Multiple Former Twitter Employees Note That Musk’s New Favorite Tool, Polls, Are Easily Gamed By Bots
from the but-of-course dept
Rolling Stone has a fun article quoting multiple former Twitter employees highlighting that polls are the least secure tool on the platform, and are regularly open to manipulation by bots:
“Polls are more prone to manipulation than almost anything else [on Twitter]. It’s interesting, given his [Elon’s] use of polls,” he added. Several other ex-Twitter employees gave similar assessments.
This seems particularly notable for two reasons: (1) Musk’s sudden reliance on polls for making big content moderation decisions, and (2) his formerly professed (though of questionable seriousness) claims about concerns regarding bots on the platform.
On point one, we already discussed the ridiculousness, and lack of seriousness, in using easily gamed polls as a tool for content moderation. While supporters like to argue it’s “democratic,” it has none of the actual hallmarks of integrity around the “voting.” And this report regarding the manipulation just makes that even clearer:
“When someone says. ‘Oh we must be protecting polls, right?’ No, we’re not,” the former Twitter employee told Rolling Stone.
In the years since the feature debuted, a small industry of spammers has cropped up to offer services manipulating the results of a Twitter poll with inauthentic accounts. The spammers allow users to buy votes in chunks, some offering 15,000 votes on a given poll for a little over $130 or smaller responses for just 19 cents a vote with “guaranteed fast delivery” that’s “100% Confidential.”
For what it’s worth, the Rolling Stone article perhaps gives a little too much credence to the idea that Musk ever seriously considered “bots” a problem on Twitter. It was always clear that it was a pretense to try to get out of the deal. So the fact that he pretended to care about bots on the platform for a few months shouldn’t be taken to mean he really believes it’s a problem. Especially right now when he desperately wants to show growth to woo back advertisers who have abandoned ship.
The Rolling Stone piece does a nice job also highlighting how Musk’s recent claims of big increases in the mDAU may also be facing the same issue as the polls: a lack of staff manually removing spammers:
But it’s not clear how much of that claimed growth is authentic. Asked whether those numbers could be inflated by spam accounts, the former Twitter staffer told Rolling Stone: “No fucking doubt.”
“Think about it: On any given week, [the security] team removed millions of accounts manually,” the source said.
Of course, on Wednesday, Musk publicly claimed that the site was removing a bunch of spammers:
Of course, somewhat hilariously, the purge ended up killing a bunch of high profile legitimate accounts. Early on, there were reports of some high profile “left leaning” critics of Musk who were removed leading to claims that the Muskian Twitter was dealing in “anti-left bias,” but as with the years of false claims under the old regime of “anti-conservative bias” the reality appeared to be much more mundane: the impossibility of doing content moderation well at scale. Indeed, some of the other accounts that were suspended included Elon Musk’s most vociferous number one fan.
Turns out content moderation, including dealing with spam and bots, is, you know, not easy.
Filed Under: bots, elon musk, polls, spam
Companies: twitter
Comments on “Multiple Former Twitter Employees Note That Musk’s New Favorite Tool, Polls, Are Easily Gamed By Bots”
Vox populi, vox dei, e pluribus unum, yo quiero Taco Bell.
Re:
Vox Musk. Vox cacas tauri.
Re: Re:
Honestly, you give a bull’s shit too little credit; at least it’s worth something, Muskian antics just cost money like an overflowing hog farm lagoon turned future Superfund site. I guess that makes sense because all most of his success comes from a pork barrel.
Smokescreen
Where is the point in complaining about Musk looking away when bots are putting their thumb on a scale that is entirely under his control?
He can just announce what he wants.
Re:
This is all illusion to placate his rabid fans, and nothing more. He doesn’t believe in what he’s saying or doing, and he’s not fooling anyone who isn’t in thrall to the myth of his magical powers.
Re: Re:
He believes in his bullshit as much as Don Draper did.
i think the “anti-left” thing was brought on because Musk invited people like Andy Ngo to “report” accounts, and suddenly they were banned the next day.
i think it is less “anti-left” and more “Nice day to do whatever some shitweasel i like suggests, heh-huh”.
More broadly, it’s probably just the moderation-at-scale problem as usual. But the high-profile dumbassery certainly colored some people’s lenses.
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“probably just the moderation-at-scale problem as usual”
More like a lack of any attempt at organised moderation at all problem, due to him having sacked almost all the moderators.
… “Polls” of all sorts flood the media daily — none of these polls are reliable nor objectively conducted by well established standards of scientific sampling.
Online polling is the worst.
But it don’t matter at all — the public loves polls with their superficial veneer of phony numerical accuracy.
Media providers from all political viewpoints eagerly provide what the public wants, including Musk.
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Unrepresentative
Having former twitter employees complain about vote manipulation, after the Yoel Roth/NY Post laptop voter manipulation is so cute.
But it’s still missing the point: there’s a huge amount of Twitter users that want to see less censorship. The view that twitter 1.0 was upholding some kind of sacred community guidelines agreed upon by the vast majority of users wasn’t shared by the community.
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Yes or no, Koby: Do you believe the government should have the legal right to compel any privately owned interactive web service into hosting legally protected speech that the owners/operators of said service don’t want to host?
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Re: Re:
As always, you speak of force so that you can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment when large generic speech platforms give you the censorship you want.
Large generic speech platforms who censor opinions based on viewpoint should be criticized (or bought!) to get them to voluntarily stop censoring opinions based on viewpoint.
And before you go on with your next lies, no, that does not mean no moderation or allowing all legal speech. Moderation and censorship are different.
Re: Re: Re:
.. said nobody not deliberately lying, ever.
Re: Re: Re:
Hyman.
Shut the fuck up.
You will never admit that YOU ARE THE ONE WHO WANTS TO CENSOR, SILENCE AND MURDER.
Re: Re: Re:
Do you have anything else to say beyond the same regurgitated bullshit that has no real thought behind it other than “other right-wingers say it, so it must be true”?
Re: Re: Re:2
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/12/05/rep-khanna-on-twitter-free-speech-and-the-hunter-biden-story/
Is Ro Khanna also a right-winger?
The response to someone being wrong is to be right, and if that means saying the same right thing over and over again, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It may finally sink in with repetition, or it may not, but being silent in the face of lies is never the answer.
Re: Re: Re:3 The defination of insanity...
“and if that means saying the same right thing over and over again”
Re: Re: Re:3
I am sure that the Inquisition were convinced that they were right when they persecuted Galileo for saying that the Earth moved round the Sun. You are no more right than they were then.
Re: Re: Re: Ah the cowardly bigot dogwhistle/bullhorn...
‘censor opinions based on viewpoint’
Translation:
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no…no not those views
Me: So…deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
(All credit to Twitter user @ndrew_lawrence.)
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Re: Re:
Update: Matt Taibbi is publishing The Twitter Files on twitter, right now, and not on his substack. The credibility of twitter 1.0 employees could be coming to an end this weekend.
Re: Re:
I repeat:
Yes or no, Koby: Do you believe the government should have the legal right to compel any privately owned interactive web service into hosting legally protected speech that the owners/operators of said service don’t want to host?
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Re: Re: Re:
Asked and answered when the Government made Western Union a common carrier, all privately owned infrastructure at the time FYI, for much the same bullshit BigTech does today.
Re: Re: Re:2 "I've never been proven wrong on Techdirt!"
Did you post the from a bar or did you break into section 8 housing, drunk again?
Re: Re: Re:2
The “common carrier” here isn’t Western Union, it’s the SWIFT Network, and it isn’t as “common carrier” as you think, asshole.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Common carrier is what ever the law says it is moron. It’s originally a maritime law. As said many times here to fucking morons its a legal framework that works very well for regulation of various industries. Western Union was screaking the same ‘but muh private platform’ that BigTech and corrupt cocksuckers like Mike are screaming now.
Re: Re: Re:4 So predictable
And hissy fit right one cue from crybabby.
Re: Re:
Also: Tabibi confirmed the government didn’t have a hand in “censoring” the laptop story, and he also confirmed (even if only by accident) that several of the tweets deleted in connection to that story were, in fact, nude photos of Hunter Biden posted without his consent—which was, and still is, a violation of Twitter’s TOS.
So, uh…not really the big fucking deal you, he, and Elon made it out to be. 🙄
Re: Re: Re: 'How dare you act like us?!
Maybe Koby just really wanted to see a naked Hunter Biden and is upset that someone prevented them from doing so?
Personally I find it rather funny and pathetic how much attention the whole laptop story has gotten because even if you assume that the whole thing was legitimate the big question would still remain: Was there anything (claimed to be) on there worse than what Trump and his family said and did?
It’s like claiming that your political opponent kicks puppies when there’s video evidence of you shooting one.
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Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
It’s gotten a lot of attention because it’s a prime example of the bias. We can rest assured that if there was a Don Jr. laptop that it would have been heralded from the heavens. But because it’s a Biden laptop, it got covered up. The coverup IS now the crime.
Re: Re: Re:3
You mean the same bias that let Donald Trump violate the rules of Twitter multiple times during his presidency? You mean the same bias that had Twitter and Facebook doing their best to avoid making conservative voices feel like they were being “silenced”? You mean the same bias that’s making CNN lean more towards the right than making it stand in the center (because it was never actually a “leftist” network to begin with)? Is that the bias you’re talking about?
Which one do you think is the bigger problem for you, Koby: the Twitter rules that ban hate speech, or the fact that you believe such speech is explicitly “conservative” and should thus be allowed on Twitter to avoid any “anti-conservative bias”?
Re: Re: Re:3
You say Twitter was biased while all the internal messages show that wasn’t actually the case at all and that shows us that you must deny factual reality to come up your idiotic arguments.
To quote Melvin Udall from As good as it gets in regards to how you function:
– I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.
Re: Re: Re:3
Stephen T. Stone has literally just linked you evidence that there was no bias, you human manure bucket.
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Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Ahh I didn’t see that. But apparently Matt Taibbi himself doesn’t think so:
“9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party”
“10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However”
“11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.”
“12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read.”
This is why The Twitter Files have made a splash. It proves the bias, demonstrates the coverup, and uncovers the censorship requests from politicians.
Re: Re: Re:5
Yes or no koby are you sexually attracted to matt because hes a giant tool!
Re: Re: Re:5 Weird flex bro
Hunter Biden’s dick is the hill you’re willing to die on eh?
Re: Re: Re:5
Nothing you mentioned is in violation of the first amendment or any other law. If you think that political bias is a problem, I have some very bad news about right-leaning sites. The fact that most sane people don’t go to those sites does not make it a problem that the places people go to communicate without such explicit hatred tend to focus on making those places more acceptable to advertisers.
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Re: Re: Re:6
When the censorship is going your way, you hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment to pretend that there’s nothing wrong with censorship as long as it’s legal. But a large generic speech platform that’s censoring opinions based on viewpoint is taking away the free speech of the people being silenced, even when it’s allowed to do that. A large generic speech platform that pretextually silences speech that might harm the political party they favor deserves to be harshly criticized for doing so.
Re: Re: Re:7
… Is not even remotely how things work out here in the real world, Hyman.
Re: Re: Re:7 Fuck off neo nazi
Opinions so popular you are too much a coward to sign a fake name too.
Re: Re: Re:7
You’re once again conflating a privilege with a civil right, Hyman. Twitter can’t “silence” anyone who gets suspended/banned from Twitter; Donald Trump stands as the ultimate proof. And losing a Twitter-sized audience isn’t being “silenced” because you were never entitled to that audience in the first place.
Like Koby and Lodos, you continually frame the loss of a spot on Twitter (or Twitter deleting posts that violate its TOS) as censorship instead of moderation. But that framing is disingenuous because it plays into the “I have been silenced” fallacy—i.e., the idea that losing one platform (that you don’t even own!) is the same thing as losing your entire freedom of speech. Again: Privileges are not civil rights; equating the two doesn’t help your argument.
I’ve said before that I’m willing to accept better ideas when they’re presented to me. I’ve spent many years refining my own ideas about censorship and moderation—not only to the point of crafting a copypasta that summarizes my thoughts, but also to the point where I can justify my thinking. To that end, any better ideas on that subject need to have better thinking than my own. I haven’t seen you or the other trolls present any idea about censorship that offers better thinking than my own positions. If anything, your ideas on the matter is so broad that, as I’ve told you before, the only logical endgame for your ideas is “the government must step in to enforce your ideas”. (After all, you keep saying a platform “should” host speech, “should” implies obligation, and your bitchfits aren’t going to make that obligation happen.)
Any privately owned platform for speech, regardless of any factors, has the absolute right to decide what speech it will and will not host. A platform choosing not to host, say, racial slurs is not “censorship” unless you truly believe—not think, but believe—you should have the right to say the N-word without consequence on the property of someone who would otherwise kick you off for doing that. To argue that such a rule is “censorship” is to imply that any rule that restricts speech based on what platform you’re on is “censorship”. You’re not offering any logical thinking behind that idea other than trying to turn a privilege into a civil right.
You’re gonna need to explain your thinking much, much better than you’ve been trying to explain it if you want me—or anyone else here with some goddamn sense—to buy into your ideas about censorship. As it stands, the people who’ve been commenting here the longest and have thought about this subject past knee-jerk reactionary “deletion is censorship” thoughts aren’t buying into your bullshit. You might get some gullible schmuck who hasn’t thought much about censorship to buy into your bullshit because you use all the right(-wing) catchphrases and present yourself as “polite”. But since you’re obviously seeking our approval (why else would you keep coming back to a place you’re not wanted?), you’ll need to do better than endlessly repeating catchphrases you learned from wannabe fascists. You think you have steak, but all you have is some barely existent sizzle. Give us the steak or give us a reprieve from your bullshit, but give us something other than the same six lines repeated over and over and over, goddamn.
Re: Re: Re:8
It’s impossible for any platform to control anyone’s speech except for their own.
Re: Re: Re:9
At least, not without being a most willing state actor.
Re: Re: Re:8
You got that right.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Much like “illegal alien” which is the correct legal term vs. “migrant” which is meaningless new speak, the term “moderation” is not the correct legal word. The correct legal word is censorship you fucking moron!
Moderation has an entirely different meaning in law you stupid fuckstick.
Re: Re: Re:9
lmao fuck off fascist
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Re: Re: Re:10
Nope boi.
Re: Re: Re:11 Crybabby's back!
He’s still not gonna fuck you.
Re: Re: Re:9
“Legal word”? You’re talking about a private entity taking an action with their private property. What does the law have to do with it?
Re: Re: Re:9
Yes, and it’s legal speech, Chozen.
Why do you hate private property laws?
Re: Re: Re:9
.. said nobody literate, ever.
Re: Re: Re:10 A decidedly counter-productive argument
People are free to stretch the definition of censorship to include ‘Being told by a private property owner that you’re no longer welcome to use their property to speak from’ but even if others are willing to buy that definition all it does is ensure that no-one cares when someone cries ‘Censorship!’ because it’s something that happens every day with public support in the form of angry drunks, abrasive bigots or generally toxic people shown the door rather than being able to ruin the day of everyone else in a given business/private property.
Tell people that giving the boot to the angry drunk, belligerent sexist or casual racist is ‘censorship’ and other than those who fall into one or more of those categories the response is likely to be less ‘Oh well then that should happen a lot less‘ and a more ‘So censorship is a good thing then I guess’.
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Re: Re: Re:11
“Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are “offensive,” happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups.”
https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship
Re: Re: Re:12
I kick you out of my home for yelling racial slurs. You go visit your racist friend and yell those same slurs without consequence. How did I suppress your speech?
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Re: Re: Re:13
Has your house been declared a modern public square by the supreme court you fucking moron?
Re: Re: Re:14
Irrelevant to the argument. Twitter is privately owned; it has no obligation to host any third-party speech. My home is privately owned; I have no obligation to let anyone say racial slurs in my home.
Again: I kick you out of my home for yelling racial slurs. You go visit your racist friend and yell those same slurs without consequence. How did I suppress your speech?
Re: Re: Re:15
AT&T is privately owned. Privately owned doesn’t mean shit you fucking moron.
Re: Re: Re:16 "I've never been proven wrong on here." He sobbed!
Come on let’s see that full on hissy fit crybabby!
Re: Re: Re:16
It kind of does, if you’re going to argue that Twitter is either a “public forum” or a public utility in the vein of telephone service.
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Re: Re: Re:17
It is if we the people say it is. And social media is as declared by the SCOTUS a public square/forum. Packingham v. North Carolina 2017
“SOCIAL MEDIA allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another about it on any subject that might come to mind. Supra, at 5. By prohibiting sex offenders from using those websites, North Carolina with one broad stroke bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern PUBLIC SQUARE, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge. These websites can provide perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard. They allow a person with an Internet connection to “become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox.”
Re: Re: Re:18
No, it isn’t. The decision refers to social media as “the modern public square”, but it doesn’t declare that the law recognizes those services as actual public squares under the legal definition of that term. If it had, Twitter wouldn’t be able to make rules prohibiting the posting of hate speech on Twitter—it would have to abide by the limitations of the First Amendment and allow literally all legally protected speech without consequence. Try again.
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Re: Re: Re:19
“No, it isn’t. The decision refers to social media as “the modern public square”, but it doesn’t declare that the law recognizes those services as actual public squares under the legal definition of that term. If it had, Twitter wouldn’t be able to make rules prohibiting the posting of hate speech on Twitter—it would have to abide by the limitations of the First Amendment and allow literally all legally protected speech without consequence. Try again.”
WTF??? The supreme court makes ruling that you cant pass a law that prevents a person from having social media accounts because social media is the modern public square and you say “that the law recognizes those services as actual public squares”
Supreme Court decisions are the law you fuckstick because they are the current interpretation of the Constitution which is the highest law in the land you god damn fucking moron.
Re: Re: Re:20
You forget the circumstances of that case: It was about whether the law could prevent sex offenders from using social media websites. The Supreme Court ruled that the North Carolina law barring registered sex offenders from using any social media service was unconstitutional because “[a] fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that all persons have access to places where they can speak and listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once more”. The law in question barred a certain class of people from using an entire class of websites that are “for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge”.
The Supreme Court did not declare, and has not declared, social media services to be true public forums under the law—i.e., the law doesn’t say Twitter has to host all legally protected speech from all possible users. Any assertion to the contrary will need a much better citation than Packingham. And that sure as shit won’t be Pruneyard, in case you think to go there next.
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Re: Re: Re:21
“law doesn’t say Twitter has to host all legally protected speech from all possible users.”
Goal posts moved!!! Fuck you are pathetic. Go suck a dick for the love of god you need it.
Re: Re: Re:22
No, they’re not. You’re the one who said—and I quote—“social media is as declared by the SCOTUS a public square/forum”. Packingham, the case you cited, proved you wrong; even though Justice Kennedy referred to social media websites as “the modern public square”, the ruling itself says nothing about whether those same websites are, in the legal sense, a true public forum. Packingham wasn’t about whether social media services were true public forums—it was about whether the law could stop a certain class of people (registered sex offenders) from using those services altogether for even the most innocent of purposes given how important a role those services can play in modern life (for better or for worse).
You suggested that a SCOTUS ruling declared social media to be a true public forum—i.e., a forum in which all legally protected speech must be able to be posted. That same ruling says nothing of the sort. You failed to back up your claim; that I proved as much without once changing my argument seems to be your problem.
Re: Re: Re:23
“You’re the one who said—and I quote—“social media is as declared by the SCOTUS a public square/forum”
Which is true. You are trying to move the goal posts because SCOTUS precedence moves slowly. We still have multiple cases over Heller moving their way through the courts. Brown was decided in 1954 Senator Joe Biden was still fighting desegregation in 1977. A lot of people forget that Delaware as both a slave state and a segregationist state and that at one time Joe Biden was a segregationist senator. Delaware tends to get a free pass because it was part of the Union, same with Maryland.
Re: Re: Re:14 Or a public house...
Like a bar, or a pub, or a tavern, or a lounge, or a saloon, or a lounge, or an alehouse, or a cocktail lounge, or a watering hole, or a taproom, or a canteen?
Re: Re: Re:12
Moderation does nit suppress speech, it just tells the speaker to go elsewhere to say what they want. Somebody using libel laws to go after satirist, like Devin Nunes on the other hand is censorship, as it is saying you can’t say that anywhere.
Re: Re: Re:10 You know?
I don’t know how many times I need to point this fact out but you people (I use that accurately, those that support silencing under the guise of private choice); but the sooner you accept the definition of the word and change tactic to constitutional law, you have a failing argument.
The ‘in the alternative’ battle of “even if” doesn’t help. You can not be taken seriously when you pretend you are not censoring, or supportive of it.
You support censorship. And under the constitution private censorship is legal.
Re: Re: Re:11
I kick you off a service I run because you said shitty things about queer people. You go to Gab and say the same things without consequence. How have I silenced you in any way?
Re: Re: Re:12
By preventing the person from speaking on your site, you have silenced and censored them. That they can speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
Re: Re: Re:13
After Twitter banned Donald Trump, he was still able to speak on any other site that will have him. He even started his own site to replace his Twitter account. If you want to make me believe as you do, Preacher Hyman, you’ll first have to overcome the “I have been silenced” fallacy—and I don’t think your orthodoxy can do that.
Re: Re: Re:13
… said nobody capable of rational thought, ever.
Re: Re: Re:13
speech that can be heard isn’t silenced, dumbfuck.
Re: Re: Re:11
You support censorship. And under the constitution private censorship is legal.
Strange way to spell ‘property rights’ and ‘first amendment’ rights but you do you I guess.
Re-read my comment. Even if I grant that censorship applies to being told ‘You can speak but you’re not allowed to use my property to do so’ that’s not helping your case because at that point no-one cares if censorship is happening’.
It would be like stretching ‘assault’ to cover ‘looking at someone with anything less than complete kindness’; if you stretch the definition all you’re doing is ensuring that the term loses all impact and that should an event where the term would actually apply(the government telling someone they can’t speak at all or someone getting physically beat respectively) people are likely just to shrug it off as just more whining by someone facing consequences for their actions/not being looked at with gushing affection.
tl;dr: I’m willing to grant your definition for the sake of the argument but at that point I don’t care. Cry to the skies about yourself or others being ‘censored’, I’m just going to read it as ‘I faced consequences for my actions and/or can’t keep using private property against the owners wishes’ and respond appropriately.
Re: Re: Re:12 Now if only they could actually admit that, that was the case
“‘I faced consequences for my actions and/or can’t keep using private property against the owners wishes…”
This here is exactly what they have a problem with! Hyman, Crybabby, Lost, and whoever else, just cannot stand the fact that people are not required to listen to their inane drivel, no matter how smart they think they are.
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Re: Re: Re:13
On the contrary, gender ideologues cannot stand hearing that people can only ever be the sex of their bodies, that gender and sex are the same, and that sex is never assigned, only observed and noted. Gender ideologues are prepared to sacrifice the founding values of this country so that they can silence those who disagree with them. But even if they manage to keep their boot on the face of humanity, it will not matter. Men can never be women, no matter how many people are thumbscrewed into affirming that belief. The universe is entirely indifferent to people’s wishes. Transwomen are men. They might get prostate cancer but never ovarian cancer. They might get a real woman pregnant but will never be pregnant themselves. They will never experience the onset or the end of menstruation. No matter how they try to pose as women, they will never share in the experience of being a woman that comes from having a woman’s body.
Re: Re: Re:14
That you think trans people should have to put up with people like you denying trans people some basic human dignity by way of questioning their identity—their existence—isn’t surprising, so much as it’s frankly sad that you want the right to harangue them without consequence.
And what have you to say about the people who are prepared to sacrifice trans people (figuratively or literally) to enforce a strict gender ideology of their own—y’know, people like your TERF allies?
(Also: Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you still refuse to unconditionally condemn the Club Q shooter.)
Re: Re: Re:15
Somewhere along the way the work and acceptance of the 1960s-1980s was lost. What happened to scientific fact?!!!
If you have a penis you are a man.
If you have a vagina you are a woman.
If you have both you are a hermaphrodite.
If you have neither you are non-gendered.
Gender is not fluid. Humans are not like amphibians and some reptiles and birds. We do not and can not change gender.
Your personality may be some level of masculine or feminine. And there are gender-related common-scale traits. Saying you are the opposite gender does not make it true. Acknowledging your alternative non-conforming personality and lifestyle choices is accuracy.
There’s a middle neither side is interested in.
People willing to kill others for their personality development or lifestyle choices tend to fall into three classings. Those who are raised by inferior parenting tends to be the largest. Less accurately, brainwashing.
The larger of the minority classings are those who’s own life choices have created imbalance and conflict psychologically. In other words, those that deny the reality of who, and yes, what, they are.
And there are a small few who are simply evil beings. Those, the target is used as a cover for their own fetish of pridefulness in the killing of others.
Two of those groups can be rationally and properly educated out of false understanding.
But we need to start by NOT ignoring reality in the first place.
You can not justify the replacement of one fiction with another as a solution to bigotry and ignorance.
Re: Re: Re:16
A not-zero number of people stopped accepting strict gender roles and identities that needed enforcing via lots and lots of social conditioning (and a fair number of laws) as “scientific fact”.
Biological sex is not fluid. (And even that’s more complicated than you think.) Gender identity sure as hell can be; who are you to tell a trans person that their identity isn’t valid? Are you really gonna go out on the same limb that Hyman stuck himself on—which also means running back to anonymous posting when you get your transphobic shit locked behind the spamfilter?
Trans people deserve the same respect for their identities that you would want for yours. How’s that for a reality we shouldn’t ignore?
You’re free to keep believing that trans men are actually women all the live-long day. No one is asking you to change that belief; that includes me. What is being asked of you—and of transphobes like Hyman—is to respect someone’s gender identity regardless of your beliefs. You don’t have to like Caitlyn Jenner or even believe she’s a woman. But if you’re going to be the kind of dick who misgenders her for any reason, all you’re doing is sending a message to other trans people: “I don’t respect you and you can expect me to never defend you when the time comes.” And believe me when I say that time is coming—because it’s practically already here.
Re: Re: Re:17
And you already change the argument away from my statement.
Gender is a biological fact. One that in non-humans can even be fluidic.
Identity is entirely separate. Gender identity is a combination of social, physical, and psychological traits that combine to create an identity. Despite gender.
I never did. Every person is entitled to their own identity.
I have never (intentionally) posted without being trackable.
Yes. And I have no problem with using your choice of him or her. Sir or madam. (We and us is a sign of actual mental illness though).
Re: Re: Re:18
No, sex is a biological fact (and one that’s far more complex than a mere binary). Gender is a construct created by several millennia’s worth of human society. If gender weren’t a construct, we wouldn’t have people talking about gender roles in ways like “men should work in the office, women should work in the kitchen”. The gender spectrum encompasses an untold number of social cues—from clothing to hairstyles to behavior and beyond—to determine where some people identify on said spectrum and where still other people think the first group of people should identify.
I’m cisgender, which means my gender identity and my biological sex are the same. Even so, I’d still want other people to respect my identity by referring to me with the proper pronouns (he/him, though I’m also fine with they/them) and my proper-ass government name. All trans people want is that same level of respect even if someone doesn’t personally believe, say, a trans woman is a woman. That’s why shit like “drop the T” and “all trans people are groomers” bugs me: Not only is that kind of disrespect an omen of worse things to come, it’s also an early warning sign for the people doing that shit eventually coming after queer people in general again (since a lot of their shit is rebaked homo- and queerphobia meant to drive a wedge between trans people and other queer people). And as both the Club Q shooting and the armed protests of drag queen shows in the weeks since that shooting have shown, that time is coming real fucking soon.
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Re: Re: Re:15
If someone’s dignity depends on other people affirming lies, then they’re not going to get any. Religious people don’t have any trouble keeping their dignity in the face of people who correctly tell them that their gods don’t exist. Gender-queer people need to learn to do the same, because the universe isn’t going to warp itself to affirm their delusions.
This garbage never goes away, no matter how discredited and stupid it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/uofm/comments/z706tb/peter_chens_trial_is_live_streaming/
I keep saying that gender ideology will wind up on the scrap heap just like recovered memory, but here we are, with a professor’s life held in limbo for years by such a recovered-memory accuser. He was fortunately just acquitted.
Re: Re: Re:16
Why don’t you just come out and say you want trans people gone forever, Hyman. Because when all this shit is broken down, it’s all about you wanting trans people to disappear from existence, and whether they’re dead or simply in the closet for the rest of their lives is irrelevant.
I know you’re already on the side of people like the Club Q shooter and the armed drag show protesters. At least do yourself the favor of admitting their violence is your personal wet dream.
Re: Re: Re:17
“Why don’t you just come out and say you want trans people”
Why don’t you just come out and say that you don’t care about trans people at all. Hell half of them are your competition.
You are a loser who is looking for a cause to bring meaning to your life. You are also lazy so you want a cause that takes the minimal effort.
Re: Re: Re:11
Zero.
You need to spam your ignorant lies zero times.
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Re: Re: Re:8
I have explained my thinking perfectly well. You choose to pretend not to understand because it suits your purposes, because you like the censorship the large generic speech platforms provide(d) for you.
Once again: free speech is a right in the US such that the government can’t silence legal speech, but it is also a foundational value of the country such that opinions should not be silenced based on viewpoint even by private platforms that have a legal right to do so (as Democratic representative Ro Khanna has just pointed out in response to the Twitter Files.) I have never asserted a right to free speech on privately owned platforms, only a right to criticize those platforms when they censor based on viewpoint in order to get them to change their behavior voluntarily. You lie and claim that I want to force platforms to host speech involuntarily so that you can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment to (correctly) say that they cannot be so forced.
Once again: censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on those platforms that the censor controls. Whether those silenced people have the ability to speak elsewhere is irrelevant. You lie and claim that the ability to speak elsewhere immunizes the censor from having their acts be called what they are, even though that would make the very same act be censorship or not depending on whether it was done on the last available platform.
I will repeat this as often as needed to counter your lies. And I don’t expect to get tired.
Re: Re: Re:9
>
Once again: censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on those platforms that the censor controls. Whether those silenced people have the ability to speak elsewhere is irrelevant. You lie and claim that the ability to speak elsewhere immunizes the censor from having their acts be called what they are, even though that would make the very same act be censorship or not depending on whether it was done on the last available platform.
Once again.
Moderation is, “You can’t speak here.”
Censorship is, “You can’t speak ANYWHERE in this country, and we’ll use the full force of the law and monopoly on violence to silence you.”
It’s one thing if I get flagged and hidden on this site, or get kicked off on Twitter. I can still post on Facebook, a Mastodon/ActivityPub instance, rant on Tumblr, or one of the fine right-wing social media sites or buy my own server and regurgitate Timecube bullshit.
It’s another when I can’t do ANY of that in a country.
And I know you aren’t referring to the fucking latter, you white supremacist.
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Re: Re: Re:10
“Moderation is, “You can’t speak here.”
Censorship is, “You can’t speak ANYWHERE in this country, and we’ll use the full force of the law and monopoly on violence to silence you.””
Provide a link to some generally accepted legal site that uses that definition.
That is a definition that was made up here on TechDirt by a bunch of fucking morons. This site is run by an MBA and a theater major who know fuck all about law.
Re: Re: Re:11
Actually it was devised by a bunch of thin skinned crybabies because their feelings got hurt.
Re: Re: Re:12
…says one of the people who whine about “censorship” on Twitter but conveniently never show up to comment on articles about actual censorship. 🤔
Re: Re: Re:13
A) I don’t use twitter and don’t care what is or is not on the platform. I only point out that all this nonsense about what can and cannot be said is about creating a generation of people who go catatonic when someone says something mean
B) this is a two-road issue. First, the CC is clearly censoring speech in public. However, unless stated in law or statute, there is no requirement to hold a meeting open to the public. Nor is there such otherwise requirement for guaranteed access.
Such articles, common to this author, attempts to combine separate issues into a false conclusion.
He wasn’t arrested for his speech! He was arrested for trespass. He was lawfully ordered to remove himself. He refused. He was arrested. The issues may be in unison but remain separate.
“ Iowa City Officials Prove They Aren’t Fascists By Arresting An Activist Twice For Calling Them Fascists”
That’s a false headline. Followed by a false conclusion.
Re: Re: Re:14
Yes, and…so what? Those people want a better, kinder world. I fail to see the issue there other than you being upset that other people get upset about still other people saying mean things.
That really isn’t the issue. The issue is that a man was arrested for criticizing the government. The First Amendment guarantees every American citizen’s right to do exactly that in any way, shape, or form (that isn’t explicitly illegal). Whether he criticized government officials to their faces is irrelevant; the arrest would’ve been a First Amendment violation if the criticism had happened on Facebook.
No, he was arrested for his speech. He was given time during the meeting to have his say; that the rules for such comments were clearly unconstitutional doesn’t revoke his civil rights. The government explicitly acted to take away his rights by having him removed from a public meeting and arresting him for violating a patently unconstitutional rule against “derogatory” speech. That whole situation is the epitome of censorship, and here you are trying to defend it. I couldn’t think of a better way to show how much of a hypocrite you are on this subject, and you drop it right into my lap!
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Re: Re: Re:15
Of course you wouldn’t see what’s wrong with censoring speech because people want a “better, kinder world.” That willful blindness screams out from everything you write.
The universe does not arrange itself so that all truths are comforting. The purpose of free speech is to help discover what is true, not what is kind.
Re: Re: Re:16
I can want a better world—a world where people like you don’t get to terrorize and harangue an entire group of people you dislike—and still recognize the dangers of censorship. What you want is for my ideas about censorship to fall in line with your damn near religious beliefs about censorship, and any pushback I give against your orthodoxy is met with droll repetition of that orthodoxy rather than a reasoned discussion of ideas. What’cha gonna preach about next, Pastor Hyman: “large generic speech platforms” or “woke gender ideologues”?
Trans people exist. The universe doesn’t arrange itself to comfort you.
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Re: Re: Re:17
Anorexic, bipolar, and schizophrenic people exist too. Their existence does not make their delusions true.
Re: Re: Re:18
And if you keep on telling them they are deluded, you make matters worse. The problem we, and social media have with you is not that you believe Trans people are deluded, but rather that you insist on the right to repeatedly and continually tell them you think they deluded, bring up the topic on any thread with any tangential connection to free speech.
Re: Re: Re:18
Ah, now you’re one step away from declaring trans people in need of a “cure” for their “delusional state”. And since there is no medical cure for “existing as transgender”, you’d have only one option left: Violence, either of the “conversion ‘therapy’ ” kind or the Club Q kind.
Pressure and time—that’s all it takes, Hyman. tick tock, motherfucker
Re: Re: Re:19
People with mental illness always need to be told that they are ill, because that is the first step in being able to help them. It may be that some trans people are best off living their delusional life, in the same way that some schizophrenics are able to live a relatively normal existence even though they continue to hear voices, by recognizing that those are a part of themselves. But it will never be the case that others are required to affirm their delusions, even if it makes the deluded feel better.
There are many conditions for which there is no cure yet. That’s sad, but only a psychopath like yourself would believe that not being able to cure sick people requires killing them or pretending that they’re not sick.
And of course, it’s psychopaths like yourself who would believe that hiding children’s mental illness from their parents and convincing them that they should have themselves mutilated to try to be something that they never can be is virtuous while trying to get them to live comfortably in the only body they will ever have is evil. That’s why people like you are being called groomers. You are destroying children’s lives for the benefit of your own insane beliefs.
Re: Re: Re:20
Some trans are real and harmless. They are the nicest people you will ever meet and/or fuck. However, there are a minority who are using a trans identity to self medicate a deeper mental illness. These are the people who will still be a bundling ball of anger while at a drag show. I find these people intolerable and completely fake.
Sadly this minority bring a bad reputation to the majority.
Re: Re: Re:21
You don;t have to watch drag shows if they make you so angry.
Re: Re: Re:22
Why you got to be such a homophobe dude.
Re: Re: Re:20
That is a wrong and very dangerous position to take. Most mentally ill people know they are ill, and nagging them about their illness will only make matters worse. What will you do when you discover that in most cases there are no cures, and only things that help a little, build concentration camps to keep them out of society until you can kill them.
Re: Re: Re:20
And how are you going to help trans people stop being trans when the only known treatment for that particular notion is the physical and psychological torture that is “conversion ‘therapy’ ”? Like I said, Hyman: Violence is all you have, and violence is where you will go. All it takes is pressure and time.
Who here has ever asked you to believe that a trans woman is a biological female? No one, that’s who. Even I haven’t asked you to believe that. All I’ve ever really asked you to do is two things: (1) Show trans people the same level of basic human respect that you would want to be shown in kind, and (2) stop acting like trans people are intellectually disabled (i.e., r⸻ded, since that’s probably the term you’d use) because they exist as trans.
Trans people exist. Their existence doesn’t need a cure. What else am I supposed to think, other than “you crave further anti-trans violence”, if you insist on “curing” the problem of their existence?
Two things.
Re: Re: Re:21
An adult.
Re: Re: Re:22
Are you part of their family? Are you their doctor? Then their lives and their decisions are none of your fucking business unless their decisions would somehow personally affect your life. You don’t get to control how the parents of trans children treat said children, even if you think the “proper” version of such parenting is “beating the trans out of them” or “sending the freak to die in the streets” (as opposed to “seeking proper medical treatment”).
You’re no better than a religious zealot, Hyman: Choosing your own path is all fine and dandy, but you also want to choose everyone else’s path for them. But in this world, you don’t get to do that. Your beliefs aren’t the unerring word of God and your feelings aren’t more important than the civil rights of trans people.
Still waitin’ on that unconditional condemnation of the Club Q shooting, by the by.
Re: Re: Re:23
Provided they are convicted, the Club Q shooter should be swiftly executed, or failing that, be locked up in a prison that matches the sex of their body for the rest of their life.
All murder is evil. No murder validates the beliefs of the victims.
It is more than ironic for you to complain that I am not part of the family when it is liberal ideologues who have schools hide the mental illness of children from their parents.
Re: Re: Re:24
You were so close, man. You were so fucking close. Then you took that potshot at trans people. It isn’t an unconditional condemnation if you mock the trans people he killed—it’s you implicitly agreeing with his ideology while distancing yourself from the actions he used that ideology to justify.
Pressure and time, Hyman. Pressure and time.
“Liberal ideologues” don’t “have” schools do anything. And I don’t think a personal decision to withhold information about a child’s queerness from parents should be a formal on-the-books school policy. But I see no problem with a teacher or other faculty member doing that if that adult believes doing so is in the best interests of the child’s safety and well-being. The alternative—full disclosure upon receipt of the information in any and every situation—may result in harm to the child, though I’m sure you’re fine with that outcome because it means you can have a nice laugh at the expense of a queer person’s life.
Re: Re: Re:24
… never happens outside the hallucinations of the mentally ill like Hyman.
Re: Re: Re:20
Hyman, you are mentally ill.
Re: Re: Re:15
No, he wasn’t. He was given a lawful command to exit the meeting. He has no specific right to access any meeting. He refused, and continued to be disruptive.
He was arrested for his actions, not his speech. It’s quite simple.
Re: Re: Re:13 Ps
Mind you he was free to exit the building, as instructed, and make his comments outside! Where he isn’t disrupts.
Isn’t that the idea you push, go somewhere else. Not censorship if you can say it elsewhere. Etc etc.
One has a right to petition and redress. That right does not guarantee ability unrestricted.
Re: Re: Re:14
But it does require that the burden of proving the reasonableness of those restrictions lies in the hands of the government. A rule that disallows “derogatory” speech is clearly drawn too broadly—e.g., who gets to decide what is “derogatory”? The fact that the comments occured during a period of public comment also prove that the comments were intended to criticize the government without disrupting its functions. For the government to both boot a critic over non-disruptive speech and have him arrested because of his speech (regardless of any post-hoc “trespassing” justification) is the epitome of government censorship. The whole point of the arrests were to make the man feel so unwelcome to make public comments again that he would chill his speech to avoid further arrests. If you can’t call that censorship but still think Twitter deleting a few Twitter posts with a New York Post link is an actual example of censorship, what the actual fuck is wrong with you.
Re: Re: Re:15
The law is the law. If you don’t like the law break it and accept the consequences, or abide by it.
He has standing to now challenge the ability of the CC to boot a person from the chamber.
Missing from Tim’s long and factually lacking rant, is the fact that this person was asked to leave multiple times, and continued to speak, yell, and carry on.
He was NOT arrested for his speech, he was arrested for breaking the law.
Here’s a key difference between you, a typeset democrat liberal regardless of what you call yourself, and I; an old style libertarian!
I don’t support breaking the law or ignoring the law to achieve results.
Be it the many hundreds committing arson and looting during anti-police protests or the some dozens who broke into the capital building.
Or a single disruptive man in a public government meeting.
On rare occasions breaking the law brings results. Examples like Rosa Parks, Malcom X, Jon Jackson “Freeland” and the semi-mythic (multiple) Mr Ghost(s) of the Revolution.
But far more often taking the legal route and working within the system brings better changes faster.
But your example shows no in-action censorship. In law or in your own “go elsewhere” ideals.
What the example is, is a man at a limited-participation timed governmental function who violated the rules of conduct and then refused to leave when lawfully told to do so.
He can protest outside. He can file a formal writ or petition. He can process for a recall of position.
His place and time was limited. Not his ability.
And by the way, no, I didn’t read the full article, or even much part, when it was initially posted. Tim takes an approach that mimics MANBC and OAN. What ever facts exist, if they exist, are buried in personal political rhetoric, half truths, and some out right lies.
I did re read this now, but knew the story from another source. Have seen two video recordings, and read writings on it.
Re: Re: Re:16
I bet you don’t believe in strikes, either, you fucking Pinkerton.
Re: Re: Re:17
I believe a union has the right to strike.
I also support the right of an employer to hire willing workers to replace the strikers.
And I support my RIGHT to work at a location without mandatory union membership. My right to represent myself in negotiations without the interference of any such union.
But that’s a different story that you may have forgotten but pulled out of me long ago. I support your ability to form a group and complain together. About what ever real or imagined concerns you have. But you have zero right to claim to represent me without my permission.
Illinois just passed a ballot issue that bans an individual’s right to self representation in unionised companies.
But you pro-union people appear to miss the trampling of individual rights in your tank drive over those who disagree with you.
Nobody has a right to represent me: except myself or someone I willingly choose.
Nor do you have a right to force me to accept something you want that I don’t. Be it reduced paid hours from mandatory lazy time, er, breaks. Or higher than needed wages. Or insurance requirements.
Re: Re: Re:17
And what the fuck is a Pinkerton?
Re: Re: Re:18
Proudly lazy and stupid is no way to go through life son.
Re: Re: Re:18
You have the Internet.
Use it.
Re: Re: Re:19
I did. The top results are all about a Scottish detective.
Which makes no sense contextually
Re: Re: Re:20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)#Modern_era
Re: Re: Re:12
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Re:11 Didn't think your clever little plan all the way through did ya bro?
“This site is run by an MBA and a theater major who know fuck all about law.”
And you keep losing arguments with them, over, and over, and over, and over again.
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Re: Re: Re:12
lol
I got that fucking moron Mike to admit that he thought owning a spectrum license meant you own the spectrum. I proved the owner of TechDirt to be a fucking tech idiot!
Re: Re: Re:13
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Re:10
No. Censorship is the silencing of opinions based on their viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. Moderation is the silencing of speech based on its form – being off-topic, or spam, or violating decorum as defined by the site.
You want the censorship that large generic speech platforms provide(d) for you, but you know that having it called by its correct name will make it unpopular, so you lie and claim that the censorship is really just moderation. But it is not.
Re: Re: Re:11 Can't even stand by a fake name
What were the oh so popular opinions again bro?
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Re: Re: Re:12
That people are only ever the sex of their bodies. That gender and sex are the same. That sex is not “assigned” at birth, only observed and noted, often well before birth. That people may not force themselves into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them. That schools should not hide the mental health problems of children from their parents. That gender ideology should not be taught as true in public schools.
Those popular opinions.
Re: Re: Re:13
See, this is the kind of shit that makes everyone else here—including the trolls, who never defend you on this shit!—think you’re fully aligned with exterminationist TERFs. You can think your politeness hides your hate. But I’d bet good money that if someone gave you a briefcase with 100 untraceable bullets, an untraceable gun, and the guarantee that you will never be prosecuted for however you choose to use that gun…well, we’d hear about a lot more dead trans people in the news.
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Re: Re: Re:11
Moderation is the act of bringing things to the middle. In the early days of the internet no one wanted to be called the forum censor so they called it a moderator and moderation even though that wasn’t legally or linguistically correct.
It is censorship it has always been censorship.
Re: Re: Re:12
I let you join a Mastodon server that I run. You get banned from it for violating a rule against hate speech. How have I infringed upon your First Amendment rights?
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Re: Re: Re:13
You have not infringed on 1st Amendment rights. You have abrogated the freedom of speech of the person you silenced, assuming that, as usual, your definition of “hate speech” is the mere assertion that gender ideology is false.
Free speech and the 1st Amendment are not synonymous. The 1st Amendment prevents the government from restricting speech, but private parties that restrict speech based on viewpoint are also abrogating the freedom of speech of the speakers, even though the law allows them to do so.
Re: Re: Re:14
No, I haven’t—because I haven’t violated Chozen’s civil rights, colluded with someone to violate Chozen’s civil rights, or threatened to violate Chozen’s civil rights if he goes somewhere else to speak his bullshit.
(Also, don’t come at me with the “you switch to the legal argument” NPC bullshit. Find a new way of framing your bullshit.)
No, they’re not. A TERF who gets kicked out of a trans-supportive forum has every right to go somewhere else and spout their TERF bullshit. Getting kicked out of that forum doesn’t violate their rights; it only costs them a privilege—the space and the audience provided by the forum—to which they was never entitled. Therein lies the foundational problem with your argument, Hyman: You believe that moderation is censorship because you also seem to fervently believe that usage of a “speech platform” is a civil right. Your argument doesn’t hold water without that underlying belief because once you take “the use of Twitter is a civil right” out of your argument, the whole thing falls flatter than Wile E. Coyote.
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Re: Re: Re:15
I don’t need a new way to say what I say, because my old way is correct. And as always, you argue with illusory versions of me who say what you want them to say, not with what I do say.
The abrogation of freedom of speech by a private entity does not violate the speaker’s right, it violates the speaker’s freedom. Freedom of speech is a foundational value of our society, and silencing a speaker because of their viewpoint violates that freedom, even when the censor had the legal right to do that.
As always, because you like the censorship the large generic speech platforms provide(d) for you, you want to hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment to pretend that censorship is not happening and freedom is not being abrogated. But it is. Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing speech based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. Whether the silenced speaker can speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
Moderation is not censorship. Moderation controls the form of speech so that it is on-topic, not spam, and decorous. Censorship controls speech so that opinions that the censor dislikes are not heard on the platforms the censor controls. You lie that they are the same so that you can claim that not censoring would lead to those three evils of “all legal speech”.
If a group wants to set itself up as allowing only one side of an issue, it is free to do so. It will then be censoring contrary opinions, but if that’s what its users want, and it makes clear in its description that this is what it will do, there’s no problem. Everyone there knows the story, and as you say, people who disagree can go elsewhere. For example, I like to read free-energy site https://e-catworld.com/ for the lulz; they have been awaiting a scam artist’s invention for many years now. That site has an explicit policy that it believes that the invention is real and does not allow skeptical posts. But large generic speech platforms should not do that, because those places are where everyone congrats to speak, not just people who are on one side of an issue.
Re: Re: Re:16
And yet, you can’t make anyone here agree with you only by repeating your “correct” bullshit. (Also: Your shit is subjective opinion just like mine. The difference between you and me is, I don’t act like my opinion is objective word-of-God fact.)
I have the freedom to speak my mind. I have the freedom to do that on any platform that will have me. I do not have the freedom to force my speech, by any means possible, onto that platform if its owners don’t want to host my speech. Like I keep telling you, Hyman: The use of a platform is not a civil right, and nobody has a right to compel other people into hosting speech. Your entire argument, regardless of whether you realize it, hinges on the opposite of that statement being true.
Welcome to Coneria!
Welcome to Coneria!
Welcome to Coneria!
Which one occurs when a platform deletes a TOS-violating post over usage of the N-word?
A trans-friendly Mastodon instance may ban any and all anti-trans speech. For what reason must those opinions be heard on that platform, such that the platform’s rules can’t be labelled as “censorship”—which, I’ll remind you, is a word with a hugely negative meaning that negatively taints the perception of anyone/anything labelled as a “censor” regardless of whether the “censor” is actually abridging anyone’s freedom of speech?
I don’t say that moderation and censorship are the same; I never will. Moderation is about a single platform kicking off any speech that its owners consider to be unwelcome. Censorship is about doing one’s damnedest to make sure that same speech is never even spoken/published. Twitter kicking someone out for saying the N-word can never be censorship unless Twitter uses all the power it can leverage to make sure that ex-user never posts the N-word anywhere else again.
Again: “Censorship” is a loaded word, and the way in which you use it paints people as censors when they’re not. The Masto example I used above is all about that idea. One platform choosing not to platform one kind of speech (and the people who espouse it) is not censorship; to imply otherwise is to imply that people have a right to free reach—a right to use a platform without facing consequences for TOS-violating behavior. Your whole argument falls apart without that one fundamental belief.
Welcome to Coneria!
So what? They’re privately owned, which means they’re free to set their own rules for what is and isn’t acceptable speech. They’re under no obligation—legal, moral, or ethical—to host any kind of speech from any third party. Hell, Twitter could literally shut down tomorrow and the government couldn’t do shit—and that still wouldn’t make him a censor any more than he is for suspending “leftist” accounts at the behest of right-wing reportbombs.
Re: Re: Re:16
“censoring contrary opinions”
Speaking of self censorship, just what are those popular opinions you speak of?
Re: Re: Re:17
He already admitted earlier he didn’t have any.
Re: Re: Re:15
Wth is this new speak TERF?
Last I knew it was a type of artificial grass
Re: Re: Re:16
TERF — noun — initialism for “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist”; other variants of the full term include “Trans Exclusionary Reactionary Fusspost”; derogatory (and often accurate) term for people who hold negative beliefs about trans people and often couch their concerns as worrying about the safety of cis women
Re: Re: Re:17
Oh.
You people from social media… never run out of strange acronyms and terms
Re: Re: Re:18
That might have something to do with the message length restrictions of various means of communications, and on on-screen keyboards of phones.
Re: Re: Re:14
No, because that “freedom” does not exist in the real world.
No platform controls anyone else’s speech except their own.
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Re: Re: Re:15
“No, because that “freedom” does not exist in the real world.”
Wow
“Now, gentlemen, I must say I differ with the keen minds of the South, and with our President, who apparently shares their views, offering that the natural state of mankind is instead — and I know this is a controversial idea — is freedom.
Is freedom.
And the proof is the length to which a man, woman, or child will go to regain it, once taken.
He will break loose his chains.
He will decimate his enemies.
He will try and try and try against all odds, against all prejudices, to get home.”
Someone like you needs to consider yourself lucky you live in a civilized legal society. 1000 years ago you wouldn’t have lasted long.
Re: Re: Re:16
“Someone like you needs to consider yourself lucky you live in a civilized legal society. 1000 years ago you wouldn’t have lasted long.”
You would have been a slave crybabby.
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Re: Re: Re:17
You’d be dead.
Re: Re: Re:18
I don’t see you saying you wouldn’t have been a slave.
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Re: Re: Re:15
Yes, I know that liberals are comfortable with a boot stomping on the face of humanity forever, as long as it’s their boot. Liberals use Orwell as a manual instead of as a warning.
Re: Re: Re:16
No, honey, you’re thinking of the kind of fascist fucks who show up to drag shows with guns.
Re: Re: Re:16
The level of projection on display here is just staggering. The Ukrainians could use you to blind Russian bombers.
Re: Re: Re:12
It isn’t a legal action or in any way related to the legal system, so it’s not legally correct or incorrect.
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Re: Re: Re:13
Go fuck yourself. Mike stupid fucktard that he is keeps using the word moderation in legal context when he gets all pissed at people calling it censorship in legal proceedings.
Again go fuck yourself.
Re: Re: Re:14 Cum at me bro
Time to drag out the rape threats since you got nothin’ else, crybabby.
Re: Re: Re:14
Says a lot about you that instead of a cogent counterargument, you go right to “fuck you”.
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Re: Re: Re:15 You Don't Deserve Any Better
Stop abasing the report feature and I’ll treat you better. Until then you are all worthless pieces of shit.
Re: Re: Re:16 Cum at me bro
cry moar crybabby
Re: Re: Re:14
For example?
no u
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Re: Re: Re:15
“So, let’s break this down. It says that a website cannot “censor” (by which it clearly means moderate) based on the user’s viewpoint or geographic location. And it applies even if that viewpoint doesn’t occur on the website.”
Not hard to find.
In reference to the Texas Social Media Law.
Re: Re: Re:16
Nobody mentally competent thinks the Texas “law” has any basis in law. Which is why Chozen does.
Re: Re: Re:9
You really haven’t. All you’ve done is regurgitate the same half-dozen sentences/paragraphs with no real follow-up.
Twitter has no right to silence your opinions. It has a right to decide whether it will host those opinions (or the speech used to express them) and nothing more. What you keep implying is that Twitter shouldn’t have the right to make that decision—that, as you keep asserting, it should host all legally protected speech. But all that does is open up the biggest can of worms possible: What makes any other platform exempt from the same obligation you want to hoist upon Twitter’s metaphorical shoulders? I mean, if Twitter must carry that obligation, why not Truth Social or Gab or a Masto instance?
This is what I’m talking about when I say that you haven’t explained your thinking, Hyman. I wrote two whole articles for this site on this matter to explain my own thinking—and to get those thoughts in order in the first place. You just keep saying “they should carry all speech” and regurgitating the same six catchphrase-esque sentences/paragraphs because you can’t actually come up with an original thought to back up your bullshit. I ask you questions like the ones in that prior paragraph and all you do is repeat “LaRgE gEnErIc SpEeCh PlAtFoRmS” as if that thought-terminating cliché should make me…well, stop thinking about the subject.
I want to expand my own thinking, which is why I’m glad if someone challenges my ideas. Someone who can offer better ideas and explain the thinking behind them can make me change my mind. But you’re not that someone because every one of your go-to sentences/paragraphs are meant to terminate thinking rather than expand it.
The fundamental questions of rationality (according to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, at any rate) are simple: “Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?” Every time you post, you don’t offer answers to those questions. You post the equivalent of “fuck you, I’m right” and refuse to explain why anyone should think you’re right. I have actual experience as a site moderator on top of several years’ worth of reading and thinking about the issue to back up anything I say on the matter, and I’m always willing to explain any position I hold as best I can. When are you going to show the same level of testicular fortitude?
Except that’s exactly what you keep doing every time you say Twitter should (read: must be obligated to) host all legal speech. By referring to moderation as censorship, you imply that having a post deleted or an account banned is the exact same thing as losing the right to speak freely. And make no mistake: So long as you push this position, on a long enough timeline, the odds that you’ll call for the government to protect someone’s right to free speech on Twitter will reach 1:1.
Oh, I bet you want it. But you’re barely smart enough to hide that desire behind smokescreens like…
…thrice-regurgitated ideas that you keep repeating with the exact same language. I may have copypastas, but I don’t use them every time I post as if they’re supposed to make all my arguments for me. That’s your issue; solve it yourself.
Losing a spot on one platform, or many platforms, is not censorship. It is the loss of a privilege to which you weren’t entitled and never guaranteed to keep. If the unlikeliest situation imaginable—someone loses access to literally every platform in existence—were to ever occur, sure, we can have a discussion about whether that’s censorship. But given how many platforms for speech exist in both cyber- and meatspace, the odds of that ever happening are about as good as my chances of getting to fuck a 20-year-old porn star.
Your logic doesn’t hold up because of the fact that you have yet to account for the “I have been silenced” fallacy. You can’t censor somebody without infringing on their civil rights (or threatening to do so in some way), and Twitter moderating speech doesn’t do that. If you really, truly, deep-in-your-soul believe that Twitter moderation does infringe upon someone’s right to speak freely, you might want to explain the reasoning behind that idea.
Or you could say the same six lines over and over again like an NPC in an SNES JRPG. Your call, TERF.
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Re: Re: Re:10
Every single time, you argue with illusory versions of me who say what you want them to say, not with what I say. You literally claim that I want the exact opposite of what I say I want. Countering that doesn’t require any new arguments from me, it just means I have to say the same thing again and again each time you post your lies.
Any site that silences opinion based on viewpoint is committing censorship. Such censorship violates the principles of free speech whether or not the site is legally entitled to do so, and such sites should be criticized in order to get them to voluntarily change their behavior, but should never be forced to do so unless they are run by the government.
Censorship is the act of the censor. You want that censorship without having it called by its name, so you claim that censorship is not censorship as long as the silenced can speak elsewhere. But you are wrong, or more likely, lying.
Re: Re: Re:11
I know better than to take you at your word, TERF. Besides, when you keep saying what a site like Twitter “should” do—thus implying it has an obligation to do [x]—that shreds the glamour you keep trying to hide behind. On a long enough timeline, you will one day call for the government to enforce the right of free speech on Twitter. tick tock, motherfucker
And how’s that been going for you, hmm? You changin’ any minds yet? You changin’ Twitter by whining like a child? You still workin’ on that novel? …sorry, I let that reference get away from me.
Point is: You won’t get anywhere if you keep acting like an NPC. Address any point I raise with something other than your well-rehearsed right-wing script and maybe you’ll get something in return that isn’t an insult like “keep acting like an NPC”. (Granted, you’ll probably get different insults, but at least it’d be a change of pace for you.)
Welcome to Coneria!
Welcome to Coneria!
Welcome to Coneria!
Welcome to Coneria!
Bitch please, I don’t want any censorship. I’ve said before that I think everyone should have the absolute right to speak their mind—and that means everyone, no matter how odious their views or the speech used to express them. But I refuse to think/believe that losing a spot on Twitter is the same thing as the government forcing someone to shut up, and you haven’t offered anything that would change my mind other than scripted NPC bullshit. That’s what I mean when I mock you for being an NPC: You say shit without any thought behind it.
Shit, man, even when I’m going over the exact same bullshit with you and your troll brigade brethren, I still try to vary it up by looking for a new angle or frame of thinking. I also try to avoid copypastas unless I feel they’re necessary. Sure, this means my posts get long-winded as fuck (yay for self-awareness!), but it also means I’m trying to think rather than merely regurgitate an idea on instinct (and without understanding why I hold the idea). I can trace my ideas on censorship and moderation to my own personal experience as a site moderator, my discussions (here and elsewhere) on free speech, and a lot of reading about the subject over at least the past decade. I have evolved my thinking and updated it with new information when necessary—hell, the second article I wrote for this site shows how I accepted new ideas into my thinking if you look at the start and end of the article itself. All you do is repeat the same six lines or so as if repeating them makes your argument stronger. For God’s sake, man, TP—troll extraordinare and delusional fuckwit that he is—manages to create more fresh bullshit with each post than you do in entire comments sections! And while I’m well aware of Brandolini’s Law, I’m also aware that I don’t really need to try that hard against you. All you’re ever going to do is the comment sections of equivalent of being an RPG NPC and repeat the same lines over and over no matter what. To that, I have only one thing to say:
Welcome to Coneria!
Re: Re: Re:12
I don’t expect to change your mind. I feel no need to change the way I express the same ideas. Telling you over and over again that you’re wrong is just plain fun, and if it disturbs you to have your lies and delusions called out for what they are, that’s just an extra bonus.
Re: Re: Re:13
It doesn’t disturb me in the sense that I fear what you’ll do to me. It disturbs me in the sense that I fear what rhetoric like yours will lead someone else to do to queer people. You think the Club Q shooter woke up one day and decided to hate queer people out of the blue? No, he didn’t—he was radicalized into that hate. And radicalization rarely starts with “kill ’em all, let God send ’em all to Hell”. It often begins with watered-down versions of that hate, e.g., “These people are mentally ill and need serious help.”
I’m not saying you personally radicalized the Club Q shooter. I’m saying that “polite” anti-queer rhetoric like yours is the first step down that road of radicalization—and on that road, “polite” rhetoric never stays polite. On a long enough timeline, that rhetoric goes from “so long as they’re not hurting anybody…” to “well, I’m not saying they should be killed…” to “oh, they definitely need to be taken out”. All it takes is pressure and time—not to mention caring about the genitals, behaviors, and identities of trans people to a degree that even trans people don’t reach.
You have so little to fear from trans people. And yet you seem to fear them so much, for whatever reason, that you declare them “mentally ill” and talk of “curing” their “illness” and align yourself with people who are willing to go further with their anti-trans rhetoric (and actions) than you are. Assholes carrying guns to a protest of a drag show is where your bullshit leads, Hyman; I can promise you that it won’t stop there. The Club Q shooting—which you still refuse to unconditionally condemn!—is proof enough of that.
Pressure and time. That’s all it takes.
Re: Re: Re:13
Also:
You don’t have ideas—you have beliefs. Ideas are flexible; they can be changed or even dropped if and when they stop being good ideas. Beliefs are inflexible; dropping a belief is akin to cutting off one of your limbs. That’s why I’m telling you that you’re repeating your shit so often that it reads like a religious sermon: You place so much faith in your beliefs being “right“/“correct” that to admit you could be wrong about anything you believe would be akin to a devout Christian rejecting God.
When I talk about my ideas of censorship and moderation, I’m more than willing to accept other people’s ideas if they’re on solid logical footing. Hell, half the reason I reply the way I do to people here is to help myself find the logical footing for my own ideas. And I rarely try to use copypastas when doing so because that’s not how thinking gets done. But you’re so assured of your correct-ness and you’re unwilling to engage with other people’s ideas beyond scripted responses that you’ve become unwilling to learn and adapt. Your thinking has become rigid; your beliefs have calcified.
I’m always willing to hear an opposing idea. Whether I engage with it or take it seriously is a different matter. You’ve done nothing to give me any ideas worth taking seriously beyond addressing your bullshit for what it is. You’ll need to do better than preaching your gospel at me if you want me to change my mind.
Re: Re: Re:11 Censorship is the act of the censor...
Speaking of self censorship, just what exactly are those “very popular” opinions of your’s?
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Re: Re: Re:11
“But you are wrong, or more likely, lying.”
He is parroting something Mike said. Stephen has no internal monologue. He can only spout slogans Mike has said in the past.
Re: Re: Re:9
Are you saying that a Synagogue does not have the right to stop a fundamental Christian preaching to its congregation, or a christian church stop a satanist from addressing its congregation? What about news organizations, who have always been biased towards one political position or another.
American society has always had limitation on what could be said in various private places, or via various publication services. Also, a political conversation does not have to occur on a single platform, just in a way that interested parties can look at differing opinions.
What you are asking for is the right to tell society what the correct viewpoint is, by forcing you way onto all platforms so that you can shout down any opposition, which is why you remain on a site where you are not welcome.
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Re: Re: Re:10
No. You want to claim that I am demanding a right to speak on private platforms, because then you can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment to (correctly) say that I can have no such right. I am demanding nothing. I am saying that large generic speech platforms should not be censoring speech based on its viewpoint. If they do, they should be criticized to get them to voluntarily change their behavior.
Organizations dedicated to a specific purpose, whose members are in accord with that purpose, can censor speakers if they want. This also applies to topic-specific subgroups on large generic speech platforms.
If everyone participating is happy with that, they don’t have to care that other people complain about the censorship. For example, no normal synagogue would let a Messianic Jew preach their beliefs, and since no normal synagogue members believe in Jesus, they’re not going to care that the Messianic Jew complains about censorship.
Re: Re: Re:11
When you say “large generic speech platforms” (whatever that means) should host all legal speech, you are also implying that you should have the right to post whatever speech you want on Twitter. And the word “should” implies that Twitter has an obligation, because of its size or its popularity, to host all legal speech (including your trans-exterminationist rhetoric). The law doesn’t recognize that obligation. Aside from the trolls (who are the only people agreeing with you), neither does Techdirt’s regular commentariat.
You whining and throwing a hissy fit like a baby isn’t going to change their minds, Hyman. On a long enough timeline, the odds of you eventually calling for the law to make that change a reality will become 1:1. tick tock motherfucker
Re: Re: Re:12
As always, you argue with illusory versions of me that day what you want then you say. I do not want Twitter to host all legal speech. I want Twitter to not censor opinions based on viewpoint, but they should moderate based on topic, spam, and decorum. They have no obligation to do what I want, but they should anyway.
The impact of the Hunter Biden laptop story irrespective of its legitimacy and the fact of Musk buying Twitter, and other such events, demonstrate that sufficient “whining” can work to change minds just fine.
Re: Re: Re:13
You can’t have it both ways. If Twitter isn’t supposed to censor “opinions based on viewpoint”…
Either Twitter has the right to moderate or it has an obligation to host all legally protected speech regardless of viewpoint or content. You can’t have both.
And when they don’t—when they continue to rub in your face the fact that they’re not behaving as you believe they should—what will be left for you to do? Because whining and begging like a little bitch isn’t gonna get you anywhere, Hyman. You will eventually go further than that. On a long enough timeline, that’s a guarantee.
tick tock motherfucker
Re: Re: Re:9
[Asserts facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Re:7
“there’s nothing wrong with censorship as long as it’s legal”
If you don’t like private companies exercising the right to free speech, free association and private property rights, go ahead and vote for those who will change that.
Until then, people telling you that they don’t want to hang out with you or listen to you is not government censorship, and thus OK anywhere, offline or online.
Re: Re: Re:7
“but a large generic speech platform that’s censoring opinions based on viewpoint is taking away the free speech of the people being silenced”
Doesn’t matter how much you push the “generic” nonsense. You have no right to use someone else’s property to speak if they don’t want you there, and no right to be associated with people who don’t want that.
Also, if you people were being silenced, we wouldn’t have to hear your impotent whining all the time.
Re: Re: Re:5
A few questions, then, Koby.
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Re: Re: Re:6 Don't Care
Don’t care if both sides could make requests. Neither side when representing an arm of the state should be making request at all. The existence of such backdoor programs at all is a violation of the rights of the people you fucking moron.
Re: Re: Re:7
The only moron here is the one who just hallucinated their incompetent, baseless “arm of the state” assertions.
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Re: Re: Re:8
See Youel Roth’s sworn deposition to the FEC you moron.
Re: Re: Re:9
My point stands proven.
Re: Re: Re:10
One group of people:
and thus understands the fact that speech doesn’t automagically become government action merely because the person speaking happens to work for the government.
The second group, sharing zero of the above traits with the first group, consists of a proven projecting moron that calls himself “Chozen.”
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Re: Re: Re:11
Yeah its called Jawboning. Supreme court declared it unconstitutional about 60 years ago you dumb fuck.
Re: Re: Re:3
So you admit there’s no crime.
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Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
No, it certainly looks like there’s money laundering going on by the Biden family. But that’s not being discussed today. This one is the social media (and regular media) cover-up of likely criminal activity in order to influence an election.
Re: Re: Re:5
FYI: At the time this supposed money laundering allegedly took place, neither Biden was holding public office. But who was holding public office from, say, the 20th of January 2017 to the 20th of January 2021—and how much bullshit did he and his family get up to during that time? For what reason would the corruption of a then-sitting President of the United States and his adult children be a lesser scandal than a former Vice-President and his son maybe doing some money laundering, other than the fact that you’re predisposed to treat every left-wing scandal as Worse Than Watergate and every right-wing scandal as if it’s “business as usual”?
Re: Re: Re:6
“At the time this supposed money laundering allegedly took place, neither Biden was holding public office.”
…and for the people taking actual stock of what was happening, Trump was installing his family and friends into positions they were woefully unqualified for, some of whom were directly opposed to the agency they were in charge of.
If nepotism is the focus of the laptop nonsense, no sane person would believe it’s a valid criticism when compared to the alternatives. If someone thinks this is more important than working out why Jared was in charge of the pandemic response then got $2 billion from the Saudis after leaving office, they probably don’t have a valid focus on the issues.
Re: Re: Re:7
‘But he kicked a puppy!’
‘So you’ve said, but even if that turns out to be true we’ve got video evidence of your guy shooting one. On multiple occasions.’
‘Stop trying to change the subject with fake news. So you’re saying you’re supporting a puppy-kicker?!’
‘No, I’m saying I’m not supporting your puppy killer, because even if your accusations were true he’s still the worse option.’
‘You heard that everyone, they support a puppy kicker! Now let’s go back to heaping praise on our guy and looking at everything but the pile of dead puppies at his feet which both don’t exist and were planted by his opponents!’
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Re: Re: Re:6
As many less-beneficial things he did, such as ignoring police issues and not cracking down on white supremacists…
He didn’t do anything illegal as president.
The two things that are close? Some foreigners stayed at nice high end hotels that happened to be part of the Trump portfolio
And
He took a bunch of files home, (not the first to do so) that may or may not have been classified, from his time in office.
Nobody has yet shown an actual illegal activity.
Compared to the Obama administration that rigged a foreign election, bush invading a country without cause, Clinton invading a country without cause, bush black ops, Reagan criminal black ops, Carter destroying the country…
You all hate the man, but nobody has shown anything close to the crap of selling access to the VP, money laundering, forced closure of a criminal investigation (because the son works there), actual physical tampering and interference in a foreign election, and interference in a U.S. election.
Seriously, the Biden family makes Bush, Clinton, and Trump families look like saints!
Re: Re: Re:7
That he didn’t do anything illegal is not the same as saying he didn’t do anything immoral, and if you believe he didn’t do anything like that, I know of a list says otherwise.
Hell, you yourself prove as much with your next statement:
At worst, Trump courted foreign governments as a means to enrich him and his family in exchange for preferential treatment by the American government. At best, those governments decided to enrich the Trump family because they believed it would give them preferential treatment from Trump/his administration. Illegal? Maybe. Immoral? Abso-fuckin’-lutely.
As numerous people have pointed out, Trump’s taking of those documents is far, far different than what other presidents have done—and it doesn’t help that he took what were certainly classified documents (he couldn’t declassify them psychically, like he claimed and you probably believed he could) and stored them in a building where numerous people could’ve seen those documents without a proper clearance. And he has never once explained the true reason he took those classified documents with him, which can lead (and has led) to lots of speculation about that reason—including the notion that he was willing to sell those documents to the highest bidder. Illegal? That remains to be seen. Immoral? Abso-fuckin’-lutely.
I’d ask how long you’re going to keep up with all this unnecessary dickriding, but I know you’re not going to stop. Trump literally called for the termination of the Constitution and I bet you’re willing to say “oh well he’s not talking about the entire Constitution” or “well it’s just to go after his political enemies, nothing wrong with that” or some other justification for his now-naked calls for fascism. And that doesn’t even get into his having dinner with a White supremacist and someone who, days after that dinner, said positive things about Hitler on a live mic during a show broadcast to millions of people.
Keep riding his dick as long as you want, Lodos. But don’t be surprised when he finally fucks you up the ass and you don’t like it.
Re: Re: Re:5
From this we can conclude you didn’t actually read Twitters internal messages and instead just started to make shit up, ie lies.
How fucking delusional do you have to be to think that media would cover up a story about Biden and money-laundering? They would just love to have such a story to drive readership and engagement. If there were a story here, don’t you think Fox and Sinclair media wouldn’t milk if for all it was worth? Your problem is that you are so far down the conservative rabbit-hole you have lost all ability of critical thinking, you’d happily eat shit if some conservative talking head said it would make democrats look bad.
Finally, should we compare the number of democrats and republicans that have been found guilty in a court of law where the case has a bearing on elections? You now, actual criminal activity.
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Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
Noone was able to read Twitters internal messages until yesterday. Now, we don’t need to wonder, we can just read it thanks to Matt Taibbi.
It’s surprising to some, but the legacy media will sacrifice their credibility and profitability to assist the politicians that they favor.
A guy named Matt Drudge launched himself to stardom when he scooped several major networks on the Clinton/Lewinisky story, when those networks spiked the story. No, they would NOT love to drive viewership. They will SACRIFICE viewership.
It has been the only way normies have been able to know about the story at all for the past two years. The other networks refused to cover it. Their ratings sucked because of it, and now there’s layoffs for some. Don’t worry about Fox News and Sinclair. It’s the others that are putting their employees out of a job.
Re: Re: Re:7
Yeah, I mean, look at how conservative media keeps propping up Trump as a mastermind of politics.
…oh wait you meant—
Except here’s the thing: Fox News loves anything that makes Democrats look bad. That drives viewership almost as much as Tucker Carlson’s nightly screeds against trans people. But even Fox News didn’t bite that hard on the laptop story because what remains of its editorial standards and institutional ethics wouldn’t let it treat that story as The Worst Thing Since Watergate.
Think about why they refused to cover it. The laptop’s provenance was largely unprovable—maybe it actually did belong to Hunter Biden, or maybe it was a laptop full of hacked materials, but no one outside of whoever dropped it off (which has never been confirmed to be Hunter) will ever know for sure. The chain of custody between when the computer repairman first handled the laptop and when the FBI received the laptop is questionable at best and untraceable at worst. The emails may have established something wonky going on with Hunter Biden, but any actions they allege on his part had to have taken place while Joe Biden was not in office and were therefore irrelevant to Biden’s eventual presidency—especially since Hunter was never promised, didn’t get, and still doesn’t have a prestigious position within the federal government/the White House.
For funsies, think about the Steele Dossier for the moment. Yes, some of it was proven to be true, but a good chunk of it was bullshit. That includes the “piss tape” accusations. (Were those claims plausible? Maybe. Were they ever corroborated? No.) That said, the people who put together the dossier were clear from the get-go about many of its contents being sourced largely from shady and unreliable sources. The dossier story picked up traction partially because of who the dossier targeted, but also because it painted a horrible picture of Trump that was entirely believable even if it wasn’t wholly accurate.
The Twitter Files and the Hunter Biden laptop story have both fallen flat because they only have the appearance—the aesthetics, if you will—of a major scandal without actually being one. “Twitter employees had a back-and-forth about a big moderation decision!” So what? Mods on lesser sites do that shit all the time. “Hunter Biden is corrupt!” So what? He’s not working in the White House or running any of Joe’s business ventures while being privvy to information that could be used to boost those businesses.
Right-wingers like you keep trying to make two nothingburgers sound like they’re massive, earth-shattering scandals. It’s not working because you need a steak to go with all the sizzle and no one is serving any steaks. Shit, man, Trump called for the termination of the Constitution and the overturning of a free and fair election so he could return to power and go after his perceived enemies without limitation. I don’t see you saying dick about that outright call for a fascist dictatorship, but I can all but guarantee you’ll keep whining about Joe Biden’s shithead son as if that “scandal” is, was, and always will be worse than the corruption of the Trump administration (including his two impeachments…and the well-documented reasons for said impeachments).
Re: Re: Re:7
[Projects facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Re:7
So you just made up shit then.
You are essentially a rube because when you say “legacy media” you cannot fathom that there exists media outside the US that don’t care one bit who s(h)its on the US presidential porcelain throne.
As usual you “embellish” while conveniently argue about something in hindsight. Now tell us again, how many networks sat on the story and why? You get extra-points if you take into consideration how media in general at the time handled stories about the President where they hadn’t had time to do their journalistic duty of vetting the information.
I also have to ask, do you actually not understand the concept of anecdotal evidence how it can’t be generally applied to all situations or do you do that on purpose?
What story? Have someone actually published a news story about it recounting the facts? Or have you listened opinions trying to make it a story?
There’s nothing to cover. Sure, Fox’s talking heads and other pundits that peddle in lies that befuddle the stupids have talked about it, but they made damn sure it was voiced as opinion and not news. Funny that.. And if you think that one story affects ratings, the only thing I can say that how you think the world works and how it really works are entirely different things. Funny that #2, most networks ratings have gone done the last years because there are less daily scandals and brain dead conspiracy theories being discussed plus the fact that there isn’t a lockdown anymore and people actually do other stuff than vegetate in front of a screen.
Re: Re: Re:7
What Koby;s missing is that the legacy media won’t actually see a drop in viewship. Npbody mentally deficient enough to believe that this nothingburger reflects badly on traditional media, are conaumers of fact-based news at all in the the first place; they’re right-wing. The right-wing sheep can’t stop watching what they weren’t already.
Re: Re: Re:7
Show us on the doll where CNN touched you bro!
Re: Re: Re:7
“A guy named Matt Drudge launched himself to stardom when he scooped several major networks on the Clinton/Lewinisky story, when those networks spiked the story. No, they would NOT love to drive viewership. They will SACRIFICE viewership.”
You usually make little sense relating to reality, but you take here is that… because they missed out on a scoop around 25 years ago, they’ll deliberately avoid a new scandal now?
The main reason why the Lewinsky scandal didn’t get traction until Drudge got the dress was because it was a nonsense witchhunt that would have gone nowhere had Clinton not lied to Congress, facing questions that really had no business being in front of them to begin with. Once there was a story – a president committed an impeachable offence – they picked the story up. Before then, there was little of real public interest, and in fact the personal failings of the people trying to prosecute him (Gingrich divorcing his wife in hospital to marry his mistress) were more pertinent until Bill made the mistake of lying under oath.
“It has been the only way normies have been able to know about the story at all for the past two years”
We may have different definitions of normal. Most people are still waiting for an actual story. So far, we have an emotionally damaged rich kid who likes hookers and blow, a laptop that ended up being caught in possibly the least likely story ever told, and a desperate attempt from the most nepotistic presidency in history to claim that. the other guy is the real problem, based on supposed evidence that has zero credibility.
Most people are willing to consider evidence, and that includes the mainstream media you dearly wish to involve. But, there has to be something to report, and in 2 years you’ve failed to present anything that’s either not in evidence or pales in comparison to the nepotism and cronyism committed by Trump. If I understand it correctly. you haven’t even come up with something he is supposed to have done while in government.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Twitter dumps?
Re: Re: Re:5 Run away little coward
You’ve grasped at so many straws here that there is now a mountain of straw wrappers for you to pick up as you leave with your tail tucked firmly between your legs bro.
Re: Re: Re:3
“We can rest assured that if there was a Don Jr. laptop that it would have been heralded from the heavens”
Well, first of all there wouldn’t have been the harebrained tale of him taking it to an unauthorised dealer on the other side of the country, forgetting to pick it up then it just happening to be given to an opposing political operative just before his father’s election.
I’m yet to hear what’s meant to be on the laptop that’s incriminating or important. He likes hookers and blow? So what, that doesn’t reflect on his father’s job. He got a good job through his father’s connections? OK. Now explain Jared’s $2 billion from the Saudis or Ivanka’s presence at various international summits despite zero qualifications.
“The coverup IS now the crime.”
Prove a cover-up. So far, we have a very suspicious method of the laptop being intercepted, zero chain of evidence protections that can affirm that what was on the copy distributed was on the original.
The FBI saying “there’s nothing that implicates Joe Biden” or “there’s no way to validate what was on the laptop before Rudy got his hands on it” is not a cover up.
Re: Re: Re:4
Yeah, the timeline of known facts bears this out.
Re: Re: Re:5
Basically, with the laptop story:
I’m happy to be proven wrong, but there’s so little of substance here I’d be more likely to agree that Rudy’s press conference was at a Four Seasons hotel then I am to believe that there’s anything worth looking at on the laptop.
Re: Re: Re:6
The timeline that requires the least unreasonable assumptions is that Russia stole data and hardware from the Ukrainian company, doctored the data like they did with the stolen DNC emails, then the known Kremlin agent Rudy has an established history of meetings with gave it to him, which Rudy, unable to control himself, announced as his “bombshell” while he was still,abroad and before he was introduced to the computer shop stooge.
We also have at least one “witness” who early on claimed the emails were legit recanting and admitting he was bribed to say that.
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Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
The primary defense against a money laundering operation has been that Joe has no clue whatsoever how his son is earning his money. The messages on the laptop appear to disprove that, and if the remainder of the email threads could be investigated, then there would be proof for an indictment. Joe grants the permits, Hunter receives the payoff.
Re: Re: Re:5
Those emails would likely never be used at any potential trial, though. No prosecutor worth a damn would ever put them into evidence because all the chain of custody/provenance issues would lead any defense attorney worth a damn to immediately challenge the credibility of that “evidence”.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Shut the fuck up counselor lol.
Re: Re: Re:7 He still ain't gonna fuck you
You’re sooooo thirsty bro.
Re: Re: Re:5
The information and the copy of the drive have been circulating for 2 years, if there were any actionable evidence there it would have been acted on by now.
You can take your appear to disprove and show it were the sun doesn’t shine – it’ll be in good company with all the other wishful thinking-arguments you come up with that has nothing to do with factual reality.
Re: Re: Re:5
Yeah, and those emails will be produced “magically” by either the Russians, the CCP or one of their toadies.
You’re so full of shit, you want us to look at Hunter Biden’s dick.
Re: Re: Re:4
Whataboutism. Jared and Trump’s corruption has no bearing on anything that the Bidens did. Note that I am not saying anything about either situation, just pointing out the problem with this angle of argument.
Re: Re: Re:5
Jared and Trump’s corruption has no bearing on anything that the Bidens did
On it’s own no, however it does when it comes to people trying to argue that the story/laptop were election changing-level pieces of information and/or are somehow evidence that Biden is unfit for office, at which point ‘Even assuming the laptop is legit the alternative would still be vastly worse’ becomes a valid counter-point.
Re: Re: Re:6
I’m not sure I follow. Do you mean that even if the laptop stuff proves Joe Biden was acting corruptly, the Trump world has much worse levels of corruption? If so, isn’t that still a classic whatabout? “OK so what Biden did was bad, but what about what Trump did?” The question of alternatives is only relevant if we’re talking about who to vote for, right? Until then, the response should just stick to the evidence, and whether or not it proves any corruption. And if it does, I would be in agreement that someone should be prosecuted for it – without regard for anything Trump has done.
Re: Re: Re:7
It is and it isn’t. It is, in the sense that making the claim exactly as you phrased it is technically a whataboutism. It isn’t, in the sense that the people most likely to claim that Biden’s corruption was worse than Trump’s are conservatives, and their pursuits of both the laptop story and the “Twitter Files” are naked attempts draw attention away from, y’know, the Trump family’s own corruption (and the many legal cases surrounding it). The two stories falling flat with the media (including non-extremist conservative media) doesn’t help their cause, though.
My thoughts on the matter: Hunter Biden may have indulged in some corruption. Whether it’s worse than the Trump family’s corruption is largely irrelevant to his own possible corruption unless someone really wants to play that particular game of Political Chicken. (They’ll lose it, too.) And whether Hunter Biden deserves jail time depends on whether the government can explicitly prove that he broke the law (albeit without the laptop because no prosecutor worth a damn would ever enter that as evidence).
Re: Re: Re:8
So kind of a counter-whataboutism. I suppose that works, depending on the context.
Re: Re: Re:3
Hey k-dawg you get to the bottom of the hunter biden dick pix yet?
Re: Re: Re:2 Not one puppy…
I don’t like to nitpick, but it’s not like a video of them shooting one puppy…
It’s more like there’s hours of video evidence of them eating litters of puppies alive, having sex with some, tearing them apart limb from limb and laughing manically the whole time and then bitching someone scared a puppy.
But that’s their definitive MO… commit crimes full speed, nonstop, brag about them, promise even more and then point to the other guys and vilify them for not eating their veggies.
Fuck their bullshit non-equivalent, false equivalence and the horse it rode in on.
Re: Re:
I see the credibility of Twitter 2.0 employers to be a lot more under wear right now.
With “under wear” being used in the sense of “there is a smoldering rapidly expanding hole where the bearing used to be”.
Re: Re: Run away little coward
Matt Taibbi the Russian tool is really gonna blow that nothing-burger wide open eh?
Re:
Having former Twitter employees complain about poll manipulation, an issue with plenty of past and current examples of why online polling is a big fucking problem, isn’t “unrepresentative”, NEONAZI.
4chan has gamed the Time Person of the Year poll at least TWICE. Various online poll sites have tried to combat poll manipulation for most of their operating lifetimes.
Stop lying.
Re:
Yes or no koby do you see Matt as a kindred spirit because he’s such an enormous tool?
Re: Re:
How dare you call Koby a tool.
A tool is actually useful.
Does anyone trust a Twitter poll at this point? There is likely no one left that will tell Musk to stuff it when he says to lie about poll results.
To paraphrase...
…one of many pithy ‘razors’ much less pithily:
“Never assume bias when lack of knowledge and service capacity prevent services from being rendered, but less rendered properly.”
It’s nice that Twitter employees took the time to ‘note’ how broken polls are, but clearly it’s always been a problem. Well before the current buyout even started, poll manipulation was fairly obvious for years. A mea culpa now doesn’t absolve them of not fixing it, nor does it change that polls have been garbage since inception.
Obvious reasons for polls being garbage are obvious and always have been, but they ‘work’ for the same reason PFP NFTs and now ‘AI’ portraiture have seen people spending real money on what amounts to processing time. Our culture really is self-obsessed; why else would people hire people to vote in easily-skewed polls? Especially insecure fuckhead billionaires.
Also Pranay Pathole is an asshole and rightfully should have been banned along with the current Twitter owner, probably the day he made an account. Yay free speech and an easily manipulated populace and counterfeited consensuses, fucking Jack Dorsey. Silicon Valley is the most shithole place in our shithole country, the most shithole of all countries if simply by setting such a shitty example for everyone else.
Initial fuckery just leads to later fuckery if no one actually fixes it, then you have the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man of the internet blunder his way in to ‘help’. Social media is a great way to extract free labor from users, until it isn’t. This is ‘just’ another internet bubble in the process of bursting, not worth getting ‘recession PTSD’ about.
Re:
“Well before the current buyout even started, poll manipulation was fairly obvious for years.”
Because there’s documented evidence of this happening? Or because they didn’t get the result you thought they should have?
I hear such claims, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen real proof. Also, the problem here isn’t whether or not a poll was manipulated. It’s that Musk decided to announce that the outcome of the poll would shape his business decision, presumably in an attempt to shield himself from consequences when bad things happened after he took action. I have no doubt that he’s using the “vox populi” excuse to push through things he was going to do anyway.
Re: Re:
I have no doubt that he’s going to do whatever he wants regardless of poll results—he’ll claim “voice of the people” if a poll goes his way or “bot spam, overturned” if it doesn’t. The polls are a post-hoc justification for whatever decision he made before he even opened a poll. Musk is so transparent that even I, someone with eyesight issues, can see right through his bullshit.
Re: Re: Re:
As I’ve mentioned, the “vox populi” thing was just a distraction to pretend that when he reinstalls certain people it’s a popular vote not him making the decision. Just ignore the facts that he’s the one counting the votes and he has the ability to change the database in ways that the pillow guy fantasises…
Re: Re:
Shockingly enough, yes.
4chan has gamed Time’s Person of the Year poll at least twice. I believe there’s a few articles on that…
Re: Re: Re:
Hitler got the Man Of The Year award. It’s about significance, not goodness.
Re: Re: Re:
It’s also just obvious as fuck in how polls and the Twitter userbase interact in comparison to how statistically-relevant polls function. Anyone who can’t deduce that has moldy melons for brains.
Re: Re: Re:2 Times change
Something is clear in some of the discussions here that has nothing to do with anti-Trump and Biden voters. Or Pro Trump voters
And this is my opinion on a view from within America about American people.
Acknowledging a generational gap in tools!
Value and/or willingness when it comes to online “tools” and methods.
The very same people who take posted polls are the ones who fill out surveys and prefer threaded lists and ordered forum style.
the immediate discounting of online polls is near purely a generational thing. Those who came after the tech revolution. The majority of web 2.0 and Web 3.0 users are/were under 40. And democrats.
Even from the Republican side most users still remain under 40.
There a strong correlation between age and platform preferences. I still use dial in BBS sites (and host one) from time to time. Many still exist for software and the retro-tech scene.
The average twitter user is under 30.
Same for Facebook, and most other web2 sites.
And web 3, including twitter, is much younger.
While there is some small truth to bubble issues, the largest stumbling block for a web 2/3 conservative service is that the majority of conservatives or older than the audience for such platforms as Truth and Fab, and Twitter.
Our age group rarely moves on in tech, even as we are the ones that create and build it for others.
Polls were a large aspect of direct user engagement in the web 1 and pre web era. Those quick to use and trust it are more likely over 40, and from a US standpoint, not democrats.
There’s an academic study to be done here. But in reality fee right of the mid-left even try m, let alone use, social media sites. Most that do and stay do so for a public or monitory reason. Such as business owners and politicians.
It’s an aspect to consider when you throw away online poll results.
There probably is not manipulation. But your demographic is unlikely to click in the first place.
And when a whole group is opposed to the very practice, results are biased.
Re: Re: Re:3
One: You’re full of shit, so your skill in Scatomancy makes sense.
Two: What the fuck is my demographic, you bottom-feeding dweeb?
Three: Fuck right off.
Re: Re: Re:4
Fact: the average adjusted age of social media users is under 30. Depending on source it’s at 22 or 25. Not including TikTok, with a much lower demographic average in the US
That would be the people who use and enjoy “services” like twitter and Facebook and truth and other “social” things like that. You self righteous turd.
Maybe later. Not really horny right now.
Re: Re: Re:5
So you went and proved you’re full of shit. Hurrah, Scatomancer!
No really, fuck right off a building into a dumpster where your constantly-flaming ass belongs.
Re: Re: Re:5
I’m going to remind you that you’re: a) wrong and b) the only self-righteous turd in this thread.
You continue to be a snob and make base assumptions because you’re full of shit and turd is all you’re made of.
Join the great shitsplosion in the toilet and flush your shitberg of opinions into the sewer where you belong, turdsack.
I’ll leave you with one last thought since you have none of your own, being a shit-for-brains:
Twitter is a hellish and unenjoyable place that I neither have an account on, nor use. I’ve repeatedly said that on TechDirt, so it’s not a new viewpoint for me. However, based on this thread I KNOW you should use Twitter because it’s full of shitheads like you. If anything, it’s made by and for shitheads like you, owned by a shithead by you, and shitheads like you are part of why Twitter is so awful. Because even without you personally, your ilk put as much shit in that sandwich as they could fit.
Toodles.
Re: Re: Re:3
Like who are the people that, “..take posted poll…fill out surveys…prefer threaded lists and ordered forum style.”?
You’re a joke.
Re: Re: Re:4
No, I’m a user who grew up with the computer revolution. One who knows what quality is like. Who prefers reason and maintaining comment history and easy reading over the instant gratification of modern Web 2.0 and its brain porn of right now.
One who prefers actual commentary over a few dozen words in a glorified text message
The joke, is people actually think modern anti social services are actually useful with their post length restrictions and bagel pictures.
Re: Re: Re:5
You’re a snob who likes to make assumptions about other people, about what they like, and about their intelligence. All while often being provably wrong.
You are full of shit, not knowledge or intelligence. Certainly you’re more full of shit than of having a sense of taste.
I pity your existence and your confidence in your competence, since the former is pointless and the lattermost (competence) is entirely lacking.
Aka you have shit for brains.
Re: Re: Re:6
Snob? Clearly you fail to understand the terms you use.
I’m as far from High society as you can get!
The snobs tend to be the far-left American liberals.
Re: Re: Re:7
You’re really good a projection; probably almost as good as you are at shitting your own pants.
But nothing takes the cake like your ability to juggle turds on your tongue. It’s like magic! Oh, but wait, you’re a shit-for-brains scatomancer, so it must be magically shitlicious!
Re: Re: Re:8
Don’t like it when I call out the silver spoon and gold spoon trust baby liberals do you?
Bit upset I called you out on your total lack of understanding of the English language?
Projection? I’m not the one discussing the consumption of poo every other sentence. Here’s a bit of advice, even if you don’t want it. You come off as an actual troll incapable of rational discussion or debate.
Maybe a bit of reflection? What is it you really are trying to do here?
You don’t get much done by calling someone a doodoo head. Just saying. So when you act like a 2year old, I treat you like one.
Re: Re:
Your inquiry deserves a response, so:
Fuck off.
Re: Re: Re:
Are you capable of complex thought?
Or are you web 2 brain-limited to a few dozen words or less.
I’m guessing the second line is accurate. Especially how you find you need to use wording in your short barbs that does nothing but raid an eyebrow for lack of complex thought.
It’s telling your idea of useful commentary is a few four letter words.
Re: Re: Re:2
I’m more capable of complex thought, of feeling, of knowing, of caring, of being a worthwhile human (giving you the benefit of the doubt there) than you’ll ever be. And that’s my worst compared to your best, you’re certainly not worth even giving much complex thought to though.
I’m being dismissive of you because you’re a piece of shit and all you deserve is to be repeatedly informed of that until you go and eat shit.
It’s telling that you have no reading comprehension and that you make specious arguments based on your worthless farts that you try to pass of as opinions instead of overripe gas from your shit-bloated inner self.
Re: Re: Re:3
Wow, that’s what you come up with in response to NPD reports on the average user studies?
You may not like the facts, but the studies are all publicly. Just go to the various web pages and look. NPD, NYT, WSJ…
The generation of users who, like me, find the whole process a waste of time tend to be between 40 and 60, and are or were involved in the technology field.
Just because you don’t like the results of the poll doesn’t mean they are rigged. Look at Trump loosing, not rigged. Just biased in implementing the process.
And were the rigging in 2016? You didn’t like those results.
Just because democrats and children didn’t take the time to answer a poll with a single click, doesn’t make the results wrong.
And there is no proof offered by you, or others, that some great bot army was involved.
Grow up. Not everyone agrees with you.
And here’s a side not, some of us support all speech. No matter how “toxic”, left or right.
Because if a few bad words or mean comments are the end of your tolerance…
In a natural world you would have failed the natural selection process.
Re: Re: Re:4
You have shit for brains, shit shit shitty shit brains.
Nothing but poo, up in your head. No matter what you do, no matter how you wipe ever word you type; just another shit stripe! No body gives a shit about your gripes, since all you have to say is tripe.
Yikes!
Don’t tell me to grow up when your express thought-free bullshit opinions as truth. Nothing you have to say is remotely coherent or worth giving a serious answer to.
You said you weren’t horny, but here you are jacking off to Trump in the comments while you fellate Musk. Who the fuck should ever give a shit about your love of bigots? After all, you’re full of all the shit and clearly have plently.
Re: Re: Re:5
My love is of freedom of expression.
That I don’t give two shits about some idiotic baby’s feelings being hurt … is because gen z is so sensitive we have a generation that wouldn’t survive a quality debate; forget national crisis.
Back a few generations a common ideology was taught to kids.
“Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me”.
…because feelings?! To hell with your individual feelings. I know two-year-olds with stronger mentality than some of these people crying on “news” shows about their feelings.
Real life is not going to accommodate your feelings. Get used to it and get over it.
He owns the platform and can do whatever he wants. If you don’t like that go elsewhere. The same thing you, and your like, had said about past twitter users who got ejected and complained, went to court, etc.
You, and your Ilk, once again show your extremism In hypocrisy.
Prove the poll was manipulated. Or move on. Because trump was going to get his account back poll or no poll.
That what a single man says is so disabling to you… is something you need to figure out with a specialist. How a man’s words can decimate your personal life?
I’ll lay this out again, my support of free speech, even unliked and controversial, predates trump by decades. It is based in my love for extremes in art. And good art is often disruptive, even decisive. Be it books, film, or games, or music. And if you have a problem and make a law in one place, it will affect other mediums.
So again, fuck your feelings.
The ability for art, and artistic commentary, is far more important to me than your personal feelings. Those of a person, or group. Or even a population!
Free speech must be supported. If you don’t like it don’t use it. Don’t read it. Don’t watch it.
You can mute and clock people on the service. So do so. Wow, no more trump. Wait, he’s not on it anyway.
Gamed by bots? He owns the platform that runs the polls, has access to the database and how the results are presented to the public.
Bots are a good excuse if the polls go a way he dislikes, but there’s nothing to stop him faking the results if he wishes. His public announcements in this way are just a way to pretend he didn’t personally make the decision if he faces opposition regarding the outcome.
Re:
He owns (or rents) the bots that voted in his polls, I doubt he knows how to use the Twitter database.
It’s not an excuse, it’s him employing an ‘Accusation in a mirror’ tactic that was commonly used on Twitter for years before he bought it.
You should know at least that much to be qualified to comment on this.
Re: Re:
“I doubt he knows how to use the Twitter database”
He owns the site and therefore the database. If he doesn’t know how to edit it directly, he definitely has the power to tell someone who can to do so. He’s fired people for daring to tell him that the site doesn’t work the way he assumed it did, I doubt that he wouldn’t have the power to coerce someone with access to fake a poll if he wanted to.
Re: Re: Re:
Yeah okay, sure.
Re: Re: Re:
And the claim is republican conspiracy theories are a problem.
Nobody has shown anything suggesting this was manipulated, by hand or by bot.
Ultimately, he was going to restore Trump regardless. So you really believe he’d change a poll rather than use a negative result to thumb his nose at the “libs” and say “to hell with what you want”?
He’s antagonistic. He likes a good fight. What you suggest is exactly the opposite of his mentality.
Because “Trump should be let back on twitter” is a position no thinking human being could possibly ever take, Musk’s poll proved only that the majority of the accounts following him are robots.
Re:
Note: bots can be programmed in wetware.
Re: Re:
That’s just called “abuse of psychology”.
Shockingly effective, actually.
Re: Re: Re:
It’s called right-wing media.
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Evidence
Is techdirt going to ignore the twitter releases of info on the Biden laptop story?
Because all of a sudden it looks like the complaints about censorship were correct.
Re:
… said nobody mentally competent, ever.
Re: Re: Really?
Did you read the dump?
Re: Re: Re:
Your pathetic attempt at deflecting from yet furthher proof that you lack any ability to evaluate sources, read, or think critically is noted.
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Re: Re: Re:2 Ignorant idiocy
As soon as a political party starts asking for removal, of any type, it’s political censorship.
It bet far beyond naked pictures. but you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t read the dumps, and just listened to mainstream media.
You have a meme that was risqué, but not pornographic. You have email snippets, and plane discussions. All blindly pulled down at the request of a political party.
I don’t need to evaluate reports, I look at the source material. Try that next time.
Re: Re: Re:3
Yes or no: Did the removal of those posts from Twitter prevent them from being reposted anywhere else?
How many such requests were made by the other political party, and how many of them were honored in much the same fashion? If you’re gonna act like the other “side” is blameless and innocent, you’re gonna need some goddamn proof to back that shit up.
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Re: Re: Re:4
The removal of the posts censored them from the twitter audience. Regardless of other locational posting.
I made no implication that other political parties didn’t push for selective censorship. But we have no such available data.
The reality is, the Biden campaign conducted targeted monitoring for requests for removal of detrimental materials.
Further showing twitter’s employees leanings to influence what is and remains public.
Re: Re: Re:5
That isn’t censorship unless you believe—not think, but believe—the people who made those posts had a guaranteed right to both that audience and their spot on Twitter. I know you’re a Trump dickrider and therefore already something of a dumbass, but please don’t tell me you’re that far gone.
That tells me all I need to know about the credibility of the “Twitter Files”. The people breaking this story are showing us selective evidence that bolsters their pre-conceived conclusions rather than showing us all the evidence so we can draw our own. To wit:
Did the GOP, the Trump campaign, or the federal government (which was under Trump’s control) make similar requests? If so, how many such requests were there? Was the number of those requests equal to or higher than the number of requests from the DNC/the Biden campaign? How many of those requests from Trump’s side of the aisle were honored compared to the number of requests from Biden’s side of the aisle that were honored?
Notice how the “Twitter Files” conveniently leave out (and are unlikely to reveal) any evidence that could answer those questions. It’s almost as if the people behind the “Twitter Files” have a specific axe to grind against a specific lawmaker/political party in service of a former president. Imagine that~.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing speech based on viewpoint on platforms they control. The ability for the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
Once upon a time, liberals mocked conservatives for both-siderism. Now, it’s apparently the right thing to claim? Liberals really are a plague on rational thought.
Re: Re: Re:3
A tipoff is NOT collusion or a formal request to remove content.
You should know this, but choose not to see reality.
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Re: Re: Re:4
I didn’t state it was any sort of collusion.
I stated the DNC/Biden campaign made continuous requests for removal of materials that were damaging to the Biden campaign. Request generally honoured by twitter employees.
Most of such requests were not for violations of twitter policy.
Re: Re: Re:5
You heavily implied it, though.
If Twitter honored similar requests by the Trump administration, would that rise to the same level of (near-)collusion of which you accuse the Biden campaign of committing with Twitter? I ask because you seem awfully committed to ripping Biden for anything short of dying in his sleep, whereas you think Trump is a wholly innocent smol bean of a person who could never do anything corrupt. Is it a whataboutism? Sure, I’ll cop to that. But you’re the one who keeps claiming that the Dems/Biden are uniquely corrupt for asking Twitter to do what it did. And since the chances are more than good that the Trump administration did the same thing as the Biden campaign, I’d like to know if you think that’s merely something to be overlooked as “oh it’s not ‘collusion’ when my guy does it”.
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Re: Re: Re:6
No, I stated that Twitter employees acted in DNC requests nearly completely in removing content. It’s not collusion, it’s bias on the part of individual employees.
One there’s no evidence of republican support from employees
Two if such cases did occurs it would show equality, not bias. As both sides would be removing content, not just ine
Re: Re: Re:7
That implies collusion between the DNC and Twitter.
Again: It’s a bit weird that someone who was given assumedly complete access to internal Twitter documents/data showed you and everyone else evidence that the DNC “colluded” with Twitter to delete content, but didn’t show off anything that would implicate the GOP in any similar “collusion”. Why, it’s almost as if the people who colluded to show off this data—Musk, Taibbi, and anyone else Musk let view the data/documents—had a bias of their own and thus can’t be trusted to give us the whole truth. Imagine that~.
No, it wouldn’t. To prove a bias, the data would have to show that, proportionally, Twitter obliged more requests from the DNC than it did from the GOP. After all, if the DNC made 100 requests and Twitter obliged on 90 of them, but the GOP made 70 requests and Twitter obliged all 70, that would seem to me like a bias in favor of the GOP.
But as I said: We don’t have any evidence of GOP requests because the people who could show that data have refused to show that data, and that fact alone suggests a bias that taints what is already a nothingburger of a story.
Re: Re: Re:
Maybe if you’re interested in a trust fund jerk’s penis pics.
If I wanted that, I’d visit a porn site, not twitter.
Maybe you should actually read Texhdirt instead of screeching.
Re: Re: Re:
Why? No one is as skilled in scatomancy as you.
Re:
Cool story bro.
Re:
Only if you frame “censorship” as “a platform’s moderators going back and forth with each other about whether to allow linkage to some controversial off-site content that the platform can’t stop from being published or talked about” or “deleting posts featuring nude photos of a political candidate’s son that were publicly posted without his consent”. Otherwise, this all looks like reasonable content moderation decisions (or discussions thereof) that happen on numerous other Internet spaces every day.
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Re: Re: Ignoring?
Care to explain DNC involvement?
Re: Re: Re:
The DNC asked for the removal of nude photos of Hunter Biden that were posted without his consent—i.e., revenge porn, which was and still is against Twitter’s rules. Any other requests they made could’ve been ignored by Twitter, since Twitter is under no obligation to remove any speech that isn’t outright illegal.
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Re: Re: Re:2
The image showed no nudity. Try again.
Re: Re: Re:3 That'ss crybabbys MO
Quadrupling down isn’t a good or fresh look.
Re: Re: Re:4
Well, it doesn’t.
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Re: Mike Knew
Mike slipped up many times here representing knowledge that he shouldn’t have known at the time relating to the Laptop and other issues. Mike is now a witness and doesn’t want to touch this shit.
Re: Re:
Ohh right down into conspiracy land. How many aliens did it take to kill reptile JFK?
Re: Re:
… said nobody not on hallucinogens, ever.
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lol
Yeah the first poll to unban Trump was close. The next one not so much. Yeah Twitter is gamed by bots but not by hte right.
The Trump poll was a fucking trap to lure out the bots you fucking morons.
Re:
Citation needed.
Re:
That’s so fucking stupid it almost sounds smart…
Just like you crybabby
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Re: Re:
51.9% were in favor of brining back Trump. Next poll to offer a general amnesty had 72.4% support. Musk banned the bots that voted in the Trump poll you fucking moron.
Re: Re: Re: Cum at me bro
You gonna threaten to rape me next?
Re: Re:
Whoever this is, it’s “crybaby”. As in a “baby” who “cries”.
Re: Re: Re:
It’s definitely crybabby. Someday, possibly, with a lot of therapy, he will mature enough to be just a regular old crybaby.
Thanks for sharing. It is very helpful for me and also informative for all those users who will come to read.