direct sanction against Twitter, and some sort of legislation that will indirectly penalize the other big tech companies by increasing their liabilities.
There seems to be a pervasive fear of covering topics that would influence the election which is rooted in the 2016 WikiLeaks releases.<p>Obviously in this instance, there are political components in the reporting, but there are also undeniably components of truth as well.<p>A healthy journalistic environment would dissect the facts from many angles and leave readers more informed. However, this recent trend of topic censoring adds confusion to the discussion while at the same time sowing distrust of media institutions. That is to say: it creates the precise environment in which an alternative reality can thrive.<p>My biggest concern is that it will culminate in the president claiming victory next week, and the discussion of it in the media will be inherently incomplete and untrustworthy. That would be a real pickle for our country moving forward together.<p>Edit: the irony of downvoting this take to 0 without responding is hilarious.
It's fake news pretending to be real news. All social media platforms should do a better job blocking disinformation like this.<p>That said, all they need to do is delete the fake news Twitter asked them to, yet they won't. Why?
I'll probably get down voted for pointing this out but neither Hunter or Joe Biden have denied those files are legit. And Biden's lawyer hasn't denied he called and tried to get the files back.<p>None of the reports I've seen casting aspersions on the legitimacy of the files have offered any proof they are not legit.<p>I think it's fair to say the messengers (Rudy and Bannon) are certainly motivated by personal and political gain but I don't think they're stupid enough to knowingly try to pass off forged documents to smear the Bidens.<p>So, with all that in mind I do find it queer that most all of the left leaning "News" organizations have focused on discrediting the legitimacy of the files without having any real evidence at all of them being forged or altered and for the most part I've not seen them reporting on what's in the files or alleged to be in them.
It seems to work for me now: <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1316437892122710022" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1316437892122710022</a>
Twitter has not unlocked the New York Post's Twitter account because the New York Post has refused to delete six tweets.<p>The New York Post can recover their Twitter account at any time by deleting those tweets.
Large tech companies like Twitter and Facebook and media alike have suddenly come up with all sorts of new standards to justify blocking or not reporting the Hunter Biden documents. I find it grotesque and completely inappropriate. Democracy is not a bunch of educated elites (and most of the "respected" media is white and ivy-league educated) telling the unwashed masses what to think and how to feel.<p>From Mikhail Bakunin:<p>> Liberty can and must defend itself only through liberty; to try to restrict it on the specious pretext of defending it is a dangerous contradiction.<p>Despite the intentions of these companies, I find it fairly evident that censorship usually just reinforces the status quo. It's a terrible tactic for forward progress.
Before anyone brings up Section 230, let's all get up to speed on what it means, from an expert, Ken White @ Popehat:<p>"Section 230 Is The Subject of The Most Effective Legal Propaganda I've Ever Seen"<p><a href="https://popehat.substack.com/p/section-230-is-the-subject-of-the" rel="nofollow">https://popehat.substack.com/p/section-230-is-the-subject-of...</a><p>TL;DR: <i>No</i>, moderating their site even in an egregiously, blatantly biased way won't make Twitter a "publisher" or make them lose Section 230 protections
Good, they shouldn't have tried to spread garbage, unvalidated information in order to try and undermine Biden's campaign. I guess they'll just have to stick to the fox news crowd and Trump followers.
Wasn't this all about the publishing of Hunter Biden's personal information? A violation of Twitter's privacy policy, that they have always enforced. And yes, they have enforced it against journalists posting newsworthy information deleterious to Trump.<p>"Twitter also said the Post article contained images that included personal and private information such as email addresses and phone numbers, which is against the social network's rules. "<p>Weird seeing disinfo get upvoted on Hacker News of all places.
dang threatened to turf me from HN because I paraphrased Masha Gessen's views on Trump, which is too political and/or troll-y for HN. This is fine, it's his turf and he can chuck me or anyone else out whenever he feels like it.<p>Since people here think Twitter is in the wrong, my question is when do I get these protections on HN? Do I have to implement them on forums I run? How big does a company have to get before they have to implement these protections? Who oversees and enforces these things? How is "big" defined anyway? After all, HN is already bigger than Twitter was at some point. Do we use MAUs, DAUs? Number of words/day, etc?
The outrage over this move is so disingenuous. Reputable news outlets deemed this story to lack credibility, including the NY Post's more reputable (but still conservative, pro Trump!) sister publication, WSJ.<p>It's not the NY Post's inherent right to inject misinformation into elections.
I’m reminded by the stories in 2016 on how the Pope has endorsed Donald Trump. Was it true? Not in the slightest. And yet these stories got millions of impressions. Enabling the spread of harmful, false, foreign-planted propaganda to spread like a cancer in our democracy is worth taking a moral stand over. Actors that propagate such falsehoods have earned their punishment.<p>Equivocation in this thread to NYTimes publishing on Trump tax returns boggles the mind, and shows the sorry state of 2020. It’s reminiscent of how Trump redefined “fake news”—a phenomena associated almost exclusively with right-wing falsehoods masquerading as news—to mean “facts that are so damning of me that I construct a reality-distortion field to blind my followers”. I am dismayed by how many commenters here seemingly abandon objective Truth and descend into the anarchy of textual equivocation.
Well the fact is the NY Times story is probably accurate and the NY Post story is extremely suspect.<p>Twitter made a journalistic decision not to spread trash, possibly from Russia, that could have a real impact on our election result. Tough call, but the right call. If twitter sees itself as having some sort of moderator role than it has to make these judgement calls.<p>Other outlets didn't amplify the Hunter Biden laptop story either. Even conservative outlets like the Wall Street Journal decided it was too sketchy to spread.<p>Twitter is trying to avoid being a platform for conspiracy theories and foreign intelligence agencies. It has to act.
I'm in favor of twitter banning links until the New York Post blacks out the email addresses in its pictures. That sort of thing is not necessary for the story and lots of trolls reading them will simply destroy them. It looks like inciting harassment to me instead of press free speech.
Twitters censorship just serves to further polarize and divide people.<p>As the right bails on twitter and goes to pure conservative echo chambers and the left stays in their leftist echo chambers... any shared interactions are lost.<p>Even though it's their right as a private company...its truly a shame that Twitter is acting like this.
Twitter is a private corporation and perhaps its best if we all realize that FB/Twitter/Google are biased agencies.<p>That said, maybe it's best if NYPost stays off Twitter.
If you insist on spreading hateful, proven-false conspiracy theories about a major-party presidential candidate, do not be surprised when reputable firms will not be complicit in such spread.