
Twitter refuses US order to disclose owner of anti-Trump account - anigbrowl
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-lawsuit-idUSKBN1782PH
======
jwilk
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14053958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14053958)

------
hyolyeng
This is truly terrifying. The fact that the US government will pursue this
kind of action, potentially exposing and punishing criticizers of the
government -- seems like this is how dictatorships/autocracy/totalitarianism
start.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
say it." If we believe in the free America, this should be what we should all
fight for, if we want to keep America for the reason it became great in the
first place.

~~~
spaceflunky
>"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
say it." If we believe in the free America, this should be what we should all
fight for, if we want to keep America for the reason it became great in the
first place.

We're talking about the same Twitter that shut down Milo Yiannopolis' account
because Twitter didn't like what he was saying?

~~~
AbrahamParangi
There's an incredibly important difference between a corporation exercising
its power to control speech on its platform and the US Federal Government
exercising powers _not granted to it by the laws of the United States_ to
control speech in general.

~~~
spaceflunky
Two things are are wrong with your statement:

1.) The government has made no request to impede upon the speech of the
account owner, nor has the gov asked to shut it down the account. The gov
asked for the account holder identity because they suspect (with reason) that
someone is impersonating a federal agent through the account.

2.) Twitter invoked "free speech" to deny a reasonable request from the
government. Right or not, I am mocking Twitter for acting like "champion of
free speech" on one hand and then shutting down what they deem as "hate
speech" (which the ACLU explicitly protects as free speech) on the other hand.
Twitter can reinstate Milo's account at any time, yet they don't.

3.) We have just as much evidence to believe that the account holder is a fake
federal employee as we do to believe they are real.

~~~
memmcgee
1a) You don't have to impede speech to be violating the First Amendment. The
Supreme Court has ruled consistently that anonymity is protected under the
First Amendment.
[https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity](https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity)

1b) Additionally, "impersonating a federal agent" is a flimsy reason to
violate the First Amendment, especially when the only harm they're causing is
making the government look bad. Typically "impersonating a federal agent" is
used as a charge when the suspect has committed another crime while
impersonating someone. The only crime here is making Trump look bad.

2) Get out of here with your false equivalency bs. Equating the government
making a (likely) unconstitutional request to reveal the identity of a
critic's Twitter account to Milo getting banned from Twitter for harassment is
stupid. Hate speech is protected from the government, not from Twitter trying
to create a safe platform for its users.

3) I thought everyone was innocent until proven guilty? The government has the
burden of proof here, not some rando on Twitter.

~~~
Banthum
On 2) parent is not equating the goverment's position on this case to
Twitter's positions on Milo. He is equating Twitter's position on this case to
Twitter's position on Milo's case, and noting that there is indeed a double-
standard. Twitter's message seems to be: Speech must be free - but only if
that speech is for left-wing causes.

~~~
memmcgee
Milo was not banned for "free speech". He was banned because he was harassing
people, which he very much was doing. If you want to say Twitter was banning
people solely for their beliefs, find a better example.

Additionally, protecting your speech from the government is not the same as
giving you a platform on which to speak. Twitter protected their users under
the Obama administration as well, they were not one of the tech companies that
shared data with the NSA according to the Snowden leaks.

~~~
Chris2048
> He was banned because he was harassing people

No he wasn't. Twitter claimed he incited other people to harass LJ.

You are also correct that, very often, the freedoms granted to Americans
concern the ability of _government_ , specifically, to impede; Hence it is
correct that twitter would act differently when the government involves
itself.

~~~
odonnellryan
His account was suspended many times. It wasn't just banned out of nowhere.

Twitter hasn't released information surrounding the ban. Just a brief, very
general, statement. Makes sense to me they don't want to spread news that
could be considered libel/slander.

If they say "Milo did this, this is why he was banned" now it's open to
opinion. "Did this" is an opinion, and now suddenly Twitter says an individual
did something.

Twitter gains nothing by clarifying (in the eyes of their lawyers) so they
didn't. Why get sued over this?

~~~
Chris2048
> It wasn't just banned out of nowhere

This doesn't have much to do with my point - The final ban was based on LJ.

If you're going to take the "Descartes's Demon" defence, it works both ways:

We don't know if twitter banned Milo for other reasons, but we also don't know
if "He was banned because he was harassing people" by the same measure.

~~~
odonnellryan
> We don't know if twitter banned Milo for other reasons, but we also don't
> know if "He was banned because he was harassing people" by the same measure.

This is the exact point I'm trying to make. It doesn't matter why he was
banned, Twitter can ban anyone.

As long as they didn't ban him because he was a part of a protected group,
it's kosher.

~~~
Chris2048
> This is the exact point I'm trying to make

My original point simply points out Milo was not banned for personally
harassing anyone, nothing else.

~~~
odonnellryan
Then what are you trying to discuss?

~~~
Chris2048
>> He was banned because he was harassing people

> No he wasn't. Twitter claimed he incited other people to harass LJ.

------
throwaway2048
Its disturbing the amount of posters here who are directly equating banning
users who actively post racist, hateful bullshit and handing over the user
info of somebody who opposes the president.

Because they did one they should do the other? what?

~~~
sergiotapia
What's more disturbing is how normalized it's becoming to frame any criticism
as hate-speech. That should scare you.

~~~
matthewmacleod
While I don't doubt that there's an increasing trend to shout "hate speech" in
an effort to shut down discussion (and that's obviously dangerous) there is
_equally_ a worrying trend of dismissing co-ordinated campaigns or harassment
and personal attacks as "free speech".

There's more complexity here than you're acknowledging.

~~~
ThomPete
And things labeled hate speech isnt as easily defined as some seem to imply.

------
ultimoo
[https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/850100381560578052](https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/850100381560578052)

"well now on CNN! and we gained 17000 followers in less than 30 minutes. Thank
you CBP/Trump"

I just learnt about the Streisand Effect this afternoon --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

~~~
posguy
Yep, try and sue or suppress someone and you run a real risk of having it blow
up on you, defeating your intent to keep it quiet. Sometimes the best action
is to do nothing, and let it blow over.

~~~
mysterypie
I wish it worked the way you said, but the Streisand Effect is a myth. If
you've worked in customer service, public relations, as a manager, you know
that 99% of the time when something is suppressed the problem goes away.

It's just as true from the opposite point of view. If you're a customer,
client, or user, and your complaint or comment is suppressed, 99% of the time
you do nothing or it goes nowhere.

Once in a long while, something blows up but it's not the rule.

~~~
pepve
So what you're saying is that the Streisand Effect is not a myth, it's just a
rare occurence.

------
colanderman
And while apologists may bring up the Yiannopolis case as an example of
hypocrisy, let's keep in mind that _Twitter_ is free to censor speech how it
sees fit. The US government is explicitly _not_.

~~~
jquery
Free speech doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's a cultural value. Once the
cultural value disappears, so too will the first amendment, either by a new
amendment or by judges raised in a society where wrongthink was censored on
every platform they grew up with. Yes Twitter doesn't technically have to
support free speech as a private corporation, but its censorship is nothing to
celebrate.

~~~
fiter
I think it's important to remember the context in which the USA created its
laws about free speech. In that time, it was your right to buy a printing
press, paper, ink, movable type, and print your own pamphlets. The government
was not to stop you from doing that. The government was not going to force you
to print your neighbors pamphlets.

Your neighbor is Milo. Your printing press is Twitter.

~~~
cookiecaper
It's much different now. It's a lot easier to get access to a printing press
than to something equivalent to Twitter.

Everyone is mutually addressable in meatspace. If you're in the same space,
and someone else talks, you have no choice but to hear it or leave the
premises (note that here, the people who don't like the speech must vacate,
_not_ the people speaking unpopular things). There's a great equalizing power
in that.

In ye olden tyme, you could walk up to your neighbor and give him a copy of
your paper. He could throw it away or refuse to talk to you, but there was no
[legal] way to totally disappear/silence you.

As for corporations, if they didn't like you, all they could do is print their
own counter-arguments. Now the corporate entity can effectively disappear you
and cut you off not only from the larger world, but your personal social
graph.

This is particularly insidious when it comes to the practice of shadowbanning
(and I'm speaking in general -- not trying to start a debate as to whether
Twitter engages in this or not).

~~~
sanderjd
It is actually much much much easier to start something like Twitter than it
ever was to buy your own printing press, run it, and distribute its pamphlets.
The analogy is whether or not it was easier to get access to the Philadelphia
Gazette's printing press (or whoever was big back then), or to Twitter.
Clearly, it's still easier to get access to Twitter, but similarly to the
Gazette, they can decide not to print and distribute your pamphlet.

And if they did agree to print your diatribe against the President of the day
under an anonymous byline, they sure as hell would have claimed the right to
not release your name to the government.

~~~
cookiecaper
I know that's the analogy people make, but it doesn't hold up.

Newspapers were hawked by criers in the street, or sold at stands directly
adjacent to competing newspapers, or delivered to your doorstep where the
other guy could place his competing paper right next to it. All the conduct
was in the real, person-to-person world where every physically able person has
the same access.

That access is completely non-existent in cyberspace; the user pulls only what
he wishes to receive. In the physical world, the user receives pushes from
everything in his environment.

Twitter is not a publication, but a piece of _telecom infrastructure_. People
do not go to Twitter to see what Twitter thinks. They go to Twitter because
they believe Twitter will successfully carry the communication from the people
they trust and want to listen to.

Is it equally OK for the phone company to kick you off and take your phone
number because they didn't like what you said through "their" telephone
infrastructure? What about your ISP kicking you off because they don't like
what you're posting over "their" pipes? If you don't like it, you can go to
another company, or heck, even start your own, right?

Not only were newspapers publications with a monolithic, easily attributable
point of view, but newspapers did not have circulation that reached into the
billions either (and if one newspaper did get that large, they'd have been
broken up in antitrust).

Now, companies can alter or silence _someone else 's_ speech, and remove the
entire audience, because ironically, the audience no longer needs to go into
the real, physical world that exists behind the keyboard to find out what's
happening. They implicitly trust these platforms to present the information
they request.

There are many big differences between cyberspace and physical space. We've
made a lot of short-sighted policy by pretending there's a 1:1 mapping. Let's
not keep that habit up.

~~~
fiter
You're proposing a lot of regulation that I'm personally not interested in.

And why is it that Twitter has to carry that regulatory burden? At what point
does a company/website become _telecom infrastructure_?

One of the issues with ISPs and other utilities is that they have been given
local monopoly in exchange for regulation, so I would not say they are similar
to Twitter. This is also why your statement "you can go to another company, or
heck, even start your own, right?" is supposed to cut.

You're also not giving very much credit to the audience you speak of. The
audience has always had to ensure their own information sources are good.

~~~
cookiecaper
>You're proposing a lot of regulation that I'm personally not interested in.

I'm not really proposing any specific regulation. While it is telecom
infrastructure, I'm not suggesting they must be subject to exactly the same
regulations as hard-line providers, and there are reasons to craft a different
class of rules for them.

The point is that just saying "they're a private company, they can alter
things and silence customers however they want" shouldn't work anymore.

>And why is it that Twitter has to carry that regulatory burden?

Because they're a massive communication platform that people depend on to
accurately represent conversations. Why should Comcast or AT&T have to carry
regulatory burden? Same reasons.

>At what point does a company/website become telecom infrastructure?

Whenever they act a carrier or intermediary in conversations not intended to
go directly to/from them. If you're talking to someone else _through_
something and trusting it to carry your communication, it's a
telecommunication device.

Of course, there can be limits on when/where any potential restrictions should
become effective.

>One of the issues with ISPs and other utilities is that they have been given
local monopoly in exchange for regulation, so I would not say they are similar
to Twitter. This is also why your statement "you can go to another company, or
heck, even start your own, right?" is supposed to cut.

Whether the monopoly is imposed by fiat or occurs organically, it should still
be recognized and addressed as a monopoly.

>You're also not giving very much credit to the audience you speak of. The
audience has always had to ensure their own information sources are good.

Yes, but in the past, it was not really possible to shut everything else out.
There was an opportunity for competitors to get their attention in the
physical world where everyone in the same vicinity shares equal access. You
couldn't get outside information whilst remaining cloistered up inside your
house; you at least had to go to the doorstep or mailbox, where people could
leave their own publications.

In cyberspace, you have a blank window until you explicitly request some
content. There is no opportunity to present anything that the user doesn't
explicitly pull, and then the user is pulling that data from platforms
entirely under the control of a very small handful of corporations.

When _at least_ 90% of people are getting their data from the same sources,
it's reasonable for some controls to be in place.

This isn't new; until the early 00s, we had rules that prevented a single
corporation from controlling too many media outlets in a specific market.
Until the late 80s, we had the Fairness Doctrine to ensure that controversial
public issues were presented fairly.

If those controls were needed to help control broadcasters whose range was 50
miles, how is it absurd to suggest similar things apply to Twitter/Facebook
whose range is infinite and whose user base reaches into the billions, an
appreciable percentage of _all_ humanity?

------
incompatible
If the government can demand records for "an investigation to ensure
compliance with duties, taxes and fines and other customs and immigration
matters", they can demand records for anyone else with similarly vague
justifications. It's fortunate that there are organizations like Twitter
willing to take a stand against it, I guess many others would just hand over
the data.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
There are legitimate, appropriate ways for the government to subpoena, court
order, and issue warrants for certain records from social media like Twitter,
Facebook, Reddit, and HN. For some insight into this process, Reddit just
published their 2016 Transparency Report:

[https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2016](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2016)

They complied with some 60% of them, finding the others invalid (and, notably,
not being proven wrong in that regard).

It's shocking to me that agents of the government so regularly abuse the trust
placed in them to make illegitimate requests of these corporations.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Few people actually gets punished for abusing public trust so it really
shouldn't be much of a surprise at all.

------
thinkloop
On the one hand we live in a big brother dystopian society where government is
plugged into the internet backbone, has backdoors into all software and
hardware, and knows everything being said by anyone, and on the other, they
can't find a Twitter account's email, whine to Apple about a locked iPhone,
online banking by regular people on virus machines (PC's) never gets hacked,
and we only get celeb nudie drops once a decade - are we really losing the
security war that bad?

~~~
acdha
“The government” isn't a single group of people. It's entirely possible for
the intelligence agencies to be simultaneously sucking up a lot of data but
not sharing that data with civilians in a separate agency. From what I've
heard, that's expected because there's a cultural expectation that they're not
involved in domestic politics.

~~~
zaroth
I hate to say it, but; "Too Soon"

------
jquery
While I am totally on Twitter's side in his case, anyone who thinks Twitter is
some sort of believer in free speech hasn't been paying attention the past
couple years. Free speech isn't a core value at Twitter, it's a shield to
protect their business interests.

------
codydh
I think it sometimes gets lost that there's a difference between being harshly
critical of another group's opinions, and threatening or harming another
group. There are multiple ways in which they're different, and they're not
both free speech (IMO).

~~~
duncan_bayne
Indeed. I believe that those who deliberately conflate the two do so in order
to restrict legitimate (if often vulgar or hateful) speech.

~~~
s73ver
I believe the opposite, that so many who deliberately conflate the two do so
to make it easier to do the second by trying to frame discussions in terms of
the first.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I believe we're both right :) Seems to be a strategy employed by both sides.

------
israrkhan
Waiting for a trump tweet, bashing twitter...

~~~
xigency
Good lord, I am surprised they haven't disabled realdonaldtrump over the
course of this election and presidency. Not to ruin the attention or users it
draws, but just because they can.

~~~
artursapek
That account, run by POTUS himself, is regularly cited on national TV and in
major newspapers. Why would they ever do that?

------
razvanh
Relevant: [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/what-happened-
wh...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/what-happened-when-i-joked-
about-the-president-of-ecuador.html?_r=0)

------
mrmondo
Massive respect to twitter for standing up for privacy like this.

~~~
jlebrech
but when someone doxxes a trump supporter?

~~~
mrmondo
then Trump wouldn't be demanding their private information and if some other
government was - I'd hope the same respect of privacy would occur.

------
sergiotapia
Speaking as a latino, it's funny that they defend this account but ban stuff
like @PolNewsNetwork1.

Also funny I have to clarify that I'm a "minority" or I'll be attacked as a
racist xenomorph mysoginist accountant bioslug edgelord.

Let's not paint this as Twitter defending civil liberties.

~~~
hsod
There's a difference between banning an account for TOS violations and
complying with a legal order to unmask an anonymous user to a law enforcement
agency. Not sure why you would try and conflate them

~~~
brazzledazzle
The conflation between the two is happening throughout the comments for this
story. It would take such a complete misunderstanding that I can't help but
think these people aren't actually confusing two fundamentally different
things and are just biased to the point that they can't think critically and
are reaching for anything no matter how ridiculous to paint Twitter in a bad
light. But perhaps I'm missing something that's obvious from their
perspective.

~~~
ursus_bonum
This precisely. What is going on in here? This story has nothing to do with
Twitter banning certain accounts, so why is half the discussion about that?

~~~
mikeyouse
Because much of politics is circular and virtue signaling is just as important
to the libertarian-leaning HN population as it is to the 'snowflakes' that
they loathe.

------
aetherson
Good for Twitter.

------
ultim8k
The law and the right thing are not always the same. I personally prefer to do
the right thing and $#it the law. Especially if I'd have the power to do like
twitter does. Law is decided by stupid people (eg Trump) for stupid people
(his voters).

------
stefek99
My thinking in each and every case like this:

\- official statemen: "no no no" \- "here is the data" (behind closed doors)

------
musgrove
Then all they'll do is find a reason to have it subpoenaed.

------
agrona
This is great. Although part of me has a desire for the person to be outed so
Trump can lose yet another horrendously baseless first amendment lawsuit.

Hopefully a lot more visibly, this time.

------
known
"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
\--Einstein

------
Neliquat
Not a fan of Twitter, but kudos for doing the right thing here, whatever their
motivations. Free speech is being attacked by the far right and the far left
it seems these days. Lets keep this thread on the rails a bit and thank
someone for taking the high road, no matter how expected it should be.

~~~
always_good

        > Not a fan of Twitter, but
    

Aside, why do people write this kind of thing? What does it clarify?

It's not like you're taking a controversial stance here. In fact, you're
taking the same one as the article and the rest of our echo chamber.

I don't unconditionally hate Twitter either, but I don't try to get a cookie
for it.

~~~
mvpu
Such lines are usually followed by the opposite view..

 _Not a fan of X_ , but < _something good about X_ >

 _Don 't mean to be rude_ but < _something actually rude_ >

 _I 'm not saying X is right_ but < _something right about X_ >

This is internal noise that the writer spills out. There's no need to write
these things.

Here's the kicker: _I think_ it will rain tomorrow. The _I think_ is
unnecessary, you're saying it because you're thinking.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
"I think" is a modifier on certainty the way it's normally used, not merely
redundant information (as the literal reading suggests). It is generally used
when the person isn't certain.

Similarly, _all_ of the phrases you mentiom carry information about how the
comment should be interpreted.

Not a fan of X: I'm generally biased against X, so my opinion they did well
here carries extra inferential weight.

Don't mean to be rude: I don't know how to say this politely and request that
you "iron man" the question or statement. There are arguments about if you
truly need to say such things, but I'm generally on the side that rudeness is
better than censorship.

I'm not claiming X is right: I explicitly disclaim a typical inference one
would draw from making an argument that something about X is correct.

What you see as "noise" are inclusions of internal probabilistic weights,
parse requests, other meta-comments, etc.

------
dingo_bat
In other news, Twitter has been banning trump-supporting accounts left and
right, without much uproar.

------
hysterix
The comments in this thread are just as pathetic as I've expected from
ycombinator as of late.

Just search for the term, "hate speech" and you'll see this pervasive cancer
trying to erode the very fabric of our free society.

If anyone uses the term hate speech unironically, I'd like you to take a long
walk off a short pier.

------
Sunset
Just start holding C_Os in contempt in solitary. See how long twitter's
resistance lasts.

------
darkhorn
I told before. Trump acts like Erdoğan.

~~~
adrianratnapala
Erdoğan stacked the institutions _before_ he tried this sort of thing.

So Trump is like Erdoğan, but not as clever or as likely to succeed maybe?

~~~
martythemaniak
Perhaps Trump will act as a sort of fascism vaccine in the long term.

Made from the same fascist fabric as the worst of the, causing society to
develop the necessary anti-bodies and fight back, but weak enough to not do
too much damage.

Or maybe one of those childhood diseases you fight off and develop immunity
against, but leaves with with permanent scaring.

~~~
mattnewton
I hope so. The GOP wakes up, as if from a bad dream, and then runs Nikki Haley
to prove that they can be the party of immigrants, women, and fiscally
conservative socially-moderate people again.

~~~
Analemma_
The thing about the GOP is that even the promisingly normal among them get
warped and mangled by the incentives of the primary process.

Bobby Jindal, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie all looked like somewhat
reasonable choices at one point, until they had to go through the primaries
and came out the other end as twisted, raving loonies. Nikki Haley looks fine
now but there's no reason to think she'd fare any better.

------
ryanmarsh
Would HN be so proud of Twitter if they had refused to disclose the owner of
an alt right account?

~~~
jhpriestley
Yeah seriously, when it's "their guy" Obama, HN is totally supportive of US
government surveillance and retaliation against wikileaks, snowden, manning,
etc. /s

~~~
3131s
Sort of. HN has moved in that direction more in the last few years when it
became unmistakably obvious that Obama, on the most important issues,
continued an ugly legacy that the US has made for itself over the past 60
years.

