I’ve literally shown you lying multiple times in one this thread. Including this time.

No, you have not.

Strawb and Toom don’t seem so smart but I’m not sure how many other people you can gaslight.

You’re the one gaslighting here by pretending to have shown something you clearly haven’t.

Yes, you see that’s literally the same thing I said, but you’re trying to make it sound different. They blocked the article for 2 days. Not a few hours. Your “statement” was halfway through that period.

I fail to see how that helps your case. Moreover, you specifically said it took months, not days.

They realized they’d fucked up, but they were “listening to feedback” and trying to pretend they were still right, initially.

Where is your evidence that Twitter pretended they were right? Also, that they said they were “listening to feedback” doesn’t help your case.

That they didn’t directly say the words “we’re sorry” or whatever is meaningless

It absolutely is not and if you had any class you would realize that.

Not that you have any room to criticize others for not having class, but while you’re not completely wrong about it not being meaningless (an explicit apology is far better than an implicit one so long as both are also accompanied by corrective action), it is irrelevant to whether Mike was lying when he said that they owned up to the error and such. You can admit making a mistake and take steps to make up for that mistake (i.e. own up to the mistake) without explicitly apologizing for it.

Since Mike didn’t say that they used those exact words, and those words weren’t necessary to prove him right, it is irrelevant to whether Mike is lying about this.

Ah, yes, the “inquisitorial confession” policy. “Admit you were wrong (even after we have) and we’ll end your suffering”. Meaningless excuse.

Not to the point Mike is making, which is that Elon’s Twitter handles this no different from old Twitter. He is stating that this policy is still in place today.

Again, this isn’t about whether Twitter is right or wrong about having and enforcing this policy but about comparing Twitter now to Twitter back then, and whether or not the NYP story was treated differently from other, similar (in terms of the rules) posts.

“Well established policy.” is not a defense, at all.

It is a defense to accusations of discrimination (or government coercion), which is what Mike was getting at here.

They were morally obligated to unban NYPost without trying to make them confess their sins.

I agree completely, but Mike isn’t asserting otherwise. The thing is that Mike isn’t saying Twitter was morally right to not unban them immediately despite their existing policies, so the point is irrelevant to this discussion.

Which they did…after 16 days.

I’m not saying that wasn’t the case, but I don’t really recall. Do you have a citation?

When the outrage had grown loud enough and they couldn’t avoid doing it. Because before that they were trying to be stubborn, save face, pretend they “really were right all along” and they were just being kind enough to change their policy.

Again, where is your evidence that they were saying that they were “right all along”?

Actually, maybe you’re just being unclear. Maybe by “right all along” you mean that they stood by their decision that the post was sufficiently likely to be in breach of the hacked-materials policy. That actually makes a lot more sense… Though, the thing is that, as I understand it, Twitter never actually said that that was wrong; they said that evidence came out later that, had they had it at the time, would not have led them to block the post in the first place, which isn’t exactly the same thing as saying that they shouldn’t have made that decision in the first place based on the evidence they had.

Still, I’ll discuss this more later.

None of this addresses that they spent hours debating whether to do this (blatantly illiberal) move, choose to do so, and that the FBI rather transparently at least tried to prime them to do that, btw.

Because none of that is at all relevant to the point being made, at least to Mike. I’ll get back to this, though.

Vs. Clearly initiated by algo, reversed within hours, “we’re sorry” and no forced-to-confess-your-sins bullshit.

Right, so, I don’t agree that the difference between hours and less-than-a-day is material, nor that the explicit apology vs. implicit one is important for Mike’s point, but the other things, I kinda agree with you on, though with caveats.

First, the story in question here hasn’t been shown to have been done algorithmically, nor is that as clear as you assert. However, I do agree that it’s possible that it was, that—if it was—that would be a material difference, and, most importantly, the evidence you cite for why it must have been done algorithmically is in itself a potentially important distinction.

See, here’s the key difference. In the case of the laptop story, at the time, the evidence available at the time was sufficient to show that the story could plausibly contain hacked material and, if so, that would indisputably be in breach of the policy Twitter had at that time. (That the policy itself was bad and later changed is ultimately irrelevant to the point I’m making.) Now, sure, later on, new evidence came out that, had it been available to Twitter at the time of the initial decision, would have caused them to not block the story in the first place, but when the story came out in the first place and during the entire period the post was blocked, Twitter had what they believed was sufficient evidence that the story likely breached their policy. The reversal was not because they re-reviewed the post and decided that the initial decision was in error based on the available evidence and the policies in place at the time but 1) a change in policy, 2) making an exception to a different policy, and 3) discovery of new evidence.

None of those were the case for the posts at issue in this article. No actual changes in policy were made, no new evidence came up; this was entirely a decision that the posts in question were never in breach of the terms at all and should never have been blocked to begin with (at least arguably). It was entirely about a mistaken application of policy. That does make for an important difference.

As for the policy about not reinstating posts when a change in policy causes them to not be in breach anymore, I agree that that had no role here, though that’s because it wouldn’t apply here since no changes were made to the policy in the first place. That said, as Mike points out, that policy is still in place today, so while that is an important difference for this particular story, it is not a difference at all between current Twitter and old Twitter.

None of this proves Mike was lying, though; I would say it comes down to having a difference of opinion in what constitutes a material difference. Still, I will grant that Mike has not fully grasped the nature of the objections here.

I need to a verifiable citation for this (not a TD article) because all I have ever seen on the subject is hearsay, from you. Frankly I don’t believe you, I’m saying.

The reason Mike generally presents a TD article is because there are multiple external sources within that article.

As far as believing what he says about what his contacts say, that’s just journalism. They are anonymous sources, so there is little he can do to present external confirmation. I’m sorry if you can’t accept that, but there isn’t much he can do.

Still, I too would be interested if Mike does have corroboration from other sources, so I won’t say he shouldn’t present such a source. Instead, even though I actually believe him, I shall actually join you in asking for an additional source, if only out of curiosity.

It without question is doxxing, […]

I dispute that that’s the case “without question”, but I will agree that it could be argued that it is doxxing, depending on how exactly one defines the term.

[…] and therein lies the difference…that’s against policy, still. If you can prove mastodon linkers were forced recant despite a subsequent policy change you will have scored a point.

Here, I once again concur. If the posts were removed for alleged doxxing and not just for linking to Mastodon, that is weak evidence that the policy is still in place. For Mike, I would suggest screencaps of notices stating the reasons given for removal, the tweets allegedly removed, and evidence that the accounts were still banned after the change in policy.

I’ve seen you try to cast Musk as a hypocrite it turned out you were just making shit up to create a false-equivalency.

Not really. You believe you’ve seen that, but mostly you’ve been incorrect. This case may be an exception to that, but I can’t say I’ve seen a trend like you claim.

Last week you tried to pretend Musk following the exact same policy in India that Old Twitter had, pursuing the same lawsuit, was somehow Musk “gladly” banning people at Modi’s request.

As I recall, the difference was that old Twitter was refusing to comply with the requests that Musk is honoring. I invite evidence to the contrary, but that’s my understanding.

You’re just fucking lying, admit it.

People can be wrong without lying.

Funnily enough, that’s my main objection to you. It’s as if once caught in a lie, the only solution you see is to lie more.

I mean, you have yet to demonstrate that Mike was lying, and the only instance you might be right and Mike wrong (this case), you haven’t been great at presenting your case. Like, I actually might agree he’s at least partly wrong in this case, but the way you worded things made it hard to see that, and you definitely have overstated your case at least as much as he has.

I also feel obligated to point out that I have only ever seen you acknowledge that you were wrong on anything exactly once, on the bees-are-fish case in California. And that I have seen Mike change his mind sometimes, once quite recently, even.

You have like a dozen people that comment regularly and almost all of them are committed liberals, which of course they are, you are.

Uh, no. Mike is not a “committed liberal”. He does have some liberal leanings, but then he also has libertarian leanings.

Ever notice how any conservative opinion gets “flagged” within minutes, no matter how reasonable?

No, I haven’t. There have been several conservative opinions that didn’t get flagged. It’s just that a number of the people who tend to post conservative opinions here have a tendency to unreasonably repeat false things, and so they tend to get flagged every time now no matter how reasonable that individual post may be. It could be thought of as the Techdirt equivalent to banning a particular user, I guess.

Additionally, there has been at least one liberal user who has received that same treatment (LostinLodos comes to mind), so this isn’t a bias against conservatives per se.

Really, this appears to just be confirmation bias on your part.