Taibbi - The Twitter Files, Part 1
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@LuFins-Dad said in Taibbi - The Twitter Files, Part 1:
We seem to only be focusing on the legality and not the morality and ethics. @jon-nyc regardless of the law, was it moral and ethical for the highest levels of Twitter to suppress news stories that were damaging and exposing potentially illegal activities by the former VPOTUS and current Democrat candidate for the Presidency?
I tried to touch on this when I said this situation wouldn't pass the sniff test for anybody interested in keeping partisan government out of Twitter moderation. Anyway, if it's as easy as a government official instructing their national committee chair to be their moderator agent with Twitter or Facebook, obviously this is not only a legal technicality but a legal loophole that anybody should be in favor of closing.
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I think you’re also misunderstanding the first amendment. The government can make all the moderation requests it wants. It’s only some kind of enforcement that would be unconstitutional.
Also (not directed at you Horace), I see some RW commentators salivating at the prospect of someone going to jail for violating first amendment rights. Even putting aside the fact that no such first amendment violations occurred, if the government does violate your first amendment rights you take the government to federal (civil) court. It isn’t the case that government functionaries get arrested.
It’s always something.
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@jon-nyc said in Taibbi - The Twitter Files, Part 1:
I think you’re also misunderstanding the first amendment. The government can make all the moderation requests it wants. It’s only some kind of enforcement that would be unconstitutional.
Again a loophole that has obvious ethical hazards. Nobody is so naive to think the request is not transactional in some way. And if it's in any way transactional, it should not be happening.
Education is extremely important.
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I doubt it was perceived that way at all. Most of the ‘trust and safety’ (sic) team were fellow travelers and didn’t need much convincing.
Also from the emails Taibbi released it looks like there was discussion and, at the margin, disagreement about what to delete and not. They don’t seem to be behaving as if they’re taking orders.
It’s always something.
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@jon-nyc said in Taibbi - The Twitter Files, Part 1:
I doubt it was perceived that way at all. Most of the ‘trust and safety’ (sic) team were fellow travelers and didn’t need much convincing.
Also from the emails Taibbi released it looks like there was discussion and, at the margin, disagreement about what to delete and not. They don’t seem to be behaving as if they’re taking orders.
Zoom out to the level of the social value of the friends one makes and does favors for, and it becomes transactional by definition. In any case the appearance of impropriety and the ease with which real impropriety could be plausibly denied makes such a situation fraught with hazards. Hazards which, were the shoe on the other foot and the Trust and Safety team were Trumpists in 2019, would be considered existential to the democracy.
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According to The Resident, anyway.
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It’s always something.
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@jon-nyc yes. I was unclear.
What the FEC statement says that they didn't receive requests from the Biden campaign about the the NY Post articles.
But, the the emails show is that the Biden campaign DID interact with Twitter regarding other issues that they found problematic.
Though the two statements are not the same, they are not necessarily contradictory.
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I suspect that hot potato was a phone call.
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