[HN Gopher] Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
___________________________________________________________________
Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
Author : eyeball
Score : 109 points
Date : 2020-10-25 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (taibbi.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (taibbi.substack.com)
| nabla9 wrote:
| There is no clear principles or policies for censorship or
| suppression for economic or political reasons. Until there is, we
| must look each case as single instance.
|
| That case was hilariously crude attempt at influencing and
| creating false narratives. The whole thing collapsed quickly but
| it still had huge impact. Mixing something real and something
| false makes people accept falsehoods.
|
| Censoring obvious falsehoods like in this case is not the
| scandal. The lack of policy principles is. Twitter could have
| reduced the frequency the links show in the feeds dramatically
| and nobody would notice. It would be there when you look at it,
| but it would not propagate. In fact, that's what Twitter and
| Facebook are doing for commercial reasons.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| What obvious falsehoods are you talking about?
| mmastrac wrote:
| Yeah, Twitter managed to kneecap a false narrative before it
| took hold and influenced an election. If there's a 48h waiting
| period for questionable stories like this, I'm all for it.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Could someone just explain in simple words why everyone keeps
| calling this story false or debunked or whatever? Everyone
| keeps downvoting me and I don't know why. It seems like to
| debunk this story you'd have to have a journalist do some
| journalism and figure out why all these companies were giving
| hunter biden money.
| nabla9 wrote:
| The Burisma story have been repeatedly found to be false.
|
| Trump Revives False Narrative on Biden and Ukraine
| https://www.factcheck.org/2020/10/trump-revives-false-
| narrat...
|
| Trump's conspiracy theories thrive in Ukraine, where a young
| democracy battles corruption and distrust. We talked with two
| dozen leaders and investigators in Ukraine. They all agree
| the claims against Joe and Hunter Biden are baseless. Yet
| they persist. https://eu.usatoday.com/in-
| depth/news/world/2019/10/10/trump...
|
| The facts behind Trump's bogus accusations about Biden and
| Ukraine - Trump claims Biden threatened Ukraine to aid his
| son's business interests. The facts suggest otherwise.
| https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2019/9/23/20879611/j...
|
| ----
|
| The latest NY Post story is just crazy.
|
| Man Who Reportedly Gave Hunter's Laptop to Rudy Speaks Out in
| Bizarre Interview https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-
| reportedly-gave-hunter...
|
| Hunter Biden's alleged laptop: An explainer
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-
| bi...
|
| What we know -- and don't know -- about Hunter Biden's
| alleged laptop https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-
| laptop-new-york-po...
| akvadrako wrote:
| Most of what you wrote is irrelevant.
|
| If the basic facts of the story are wrong, like the laptop
| or emails are not genuine, why don't the Biden's deny it?
| eyeball wrote:
| Some pretty genuine looking video floating around from
| it.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Nobody can discredit it so they suppress it. It's the same
| thing Twitter did for the same reasons.
|
| For starters it doesn't even need to be discredited -- it
| just needs to be denied, which it hasn't been. I mean the
| basic facts like the authenticity of the laptop/emails or the
| meeting.
| __float wrote:
| At what point do we look to _capitalism_ as a driving factor for
| misinformation spreading?
|
| Media outlets are incentivized to bring in clicks/shares/likes.
| They're not incentivized to research stories sufficiently, so...a
| shaky lead from a sketchy source but a super compelling headline?
| Of course that gets published.
|
| Taking this as some anti-conservative war from the tech industry
| is super misleading.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| It's not capitalism, is the lack of capitalism.
|
| It's having a centralised government (which can be used to
| obtain a lot of power) that create an incentive for
| misinformation.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Media outlets are incentivized to bring in
| clicks/shares/likes.
|
| Yes, in a way, but also obviously not. If that was their
| only/primary driver, they'd go all click bait all the time.
| They wouldn't report things that aren't loved by the masses.
|
| They clearly do, so clicks/shares/likes can't be their primary
| things.
|
| I do believe that it's partially right, it's just not number
| one. Number one is agenda, and within the pool of stories that
| benefit the agenda of the company, they choose what generates
| most engagement.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _Media outlets are incentivized to bring in clicks
| /shares/likes._"
|
| Even an individual who posts a blog post wants
| clicks/shares/likes, even if there's no money involved, to
| validate their work in putting out a post and to bolster their
| self-esteem. That highlights why capitalism is not itself the
| issue; any type of news media would just respond to what its
| customers want. And what the public wants is infotainment, not
| well-researched stories.
|
| The real problem is people and that's a problem that can't be
| solved.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Yeah the censorship is bad and further reduces trust in the media
| and tech companies (though its already at zero for many people).
| But isn't the story here that the vice presidents son was being
| paid millions of dollars by chinese, ukrainian, and other
| companies for .. something? It's not his business accumen, right?
| What could they possibly be paying him for other than access to
| his dad? Is there any other reasonable explanation for these
| "business arrangements?"
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I doubt anyone is surprised by another plausible case of
| corruption (or depravation / or pedophilia if you address the
| other allegations). There is also the story that the FBI was
| sitting on this since December (potential for blackmail in case
| Biden is elected? who knows) which is scary as well.
|
| In the end, I think it's endemic in having human corruptible
| politicians who can accentrate power. We will minimise this
| problem only if we decentralise the structure of powers in our
| society.
|
| Not that any mainstream party has an interest in promoting that
| (unless you consider Jo Jorgensen and the libertarian party)
| darkerside wrote:
| It's a lot of money for a person, but it's not a lot for a
| business. It's a cheap insurance policy to stay on the "good
| side" of someone who operates, even privately, in the quid pro
| quo seeking way that Trump does very publicly.
| thebigblueguy wrote:
| 4 years of investigations and the best they got on so called
| Trump Quid Pro Quo was him asking Ukraine about this specific
| grift by the Biden's.
|
| Either he's better at hiding his crimes than Muller and the
| Democrat party is able to investigate them, or _gasp_ they
| can't actually find anything because there is nothing...
| thebigblueguy wrote:
| They paid for introductions to "the big guy".
|
| I'm surprised HN keeps this story up given the overlap of
| philosophies between the tech bubble and Democrat politicians.
| chowchowchow wrote:
| And? I don't think the NYP story was supposed to be a bombshell
| that Hunter Biden got jobs because his last name was Biden.
|
| That may be unfair but that particular point is not even the
| subject of the New York Post story.
|
| Companies hire people in useless positions all the time you
| know.
| thebigblueguy wrote:
| That's exactly the point. Your attempt to pretend paying a
| drug addict $83k per month is fine, nothing to see here, is
| definitely not the same opinion of most voters.
|
| That alone is worth the tech companies risking their
| reputations and livelihoods of all their employees /
| partners! Trump cannot win! He's eeeeeeeevil!!!
| luckylion wrote:
| > Companies hire people in useless positions all the time you
| know.
|
| Yeah, they're called princelings, it's very common in China.
| If you want to do business, you hire the child of a high-
| ranking party member, pay them large sums of money for zero
| work and then you get all the permits you need.
| chowchowchow wrote:
| Mmhmm. I said it's unfair. Again I don't see how
| reiterating that Hunter Biden probably got some jobs
| because of his name proves the more salacious allegations
| that were the center of the story...
| luckylion wrote:
| It doesn't, of course. Just as Mercedes paying Chinese
| princelings millions doesn't prove that there's
| corruption in China.
| chowchowchow wrote:
| Well there's other evidence of that! And the trouble here
| is the evidence from the story is not verified (the FBI
| has not confirmed its HB's laptop, has it? The
| screenshots of the Russian blackberry seem...
| dubious...). And that's the sort of thing that most news
| organizations would gate reporting on.
|
| I do agree it's a bit strange for Twitter to step in and
| try to apply editorial standards where NYP didn't when
| they otherwise disclaim responsibilities of being a
| publisher. I dunno; there's an interesting discussion
| here if you can tone down the fire in your belly about
| conspiracies.
| luckylion wrote:
| > And that's the sort of thing that most news
| organizations would gate reporting on.
|
| I don't think that's true. The Steele Dossier ("Trump
| pays Russian Hookers in Moscow to pee on him") wasn't
| treated special in any way, and it was much more
| questionable at the time than this story (where the
| unclear part is what they got for their bribes, not
| whether they payed his son for access to the VP). Of
| course, one argument might be "we've learned from our
| mistakes", but I believe that's a bit too obvious.
|
| > I dunno; there's an interesting discussion here if you
| can tone down the fire in your belly about conspiracies.
|
| I don't think it needs a conspiracy theory, the
| coordination was very public. That there's political
| corruption in the US is also not news, it's the reason
| why children of politicians are making giant sums of
| money, politicians being paid tens to hundreds of
| thousands of dollars to give a speech etc. That's normal,
| there's not much to be found, I believe.
|
| Discussion of the suppression is not encouraged here:
| even a story about the suppression of the story was
| pretty much immediately suppressed on HN.
| chowchowchow wrote:
| You're making my point aren't you? You think the NYP
| story is as reputable as the dossier ?
|
| All the same, I don't know of any newspapers which
| published stories treating the dossier as a source. As an
| object of the story, IE this thing exists, yes. As
| corroboration: please share if you have any.
|
| Actually I think what happened is Rudy etc got a little
| too desperate and excited and blundered tactically:
| surfacing the contents of the hard drive as continual
| leaks, like the DNC emails, would've allowed for a
| similar dynamic to 2016. Wouldn't have mattered
| politically if the contents were real or not.
|
| By reaching and trying to drop the story as "real news,"
| the dubiousness of the source material got thrust
| directly into the spotlight. Blaming twitter, liberals,
| or whoever, for their poor smear tactics is just a coping
| mechanism at this point if you ask me.
| tmaly wrote:
| LOL this post got suppressed ( flagged )
|
| I think the post definitely has some merit on the discussion of
| free speech on the modern platforms that have become the new town
| square.
| nwienert wrote:
| Even my post trying to discuss suppression of suppression
| articles, just got suppressed!
|
| How suppressing :(
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24889835
| dang wrote:
| Users flagged it. That's usually what happens.
|
| Probably in this case it's because metadrama threads like
| that are a dime-a-dozen and never lead anywhere new - they
| just become generic hodgepodges.
| dang wrote:
| Users flagged it. That's usually what happens.
|
| We sometimes turn off flags when an article is able to support
| a substantive discussion. I don't know if this one can or not
| but it seems worth a try.
| 54351623 wrote:
| How to set up your own Mastodon instance.
|
| https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/social-network-set-mastodon-in...
|
| Or of course there is always 4chan if you are so concerned about
| censorship.
| firebaze wrote:
| Simply _stop_ taking twitter seriously. If there 's something
| posted which interests you, read it. If not, ignore it. Whatever
| emotion it causes in you, just walk around the block and ignore
| it.
|
| Just don't give a s..t, and twitter will get back to normal in
| the long run.
| neonate wrote:
| What Taibbi is writing about in the OP goes far beyond Twitter.
| nwienert wrote:
| So you argue elsewhere this article was worthy of suppression,
| and yet here you are discussing it? Hypocritical.
| firebaze wrote:
| Just trying to give insight into the reasoning. If this is
| considered hypocritical by you, what would not be?
| nwienert wrote:
| If you think it merits discussion and your discussion is
| merely some opinion that doesn't cross any of the site
| guidelines (sums to "I don't care about this topic much so
| you shouldn't either"), then there's no basis for flagging
| it.
|
| Flagging means it's either off topic, inflammatory, or not
| worthy of discussion. It's on topic, and obviously not
| inflammatory. So you're left with worthy of discussion...
| and you obviously are discussing it.
|
| Put it this way: if this is worthy of a flag, why are you
| here giving soft opinion as to why you personally would
| ignore it, as opposed to arguing why it shouldn't be
| allowed period?
| cwhiz wrote:
| It is the people who want suppression of information. Twitter and
| FB are responding to user demand.
|
| This post has been flagged. People don't want to see or hear
| about this. HN may, or may not, remove it. Either way, there are
| HN users who want this removed.
| luckylion wrote:
| That's just _some_ users though, and I 'm 99% sure they don't
| want _others_ to see it, because they believe knowing about it
| might damage their political side. I 'm sure they have good
| intentions and believe that the end justifies the means and if
| suppression of truth is required to let the good guys win, then
| so be it.
|
| Of course, everybody generally thinks they are the good guys,
| and once you're going down the road of "everything is allowed
| because my goals are good", you're not going to stop until
| somebody else stops you.
| SirHound wrote:
| It's not the truth though as far as we can tell.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| I fear Taibbi is right, the suppression by Twitter, irrespective
| of the merits and veracity of NY Post's report, will now
| normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and
| small. Which will then incentivize governments to take on the
| platforms. This also raises issues of unequal treatment - say the
| NY Post report was factually wrong - why pick on the NY Post
| only? Why not the hundreds of other "news organizations" peddling
| unverified and factually incorrect reports on Twitter.
|
| I wish it did not come to this. I feel this action will uncork
| second order effects which we will come to rue for a long time.
|
| Edit: This story was flagged which is unbelievable.
| darkerside wrote:
| I think you're right, but I don't think the previous status quo
| was tenable either, and maybe even more problematic.
| Disclaimer: these are opinions.
|
| We allow mainstream press, owned by allies of a politician, to
| make outlandish claims unverified in the weeks leading up to an
| election. This has always been "correctable" in the past, in a
| world where articles could be retracted or condemned,
| particularly by even more mainstream outlets (because there is
| a spectrum from tabloid journalism to "respectable"). With
| social media, the genie is out the bottle with that initial
| statement, and there's no way to set the record straight
| anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election.
|
| I realize that I used a ton of loaded terms here. That reflects
| a couple of opinions that I hold: that there is value in
| institutions, that truth is a social construct, that
| maintaining order in people's lives has intrinsic value. Folks
| are free to disagree, but please be clear about whether it's
| with the premise or the conclusion.
| mullr wrote:
| It's completely correctable. If fb/Twitter wanted to, they
| could track every person who saw a piece of "wrong"
| information, and plaster the retraction in front of their
| face.
| darkerside wrote:
| I'd argue that, if anything, that would make some people
| more certain that it was true
| disown wrote:
| > With social media, the genie is out the bottle with that
| initial statement, and there's no way to set the record
| straight anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election.
|
| Isn't it actually easier to correct the record with social
| media since you can correct it immediately and reach the
| people immediately? Whereas with newspapers, you'd have to
| wait days/weeks and have to search the tiny section they
| reserve for corrections?
|
| It's what made newspapers such great tools of propaganda. You
| push misinformation, spread it and then "retract" quietly
| relatively unseen.
|
| Edit:
|
| > If the idea that a particular professor or candidate is
| sexually exploitative becomes viral, can you really undo the
| damage?
|
| My point is that it's easier to "unring the bell" via social
| media than via newspapers. We are discussing the "previous
| status quo" : A newspaper writes a lie. How do you "unring
| the bell"? You have to wait until the next time you publish -
| which varies depending on whether you are a daily, weekly,
| monthly.
|
| Whereas in the social media era, you can just post on
| facebook, twitter, etc your retraction. The retraction is
| immediate and can be as visible as you want it to be.
| darkerside wrote:
| To your edit, we can rebuild cities after nuclear
| destruction much faster these days thanks to technology
| darkerside wrote:
| What you can't stop are the conversations that continue
| about the topic itself, irrespective of the news story.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Wildfire also spreads much faster on the web. If the idea
| that a particular professor or candidate is sexually
| exploitative becomes viral, can you really undo the damage?
| PaulAJ wrote:
| The truth is not a social construct. Either Hunter Biden
| received that "thanks for the meeting with your father" email
| or he didn't.
|
| Importance is a social construct. If that email is what it
| puports to be, then whether it is important is a point of
| view.
|
| The media don't (mis)lead us by telling us lies, they do so
| by deciding which parts of the truth are important enough to
| tell us.
| barrkel wrote:
| The accepted narrative is a social construct, and most
| people's understanding of the truth is closer to a
| narrative than a series of facts.
| darkerside wrote:
| You can argue about facts all day, but I would argue that
| "truth" ends up being something more. Innocence or guilt,
| vindication on the history books, really any assignment of
| a quality is done by a collection of people, and the
| results apply with the bubble of people who have agreed to
| no longer question what is agreed upon as true.
|
| I promise I could argue all day about whether your initial
| simple statement was true or not. What does received mean?
| What did the email say, and did it actually mean what you
| paraphrase? You'd probably view it as bad faith (and you'd
| be right), but that faith already implies the exact social
| consensus I'm taking about.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| The liberal wing was upset that state and non state actors
| influenced the 2016 election by manipulating social media.
|
| Now, Twitter is working to suppress some content that they
| believe is a repeat attempt -- the October surprise if you
| will.
|
| I don't have strong opinions on whether it's right or wrong,
| but I don't think this is a scandal.
|
| Twitter is a private company. You don't have a constitutional
| right to write whatever you want on Twitter. If Americans
| believe otherwise, then they'd have to nationalize Twitter or
| at least pass legislation that mandates what content Twitter
| can or cannot moderate.
|
| I do find it surprising that social media companies are being
| held to a very different standard than "news". In the US, we
| have specific news organizations that are unashamedly biased
| and blasting the airwaves with dangerous propaganda.
|
| I'm not trying to make a case of whataboutism, but it's mind
| boggling that social media receives so much scrutiny when this
| other group of fairly openly nefarious actors get a free pass.
| As far as I can tell, this is because the media organizations
| have fairly established relationships with politicians from one
| party or the other, with political parties using them as
| propaganda loud speakers.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Should T Mobile or Verizon be able to censor your phone calls
| and text messages if they don't like the content? After all,
| they're private companies as well.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| I would say yes. If they censor my calls, I would switch
| providers. But more importantly, if we as a country believe
| that's wrong, we should pass legislation
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| There is legislation. It's called common carrier. The
| argument is this existing legislation should be extended
| to social media as well.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| The difference is that social media aren't neutral
| communication channels when the visibility of a
| communication is altered by likes and algorithms.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| You make valid points and I don't know why are you downvoted.
| But Twitter is not a journalism play, it is a platform play
| and purported to be neutral. If there is blatant supression
| then they will antagonize atleast 50% of Americans which
| would be terrible for their bottom line.
| eyeball wrote:
| It's crazy that they're even blocking links to the ny post
| article via direct message. What's next? Email?
|
| Will we have to resort to signal and other encrypted direct
| messaging methods to have open discussion?
|
| Or run your own mail server end hope your recipient doesn't use
| one that censors?
|
| Creepy stuff.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| This has been the reality for people on the political fringes
| for some time now. Unfortunately nobody's been paying
| attention to it due in large part to the
| commentariat/journalistic class's willingness to encourage
| and provide cover for this behavior as a matter of political
| expedience.
|
| Another example: Messenger's been blocking links to
| joebiden.info (this may have changed, it's been six months
| since I've checked)
| beaner wrote:
| Why is this flagged? Even if you disagree with the assessment,
| the relationship between the press and big tech described here
| seems very relevant to HN.
|
| Isn't removing it making its point?
| dang wrote:
| Users flagged it. That's usually what happens.
|
| Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890813.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| The left is obsessed with suppressing anything that's "dangerous"
| cause they think the lowly under-class can't be trusted to review
| information and form opinions.
|
| If they had less authoritarian instincts, they'd realize that
| prohibitions generally spectacularly fail. I suspect any of the
| things they wanted to ban just got attention they never would
| have otherwise due to the Streisand effect.
| nextstep wrote:
| I think you're confused about what or who "the left" is;
| corporate media and the liberal party in the US (the Democrats)
| are not leftist in anyway; a writer like Matt Taibbi is a
| leftist or has leftist leanings. But as is very clear from this
| article, there is clear disagreement between leftists and the
| party they are forced to vote with if they want any semblance
| of representation.
| joejohnson wrote:
| The left did not suppress this story, liberal media did. You're
| responding to a post criticizing this suppression written by a
| leftist.
| akvadrako wrote:
| In the USA liberal and left are closely related - it
| basically means votes Democrat.
| joejohnson wrote:
| This is incorrect. Just because the two party system has
| suppressed anything to the left of the democrats does not
| mean liberals are in any way "the left"; there are many
| leftist voices in the US (Matt Taibbi, author of the post
| you're replying to and presumably read, being one of them)
| and they are often critical of liberals.
| akvadrako wrote:
| The terms are not well enough defined in common language
| to claim what you're claiming.
|
| If you polled all Democratic voters, 90%+ would say they
| are left and liberal.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If you polled all Democratic voters, 90%+ would say
| they are left and liberal.
|
| Or, in the real world, a bit fewer than half would say
| they are "liberal" or "very liberal". Because that's
| something that's polled on quite frequently, so there is
| real data:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2020/01/17/liberals-ma...
|
| It's true that in popular, as opposed to politically
| sophisticated, conversation in the US, a one-dimensional
| spectrum where the left and right poles are liberal and
| conservative is popular, and it's true that partisans on
| both sides like to portray the opposing party as more
| ideologically unified and extreme on that axis than it
| is, so that if you polled _Republicans_ , they'd probably
| come close to identifying Democrats as consistently both
| left and liberal.
| joejohnson wrote:
| It would seem the commenters on this site are mostly
| Americans who don't know that their two-party system only
| represents two flavors of pro-capitalist neoliberalism.
| But left and right political spectrum and the
| corresponding terms have meaning outside of the limited
| political window of centre-right US mainstream
| discussion.
| akvadrako wrote:
| They don't have meaning in terms of "liberal media" vs
| "left media" though, at least how the poster you replied
| to was using the term.
|
| It doesn't do any good to introduce jargon to people who
| are unfamiliar with it without defining your terms.
| joejohnson wrote:
| There is absolutely a distinction between liberal media
| (the NY Times, MSNBC, etc) and left media (Jacobin,
| Democracy Now!, Current Affairs, etc) and this
| distinction is made by Taibbi. Your ignorance on the
| subject is not shared by everyone.
| akvadrako wrote:
| NYT and MSNBC are left of center in the USA. As is
| Twitter, which is what's relevant here. Which is what
| makes them left-wing media.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It would seem the commenters on this site are mostly
| Americans
|
| Probably.
|
| > who don't know that their two-party system only
| represents two flavors of pro-capitalist neoliberalism.
|
| It's impossible to know something that isn't true. From
| about the late 1980s to sometime in 2016-2017 (the end
| was more sudden than the beginning), the dominant
| factions of both parties supported pro-capitalist
| neoliberalism, it's true, but each has had significant
| factions _not_ focussed on that position the whole time,
| and the neoliberal faction of the Democratic Party has
| been weakening for most of the last decade or so, and the
| neoliberal faction of the Republican Party was overthrown
| for dominance by a party that, insofar as it has a
| coherent economic policy at all, would be more populist
| protectionist than neoliberal (if one is being generous;
| kleptocratic opportunist if one is less generous.)
| American political parties are much more diverse than is
| the case of parties in systems that is typical in either
| proportional or parliamentary systems (and, especially,
| systems with both PR and parliamentary systems.)
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| Is there an issue with saying left-libertarian? Cause it's
| hard for me to believe that all these tech/media/etc
| employees aren't left, if it's reasonable to describe them as
| "progressive."
| alphite wrote:
| I think the fact that this is flagged shows that ycombinator is
| part of the same problem.
|
| Freedom of speech is what's great about this country, and big
| tech is about suppression of it. I look forward to my post
| getting deleted by the mods, reinforcing the simple truth.
| joejohnson wrote:
| This story has "62 points" and was posted 43 minutes ago (at the
| time I'm posting this comment) but as soon as I read the story
| and hit back in the browser, it was pushed off the first three
| pages of articles. What happened? Did this story get flagged?
| There's lots interesting discussion here.
| as1mov wrote:
| I think that's just HN's flamewar prevention method. Any story
| with a low score and a large number of comments are pushed down
| quickly, this is in addition to the fact that the post is
| getting flagged which pushes it down further.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I think the story is a big nothing. It was a comment not by
| Hunter Biden, but an associate, who may have been overstating or
| exaggerating what Hunter Biden said he'd do.
|
| And I plan to vote for Biden (even though I'm a registered
| Republican.)
|
| But I think suppressing links to a story in the NY Post was a
| stupid and unethical move. And one that's likely to amplify the
| story, not bury it.
| alphite wrote:
| And for the comments of people saying it's a non-story, you need
| to check your beliefs and look at the facts.
|
| This is pay for play, and corruption at it's finest. After
| attacking Trump for 4 years for falsehoods, you shy away from
| addressing issues with the opposing candidate?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I certainly hear a lot more talk about the suppression than the
| actual story (excluding the non-stop spew from Trump, I tuned him
| out a long time ago), so Twitterbook's attempts at suppression
| seem to have backfired. Taibbi may think it's under-reported, but
| even my non-tech acquaintances know about this scandal.
| pron wrote:
| I think there's a fundamental difference of opinion about the
| notion of fairness. Some people think that fairness is defined as
| something that affects everyone equally in some clean-slate
| world, while others think of fairness as equalizing the effect of
| something in an already unfair situation in the world as it is.
| To the first camp it seems that "suppressing" a particular story
| on a particular platform is unfair regardless of circumstances
| because it is not done to other stories; others think that if
| that particular story has a de facto unfair advantage of being
| amplified by an army of bots on that particular platform, then
| "suppressing" it is the fair thing to do. The question is, is it
| always unfair to tip the scales or does fairness depend on
| whether or not the scales are already tipped? Should the fairness
| of laws, rules and regulation be judged with or without
| consideration to existing circumstances?
| rootsudo wrote:
| I agree, twitter suppression made the story bigger.
|
| The NYPost has issued much fewer retractions than NYT and CNN,
| yet, Twitter does not attack those institutions.
|
| Ironic, considering the founder of the NYPost and his opinions on
| market economies.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| That NYPost has issued fewer retractions just means that they
| lack the integrity to take responsibility for its
| misinformation.
| darkerside wrote:
| I would consider retractions a mark of respectability, and the
| failure to issue them a tacit admission of failure in
| accountability.
| beaner wrote:
| That, or, of course, the Post's original reporting has been
| more accurate.
| darkerside wrote:
| Sounds like software with no bugs, if you ask me
| beaner wrote:
| Sure, but people mostly only say this when they don't
| like that the other guy has written better software.
| darkerside wrote:
| I'm sorry, but you must not be familiar with the Post.
| It's a sensationalist tabloid. The reason they don't
| publish retractions is NOT because of the airtight
| integrity of their reporting.
| rootsudo wrote:
| A sign of respect, but the NYpost was never given that option
| and immediately went into suppression, and it did not turn
| out to be false information.
|
| Meanwhile, CNN and NYTIMES post content and retract it in
| higher amounts, and they never were surpressed, locked out of
| their account or even had twitter force to fix "itself" by
| now agreeing that they'd "wouldn't" remove content but now
| just "flag it."
|
| That, is not respect, that is an alliance.
| rootsudo wrote:
| So all discussion regarding this is going to be flagged?
| dang wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890813
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