[HN Gopher] White House deletes tweet after Twitter adds 'contex... ___________________________________________________________________ White House deletes tweet after Twitter adds 'context' note Author : rmason Score : 241 points Date : 2022-11-04 19:11 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.politico.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com) | dstola wrote: | okdood64 wrote: | You think just a few days into Elon's lordship of Twitter he | was able to "turn-on" fact checking for the current | administration? (Assuming it wasn't being applied being equally | before.) | | I'd imagine it would take more time. | ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: | Given what's going on there I don't doubt it, incentives have | changed. Like that time the republicans saw themselves | getting tens of thousands of additional followers upon the | announcement of the acquisition. | rideontime wrote: | This is a community-provided note. Elon had nothing to do with | it, but confirmation bias is in full effect. | dstola wrote: | Have you ever seen White House getting fact-checked with | democrats in power before the acquisition? If there is any | bias going on its from people that have a bone to pick with | Elon and his choices | | The fact that my comment got flagged for some odd reason | highlights the fact that people (including on HN) dont want | to hear that Elon is making twitter better and less biased | bena wrote: | You do know Twitter hasn't existed for that long, right. It | was founded in 2006. | | The @POTUS account wasn't created until 2015. | | Twitter in the political space is still relatively new. | You're getting flagged for naked partisanship. | dstola wrote: | Twitter is not new though. It had sway in 2016 and 2012 | elections with prominent personalities doing public | relation on the platform. Saying its new to political | space is pretty disingenuous | | > You're getting flagged for naked partisanship | | So you're allowed to support democrat agenda "nakedly", | but not any other. Got it. | bena wrote: | This is the third president in the age of Twitter. It's | use in the political space has been expanding. It has had | to adapt. | | And I would say it didn't really have much sway in the | 2012 election. It existed, politicians reached out on it, | but it wasn't as major a platform as it became. | | Which is part of the reason why it took until 2015 for an | account explicitly for the President to be created. They | were still figuring it out. Platforms themself checking | facts wasn't a thing until the last few years. Before it | was organizations like Snopes, Politifact, etc. | | > So you're allowed to support democrat agenda "nakedly", | but not any other. Got it. | | No one is saying that. But your partisanship is blatantly | obvious and a bit tiring. | nickpinkston wrote: | Imagine if an AI system could actually generate annotations like | this... Probably too much to ask and fraught with issues, but I'd | love to see what it'd do to misinfo behavior | throwthere wrote: | Hard to discuss this without getting political and violating all | sorts of decorum but, I guess, the system worked here? | | The original White House tweet: > "Seniors are | getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in | 10 years through President Biden's leadership | | The reality: Inflation triggered an automatic increase in social | security benefits because of a 1972 law that indexes social | security checks to cost of living. | | I guess it's odd claiming you did good thing X, when in reality | it was bad thing Y that automatically caused good thing X. But | even that's not right, because in inflation-adjusted terms, good | thing X actually wasn't good at all, it was just neutral. | peteradio wrote: | "Through Biden's leadership" | | Biden had been in the Senate for like 150 years so who knows | maybe he did have some impact there. | kingTug wrote: | Ironically Biden's pre-whitehouse career involved a lot of | wanting to make cuts to social security. | exabrial wrote: | I mean if we're being fully pedantic, _technically_ it's | correct. Biden lead a huge surge in spending, which caused | inflation, which caused Social Security checks to | increase........ | | /s because the interenet | snarf21 wrote: | I agree this is weird. I guess it is meant to highlight the | other party wants to get rid of social security. It is strange | though to take credit for not doing something that someone else | says they will do in the future. | robomartin wrote: | > the other party wants to get rid of social security | | You should not repeat fake news. This isn't true. | Promulgating made-up narratives does not help anyone. | prepend wrote: | What party wants to get rid of social security? I'm not aware | of any party with this in its platform or any major | candidates running with this position. | nullc wrote: | > is meant to highlight the other party wants to get rid of | social security | | I didn't know if eliminating social security was actually a | part of the republican platform, though it seemed very | unlikely. | | I googled and found: | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/false- | cla... | RunningDroid wrote: | Counterpoint from a quick DDG search: | https://www.marketwatch.com/story/yes-some-republican- | senato... | | Tl;Dr: cuts, not elimination | atdrummond wrote: | Lee, Johnson and Scott are outside the GOP mainstream on | this one. Even historically Republicans who have wanted | to "kill SS" have wanted to replace it with something | like they have in parts of Texas (https://www.forbes.com/ | sites/merrillmatthews/2011/05/12/how-...). | | Hell, Nixon (before he stepped down) was ready to push | for a negative income tax. | smileysteve wrote: | Rick Scott, chair of the National Republican Senatorial | Committee - is outside the GOP mainstream. Interesting | context. | partiallypro wrote: | "Some Republicans" doesn't mean it's the party platform. | Some Democrats have advocated nationalization of some | social media platforms, that doesn't make it the party | platform. | smileysteve wrote: | Rick Scott, chair of the National Republican Senatorial | Committee | alistairSH wrote: | The GOP has been against Social Security from the start. | Their stated goal has changed variously from | privatization, or voluntary enrollment, to simply | slashing benefits. | | Goldwater, Reagan, Bush all wanted to vastly reduce SS or | privatize it completely. | | More recently, the GOP congress at the end of Obama's | term pushed him hard to compromise on cuts. | | In 2016, Trump was unique among GOP presidential | candidates in not calling for cuts. | | In April of this year, Rick Scott (chair of GOP campaign | apparatus) called for adding a "kill switch" on SS, | Medicare, and MedicAid. Current minority leader | (McCarthy) wants to couple the debt ceiling and social | programs. | | The only reason the GOP hasn't killed SS yet is because | it's a popular program. | partiallypro wrote: | Cuts and privatization aren't "getting rid of" which is | what this thread is about. It's like when Democrats want | to reform something, Republicans will claim Democrats | want to get rid of it. Which is false. Same here. I'm | pretty sick of it and wish people would stop falling for | things like that, when the proposed policies are actually | very complex. Would privatization be bad? I don't know, | I've never seen a good retort other than "markets have | downturns." Would limiting firearms to someone 21+ be | bad? I don't think so, but the only thing I hear against | it is 18 year olds can be in the military. Those | arguments somehow work on people. I guess real gripes | about it don't fit into campaign ads or speeches. | parineum wrote: | > The only reason the GOP hasn't killed SS yet is because | it's a popular program. | | That's the only reason politicians do anything. | pessimizer wrote: | It's important to note that Democrats have been against | Social Security since B. Clinton, and have made more than | one attempt to privatize it. Obama set up the Bowles- | Simpson commission to cut Social Security, and forced a | moron like Paul Ryan into the spotlight as an "expert." | | Obama is now for Social Security, now that he's out of | power and he can make promises that the administration | doesn't have to keep. | BitwiseFool wrote: | Indeed, and partisan politicians in safe seats also like | to float ideas they know don't have a realistic chance of | advancing in order to appeal to their ideological base. | Every now and then Ted Cruz tweets about "Abolishing the | IRS", a prospect I don't think any GOP policymakers are | actually willing to fight for. They'll pay lip service to | it, however. | ahallock wrote: | People were saying this exact thing under the tweet. So that's | probably why it was deleted. | mensetmanusman wrote: | My favorite DC sound bite: | | "In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of | increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a | sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case | for reelection." - Hugo Rossi | nullc wrote: | > President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of | inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting | president used the third derivative to advance his case for | reelection. | | I can't think of a more fitting _jerk_. | | (though arguably Nixon was actually talking about a fourth | derivative (of price)...) | weberer wrote: | - Civilization V | throwthere wrote: | - mensetmanusman | TremendousJudge wrote: | In my country we have a lowered VAT under certain | circumstances. We had a new government tell us they were | "reducing the VAT discount to half", just to avoid the word | "raise", since they had promised that no taxes would be raised. | I was reminded of that quote then -- in this case they were | using the multiplication of two negatives rule. | moralestapia wrote: | That would be the 2nd (derivative) right? | jlrubin wrote: | money = money(t) | | inflation = d money / dt | | rate of increase of inflation = d^2 money / dt^2 | | rate of change in rate of increase of inflation = d^3 money / | dt^3 | | rate of increase of inflation was decreasing = sign(d^3 money | / dt^3) | moralestapia wrote: | Huh? | | I parse it as, | | money = money(t) | | inflation = d money / dt | | rate of change (increase or decrease) on inflation = d^2 | money / dt^2 | | ^^^^ and this is the one w/ a low value | eyegor wrote: | I believe they're counting inflation itself as a derivative | lilyball wrote: | Inflation is the first derivative. The rate of increase of | inflation is the 2nd derivative. The idea that the rate of | increase of deflation is itself decreasing would then be the | 3rd derivative (think "the rate of the rate of increase of | inflation is negative") | realgeniushere wrote: | Biden said a similar thing recently, bragging that the (high) | rate of inflation was holding steady. | pakyr wrote: | When? He bragged in July when the MoM rate was zero and the | YoY rate fell by half a percent. I can't find him bragging | anywhere that the rate is holding steady though. | hartator wrote: | > When? He bragged in July when the MoM rate was zero and | the YoY rate fell by half a percent. | | I think it was MoM rate that was -0.5%, YoY rate was still | above 8%. | pakyr wrote: | The MoM rate (the amount prices increased in July) was | zero (down from 1.3% in June), not -0.5%, meaning that | prices stayed the same. If it had been -0.5%, that would | have meant prices decreased in July by half a percent. | The YoY rate is what fell by 0.6% (not 0.5% like I | thought), meaning that prices had risen a total of 8.5% | since July 2021, a decrease from 9.1% in June (vs. June | 2021). | totalZero wrote: | He did so on 60 Minutes about a month ago: | | https://youtu.be/HfNnuQOHAaw?t=15 | pakyr wrote: | Can't tell if he's trying to say that it only went up a | little in September ("was 8.2 before"), but if he is then | he's wrong - the YoY rate has come down every month since | July.[1] So we still haven't passed the second derivative | (which he did brag about in January apparently). | | [1] | https://www.statista.com/statistics/273418/unadjusted- | monthl... | hailwren wrote: | Not the one gp was referencing, but here's the Reagan quote | pretty much verbatim from Biden: | | "we are making progress in slowing the rate of price | increases." | | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/12/biden-says-cpi-inflation- | rep... | pakyr wrote: | >0.9% in October, 0.8% in November and 0.5% in December, | according to the Labor Department. | | Definitely similarly tone deaf, but in this case he was | bragging about the second derivative, not the third - | prices continued to increase, but the rate of increase | (inflation) was indeed falling. | purpleblue wrote: | That feature is really awesome and game changing I think, as long | as it can't be gamed or brigaded, etc. | jedberg wrote: | I thought during the last admin someone decided it was illegal | for the President to delete tweets or block users because they | become Presidential records as soon as they are created. | akomtu wrote: | Hypothetical scenario: if the Ministry of Truth erases all the | records of an inconvenient event in the past, would it be | "misinfornation" to mention that fact? | Waterluvian wrote: | If we're thinking about the same situation, it was whether the | President can block people, thus excluding them from civic | discourse. | | They can mute people but not block them. | codefreeordie wrote: | I recall a time a few years ago when it was deemed illegal for | the president to delete Twitter content | TimTheTinker wrote: | Each US presidential administration I've been under has always | cited cherry-picked, sound-bite US statistics -- and has the gall | to take credit for them. It's like someone's constantly watching | the metrics, and every positive blip becomes a candidate for | being a talking point. | | They take cruel advantage of how opaque the connections are | between the macroeconomic, political, and social inputs, and the | outputs as experienced by individuals. | | Even worse, talking points like that prime people to _expect_ the | government to be constantly manipulating variables in the | economy, which causes inefficiency and necessarily leads to more | unelected officials running more of the country -- since constant | manipulation is inaccessible to legislators. | happytoexplain wrote: | >It's like someone's constantly watching the metrics, and every | positive blip becomes a candidate for being a talking point. | | I would add "or negative", and I wouldn't qualify it with "it's | like". As far as I can tell, this is the one-sentence | description of how the public face of politics works, | everywhere, always. | hackyhacky wrote: | Of course the administration uses cherry-picked statistics to | get credit. And of course the opponents of the administration | use cherry-picked statistics to criticize the administration. | | Beyond obvious short-term political goals, the reason for this | is simple: in a machine as large and complicated as the | government, it's really really hard to accurately ascribe | meaningful credit (or guilt) for any change, and especially to | do so in a way that is understandable by voters. | | Each administration makes changes (positive and negative) that | won't be felt by voters for decades, if at all; and under each | administration, voters endure the consequences (positive and | negative) of previous administrations. But that doesn't get | people to the polls, so why talk about it. | rsj_hn wrote: | This is also true for other large bureaucracies. I see this | type of cherry picking and fighting over credit often at work | as well. | akira2501 wrote: | > it's really really hard to accurately ascribe meaningful | credit (or guilt) for any change | | It's a bitter pill to swallow that I not only have to give | these people my money to do this work, but they're wasting | time trying to ascribe credit or blame for it. | | > and especially to do so in a way that is understandable by | voters. | | This is the old "voters are actually stupid" idea. I don't | buy it. Voters seem to have no problem deciding for | themselves who deserves what credit, what politicians want is | to market their "success" and to pass off their "failure." | | Again.. using our own funds to do it. I find the whole thing | inappropriate. If we decide to credit you, you will be re- | elected, if we decide to blame you, we will invoke the | courts.. and I doubt they will have a "really really hard | time ascribing guilt" to the appropriate party. | [deleted] | yamtaddle wrote: | > This is the old "voters are actually stupid" idea. I | don't buy it. Voters seem to have no problem deciding for | themselves who deserves what credit, what politicians want | is to market their "success" and to pass off their | "failure." | | It's been studied and is kinda true. You can pretty | reliably do something like, over a controversial tax hike | that affected 2% of the population, get 30% of respondents | to claim it made their taxes go up, if there was a heavy | media push about how it'd make everyone's taxes go up, and | that's for something they should have _direct_ experience | with. You can also do things like get an amusingly-high | percentage of people who oppose various social programs by | name to tell you they 'd support a law to replace them with | some other program you describe... that's identical to what | the program already does. Then there's all the people who | tell you how much more dangerous America is now than when | they were growing up in the 1960s or 70s. | | I dunno about dumb, but voters' views are rather less | connected to reality than one might hope, and seem to have | a whole lot more to do with what they're being told by | pundits. | kaba0 wrote: | Thanks, interesting comment. | | Thinking along, could we perhaps rather vote on things | that worry us, instead of people (or sometimes just a | color) that may (likely not) do something about it? E.g. | salary of teachers, climate change, etc. | | And then every law/change has to be derived from that | "wishlist". Because political programs, while originally | similar, have been misused greatly. It is still prone to | abuse, but perhaps it would increase accountability of | politicians and decrease the amount of laws that are only | meant to distract the public from something much worse in | the background. But surely everyone wants "free beer and | immortality" (the program of a joke party where I live), | so it would likely fail for other reasons, but a more | direct democracy also has the shortcome of.. well, dumb | people. | mjevans wrote: | Emotions, rather than logic. Irrespective of party, for a | sadly large portion of voters. Not everyone in every | party, maybe more in some parties than others (I don't | have any data for that, this is just a theory / | supposition); but even for whatever party you the reader | is most aligned with, there will be some who blindly | follow that party and do not think for themselves. | kaba0 wrote: | While I agree with you, I think it is easy to think of | ourselves as "we are not the ones that are emotional, we | think logically". But the thing is, human beings are just | emotional to the core and every sensory input is sensed | as per the actual emotional state we are in, biased | towards our inherent biases. | | Party alignment has unfortunately devolved into this "us | vs them" pack mentality, and at this point I honestly | question the point of parties at all. Why don't we | instead vote on individuals only, and make parties | straight up illegal? | [deleted] | lisper wrote: | > Voters seem to have no problem deciding for themselves | who deserves what credit | | That is certainly true, but they have a lot of trouble | making these kinds of decisions _correctly_. Much of the | time there is an objective fact of the matter regarding the | causality between policy and outcome, but discerning it is | very hard. In particular, for economic policy the time lag | between cause and effect is commonly measured in months or | years, and that can be very hard to unwind. | noasaservice wrote: | I take it you've never seen the 'joke' political surveys | that ask the following: | | "Do you want to repeal suffrage?" | | And naturally, most have no clue that has to do with | women's voting rights, and asking to repeal them. | | Voters are very stupid. And when a group gets smarter, | gerrymandering comes in to 'lower the average'. | skissane wrote: | > "Do you want to repeal suffrage?" | | > And naturally, most have no clue that has to do with | women's voting rights, and asking to repeal them. | | "Women's suffrage" is the right of women to vote. | "Suffrage" itself is simply who gets the right to vote. | "Repeal women's suffrage" has a very clear meaning, | "repeal suffrage" is vague and unclear what is being | repealed. Women's suffrage? Universal male suffrage? | (Once upon a time, most men couldn't vote, since they | didn't meet the property qualifications.) Abolish | elections altogether? (Use sortition? Introduce a | dictatorship?) | | People aren't stupid to be confused by a confusing | question. | rootusrootus wrote: | > "Suffrage" itself is simply who gets the right to vote. | | No, suffrage is the right to vote. Not who. So 'repeal | suffrage' simply means repealing the right to vote. It is | not confusing, just absurd. | skissane wrote: | Is abolishing elections and replacing them by sortition | (legislative juries) "absurd"? A very radical proposal, | but doesn't seem inherently "absurd" to me. And of | course, under such a system, nobody has suffrage (unless | one means the suffrage of jurors on a jury.) | [deleted] | Aunche wrote: | > This is the old "voters are actually stupid" idea. | | I don't think that voters are necessarily stupid. They just | happen to act stupidly because they treat politics as | entertainment rather than their civic duty. If people | dedicated their time trying to learn about policy instead | of browse memes and articles that affirm their beliefs, | we'd be much better off. | kaba0 wrote: | Well, unfortunately I do think that voters are stupid. | For every smart people you know there is someone on the | other side of the IQ distribution and you are just quite | likely to be surrounded with a smarter bunch, biasing you | towards thinking that the "average" is better than it | actually is. | | Not the US, but I have read several reports of "vote | counters" in Hungary and the amount of people that had to | ask which of the options is (surprise) the right-wind, | populist Orban is astonishing. And while illiteracy for | example may well be worth in Hungary, the general idea is | true of every country. | hackyhacky wrote: | > It's a bitter pill to swallow that I not only have to | give these people my money to do this work, but they're | wasting time trying to ascribe credit or blame for it. | | I agree, it is a bitter pill. The alternative is to live in | a society where leaders don't need the goodwill of the | people in order to rule, and therefore have no interest in | proclaiming their accomplishments. Fortunately, there are | lots of dictatorships for you to choose from. | | > Voters seem to have no problem deciding for themselves | who deserves what credit, | | Voters certainly decide, but I see little evidence that | they decide accurately. It's not that they're stupid, it's | just that (a) they don't understand how the government or | the economy work and (b) have no collective memory. So, | they decide, if there is inflation under the Biden | administration, it must be Biden's fault, QED. | thrown_22 wrote: | dustingetz wrote: | the problem is voters are uneducated, or rather the | distribution of education will always be uneven so there | will always be undesirable selection effects that every | elected politician must definitionally survive | elmomle wrote: | It would be good to have sane conversations in this country | about what we can learn from the past few years (in which I | think both this administration and the previous one could | be accused of serious blunders and politicking) but | pointing fingers is not a helpful contribution. | thrown_22 wrote: | It would be nice to have a sane conversation. That | however is impossible when one side has decided that the | other side should be muzzled, viz. every post even | remotely critical of democrats getting flagged here, or | until recently getting you banned off twitter. | jasmer wrote: | I think this is a bit hyperbolic language. | | It's not 'cruel' for any administration to indicate basic | realities without some arbitrary historical and legal context. | | While we should be eternally vigilant and skeptical, the lack | of very specific context in this case is nowhere near a blatant | manipulation. | | In fact, I would say the 'problem' is maybe the opposite - I am | somewhat more skeptical that this is a 'Musk led personal | intervention' to draw arbitrary cynicism towards a political | entity he does not like - playing 'moral equivalence' games | with people who say "The economy is doing good!" (without | nuanced context) and "I won the election!" (without the obvious | 'context' that the statement is literally false, or blatantly | misleading). | | That said, it's just skepticism, I really can't say one way or | the other obviously. | | There's clearly a grey threshold in what we can tolerate from | government and political statements, and it's very hard to | fathom where that line is - but this one is not near that line. | | If any administration wants to claim "Lowest unemployment | ever!" in a Tweet, well then that's fine. They can say that as | long as it's true, a history lesson is not needed in this case. | | In any case, if they are going to do this, they need a set of | publicly stated criteria for it, and they need to apply the | criteria objectively and consistently. | kaimalcolm wrote: | My question then is, would/will the same fact-checking apply | to a different government that Musk does support? He's been | pushing for this equal fact checking and equal platform for | both parties, but as far as I can tell we're not seeing these | banners anywhere on politics Twitter besides official | government accounts. | TimTheTinker wrote: | > It's not 'cruel' for any administration to indicate the | obvious facts without some arbitrary historical and legal | context. | | Yes, it is. A leader's first responsibility is to tell the | truth -- and citing misleading statistics is worse than an | outright lie. | | It is cruel to lie to people in a way that causes them harm. | gleenn wrote: | Unless I'm not understanding the article, it seems like the | tweet was truthful, the payout is the highest it's been. Is | that entirely due to Biden, less clear. Could also be just | adjusting to inflation, also true. But how many things are | not adjusted to inflation, so even if the only reason the | payout is highest is because of inflation, well at least | they are making it match and not ignoring it like a million | other things. There are no lies here, only things which | might be hard to attribute. And I think it's reasonable to | attribute this to Biden in all but the most narrow of | interpretations. | pessimizer wrote: | > Could also be just adjusting to inflation | | Could also be? You definitely are not understanding the | article. | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | For anyone else that didn't read the first paragraph of | the article, here it is: | | > The White House deleted a Twitter post on Wednesday | touting an increase in Social Security benefits for | seniors after the social media platform added a "context" | note pointing out that the increase was tied to a 1972 | law requiring automatic increases _based on cost of | living changes_. | | Emphasis is mine; added for "context". :) | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | > "Lowest unemployment ever!" | | This is a different kind of statement when it's not hedged in | any way as compared to the tweet as quoted in the article. | | > "Seniors are getting _the biggest increase_ in their Social | Security checks _in 10 years_ through President Biden's | leadership" (emphasis mine) | | Of course it's easy to assume that they said "the biggest | increase" to make it sound as good as possible and it's easy | to assume that they said "in 10 years" because they didn't | want to just lie. But then, why did they need to include | "through President Biden's leadership"? Isn't that | technically false if it happened "through 50-year-old | legislation"? | | That being said, why do you think that statement isn't | intentionally misleading? Or if you do think it's | intentionally misleading, why do you think the context | shouldn't be added? I don't buy that it's arbitrary; it's | clearly relevant to the statement that was made. | | Certainly I'd agree that this policy is absolutely _ripe_ for | abuse (through arbitrary application) but so far I haven 't | seen a reason for people to think that it will be or has been | abused, barring the assumptions they choose to make. | treeman79 wrote: | Over spending / printing money by the government is the | cause of inflation. | | So if Biden wants to take credit for that. Let him. | zwily wrote: | My reaction when I saw that tweet was "is the White House | seriously blaming our record inflation on Biden's | leadership?" | EricDeb wrote: | partially, it is happening worldwide though | pastacacioepepe wrote: | > the lack of very specific context in this case is nowhere | near a blatant manipulation | | I disagree. First of all the increase wasn't Biden's | administration merit and that's one blatant lie. | | Then if the social security benefits have increased only to | keep up with inflation, to celebrate this as positive is | clearly misinformation. Those receiving the benefits are as | poor as they were before, while society as a whole becomes | poorer. Nothing to celebrate here. | simonsarris wrote: | It's pretty wild how the @whitehouse twitter account is used. | If you looked at only the ones about the price of gas you'd get | the impression its been a great ride. | | May 2021 (with forecast!) | https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1398685824934363138 | | Dec 2021 | https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/1470870982588088325 | | August 2022 | https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/1554497308024311809 | z9znz wrote: | Are you implying that the whitehouse twitter only got stupid | starting in 2021? Granted, that account was not so loud in | 2016-2020 as perhaps now (maybe... I haven't counted tweets) | because the president of that time was tweeting 10+ times per | day (some really unmatched crazy shit too). | pessimizer wrote: | Is the point of bringing up Trump to say that he is a bad | person who was doing the same thing, therefore that thing | is good? Or are we just making lists of people who have | lied? | z9znz wrote: | I'm objecting to the parent post starting with 2021 as | the year to note that the whitehouse account was posting | stupid things. That implies that it was not being stupid | prior to 2021, when in contrast the most historically | asinine tweets in existence (at least from people in | places of high authority) occurred in the 2015-2020 | range. | | Tweets in general are not good. Most are pointless, many | are stupid, some are evil, and sadly only a few are worth | existing. So I'm not suggesting that current White House | tweets are good. They are just not remarkable in | comparison to the tweets from the previous period. | robertlagrant wrote: | ...from another account. | totalZero wrote: | Seems fair game to compare Biden's White House tweets to | the tweets from Trump's account while he was the sitting | President. | z9znz wrote: | You're welcome to scroll thru | https://twitter.com/whitehouse45 if you can stand it. | Granted most of it is about every holiday, the | decorations for that holiday, the holiday decoration | preparations, and the occasional other redecorating | courtesy of the First Decorator. | | But you definitely can find BS things similar to the one | from the social security topic. | | "President @realDonaldTrump has done more to lower | medicine prices than any President in history!" | (unsurprisingly it's hyperbolic and almost completely | lacking any truth or evidence; the evidence points to an | opposite result) | | I'm not going to dig thru the pile to prove you wrong. | But you're wrong. | | Edit: Ok, I just have to add this gem. "This | Administration is "tackling longstanding problems that no | other Administration had the guts to do," @SeemaCMS | says." | | That period was just chock full of useless tweets or | outright false tweets. | thepasswordis wrote: | Most (all?) of the things that Trump was posting he was | posting from his personal account. | the_third_wave wrote: | It is the new Chewbacca defence [1], whenever the | discussion deviates from the desired narrative it is | enough to bring on a variation on 'but Trump did XXX' or | 'at least it was not as bad as Trump' or 'just like | Trump' to derail it. | | Now that the precedent has been set this is likely to | continue with one side using the mentioned _but Trump_ | arguments which are countered with _at least he was not | as bad as Biden_. Rinse, repeat, ad infinitum et | delirium. | | [1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chewbacca_Defense | EricDeb wrote: | I believe the point is that, yes what biden did here is | bad, but what trump did regularly was significantly worse | (especially calling into question the 2020 election) | nullc wrote: | This one was essentially choice since, with the relevant | context, the tweet essentially was attributing near record | inflation to Biden's leadership. | TimTheTinker wrote: | Yeah, it's ironic that their claiming responsibility for | "inflation-based increase" in social security is correct -- | because of their loose monetary policy that caused massive | inflation. | hackyhacky wrote: | Not really: inflation is happening all over the world, not | just in the US. In fact, the US has some of the lowest | inflation among western nations. | | The cause of inflation is the economic hit from Covid and | our response to it. So my original point stands: the world | is complicated, and it's naive to say "Biden caused | inflation." | makomk wrote: | From what I can tell, the US had the highest inflation in | the G7 until the Fed started hiking interest rates more | aggressively than the rest of the world to get it under | control. This was particularly noticable to me since once | they did the UK became the G7 member with the highest | inflation and our media started pointing at that as proof | of our government's economic incompetence in a way that | the US media very obviously had not. | atdrummond wrote: | Yes - the Fed is (for better or worse) more independent | and agile than the ECB. Being responsive to only a single | nation's government (even when you're the global reserve | currency) has its perks. | atdrummond wrote: | Loose monetary policy is what enabled the US to respond | to COVID in the manner it decided to. I don't think | you're being charitable to the poster you're replying to | when you say "it's complicated" then place much of the | blame on the very factor said poster identified. | smileysteve wrote: | Don't lose the "Biden administration" context. | | The majority of Covid debt originated prior to January | 20th 2021, and with a GOP majority in the Senate. Of the | $1400 stimulus sent to individuals, the previous | President, the previous Senate Majority Leader, and the 2 | incumbent Senate candidates (that didn't win) each | campaigned on the equivalent of the $1400. The previous | administration is also on record as rejecting audit | measures for the Payment Protection Program. The previous | administration nominated the fed chairman that increased | the federal reserve balance sheet and tools well beyond | 2008-2009, while also not adjusting the pace despite the | federal stimulus above (and other stimulus until Fall | 2021) | ajross wrote: | > Loose monetary policy is what enabled the US to respond | to COVID in the manner it decided to. | | This still fails to explain why the US is seeing _lower_ | inflation than most of the rest of the world, almost none | of which has the borrowing capacity of the US federal | government. | ravel-bar-foo wrote: | The US is the world reserve currency, so in uncertain | times investors in foreign countries buy dollars. This is | the only reason why the US is not currently seeing | inflation rates of 20 or 30% per year. | | The rest of the world is not uniformly seeing inflation. | I heard this morning that Canada is at 3.5%. Korea is at | 6%, and this is driven by import prices, since the USD is | at high demand. | | Domestically to the US, it's more complicated. Boomers | are retiring causing a labor crunch, but businesses are | attaining record profits which just about match the | magnitude of price increases. | jallen_dot_dev wrote: | But the bulk of the response to COVID (what hackyhacky is | arguing) did not happen under the current administration, | so wouldn't be due to their policies (what TimTheTinker | is arguing). | dools wrote: | Monetary policy is the setting of interest rates by the | central bank. Fiscal policy is taxing and spending. | Monetary policy has been more or less zero since the GFC. | dools wrote: | Monetary policy is the setting of interest rates by the | central bank. Fiscal policy is taxing and spending. | Monetary policy has been more or less zero since the GFC. | | BTW loose fiscal policy did not cause inflation. | [deleted] | mc32 wrote: | Question, is/was the Tweet covered under the Presidential | Records Act? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act | codingdave wrote: | In short, no - there was a bill to make it so, but it died: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVFEFE_Act | mym1990 wrote: | A lot of people here are annoyed by this behavior(rightly so), | but the reality is that a lot of supporters take these bites of | info and run for miles with it. This isn't just governments | either, you'll see 20 minute trash videos on YouTube that | extrapolate upon one data point into a "this is why the world is | collapsing" thing just to get a few million views. | aaron695 wrote: | dotnet00 wrote: | A bit of extra context to this is in a similar note on | https://twitter.com/RealSpikeCohen/status/158787313726963712... | which clarifies that the feature had been in beta since January | 2021 and was not related to Musk's purchase. | h43z wrote: | Have there been these "context notes" before? | r00fus wrote: | Definitely not for Trump - it's a recent twitter feature (pre- | Musk). But it's usage recently has spiked and is more like a | pinned reply. | partiallypro wrote: | You sound like someone that hasn't used Twitter or has a | short memory span, because they did direct fact checks. This | was also an official government account vs a personal account | (which is what Trump was using.) Twitter also evolved their | system because of Trump's ramblings. | bena wrote: | Yes. But now it's something different. The "context" notes | are user submitted/voted by a selection of users. | | The previous system was more of a group at twitter who | verified statements. The claim is that the new "context" | process is more transparent and/or egalitarian. When the | truth of the matter is that it's just going to devolve into | being abused by the "well ackshually" crowd. | | It's also interesting to note that the same sort of context | disappeared from one of Musk's tweets. So, I guess, what's | good for the goose is not good for the gander. | jandrese wrote: | > The "context" notes are user submitted/voted by a | selection of users. | | Oh, so you are saying they can be gamed for political | benefit? Whomever has the biggest botnet gets to control | the narrative? | nightski wrote: | Alternative viewpoints is not controlling a narrative. | jandrese wrote: | If every comment you make gets appended with "Actually: | vaccines cause autism" then that's narrative control. | partiallypro wrote: | Of course, that's not remotely how the system works or | has been used. This goes into what I've said elsewhere | today regarding Twitter. I've seen SO much hyperbole on | what's going on, when almost nothing at all is going on | in terms of moderation changes. It's so very hyper- | partisan at the moment. | hersko wrote: | By Trump they directly "fact" checked the tweets. | r00fus wrote: | There are thousands of Trump's tweets that were bald-faced | lies that did not get fact checked. Instead people replied | in the comments. | | That one or two of his tweets may have gotten a "<!> may be | inaccurate" advisory is completely different from this kind | of "community". | lawn wrote: | I always thought Trump's tweets were a big reason for | these context notes being added in the first place. | bpodgursky wrote: | Yeah but the tooling has evolved over time. If those got | tweeted today, there would be "context" added on many of | them. | roflyear wrote: | Let's see if that is true! We should find out, right? | bpodgursky wrote: | If you have a 80 million follow account, go for it. Not | sure what you're suggesting. | pessimizer wrote: | There are constitutional questions raised when | intermediaries are editing a POTUS's communications. Just | like there were constitutional questions that kept him from | banning people. | | edit: while I love the event that sparked this thread, I | would be upset if they were adding this shit to Biden's | personal account. | awb wrote: | > I would be upset if they were adding this shit to | Biden's personal account | | I'm not sure if it's codified anywhere, but I don't think | a sitting US President is afforded the luxury of a | personal life while in office, outside of personal non- | political relationships. Otherwise, the POTUS would just | pick and choose when they were acting as a President and | when they weren't as a legal loophole. | | So, any public communication, wether on an official or | personal account, would be considered an act of the POTUS | while they're in office, no? If so, then I don't know why | you'd treat it any differently than an official WH | account, especially if the personal account is being used | to discuss current political events relating to their | role as POTUS. | [deleted] | supernova87a wrote: | I wonder how deep the economic analysis will go to decide that a | tweet needs "context"? | | For example, if an administration (cough) touts that this year's | economic growth has been among the highest in a decade and that | an increase in spending is "paid for", but that's just because a | last year's index point was in the toilet because of a pandemic | and we're getting back to where we were before... | | Who decides whether that's context-worthy? | kreetx wrote: | > According to a description under the annotation, "Context is | written > by people who use Twitter, and appears when | rated helpful by others." | nomel wrote: | > appears when rated helpful by others. | | Here's someone with possible details: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33474196 | jaybaxter wrote: | Hi! Birdwatch ML Engineer here-- these context notes are from | Birdwatch. They are written and rated by users, and the notes are | only added as context to Tweets if they are rated highly enough | by multiple raters who have tended to disagree in the past. The | core algorithm is open source as well as all of the data, and | there is lots of public documentation about it too: | | https://twitter.github.io/birdwatch/ | | https://twitter.com/birdwatch/status/1585794012052611076?s=2... | | https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.15723.pdf | [deleted] | Waterluvian wrote: | BothSides(tm) does this and it annoys me: taking credit for some | previously legislated action, or gas price drop or whatever. It's | disingenuous, distracting, and makes me think the government | thinks I'm a moron. | lesuorac wrote: | I'm not sure which Green took credit for something they didn't | do but I'm looking forward to the days of anything but first- | past-the-post so parties can be held accountable. | kube-system wrote: | Voters are morons. The president has vanishingly little ability | to control the economy. Even the fed, who have significant | power to affect economic policy, have little power to bend it | to their will. | | The economy we experience today is the result of the sum of | decisions around the world being made today, and for the past | dozen years. Even the most powerful people on earth are just a | breeze against the runaway semi truck that is the economy. | deepsquirrelnet wrote: | I know I'm not the only person who watched the movie | idiocracy, but "the 'conomy" is polling at the top of the | list of issues for this election cycle. | | Just once I'd like to see an actual economist debate some | politicians who love act like them, despite having no | qualifications and nothing but a list of talking points to | back them up. We can all hope that this new crop of | temperature readers will help educate JP and the fed about | monetary policy. | ALittleLight wrote: | I would prefer a system where the candidates setup a | hierarchy of experts and advisors. The experts then debate | each other on their policy positions - both long live | debates and by exchange of essays. Then, a third party sums | up key position differences and the two parties get to | revise until they are satisfied - basically a list of | policy differences. Finally, every voter takes a test where | the questions ask them to assign policy positions to a | candidate - e.g. "Which candidate's team supports X". The | top 20, 10, 50 whatever percent of votes are used and the | rest are discarded. This system lets us know that the | voters know who they are voting for. | | Oh, and that team of advisors and experts needs to be | installed somehow in the cabinet. You wouldn't want a | candidate to just get a team of persuasive people to get | elected and then ignored. | twblalock wrote: | The president and the Fed have enormous power over the | economy. If they spoke carelessly and spooked the markets, | they could cause a crash any day of the week. Look at what | happened in the UK in their small economy, and imagine how | much worse it would be if the US president did it. | | The Fed's low rates are also largely responsible for the way | the economy behaved since 2008. | kube-system wrote: | The economy is like a running a relay race. Major players | have significant power to screw it up, but they have little | ability to fix screw ups caused by someone else. | [deleted] | BurningFrog wrote: | Voters are pretty smart. | | They just don't focus a lot of their smartness on electoral | issues, since the personal payoff is so near non existent. | smileysteve wrote: | To confuse intelligence and smarts, and rip off George | Carlin, the average voter has an IQ of 100. | EricDeb wrote: | no they're not the payoff is so near non existent because | they don't focus on electoral issues but cultural issues | adolph wrote: | Yes, if it were any different they would need to register | as lobbyists. | | A disinterested yet divided electorate illustrates how well | things are going since people focus on major differences | with minor significance rather than sweating the details of | minor differences with major significance. | stefan_ wrote: | It's beyond even the economy. Surely voters realize gas can't | cost $4 forever? Even if we continue never increasing the | taxes on it to match inflation, or road spending? | | The discussions just around this one commodity, where the | average person has major influence on their own consumption, | are mind boggling. | kube-system wrote: | If I go back to my rural hometown, people will tell me with | a straight face that the EPA should be abolished so that we | can have 99 cent gasoline again like the late 90s. | readthenotes1 wrote: | Are you a voter? | | Just asking... | andrewflnr wrote: | A good-faith reading of a statement like "voters are | morons" almost always takes it as an approximation, | sufficient to describe the bulk behavior, not an absolute | universal quantifier. | lesuorac wrote: | Only like 25% of the US votes so it's a decent chance the | poster isn't a voter. | kube-system wrote: | I've cast my share of moronic votes during my lifetime. | bombcar wrote: | I mean if you work out the cost-benefit analysis of voting | in national elections, it looks damn like the lottery ... | antognini wrote: | I went through the math on the expected value of a vote | in the last election [1], and if you're in a swing state | I found that the expected value of your vote is | surprisingly high. I estimated that a voter in | Pennsylvania in 2020 would have had an expected value of | about $3000. Of course, as with the lottery, the | probability of a payoff is extremely low. | | [1]: https://joe-antognini.github.io/misc/decisive-vote | buerkle wrote: | I'll be honest, I didn't read your expected value | article. But did it take account the difference in power | voters have based on number of electoral votes per state? | For example, Wyoming has 3 electoral votes and only | 580,000 people, while California has 55 votes and 40M | people. Wyoming has more than three times the voting | power per person than a resident of California. | antognini wrote: | Yes, I did take that into consideration. Pennsylvania was | the best case for a voter in 2020 because it had the | highest likelihood of being the tipping point state in | that election. But I also tried to estimate the expected | value of a vote in California and got a number around 60 | cents. So the expected value can can vary by nearly four | orders of magnitude depending on the state you are in. | | The main factor in this discrepancy is not so much the | number of electoral votes, but the partisan lean of the | state. Am election that ends up being decided by a single | vote in California would imply that there were extremely | unexpected results in other states. But your expected | value in Florida is much higher because it would not be | unusual for the election to be decided by an extremely | close result in that state. | bombcar wrote: | Interesting - I went through the calculation based on | "chance the election would be decided by one vote; my | vote" and it's pretty damn vanishingly small. (I assumed | any election decided by a single vote would be decided by | my vote, which isn't entirely fair, and ignored appeals, | etc), but didn't value it on election spending but | instead on "changes to me". | antognini wrote: | Yes, in absolute terms, even in a swing state the odds | that a single vote will determine the election are small, | roughly one in a million. | personjerry wrote: | It's targeted at people who aren't as smart as you, which I | guess is a lot of people | hackerlight wrote: | It's a bad status quo given they work for us. Imagine having an | employee that constantly lied to you in order to get a raise | and took credit for things they didn't do. | [deleted] | nullc wrote: | > or gas price drop | | There is at least some nuance on that one-- e.g. taking credit | for lowering gas prices when it's a result of distributing our | strategic reserve. | | In that case the administration is responsible, but it's | potentially at a significant future cost. (since once the | reserve is gone we'll be at even greater mercy to externally | set prices). | btilly wrote: | The "context" note is based on a program named birdwatch. | | According to rumor, virtually the entire team responsible for | birdwatch just got laid off. | | I'm curious what the future of this kind of context will be. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | I'm way more in favor a of a system that employs the userbase | to "fact check" than whatever busybody connected to a partisan | "fact checker" at twitter doing it manually and adding their | own particular bias. | yed wrote: | That is exactly what birdwatch is: https://blog.twitter.com/e | n_us/topics/product/2021/introduci... | nicce wrote: | The problem is that special knowledge is also prone to bias. | Some correct, but unpopular expert opinion can be also voted | to be wrong, when the level of required knowledge is | substantially high. | BolexNOLA wrote: | Why do you think the userbase would be superior? Twitter, | like most social media platforms, prioritizes controversy. | Pot-stirrers are the ones who get amplified. Why should we | trust an incredibly polarized userbase to somehow lack bias? | nomel wrote: | If you're trying to find faults with a claim, then using | one of those extremes seems completely appropriate. They | will be the only ones motivated to do so. | krapp wrote: | But they aren't going to tell the truth. Republicans | don't respond to Biden's policies with sober recitations | of well-sourced factual criticism, but the kind of | paranoid partisan hyperbole you'd find on Fox News, | because their goal isn't truth but keeping and | maintaining power in an age where voters primarily react | on emotion, not logic and reason, within bubbles of | manufactured hyper-reality. Misinformation from one side | doesn't just cancel out misinformation from the other. | ravel-bar-foo wrote: | Birdwatch is designed to add context with which both | extremes agree. The quoted watches are reasoned, and cite | sources. Actually more informative than 99% of Twitter. | | The change seems to be that it has now rolled out on all | accounts rather than just Red accounts, and now there is | drama. | nomel wrote: | More details about Birdwatch: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33474196 | [deleted] | [deleted] | rmason wrote: | Though some may dislike it, I actually am glad that Twitter under | Elon Musk is fact checking both sides. | kaesar14 wrote: | Elon has made no content moderation changes to Twitter yet. | This feature has existed for 8 months and is community driven: | https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2022/building-... | . | | The worst part of this acquisition is the groan-worthy | expansion of Elon worship in public discourse. | Semaphor wrote: | Worship of Elon? In what bubble? The German Reddit sphere | (somewhat diverse) and HN both seem to think of him as a joke | at best. | fazfq wrote: | I will choose not to believe that the "german reddit | sphere" is politically diverse in a meaningful way. | Semaphor wrote: | More diverse than my friend and family or HN. | | The English language one worships authority, the German | language side is mostly small children who are slightly | left wing. That certainly falls under "somewhat"diverse | IMO, which is a pretty low bar. | Semaphor wrote: | Because it seems my usage of bubble is not universal, just | as clarification, I see every group as a bubble, there are | smaller and bigger bubbles. I did not mean to imply that | worshipping Elon is some kind of rarity. | Waterluvian wrote: | I am confident in saying that your Redditsphere, like mine, | is absolutely NOT representative of any general population. | Hacker News is obviously even less so. | | Log out of Twitter if you have one, find an Elon tweet, and | start reading the tens of thousands of comments. | | Bonus, if you have a well-curated account: log back in and | read what comments automatically get pushed to the top. For | me, it's a ton of accounts I follow being critical of | Elon's takes on stuff. | dotnet00 wrote: | You're talking about looking at replies to Elon tweets, | but it's kind of a given that they're more likely to be | Musk supporters simply because most healthy people don't | follow or obsessively pay attention to someone they don't | like? | Waterluvian wrote: | Indeed. Demonstrating that a biased sample can generate | either side of this perspective. Especially with my | login/logout example. You can see all this disagreement | (my followers) or all this agreement (his followers) | VectorLock wrote: | Is the Elonsphere more or less representative of the | general population than the Redditsphere or the | HackerNewssphere? | Waterluvian wrote: | Probably just as bad, if not worse. But that makes the | point, no? Go find a biased sample and you can make any | narrative work. | pessimizer wrote: | > Log out of Twitter if you have one, find an Elon tweet, | and start reading the tens of thousands of comments. | | That's like trying to figure out what society thinks of | me by reading my birthday cards. | kaesar14 wrote: | How am I supposed to counter-fact this? Elon's tweets are | among the most favorited tweets of all time regularly | topping out over 1M. The average person likely has quite a | positive view of him - the right-wing of American politics | definitely does. | ianai wrote: | I've noticed a trend on YT. If someone's going to | criticize Tesla or Elon they don't outright say the name. | They say "that other big EV company" or similar. That's | about as good a demonstration of censoring dissent as can | get. | hersko wrote: | I view him favorably for a variety of reasons. I have yet | to see any reason to hate him with the obsessive fervor | commonly displayed on reddit. I honestly just feel like | his right-wing leaning/anti narrative tweets drove the | left insane. | lambic2 wrote: | Accusing a guy to be a pedophile with zero evidence was | one thing. It's just a pretty asshole thing to do, | especially when you have millions of followers and can | ruin that guy's life with a tweet. | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon- | musk... | nverno wrote: | He seems to be a guy that acts impulsively. But, being | somewhat of an asshole once or twice over the years is | hardly worthy of the passionate hatred some people have | for him. It is more about greed/envy/etc. imho. The world | is a more interesting place with Elon in it, from my | point of view. | dotnet00 wrote: | It was indeed a pretty asshole thing to do, but so is | telling someone trying to help to 'shove it where it | hurts' and as far as I'm aware, Musk is the only one of | the two to have actually apologized for being an ass | there. | Semaphor wrote: | You did it right, this was pretty much the information I | was looking for. I know neither much about the American | public, nor their right-wingers, nor Twitter. | wilg wrote: | https://www.statista.com/statistics/1304563/us-adults- | impres... | MisterBastahrd wrote: | The average person does not and never has used twitter on | a daily basis. | cal85 wrote: | Huh? I have seen the opposite, a huge outpouring of vitriol | towards him on every platform I've seen. | yehCuz wrote: | kaesar14 wrote: | Try loading an Elon tweet and just reading the replies. | cal85 wrote: | By "in public discourse" you meant specifically within | the direct replies to Musk's own tweets? | kaesar14 wrote: | Yes, that's how Twitter works? People reply to Tweets. | cal85 wrote: | You've got me there. | Ambolia wrote: | As far as I know the Biden administration never got one of | those "fact check" warning before Elon Musk. But Trump did, | so the feature would be old, but how it gets applied would be | new. | nullc wrote: | It would be helpful if someone would go find some older | whitehouse tweets that were similarly misleading and ought | to have been contextualized in the same manner. Otherwise | it's just speculation. | | Besides, if the handling were really equivalent to the | trump whitehouse people would be alleging that the tweet's | removal violated the law because it removed the 1A | protected 'fact check' text and/or violated records | retention laws (both of which were argued WRT Trump). :) | jdminhbg wrote: | > But Trump did, so the feature would be old, | | The Trump fact checks were a different feature that had | somewhat similar results. Those were applied by the | centralized Twitter team, this one is crowdsourced, and | applies to lots of different accounts, not just this | highly-visible one. | mikkergp wrote: | That certainly is one interpretation of the facts. | Ambolia wrote: | I wouldn't call it an interpretation. Either they were | fact checked before and a link can be shown, or they | weren't. Politicians lying certainly wasn't invented in | November 2022 | majormajor wrote: | Seems like it would be also possible that they were fact | checked before _and deleted it before_ and it happened | quickly enough that it wasn 't picked up on by media. | | This thread was started by an "As far as I know," and I'm | not sure it's one of those things that could be | definitely proven either way. | BoorishBears wrote: | The tweet wasn't lying, it was actually missing context | for once. You're just so used to the former white house | account holder lying that you now assume fact check == | lie... | | But I guess ignoring that and implying that some shadow | cabal at Twitter turned off the fact checking for Biden, | then Elon turned it back on, but claimed to not have not | turned it on, despite things like that literally being | his motivation to buy the site... is more exciting? | kaesar14 wrote: | One possibility is that the Biden White House probably | outright lies less than the Trump White House did. | | The other possibility being the feature as it was applied | to the Biden tweet did not exist during the Trump | administration, which I posted in the original comment. | osrec wrote: | > One possibility is that the Biden White House probably | outright lies less than the Trump White House did. | | If you say anything anti you know who, the HN community | doesn't seem to like it... I fully expect to be downvoted | too :P | whateveracct wrote: | HN is full of contrarians. They aren't Trumpers but they | like arguing with people who hate him. | koolba wrote: | > One possibility is that the Biden White House probably | outright lies less than the Trump White House did. | | More likely it's not a lie because the POTUS actually | believes it's true. It's not a lie if you sincerely | believe it right? | | Like how he keeps saying that gas was $5/gallon when he | took office [1] (it was $2.39/gallon). | | Or how he claims that his own son died in Iraq [2] (he | died in the USA). | | Though the best example would be the tale of Cornpop [3], | in which a young Biden, working as a life guard at a city | pool, tangles with a razor armed thug, himself with just | his wits and a steel chain. It's entirely possible he | thinks this actually happened. | | [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/politics/fact-check- | biden-gas... | | [2]: | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/us/politics/biden- | ukraine... | | [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us- | news/2019/sep/16/corn-pop-joe... | readthenotes1 wrote: | Biden's original tweet was not an outright lie. It was | even a half-lie. | | It was the solid truth. | | That's why the fact-check was to "provide context". | deathanatos wrote: | Unless you're interpreting the tweet like [1], a lie, | | > _A statement intended to deceive, even if literally | true._ | | ... the tweet is factual only to the extent required to | deceive the reader. As the increase is a CPI adjustment, | by definition real benefits aren't moving. Then there's | the entirety of the problems that are being caused by the | worst inflation of my life ... that's to be chalked up to | the Biden admin's "leadership"? | | The context changes the entire tone of the tweet, because | it was a lie. The White House deleted it _because they | got caught in a lie_. | | The Biden administration should be holding itself to | higher standards than this. | | [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33473072 | ahallock wrote: | They claim this new system is independent of Musk taking over | Twitter, but the timing is interesting. | mmazing wrote: | It's interesting that you agree with the assessment that a | leader of a country isn't responsible for the windfalls from | previous administrations, but ... | | Then you're associating the new leader of a corporation with | windfalls from previous administrations. | | See the problem there? | pessimizer wrote: | COLA isn't a windfall. It is literally meant to restore | recipients to the same position they were in last year. | joemazerino wrote: | Does Twitter do this for other governments or just the White | House? | Hamcha wrote: | Whoever read XKCD #1085[1] and decided it needed to be a real | thing is my hero. | | Now the problem is how much it will be politicized and cherry- | picked | | [1]: https://xkcd.com/1085/ | KerrAvon wrote: | It already has. Emerald boy has deleted context applied to his | own tweets, and some of the context being applied to Dem posts | is right-wing bullshit. | SauciestGNU wrote: | I have little doubt that Musk will have this feature used | capriciously, but I also think crowd sourcing fact | checking/context giving is bound to have weird edgecases | caused by ideological cranks. | robomartin wrote: | One of my favorite things to hate in politics is when politicians | --at all levels and all political parties-- lie and take credit | for things they did not do and, in most instances, had nothing to | do with. | | One of those are claims of creating jobs, which is absolute | horseshit. I have to stress, everyone does it. This is not about | any one political party. | | The current administration is claiming to have created _ten | million jobs_. This is nothing less than preposterous. And yet, | they keep repeating it daily. Because, you know, if you repeat | something enough times it magically becomes true. | | What really bugs me about these things is that the press never | questions any of these claims. Politicians are never asked to | "show the work". | | I mean, if you say you created one or ten million jobs, surely | you are able to present a document with data at a sufficient | level of granularity to confirm this. A list of programs enacted | by the regime in charge matched with the precise number of jobs | created ONLY because that program was enacted. | | This never happens. They all lie about this stuff. Do the masses | truly believe this? If not, do politicians actually think | everyone is stupid? Maybe we are. The evidence on that front is | clear: The people who rise up to the top of each party and are | elected into office rarely represent the best and the brightest | we have to offer. In fact, in most cases these people would be | ambulance chasers and bad used car salespeople if they didn't get | into politics. And yet we elect them and hand over the reigns. I | just don't get it. | | As a simple example of things that are incomprehensible: | | Why is it that we don't have a law that imposes severe penalties | for politicians who lie to the public? | | Imagine hiring an accountant, doctor or lawyer with the proviso | that they are protected from the consequences of lying. You | accountant can lie to you about your finances and there's nothing | you can do about it. Anyone can see this is not a good idea. And | yet, this is exactly what we have in politics. They can lie | publicly, on national media and elsewhere and the consequences | are exactly zero. | | Some might say: Well in cases of national security and other | circumstances it might be necessary to not present facts as they | might exist. | | I suppose I can see that argument at some levels, not all. It | would have been a great idea to have a requirement for truth in | what preceded the Iraq war. I think everyone can agree on that. | However, I can concede circumstances might exist where telling us | the truth could be detrimental. Don't know what those might be, | let's just stipulate this could be the case. | | OK, well, let's treat that the same way we treat search warrants | and other matters: The politician has to go to a judge, present | evidence in justification for having to promote a lie and obtain | approval. The lie is documented and so is the decision-making | process. Maybe that's a way to get around it. | | Imagine a world where politicians would not be able to lie about | national or international issues as well as attack their | opposition with lies. I don't know about you, but would think | that would qualify as progress. | | Oh, yeah, maybe we can apply similar rules to the media as well. | SilverBirch wrote: | I think there's a massive difference between correcting something | that is untrue, and just deciding you want to have your own say | because the truth isn't representative of what you feel is the | broader issue. | | Sure, we can say it's due to an old law passed by republicans. | But then the dems can argue that the modern GOP no longer support | that... so really this just turns into a mess. Was the fact true? | Yes. Was it representative of the broader argument? Depends who | to you ask. | | I think there are prices of fact check you could've put in there | - for example nominal vs real terms, but this wasn't that. | Mountain_Skies wrote: | It didn't claim it was passed by Republicans, it explicitly | stated it was signed by President Nixon and made no claims | about which party controlled Congress nor did it mention | Nixon's party affiliation. Not even a (R) after his name. | SilverBirch wrote: | So your claim here is that people don't know Richard Nixon | was a republican? | sigstoat wrote: | looked to me like the take away was that the rule was 50 | years old. would you have been happier if the context | didn't mention nixon, but noted that it was because of a | law that had been in effect for 50 years? | SilverBirch wrote: | I would've been more comfortable if they'd mentioned the | current republican candidatss for house and senate oppose | this rise despite it being a GOP policy? | vorpalhex wrote: | If truthful context makes you retract your claim.. you may be a | bit less than truthful. | SilverBirch wrote: | I think if the White House knows that in the days leading up | to the mid terms anything they post on Twitter will get a | right wing talking point attached to it they'll quite rightly | stop posting at all whether the "context" is true or not. | keneda7 wrote: | I'm confused how this was a right wing talking point? In | this case it is an actual fact. Are you suggesting we | ignore facts if they make the left look bad? | | I also want to point out the white house straight up lied | and said biden was responsible when he was not (hence the | deletion) and you are upset this lie was called out? | | Also just an fyi the feature is not something musk added. | It was being worked on long before he took over. | SilverBirch wrote: | Talking points can be facts. In fact they mostly are. I'm | saying that Twitter, intervening in the conversation to | post a technically true (republican law from decades ago) | but misleading context (policy not actually supported by | the modern GOP) is bad. Here's a question: if Trump had | been president, would this have happened, given the GOP | want to cut social security? Debatable, probably not. So | is Biden as president due credit for this rise? Sure. I | think you can make a credible case for that. | | My point is what you can't credibly do is present this as | a debate between Biden, and Twitter the official arbiter | of facts. Also, the problem with saying this isn't to do | with Musk... Musk owns Twitter. So he owns it. It really | doesn't matter what happened in the past. Today, we're | coming up to the mid terms and Elon Musks company is | intervening to push right wing talking points. | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | > Today, we're coming up to the mid terms and Elon Musks | company is intervening to push right wing talking points. | | I don't understand this line of thinking being so | certain[0]. Why is it definitely not the case that Elon | Musk's company is simply concerned with correcting | false[1] statements made by the official White House | account? | | You're seemingly trying to imply that this decision was | made solely because of right-wing bias from Elon Musk's | company and I don't see why that connection would be made | without prior (ostensibly left-wing) bias. | | (I don't exactly want to make this point because I don't | think it necessarily matters but these context blurbs are | seemingly often added by community members rather than | Twitter staff. Given how high-profile the official White | House account is, it's likely this decision was made by | Twitter staff, which is part of why I don't think this | point matters.) | | [0] People are entitled to their opinions but it doesn't | make sense to me that I would _know_ that this was | totally only done for a single reason which I don 't | like. | | [1] I think you make a strong argument that the statement | is not necessarily false, but certainly that argument has | counter points. The statement given by the White House | did not attempt to argue in any way your point. Indeed, | no mention of what Trump would have done had he been in | office at this time. I have to say it's very reasonable | to think that the statement made was plainly false. | keneda7 wrote: | I think I see what your saying but I disagree. Before | Musk twitter was heavily pushing left wing talking | points. They would ban right wing people for threats yet | let left wing people make death threats all day long. | There so called arbiter of facts was massively | politically bias. Jack at one point even said | conservatives "don't feel safe to express their opinions" | in the company. Pretty hard to argue with that kind of | statement. | | So my question is did you have a problem with that bias | also? Because half the country has watched twitter push | left wing talking points before elections for numerous | years. In fact I remember them banning several true | stories about the left. | prepend wrote: | That's not a right wing talking point though is it? The | increase was solely due to high inflation. The | administration has no decision in the matter. | SilverBirch wrote: | The administration can pass laws, do you think the GOP | may have had something to say about Social security if | they had won the election? I think so. Ted Cruz thinks | so. | nomel wrote: | This post and comment section is about things that are | happening now, not things that might have happened if | other things would have happened. | SilverBirch wrote: | I think politicians are entitled to contrast what they've | done to what their political opponents would do. In fact | I think that's like 90% of political campaigning. Here's | Obama getting loads of media coverage for exactly the | same argument 4 days ago | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us- | politic... | [deleted] | yucky wrote: | If you consider the truth to be a right wing talking point, | well then I guess they would agree with you. | Mechanical9 wrote: | The context makes it clear that the increase wasn't due to good | leadership, but instead was due to high inflation. I find that | helpful even though I support the current administration. | | With context, it sounds like they were trying to take credit | for high inflation. That probably wasn't the intention, so I | think it's clear that the original statement was misleading. | abraae wrote: | > I think there's a massive difference between correcting | something that is untrue, and just deciding you want to have | your own say because the truth isn't representative of what you | feel is the broader issue. | | Well stated. I think the job of the platform should be limited | to calling out actual falsehoods, which this is not. | | Additionally, a great platform could surface this kind of | additional context effectively, but only as provided by the | users of the platform. That's something I would love to see. | ajhurliman wrote: | Malinformation is info that's true but presented in a | disingenuous way. Misinformation is false info that's stemming | from a person who truly believes what they're saying. | Disinformation is false info spread purposefully. | jmull wrote: | I wonder if the supposed free speech absolutists will excoriate | Twitter for this, as they have in similar situations in the past? | | (How you could believe Twitter adding their own message to | something is against free speech I have no idea, but it was often | argued before. I suspected at the time many people were claiming | to be for free speech, but were actually only interested in | defending speech they agreed with. Now we get a chance to see if | that's true.) | stale2002 wrote: | Fact checking is way better than just banning people. | | The free speech supporters would vastly prefer that. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | I feel like editorializing people's tweet's is insulting, and | patronizing and is basically the platform abusing its own | users. | | If a person disagrees with a tweet, or wants to add context | they can reply to. | goatcode wrote: | Fact Check: Not all free speech "absolutists" "excoriate" such | things. Some of them have nearly always considered the context | in which they're given to decide whether these kind of | annotations indicate an actual fact-check, or, alternatively, a | big flag that the post, podcast, or video might be something | that contains genuinely interesting and informative content. | Others enjoy seeing their oppressive opponents foisted upon | their own petards, after the same tool did little to harm | themselves to begin with, and then also seeing their opponents | squeal in rage at how the turntables. | guywithahat wrote: | Remember by the end of his presidency, every tweet Trump | tweeted was fact checked/had context added? It's funny watching | the left now claim it's somehow a violation of something, | especially considering this was an automated system Elon almost | certainly hasn't had time to get to yet ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-04 23:00 UTC)