Comment by madeofpalk
8 hours ago
They're the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Of course they're ideological. That's the whole point of their existence.
Anyway,
> Twitter was never a utopia. We've criticized the platform for about as long as it’s been around. Still, Twitter did deserve recognition from time to time for vociferously fighting for its users’ rights. That changed. Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off staffers in countries where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes. Many users left. Today we're joining them.
Twitter never cared about users rights. Read Matt Taibbi's congresional testimony on Twitter's censorship machine.
If you’re citing Matt Taibbi as a trustworthy source, man, I don’t know. He’s up there with Bari Weiss for “they’re either intentionally bad faith, stupid, or both” levels of nuance.
These are not serious people.
I not only read what he wrote, I read the screenshots of OG twitter. And what he said mirrored what they said. They were incredibly one sided an censorious as hell. Your post is basically just an ad hominem. A fallacy.
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So it's OK now? Or it wasn't OK then or now?
You claim about fallacies later, but this is a also a fallacy.
It was very interesting because it came to light the administration in power at the time, trump, leaned heavily on Twitter to promote what they wanted and hide they wanted hid. Meanwhile Biden's campaign requested revenge porn be removed and Matt and friends got extremely upset about that and called it government overreach (Biden wasn't in office at the time, of course).
Very funny when you think about it, but sad too
Read, was bs, as expected from matt
> Of course they're ideological. That's the whole point
Yes, but their ideology _was_ free-speech absolutism. This move, and this statement, suggests that they're moving away from that ideology to one of selectively free speech.
Being a free speech absolutionist DOES NOT mean plastering your speech everywhere, including Twitter. Those are clearly two different concepts.
Also, literally nothing about this says anything about other people's speech. Them deciding not to use twitter doesn't mean you can't, obviously.
I feel like everyone is losing the plot a bit. Are we understanding the words we're saying before we choose to say them?
They’re not trying to stop anyone else being on X or saying anything there or anywhere else.
So because EFF does not post their news in my small Australian home town newspaper they're not free-speech absolutists?
what are you even talking about? they arent suppressing free speech, they are leaving a platform. this might be the most bot-like response ive ever seen, if youre not a bot then go outside, read a book, just log off my goodness.
Please explain. How does this suggest they no longer value free speech?
That’s not what the comment you replied to said.
They said the EFF’s ideology use to be free speech absolutism.
From the EFF post linked to that we are discussing here:
Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.
<snip>
neither is pushing every user to the fediverse when there are circumstances like:
<snip>
Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial information.
You're isolated and rely on online spaces to connect with your community.
That very much makes it sound like the EFF values free speech, but only if that speech is speech they agree with.
What about if your anti-abortion fund uses X to spread crucial information. What about if you’re isolated and rely on X to connect with your community?
What if you’re not a young person, a person of color, queer, an activists, nor an organizer?
The EFF used to be free speech absolutists, it’s evident they be taken over by progressive liberals who favour free speech they agree with.
Look in to the history of cases they have litigated. There’s definitely at least some where I disagreed with the content of the speech, but agreed with the right to say it and that the EFF were correct in supporting the case.
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What is the agenda? You're hinting at some conspiracy but I have no idea what it could even be
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You can tell conservative opinions are censored and suppressed by the way they're constantly shoved down our throats every hour of every day.
There's a certain irony in the fact that whoever you're responsing to got their message removed.
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Since the person you responded to got flagged/dead, I want to make sure they and everyone else who might think like them listens to this (an hour long, so yay attention span)
https://www.podbean.com/ew/dir-35im6-2c0a994a
"As the Senate debates the SAVE America Act amid unfounded claims of voter fraud, Jon is joined by Georgetown Research Professor Renée DiResta and Platformer editor Casey Newton to examine what actually threatens our elections. Together, they investigate how algorithms are engineered to push users toward platform owners' preferred ideologies, explore the incentives driving Silicon Valley's rightward shift, and discuss how Republicans have weaponized disinformation to undermine electoral trust and rewrite voting rules in their favor."
One topic they cover is the manner in which the Biden admin was communicating with big tech about mis/dis-information, and the multiple ways the Right has either blown it way out of proportion by not getting the facts right, and the way the Trump admin has been doing as much or worse than Biden admin ever did.
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Those "conservative opinions" were usually violent hate speech. There was no shortage of "conservative opinions" pre-buyout.
I think people were just upset certain figures were held to the TOS.
Yeah, the followup to that "censorship of conservative opinions" complaint is always "which opinions are those"
It's a perfect analogue for asking confederate fans, "state's rights to do what?"
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"were usually violent hate speech"
Did we forget "Vote blue no matter who"???
It was often as mundane as disagreeing with ANY democrat politician/their policies.
Sometimes it wasn't even a right-wing voice, but from more Left leaning voices that got banned/ostracized.
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claiming there was rampant "censorship of conservative opinions" is about as honest as claiming that the Romans were being persecuted by first century christians.
A few of these were actual calls to violence, but most were about political opinion https://ballotpedia.org/Elected_officials_suspended_or_banne...
They also banned NY Post for publishing that Hunter Biden laptop story. Which as much of a nothingburger as that story was, it's insane to get banned for that.
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They … did, though?
You're presumably referencing Missouri v. Biden, to which the EFF did file an amicus[1]. In it, they note,
> Many platforms have potentially problematic “trusted flagger” programs in which certain groups and individuals enjoy “some degree of priority in the processing of notices
> Of course, governmental participation in content moderation processes raises First Amendment issues not present with non-governmental inputs
With their overall opinion being something like "content moderation is normal, the government flagging content is also normal, and there are instances where the government's flagging of content moderation can be fine & not run afoul of 1A, but there are instances where it can, and we urge the court to think"
Note in this case, the platform was removing the content. The government was, in one respect, merely asking. (There were assertions that in other instances, such as public statements, the case was less so.) The court eventually ruled, and the ruling I saw from the 5th circuit seemed reasonable. (I think that was a preliminary injunction. AIUI, the case as a whole was never ruled on, because the Trump administration took over.)
[1]: https://www.eff.org/document/missouri-v-biden-amicus-brief
care to share some quotes from those "conservative opinions" that were censored?
https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/twitter-unblocks-new-y...
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Which ones?
What censorship?
Conservative talking points were fucking everywhere, and still are.
Well we can tell where you stand when you describe their views as "talking points". Which isn't surprising on HN (reddit but more wordy).
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Yeah, I remember when the "Twitter Files" were being released and it turned out that Twitter was illegitimately censoring leaked nudes of Hunter Biden. Whyever would non-consensually posted nudes be taken down other than the suppression of conservatism?
They were also censoring Biden's ties to Ukraine. If you'd actually read any coverage on it that wasn't left wing, you would have known that instead of spinning up this strawman version of what happened.
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Conservative opinions like "[group of people] are evil and don't deserve to be happy" and "we need a white homeland"
If you aren't kicking nazis out of your bar, it'll become a nazi bar. Twitter stopped kicking out the nazis
> [group of people] are evil and don't deserve to be happy"
Most of the times I’ve seen such statements on Twitter, the [group of people was one of: men, white people, straight people, cisgender people. Something tells me those statements were not made by conservatives…
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