I'm scratching my head here. It's quite a leap to go from:
> political parties... have a direct line to Twitter to get stuff they dislike removed
...to:
> in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online
Twitter is not the internet. It's a tiny part of the internet. You can say whatever you want on many, many platforms. In fact, people can't stop talking about some of this stuff on HN and Reddit.
I'm on the same page. Frankly I was actually wiling to buy the argument that Twitter suppressed the story on direct orders from Biden himself, or whatever, and that such a level of coordination continued once he took office. It's... not unreasonable. Certainly Musk sold that as what the story was about.
But it's not there! All Taibbi has is some bland emails pointing out that the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets. That's it! Were they bad tweets? Was there salacious content censored? Did Twitter even remove them? We don't know! But Taibbi and Musk clearly want us to think this is bad, and most of the posters here seem to be on board.
Someone point me to the smoking gun here? Where's the actual censorship? Who said what that Biden managed to suppress? Where was the unfair moderation by Twitter?
I'm... a little stunned actually. This isn't just a non-story, it's almost a smear job.
It’s the very type of behavior they claim the MSM engages in. And it’s not even well done.
Snippets of email conversations with the context removed. Why not share the whole email? If it’s this weak with this much context removal, the context must be pretty detrimental to the smear job.
The smoking gun is "the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets."
I don't think that is something the government, outside of maybe a court order through the judicial branch should be doing.
Ever.
It doesn't matter what is in the tweets it whether or not they were taken down.
> The smoking gun is "the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets."
What Biden administration? What government? This was in the summer of 2020.
I repeat: if that happened, it would be bad. The government, indeed, shouldn't be doing that. But Taibbi doesn't have the story! The evidence doesn't exist. He pushed this thing out, with Musk's backing, implying strongly (strongly enough to fool you) that he had evidence for this. But he doesn't.
You get that, right? It really feels like we're being played. They have Twitter emails from two years back but nothing incriminating from a month ago? That argues strongly that they don't have it.
How is it not OK, exactly? I mean, Twitter has a "report" button. I can report a tweet right now. Is that not OK? Clearly it's OK. I can likewise send an email to report tweets. Twitter doesn't have to read it, but I can send it. That's OK too. What exactly not OK about someone else doing the same thing that's OK for me?
I suspect your answer is going to rely, as I point out, on facts not in evidence. You are just assuming that (1) Twitter did as the Biden campaign demanded for political reasons and (2) the tweets were valid and should have been left up. And if those facts are true, you're right! That's not OK.
So now let's go back to the Taibbi article and see if you're right. And... you're not. He doesn't have that evidence. He just wants you to believe it, so he (and Musk) are pretending that the article says things it doesn't.
You read HN; you're not a normal person. 95% of everyone you know didn't hear about the Hunter Biden thing at the time, and most of them probably still don't know about it.
Exactly: the vast majority of people don't use Twitter and aren't part of anyone's "follower count".
Most people outside of your (and my) bubble don't read the news, don't pay much attention to politics, aren't particularly well educated, don't think very hard about who they're going to vote for (if they even vote), and if they use Twitter at all it's to post cat videos and keep up with the Kardashians.
You might not cross paths with this kind of person much in your daily life, but I promise you they're everywhere - and most of them would struggle to tell you what Joe Biden's son's name is, let alone what controversies he's been involved in.
i think the government has direct lines to many industry leaders. im pretty sure it's commonplace for officials to regularly communicate with e.g., oil executives or religious leaders.
we've known about the business world having direct lines to governmental agencies for decades.
many have been screaming at the tops of their lungs for decades to remove these communication lines between religious leaders/industries and the government.
to add some very relevant context to this, we just saw texts between elon and kanye yesterday. kanye is running for president in 2024. all week long has been doing interviews attacking jewish people, praising hitler, and posting swastikas. again, elon has been texting directly with him as recently as yesterday.
this communication between political figures and industry seems to be entirely commonplace. is it right? i don't personally think so. i think its problematic as hell. but the problem is significantly larger than twitter. significantly larger. religions, extractive industries, transportation companies, etc.. etc... etc...
while some may personally have a problem with it, i'll believe elon thinks its a problem when he ceases communication with all political figures, including for business related reasons.
> political parties... have a direct line to Twitter to get stuff they dislike removed
...to:
> in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online
Twitter is not the internet. It's a tiny part of the internet. You can say whatever you want on many, many platforms. In fact, people can't stop talking about some of this stuff on HN and Reddit.