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Comment by sleepysysadmin | Hacker News Reader

Ignore the NYPost for the moment.

A US government website put the details on their website. Twitter is now blocking the US government webpage hosting the details. They are blocking actual politicians linking these details. https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/13167418079595724...

Worse yet, they have highlighted the exact opposite story. They are featuring washington post who are calling it false.

https://twitter.com/i/events/1316398754883272704

I'm not an American. Any Americans want to weigh in on your views of this?

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Well, if it is false, then they are performing the stated goal of stopping the spread of “fake news”, which need not discriminate on whether the entity pushing it is associated with a government or not. Whether or not I want Twitter to be an arbiter of truth, some very basic research does seem to make it seem this story is a bit on the order of a conspiracy theory.

Just out of curiosity, what is your political persuasion? Do you tend to lean more democrat or republican?

>which need not discriminate on whether the entity pushing it is associated with a government or not.

I was ignoring the NYPost, to judge action taken by Twitter. Twitter should never ever censor a government website regardless for what it says.

>Whether or not I want Twitter to be an arbiter of truth, some very basic research does seem to make it seem this story is a bit on the order of a conspiracy theory.

Do you want Twitter to be the arbiter of truth?

My usual source of Democrat/Left news is Msnbc. For whatever reason they are not covering the story at all.

Can enlighten me on why it seems to be a conspiracy theory?

The "arbiter of truth" argument is weak. I want the people at Twitter and other platforms to be able to make decisions about whether something is a fact or misinformation.

If they get it wrong, fine. We can use other platforms if we don't like the decisions one makes. But I'm tired of the idea that they should NEVER be able to even try to recognize the difference between truth and lies.

> But I'm tired of the idea that they should NEVER be able to even try to recognize the difference between truth and lies.

But that's not what they are doing, is it? They are recognizing the difference between potential truths that would benefit whomever they are politically aligned with from potential truths that would benefit whomever they aren't politically aligned with.

They don't ask for truth, proof or anything similar, they ask for consequences, and whether those consequences appear to be good for their political agenda.

There’s a photo of Hunter Biden with a crack pipe in his mouth, and emails discussing his father while he was vice president and the exchange of money. That’s not a conspiracy theory.

Follow up. Twitter has come out saying they blocked this because of personal identifying information.

Not because it's false, fake, or a conspiracy.

Which is odd, since they've also made definitive claims that they blocked it because it's "hacked" and yet more definitive claims that they blocked it because it's "leaked". They can't even get their story straight; and with their audience who will support their every move, they don't need to.

If they are blocking it because it was "leaked" why did they not have as similar stand on Trump's taxes? That one was actually illegal to leak. They don't have a good excuse for what appears to be a wholly partisan action.

Note that the link you posted does not support your claim that twitter is blocking it - it shows a warning before posting but allows one to continue and post the link.

I have been pretty vocal about being against censorship from social media companies. But with the stakes being as high as they are this close to an election (not just this particular election, but any election in general), I see no problem with social media companies deciding they will not be a party to the spread of misinformation intended to sway the election.

These companies are not neutral communication platforms; they have no duty to neutrality. Although I agree they should remain neutral as much as reasonable, drawing the line at election manipulation is perfectly reasonable and consistent.

With the stakes being as high as they are, wouldn’t we want to know if there’s a crumb of truth to the allegations? A President beholden to shady foreign actors doesn’t sound like a good idea. Likewise if it’s false then let that come out.

The bigger problem is that journalists/newspapers are no longer the arbiters of truth, and instead the distributors are.

>With the stakes being as high as they are, wouldn’t we want to know if there’s a crumb of truth to the allegations?

Sure, but this will not be adjudicated on twitter. Letting the unverified and extremely suspicious story spread on twitter does nothing to bring us closer to the truth. On the contrary, the truth is harmed by the unchecked spread of misinformation because the truth doesn't have the same viral quality as lies.

> Sure, but this will not be adjudicated on twitter.

I agree with this, but I think Facebook & Twitter shot themselves in the foot by allowing rampant & salacious accusatory headlines to run across their platform unhindered during the past 4 years. There are numerous examples from alleged pee tapes to collusion, and general he said she said.

That's the issue I see at least.

I agree with that. But the issue is how do you stop people from talking about an alleged pee tape compared to stopping the spread of a specific story from a handful of sources. These are two very different problems. So I have sympathy for the position they are in and the difficulty in being consistent with their policies given the vast range of ways manipulative information can be spread.

Super weird, was suddenly downvoted on both comments twice, but anyways

> So I have sympathy for the position they are in and the difficulty in being consistent with their policies given the vast range of ways manipulative information can be spread.

I think the true test will be how this is held up in the future. Of course we're in the middle of an insane political divide, but eventually we'll be past it, and next time there will be new candidates, and each time beyond that. So the litmus test will be whether the rules are fair and applied equally as time goes on.

Is it meaningful whether the story is true or not? The existence of Trump's presidency says Americans don't care about corruption or whether the president is beholden to shady foreign actors. Maybe that's a good argument for the natural born citizen ship requirement to be removed from the presidency?

If there was a crumb of truth you'd get to see the raw emails with DKIM signatures that a novice sysadmin could confirm in 15 minutes. At least that would prove they aren't a total fabrication that was typed up in Word.

The entire purpose of a campaign is to manipulate the outcome of an election. A rally manipulates the outcome, as does a debate. As does a news article that raises question about one of the candidate's integrity.

No. "Manipulate" in this context carries the connotation of unscrupulous control. The purpose of a campaign is to demonstrate to voters that you're the best person for the job. There is no need for "manipulation" to accomplish this. Manipulation is used to convince people to vote for you despite the truth.

That's also inaccurate. The purpose of a campaign is to ensure that more people vote for you than anyone else.

Convincing people you're the best person for the job is only one approach. Another approach is to convince people that don't like you to not vote, or to split their vote across multiple candidates.

If agree that the manipulation happens outside of the campaign. Once you've won, you can choose who gets to vote in the next election, whether they are allowed to vote at all, or if their vote counts in your next campaign vs somebody elses'

Eg. Gerrymandering, allowing/disallowing felons votes (and moving more people in/out of felon status), adding/removing rules on how voting is done etc

Would not be the first time the US government has transparently tried to lie about and smear families of government critics.

>Would not be the first time the US government has transparently tried to lie about and smear families of government critics.

While the leak is obviously timed to directly impact the election. They no doubt have been sitting on the information for months or longer.

What do you think about Twitter outright censoring the entire subject? It only makes me want to know more.

I know the actors who advanced the theory into the public sphere, and I'm familiar with their past work. I'm content drawing my own assumptions about their bad faith.

If the US government wants to they could host their own ActivityPub[0] compliant application and do whatever it wants from its server infrastructure.

The technology exists for the public sector to disentangle itself from these commercial platforms. I don't know why pols and journos are so blind to this.

[0] This is a W3C Recommendation -- a protocol, by the words of Wikipedia that is in "the most mature stage of development. At this point, the standard has undergone extensive review and testing, under both theoretical and practical conditions. The standard is now endorsed by the W3C, indicating its readiness for deployment to the public, and encouraging more widespread support among implementors and authors." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium#W3C_...

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