The Twitter Files

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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by SilentMajority » Thu Dec 22, 2022 11:26 am

Kbg wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 10:42 am

Unless and until any of this goes to court it's all Elon Musk posturing based on whatever motives he may have which I claim zero knowledge about. I do suspect he's enjoying the attention it is bringing to twitter though.
No such thing as bad publicity.

I think he said his goal was to save the world from the woke mind virus.

Since wokeism is pushed by virtually all media and it's tenants being codified in law, it appears wokeism is a government program, deep state or otherwise. I mean did you you see the rainbow, I mean white house last week?

Maybe Elon is fighting wokeism therefore he's exposing the government's hand in media that push it.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by Kbg » Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:38 pm

The non-partisan observer observes that left and right are both "woke" these days. They just bang on different drums. Casting it in religious terms...heaven help he/she who breaks from ordained orthodoxy. Free thinking/opposing views verboten.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by glennds » Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:52 pm

Xan wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:59 am


I think the issue is more one of visibility and the reputation of a story.

People planning to vote for Biden were given the perfect excuse to not interact with the issue at all: Twitter banned it as misinformation, now I don't have to consider it, if I even come across it at all.
I accept the importance of the visibility regardless of reputation. And I think the selective squelching is wrong, but I don't believe it violates the Constitution unless evidence can be provided that Twitter was effectively colluding with the government as an agent, front, co-conspirator or whatever name you like.

But does Twitter's visibility equate to exclusivity? If a story or opinion is censored by Twitter, does that effectively kill it, or are there other means for the story to get out?
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by Kbg » Thu Dec 22, 2022 7:16 pm

SilentMajority wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 10:58 am
Hopefully Elon makes enough money here to buy another media company and shed more light on what these unelected spy/police agencies are up to.
Personally, I would prefer billionaires get out of the media biz. Jeff Bezos completely ruined the WaPo.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by vnatale » Thu Dec 22, 2022 7:47 pm

glennds wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:52 pm

Xan wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:59 am



I think the issue is more one of visibility and the reputation of a story.

People planning to vote for Biden were given the perfect excuse to not interact with the issue at all: Twitter banned it as misinformation, now I don't have to consider it, if I even come across it at all.


I accept the importance of the visibility regardless of reputation. And I think the selective squelching is wrong, but I don't believe it violates the Constitution unless evidence can be provided that Twitter was effectively colluding with the government as an agent, front, co-conspirator or whatever name you like.

But does Twitter's visibility equate to exclusivity? If a story or opinion is censored by Twitter, does that effectively kill it, or are there other means for the story to get out?


Of course ... Twitter's visibility does NOT equate to exclusivity.

For CERTAIN there are other means for getting the story out!

Twitter has only been around since around 2008 and has only been a semi-major player in news dissemination for about the last ten years?

We had a pre-Twitter time period where stories were getting out by various means. All those various means still exist plus new ones (e.g., Facebook) have arisen during the same time as Twitter's existence.

Way too easy to blame Twitter for the failures of one's preferred ideologies.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by vnatale » Thu Dec 22, 2022 7:54 pm

Kbg wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 7:16 pm

SilentMajority wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 10:58 am

Hopefully Elon makes enough money here to buy another media company and shed more light on what these unelected spy/police agencies are up to.


Personally, I would prefer billionaires get out of the media biz. Jeff Bezos completely ruined the WaPo.


In what ways did he do so?

As an exponent of capitalism ... I cheer on paper like Jeff Bezos who has achieved all that he has.

It's easy to now be critical of Amazon given the behemoth they have grown to be but seems like everyone forgets their humble beginnings and their long lean years.

They started out as an online bookstore created by a handful of people. Anyone reading this now could have done the same thing at the time they created Amazon. For many, many years all Amazon did was hemorrhage losses. Much larger businesses (who themselves have since gone out of business) offered to buy Amazon but Bezos attempting to live out his dream turned them down.

Now that his dream has come to fruition, he becomes attacked by all from all political persuasions.

Me? I see him belonging in both the Entrepreneur Hall of Fame and the Capitalist Hall of Fame. An American who should be revered for what he's accomplished, at how well he has personally achieved The American Dream. Not a person to be reviled.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by Dieter » Thu Dec 22, 2022 8:36 pm

Ran across this today — definitely confirmation bias for me, but, interesting

https://abovethelaw.com/2022/12/hello-y ... ns-laptop/

Edit:

Maybe not directly related to the article, but I do think is that the information coming out of Twitter now is quite biased towards the right with Musk and his choice of folks to whom he is providing the internal information
Last edited by Dieter on Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by vnatale » Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:10 pm

Dieter wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 8:36 pm

Ran across this today — definitely confirmation bias for me, but, interesting

https://abovethelaw.com/2022/12/hello-y ... ns-laptop/

What I do think is that the information coming out of Twitter now is quite biased


I do not understand what your last sentence means so ask you to amplify it so that I can better understand it.

But I am reading the above which you provided. Many thanks for putting it here. It is outstanding. Should be read by all. But due to its extreme length few will read any of it.

Therefore I'll put some of its more powerful excepts here now:

The morning the NY Post story came out there was a lot of concern about the validity of the story. Other news organizations, including Fox News, had refused to touch it. NY Post reporters refused to put their name on it. There were other oddities, including the provenance of the hard drive data, which apparently had been in Rudy Giuliani’s hands for months. There were concerns about how the data was presented (specifically how the emails were converted into images and PDFs, losing their header info and metadata).

The fact that, much later on, many elements of the laptops history and provenance were confirmed as legitimate (with some open questions) is important, but does not change the simple fact that the morning the NY Post story came out, it was extremely unclear (in either direction) except to extreme partisans in both camps.

Based on that, both Twitter and Facebook reacted somewhat quickly. Twitter implemented its hacked materials policy in exactly the manner that we had warned might happen a month earlier: blocking the sharing of the NY Post link. Facebook implemented other protocols, “reducing its distribution” until it had gone through a fact check. Facebook didn’t ban the sharing of the link (like Twitter did), but rather limited the ability for it to “trend” and get recommended by the algorithm until fact checkers had reviewed it.

To be clear, the decision by Twitter to do this was, in our estimation, pretty stupid. It was exactly what we had warned about just a month earlier regarding this exact policy. But this is the nature of trust & safety. People need to make very rapid decisions with very incomplete information. That’s why I’ve argued ever since then that while the policy was stupid, it was no giant scandal that it happened, and given everything, it was not a stretch to understand how it played out.

Also, importantly, the very next day Twitter realized it fucked up, admitted so publicly, and changed the hacked materials policy saying that it would no longer block links to news sources based on this policy (though it might add a label to such stories). The next month, Jack Dorsey, in testifying before Congress, was pretty transparent about how all of this went down.

All of this seemed pretty typical for any kind of trust & safety operation. As I’ve explained for years, mistakes in content moderation (especially at scale) are inevitable. And, often, the biggest reason for those mistakes is the lack of context. That was certainly true here.

Yet, for some reason, the story has persisted for years now that Twitter did something nefarious, engaging in election interference that was possibly at the behest of “the deep state” or the Biden campaign. For years, as I’ve reported on this, I’ve noted that there was literally zero evidence to back any of that up. So, my ears certainly perked up last Friday when Elon Musk said that he was about to reveal “what really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression.”

Certainly, if there was evidence of something nefarious behind closed doors, that would be important and worth covering. If it was true that through discussions I’ve had with dozens of Twitter employees over the past few years every single one of them lied about what happened, well, that would also be useful for me to know.

And then Taibbi revealed… basically nothing of interest. He revealed a few internal communications that… simply confirmed everything that was already public in statements made by Twitter, Jack Dorsey’s Congressional testimony, and in declarations made as part of a Federal Elections Commission investigation into Twitter’s actions. There were general concerns about foreign state influence campaigns, including “hack and leak” in the lead up to the election, and there were questions about the provenance of this particular data, so Twitter made a quick (cautious) judgment call and implemented a (bad) policy. Then it admitted it fucked up and changed things a day later. That’s… basically it.

And, yet, the story has persisted over and over and over again. Incredibly, even after the details of Taibbi’s Twitter thread revealed nothing new, many people started pretending that it had revealed something major, with even Elon Musk insisting that this was proof of some massive 1st Amendment violation:

Now, apparently more files are going to be published, so something may change, but so far it’s been a whole lot of utter nonsense. But when I say that both here on Techdirt and on Twitter, I keep seeing a few very, very wrong arguments being made. So, let’s get to the debunking:


1. If you said Twitter’s decision to block links to the NY Post was election interference…

You’re wrong. Very much so. First off, there was, in fact, a complaint to the FEC about this very point, and the FEC investigated and found no election interference at all. It didn’t even find evidence of it being an “in-kind” contribution. It found no evidence that Twitter engaged in politically motivated decision making, but rather handled this in a non-partisan manner consistent with its business objectives:


All of this is actually confirmed by the Twitter Files from Taibbi/Musk, even as both seem to pretend otherwise.



2. But Twitter’s decision to “suppress” the story was a big deal and may have swung the election to Biden!

I’m sorry, but there remains no evidence to support that silly claim either. First off, Twitter’s decision actually seemed to get the story a hell of a lot more attention. Again, as noted above, Twitter did nothing to stop discussion of the story. It only blocked links to one story in the NY Post, and only for that one day. And the very fact that Twitter did this (and Facebook took other action) caused a bit of a Streisand Effect (hey!) which got the underlying story a lot more attention because of the decisions by those two companies.

The reality, though, is that the story just wasn’t that big of a deal for voters. Hunter Biden wasn’t the candidate. His father was. Everyone already pretty much knew that Hunter is a bit of a fuckup and clearly personally profiting off of the situation, but there was no actual big story in the revelations (I mean, yeah, there are still some people who insist there are, but they’re the same people who misunderstood the things we’re debunking here today). And, if we’re going to talk about kids of Presidents profiting off of their last name, well, there’s a pretty long list to go down….

But don’t take my word for it, let’s look at the evidence. As reporter Philip Bump recently noted, there’s actual evidence in Google search trends that Twitter and Facebook’s decision really did generate a lot more interest in the story. It was well after both companies took action that searches on Google for Hunter Biden shot upward:

Also, soon after, Twitter reversed its policy, and there was widespread discussion of the laptop in the next three weeks leading up to the election. The brief blip in time in which Twitter and Facebook limited the story seemed to have only fueled much more interest in it, rather than “suppressing” it.

So again, the evidence actually suggests that the story wasn’t suppressed at all. It got more attention. It didn’t swing the election, because most people didn’t find the story particularly revealing.

3. The government pressured Twitter/Facebook to block this story, and that’s a huge 1st Amendment violation / treason / crime of the century / etc.

Yeah, so, that’s just not true. I’ve spent years calling out government pressure on speech, from Democrats (and more Democrats) to Republicans (and more Republicans). So I’m pretty focused on watching when the government goes over the line — and quick to call it out. And there remains no evidence at all of that happening here. At all. Taibbi admits this flat out:

Incredibly, I keep seeing people on Twitter claim that Taibbi said the exact opposite. And you have people like Glenn Greenwald who insist that Taibbi only meant “foreign” governments here, despite all the evidence to the contrary. If he had found evidence that there was US government pressure here… why didn’t he post it? The answer: because it almost certainly does not exist.

Some people point to Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance over the summer on Joe Rogan’s podcast as “proof” that the FBI directed both companies to suppress the story, but that’s not at all what Zuckerberg said if you listened to his actual comments. Zuckerberg admits that they make mistakes, and that it feels terrible when they do. He goes into a pretty detailed explanation of some of how trust & safety works in determining whether or not a user is authentic. Then Rogan asks about the laptop story, and Zuckerberg says:

So, basically, the background here, is the FBI basically came to us, some folks on our team, and were like “just so you know, you should be on high alert, we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice, basically, that there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.”

This does not say that the FBI came to Facebook and said “suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.” It was just a general warning that the FBI had intelligence that there might be some foreign influence operations, and to “be vigilant.”

This is nearly identical to what Twitter’s then head of “site integrity,” Yoel Roth, noted in his declaration in the FEC case discussed above:

Basically the FBI is saying, in general, they have some intelligence that this kind of attack may happen, so be careful. It did not say to censor the info. It didn’t involve any threats. It wasn’t specifically about the laptop story.

4. The Biden campaign / Democrats demanded Twitter censor the NY Post! And that’s a 1st Amendment violation / treason / the crime of the century / etc.

So, again, the only way that there’s a 1st Amendment violation is if the government issued the demand. And in October of 2020, the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee… were not the government. The 1st Amendment does not restrict their ability, as private citizens (even while campaigning for public office) to flag content for Twitter to review against its policies. Hilariously, Elon Musk seems kinda confused about how time works. That tweet that we screenshotted about about the “1st Amendment” violation is in response to an internal email that Taibbi revealed about what Taibbi (misleadingly) says are “requests from connected actors to delete tweets” followed by a screenshot of Twitter employees listing out some tweets saying “more to review from the Biden team” and someone responding “handled these.”


5. But Jim Baker! He worked for the FBI! And he was in charge of the Twitter files! Clearly he’s covering up stuff!

Here we are ripping from the stupidity headlines. This one came out just last night as Taibbi added a “supplement” to the Twitter files, again seemingly confused about how basically anything works. According to Taibbi in a very unclear and awkwardly worded thread, he and Bari Weiss (another opinion columnist who Musk has decided to share the files with) were having some sort of “complication” in accessing the files. Taibbi claims that Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, Jim Baker, was reviewing the files, and somehow this was as problem (he does not explain why or how, though there’s a lot of conjecture).

Baker is, in fact, the former General Counsel at the FBI. It made news when he was hired.

Baker was subject to a bunch of conspiracy theory stuff a few years ago regarding the FBI and some of the sillier theories regarding the Trump campaign, including the Steele Dossier and the even sillier “Alfa Bank” story (which had always been silly and lots of people, including us, had mocked when it came out).

But despite all that, there’s really little evidence that Baker has done anything particularly noteworthy here. The stuff about his actions while at the FBI is totally overblown partisan hackery. People talk about the so-called “criminal investigation” he faced for his work looking into Russian interference in the 2020 election, but that appears to be something mostly cooked up by extreme Trumpists in the House and appears to have gone nowhere. And, yes, he was a witness at the Michael Sussman trial, which was sorta connected to the Alfa Bank stuff, but his testimony supported John Durham, not Michael Sussman, in that he claimed that Sussman made a false statement to him, which the entire case hinged on (and, for what it’s worth, the trial ended in acquittal).

In other words, almost all of the FBI-related accusations against Baker are entirely “guilt by association” type claims, with nothing at all legitimate to back them up.

As for Twitter, we already highlighted Baker’s email that Taibbi revealed, which shows a normal, thoughtful, cautious discussion of a normal trust & safety debate, with nothing even remotely political.

The latest claims from Taibbi and Weiss also don’t make much sense. Elon Musk has told his company to hand over a bunch of internal documents to reporters. Any corporate lawyer would naturally do a fairly standard document review before doing so to make sure that they’re not handing over any private information or something else that might create legal issues for Musk. And since a large chunk of the legal team has left the company, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if the task ended up on Baker’s desk.

Now, you can argue (as Taibbi and others now imply) that there’s some massive conflict of interest here, but, uh… that’s not at all clear, and not really how conflict of interest works. And, again, there’s little indication that Baker had a major role here at all, beyond being one of many who weighed in on this matter (and did so in a perfectly reasonable manner).

Honestly, Baker not reviewing the documents first would have potentially put him in legal jeopardy for not doing the very basic function of his job in making sure the company he worked for didn’t put itself in serious legal jeopardy by revealing things that might create huge liabilities for Musk and the company.

6. Still, all this proved that Twitter is “illegally” biased towards Democrats!

Taibbi made a big deal out of the fact that Twitter employees overwhelmingly donated to Democrats in their political contributions, which is not exactly new or surprising. Musk commented on this as well, suggesting sarcastically it was proof of bias at Twitter, but left out that among the companies in the chart he was commenting on… was also Tesla, where over 90% of employee donations went to Democrats.


But, more importantly, it’s not surprising in the least. Employees of many companies lean left. Executives (who donate way more money) tend to lean right. I mean, you can look at a similar chart of executive donations that shows they overwhelmingly go to Republicans. Neither is illegal, or even a problem. It’s just reality.

And companies making editorial decisions are… in fact… allowed to have bias in their political viewpoints. I would bet that if you looked at donations by employees at the NY Post or Fox News, they would generally favor Republicans. Indeed, imagine what would happen if someone took over Fox News and suddenly started revealing (1) communications between Fox News execs and Republican politicians and campaigns and (2) internal editorial meeting notes regarding what to promote. Don’t you think it would be way more biased than what the Twitter files revealed?

Here’s the important point on that: Fox News’ clear bias is not illegal either. And, indeed, if Democrats in Congress held hearings on “Fox News’ bias” and demanded that its top executives appear and explain their editorial decision making in promoting GOP talking points, people should be outraged over the clear intimidation factor, which would obviously be problematic from a 1st Amendment angle. Yet I don’t expect people to get all that worked up about the same thing happening to Twitter, even though it’s actually the same issue.

Companies are allowed to be biased. But the amazing thing revealed in the Twitter files is just how little evidence there is that any bias was a part of the debate on how to handle this stuff. Everything appeared to be about perfectly reasonable business decisions.

And… that’s it. I fear that this story is going to live on for years and years and years. And the narrative full of nonsense is already taking shape. However, I like to work off of actual facts and evidence, rather than fever dreams and misinterpretations. And I hope that you’ll read this and start doing the same.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by Dieter » Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:22 pm

Vnatale — my second comment is about some folks saying that with Musk the truth is coming out from Twitter, but I see it as now the right wing running the show and available information
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by flyingpylon » Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:31 pm

Dieter wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 8:36 pm
Ran across this today — definitely confirmation bias for me, but, interesting

https://abovethelaw.com/2022/12/hello-y ... ns-laptop/

What I do think is that the information coming out of Twitter now is quite biased
That article was published December 9th, before Twitter Files #7 was published by Michael Shellenberger on December 19th.

https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/sta ... 0613753856

Do they have an update that addresses any of the info that came to light in that thread?
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by vnatale » Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:41 pm

Dieter wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:22 pm

Vnatale — my second comment is about some folks saying that with Musk the truth is coming out from Twitter, but I see it as now the right wing running the show and available information


Thanks for the clarification.

However, it seems to me that too many people treat Twitter like it is some kind of top down organization, like any other media outlet which decides what IS the news of the day

The Twitter reality is that it is an anarchist form of news dissemination.

It is people like you and me and anyone else who chooses to participate in plus any other news organization that chooses to do so and any other entity on Twitter that is providing information on Twitter.

Each of us on Twitter makes strict choices as to whose news we want to have put in front of us.

For some people it is only the type of news that agrees for what they basically believe in.

For me I generally try to cast a wide a net as possible so as to sift through it to find any of the gems among it.

Again here is my "A" list of all the people / organizations that I will deliberately put in front of me:

https://twitter.com/i/lists/1077088648393359360

If you start going through the members of my list your first observation of it will be that I definitely have on it a lot of fans of a certain baseball team. But when I get tweets from those people ... it is just not about that baseball team.

Just as we don't strictly discuss The Permanent Portfolio and get into discussing other topics, e.g., politics .. the same happens with these fans of this baseball team. They also discuss politics, and the breakdown of their views roughly parallels the United States - 1/2 on one side and 1/2 on the other side.

Twitter is what YOU make it to be.

That is why I'm constantly asking the Twitter critics here if they are actually on Twitter or if they are basing their comments from what they have simply read about Twitter without having their own first hand experiences with Twitter.

I am not on Twitter every day. Some days I don't even look at what comes through on my "A" list. I only want to get up to date information on my favorite college basketball team and favorite baseball team. And, for those two purposes Twitters is unparalleled in getting me the most up-to-date accurate information. It makes an internet search seem like The Dark Ages!
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by I Shrugged » Fri Dec 23, 2022 11:29 am

This is where we are.
We have left wing media and right wing media. You are apparently required to pick a side, and then you have to denigrate anything said by the other side, whether it is worth considering or not. It could be an extremely important thing to know, but no, the other side is saying it, that's all I need to know to ignore it. I have my fingers in my ears, NA NA NA NA NA, I can't hear you....

I watch left wing news virtually every night. It's useful to think about what they report. I virtually never watch any right wing news. I would say I get 90% of my info from the left. Somehow my right wing opinions have survived intact. Some of you on the left should give more consideration to info coming from the other side. It's not all lies.

Hunter and the big guy ran an influence peddling scheme worth millions. There is not just a smoking gun, there are smoking craters the size of city blocks. There has been a partner of sorts come out and talk about it. There is enough here to have a special prosecutor and all that jazz. Instead people are debating stupid stuff like whether Twitter is now right wing. Give me a break. If the Bidens get away with this without at least a real investigation, the trust goes to zero.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by vnatale » Fri Dec 23, 2022 12:00 pm

I Shrugged wrote:
Fri Dec 23, 2022 11:29 am

This is where we are.
We have left wing media and right wing media. You are apparently required to pick a side, and then you have to denigrate anything said by the other side, whether it is worth considering or not. It could be an extremely important thing to know, but no, the other side is saying it, that's all I need to know to ignore it. I have my fingers in my ears, NA NA NA NA NA, I can't hear you....

I watch left wing news virtually every night. It's useful to think about what they report. I virtually never watch any right wing news. I would say I get 90% of my info from the left. Somehow my right wing opinions have survived intact. Some of you on the left should give more consideration to info coming from the other side. It's not all lies.

Hunter and the big guy ran an influence peddling scheme worth millions. There is not just a smoking gun, there are smoking craters the size of city blocks. There has been a partner of sorts come out and talk about it. There is enough here to have a special prosecutor and all that jazz. Instead people are debating stupid stuff like whether Twitter is now right wing. Give me a break. If the Bidens get away with this without at least a real investigation, the trust goes to zero.


Are you unaware that there is a "real" investigation of Hunter Biden currently going on?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics ... index.html

Federal prosecutors weighing charges on two fronts in Hunter Biden investigation
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by Dieter » Fri Dec 23, 2022 1:11 pm

What is considered left wing media?

Liberals I know tend to see most mass media as corporatist conservative or centrist at most

And Fox as right wing entertainment, not news

https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-new ... son-2020-9

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/11449263 ... suit-trump
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by Kbg » Fri Dec 23, 2022 1:18 pm

I Shrugged wrote:
Fri Dec 23, 2022 11:29 am
This is where we are.
We have left wing media and right wing media. You are apparently required to pick a side, and then you have to denigrate anything said by the other side, whether it is worth considering or not. It could be an extremely important thing to know, but no, the other side is saying it, that's all I need to.
And hence why my media diet is quite sparse with US large corporate media of any kind mostly banned from the dinner table.

Really what we have for "news" in the US these days is biased opinion looking for an event to bloviate their predisposed opinions upon. We have a Congress of parties who could give a crap about the institution because it is all about the party. Oh there are voters beyond my base? Huh, didn't know that.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by flyingpylon » Sat Dec 24, 2022 11:38 am

Ho, ho... whoa!

Image

56 or so tweets in this one, collect 'em all!
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by I Shrugged » Sat Dec 24, 2022 6:46 pm

vnatale wrote:
Fri Dec 23, 2022 12:00 pm
I Shrugged wrote:
Fri Dec 23, 2022 11:29 am
This is where we are.
We have left wing media and right wing media. You are apparently required to pick a side, and then you have to denigrate anything said by the other side, whether it is worth considering or not. It could be an extremely important thing to know, but no, the other side is saying it, that's all I need to know to ignore it. I have my fingers in my ears, NA NA NA NA NA, I can't hear you....

I watch left wing news virtually every night. It's useful to think about what they report. I virtually never watch any right wing news. I would say I get 90% of my info from the left. Somehow my right wing opinions have survived intact. Some of you on the left should give more consideration to info coming from the other side. It's not all lies.

Hunter and the big guy ran an influence peddling scheme worth millions. There is not just a smoking gun, there are smoking craters the size of city blocks. There has been a partner of sorts come out and talk about it. There is enough here to have a special prosecutor and all that jazz. Instead people are debating stupid stuff like whether Twitter is now right wing. Give me a break. If the Bidens get away with this without at least a real investigation, the trust goes to zero.
Are you unaware that there is a "real" investigation of Hunter Biden currently going on?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics ... index.html

Federal prosecutors weighing charges on two fronts in Hunter Biden investigation
It is “an” investigation but not “the” investigation. Maybe we’ll get the full one, we’ll see.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by flyingpylon » Mon Dec 26, 2022 9:15 am

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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by vnatale » Sat Dec 31, 2022 9:51 am

MEDIA Published December 28, 2022 4:30pm EST
Elon Musk calls out 'legacy media' and 'corporate journalism': 'We have only just begun'
Musk said legacy media should worry about their own reputation
Hanna Panreck By Hanna Panreck | Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/media/elon-musk ... only-begun
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by flyingpylon » Tue Jan 03, 2023 4:48 pm

Two for Tuesday! Linking to Threadreader for easier viewing.

How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In

Twitter and the FBI "Belly Button"
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by SilentMajority » Wed Jan 04, 2023 5:39 am

flyingpylon wrote:
Tue Jan 03, 2023 4:48 pm
Two for Tuesday! Linking to Threadreader for easier viewing.

How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In

Twitter and the FBI "Belly Button"
I heard this wasn't happening.
Then it was just some liberals on Twitter.
Then it was just a business decision and normal.
Then it was for our own good.
Then it wasn't really for our own good, but just price we have pay for all the other good things from these federal agencies.
Then it doesn't matter because people can have the same conversations or get info elsewhere.
Then if it doesn't go to government courts or something then it's a nothing burger.

Ohhhh and my personal fav..... There's no "proof" it's happening at other media companies besides Twitter ahahahahahah.

That "free press" in the west (or whatever) will really get ya sometimes.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by flyingpylon » Thu Jan 05, 2023 10:57 am

Tablet Magazine:
How the FBI Hacked Twitter
The answer begins with Russiagate
by Lee Smith

What a tangled web they've woven...
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by Maddy » Thu Jan 12, 2023 7:19 am

At the risk of reinforcing the left-wing fantasy that the Constitution permits speech to be censored by the federal government and its agents so long as there are "other avenues" for its expression:

It wasn't only Twitter that allowed itself to be used as the administration's agent and partner in censoring viewpoints critical of government policy. Nor was it only Twitter that, at the administration's direction, blanketed the airwaves with an official narrative clearly calculated to sway the outcome of a presidential election (including the Russian collusion hoax).
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) is currently part of a lawsuit that was filed by the Attorneys General of Louisiana and Missouri which alleges improper collusion between the federal government and social media companies. The emails between Facebook and the White House were obtained in discovery.

In their communications with the White House, Facebook asked how they could “get ahead” of possible doubt or fear arising in the general public about Covid vaccines.

One employee – whose name is redacted due to a court order – sent a message to Andrew Slavitt, the Biden administration’s senior advisor for the Covid response, along with Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty and Director of Strategic Communications and Engagement for the Covid-19 Response Team Courtney Rowe. In the email, the employee wrote,

“Re the J+J news, we’re keen to amplify any messaging you want us to project about what this means for people – it obviously has the risk of exacerbating vaccine hesitancy, so we’re keen to get ahead of the knock-on effect. Don’t hesitate to tell me – or via your teams – how we can help to provide clarity/reassurance via Facebook.”

In response to the email, Flaherty gave the employee some suggestions on how Facebook could shut down anyone questioning the safety of the vaccine, such as telling users that “adverse effects are very rare.” Flaherty also requested a “commitment from [Facebook] to make sure that a favorable review [of the vaccine] reaches as many people as the pause, either through hard product interventions or algorithmic amplification,” ensuring that “the news about J&J doesn’t spin off misinformation.”

In another email between Facebook and the Biden administration, the employee told Flaherty that the social media company would “love to talk” about ways they could adjust its algorithm to control what information is shared and what is primarily hidden from public view, ensuring that the White House has control over the dominant messaging surrounding the vaccines.

Facebook worked with the federal government to only share approved messaging about the Covid-19 vaccines, silencing anyone who questioned the safety of the shots or suggested they may cause serious side effects.
https://100percentfedup.com/emails-show ... -vaccines/
Last edited by Maddy on Fri Jan 13, 2023 11:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by SilentMajority » Thu Jan 12, 2023 8:18 am

Last I checked, these alphabet agencies were in the federal government. The federal only has enumerated powers granted to it by the constitution. They mostly are listed in article 1 section 8.

Where in the constitution is the federal government allowed to coerce and/or bribe the press or media and run psyops on the American people?

Anyone who supports the government psyops is basically a traitor and enemy of the American people.
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Re: The Twitter Files

Post by flyingpylon » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:49 am

This just in...

Twitter Files #14
THE RUSSIAGATE LIES
One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag

Read it at Threadreader
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