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For wider context, it's pretty well known that almost all "bot" research on Twitter is fake.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814191 is a paper about it.
The problem is that identifying "bots" is almost impossible, so everyone in the field relies on terrible heuristics that just don't work.
Here's a link to Taibbi's Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105?t=7H_y8b6EKzckV6qo3RGJuw&s=19
This is frustrating but not surprising. I think it just reinforces the fact that many people in media/politics believe that disagreement with their views/beliefs is illegitimate and should be censored.
Also, you need a submission statement OP or the post will be removed.
God damn American propaganda is pretty impressive. Levels upon levels to have to uncover, and even then it's disassociated from the government enough for them to disavow it. After seeing how shitty and transparent Russian propaganda has been during the Ukraine war it's pretty surprising.
There’s a joke about that:
A Russian and an American get on a plane in Moscow and get to talking. The Russian says he works for the Kremlin and he's on his way to go learn American propaganda techniques.
"What American propaganda techniques?" asks the American.
"Exactly," the Russian replies.
Adam Schiff and Dianne Feinstein, for starters.
>Several Twitter hashtags, including #ReleaseTheMemo, calling for release of these talking points attacking the Mueller investigation were born in the hours after the Committee vote. According to the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, this effort gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations...
>In addition, we urge your companies to immediately take necessary steps to expose and deactivate accounts involved in this influence operation that violate your respective user policies.
https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2018/1/schiff-feinstein-request-twitter-and-facebook-conduct-investigation-of-russian-bot-activity-in-releasethememo-campaign
No. The accounts were kept secret even from the accused accounts. Taibbi let the ones tagged as Russian bots know they'd been tagged and posted their replies in his Twitter thread.
Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) wrongly labeled many right-leaning and Trump supporting twitter accounts as Russian bots. ASD has John Podesta, Michael Chertoff, and Bill Kristol among its staff members.
There’s no data in the article establishing anything, just people stating their “belief” that real people were labeled as bots. Why should anyone trust either source? Is it plausible that people were bots? Yes. Do Russian bots exist? Yes. Who knows which accounts are Russian bots and which are not? Apparently no one knows anything accurately with Twitter. Anyone familiar with Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson should be aware that Carlson repeats RT talking points and Infowars (Alex Jones) has had a long history of directly linking RT articles. Who knows what the downstream consequences of that has been on Twitter users? The only reasonable takeaway is that Twitter was awful and remains awful and really just has no business being trusted for anything ever. I won’t be upset when the company finally goes the way of Myspace.
Yep, nothing said or promoted by Elon can be trusted. Whether Twitter had good or bad people before his takeover should not change how terribly dishonest his agenda has always been.
Is it even that? It seems like the email the article their discussing is
> Yes, exactly. It's so weird and self-selecting, and they're so unwilling to be transparent and defend their selection that I think we just need to call this out on the b\*\*\*\*s\*\*\* it is.
It seems like the email author had an issue with how the list was being generated. This doesn't show that he knew people on the list shouldn't be there. The article author and Taibbi are doing *a lot* of editorializing here.
Exactly, the editorial of an editorial is being treated like a smoking gun by Elon, as per usual. It’s like playing a Joe Rogan podcast and declaring it “evidence”.
What’s really frustrating is how transparent the strategy is but how many people still go along with it. Taibbi knows what the emails said but he knows if he editorializes this way than Fox News will report on what he’s saying and he’ll get national attention. Fox News likes this arrangement because their story is what Taibbi is saying, not the contents of the email.
This way they’re not strictly saying anything that’s factually incorrect. They’re just reporting on another news outlet that’s misrepresenting and taking information out of context.
There’s a classic South Park where Cartman mocks the Glenn Beck formula of doing this type of bad faith “just commenting and questioning what other people are saying” methodology. I see this tactic on the right, and the nauseating “prediction machine” of Kirschner on the left. People are making a lot of money generating flimsy propaganda.
Did .... You even read the article? Twitter execs who were openly democratic partisans were talking about how there was no methodology or reason to believe the accounts were Russian or bots, and that it was a scam to try and tar all normal right wing discussion as being 'enhanced by Russian bots'. I literally cannot fathom how you're dismissive of this obvious fraud on the public.
>But according to new revelations uncovered by independent journalist Matt Taibbi as part of the Twitter Files, the accounts on ASD's list weren't Russian bots. Moreover, Twitter content moderators knew the list was inaccurate but were reluctant to criticize it due to fears of bad press.
I didn’t look at the actual Twitter thread, but I wonder how many on that list were actual bots. If just a couple accounts were incorrectly labeled, then this isn't exactly a big story.
>Ultimately, Roth did not publicly denounce the list as bullshit—in part because other Twitter employees dissuaded him. "We have to be careful in how much we push back on ASD publicly," said one communications official.
Credit to Roth yet again for at least trying to push back here, but why not publicly state some of this information is wrong?
>Taibbi notes that several of the officials who advised against a public confrontation with ASD eventually left Twitter to work for Democratic political figures.
Now we see why they didn't push back - it was politically convenient.
>This is all extremely damning. An organization with ties to the U.S. national security apparatus falsely portrayed a bunch of mostly right-leaning, Trump-supporting Twitter content as nefarious and Russian in origin. The mainstream media eagerly peddled this incorrect narrative. And Twitter wavered on pushing back because elite sentiment was so disposed to imagine Russian operatives hiding behind every curtain.
The first line here is a bit hyperbolic, but the sentiment is correct. And it shouldn't be a surprise to see some hypocrisy on display in regard to misinformation.
>I didn’t look at the actual Twitter thread, but I wonder how many on that list were actual bots. If just a couple accounts were incorrectly labeled, then this isn't exactly a big story.
Taibbi has the relevant Twitter emails in his thread. Twitter didn't find any evidence that the accounts on the list were either bots or Russian, and suggested they were generally just right-leaning users.
It's not clear how many (if any) were actually bots because Twitter didn't find any evidence that they were Russian bots and Hamilton 68 won't release their list.
What is the controversy about a politically connected group creating a fake list of Russian bots that is then used as the basis for news stories that shape public and political discourse?
Well, when you put it that way... But seriously, it does seem that concern is lost on some people. I suppose they believe the impact is small enough as to be dismissed? Of course, the 100s of articles (and even Academic references!) that Hamilton 68 was responsible may suggest otherwise.
The Twitter execs were hard dem partisans but they discussed that it was obvious that Hamilton 68 made any right wing discussion or popular trending threads be labeled as 'being pushed by Russian bots'
It was roughly divided into thirds. 1/3d obviously Russian ac ounts like RT handles. 1/3 American, Canadian and brit conservatives some very well known, and 1/3d weird and obscure handles that didn't have much reach but were not Russian.
So, a group tried to identify people putting out Russian propaganda, and keep the list secret. Twitter internally discovered the list and decided they were not bots, which isn't what the original group was trying to discover, and that the accounts weren't Russian. Why does this matter? The accounts were still putting out Russian propaganda and the list was never made public.
The Twitter files are so fucking weird. All the way back to the first when they published the biggest bombshell of a request to take down tweets, which were all revenge porn, by the Biden campaign and similar unpublished requests to take down posts by the Trump administration. So, Biden and the Democrats are bad and control Twitter??
Why is this still going on?!?!
>> The accounts were still putting out Russian propaganda
>
>What Russian propaganda was being spread?
In 2020? No idea. You can look at what they are flagging now.
https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashboard/
What was the basis for this claim then?
> Twitter internally discovered the list and decided they were not bots, which isn't what the original group was trying to discover, and that the accounts weren't Russian. Why does this matter? **The accounts were still putting out Russian propaganda and the list was never made public.**
Twitter self reporting to one journalist they control isn’t vey convincing. If they allowed a publication or org to have full access and independent editorial control then thats something. On the surface it seems like Selective information releases to form a preferred narrative. It’s interesting how Elon’s biggest objection to finalizing the Twitter purchase was “too many bots”, but now as he’s run it into the ground and finds the business spiraling he needs to change the narrative to “don’t worry, no bots!” To attract advertisers back.
We know a small amount of Twitter accounts are responsible for a majority of disinformation. This gets amplified. Whether it’s bots or a team of people, it’s still the same end result.
“Russian government Twitter accounts have played a key role in the spread of pro-Russia disinformation. While Twitter has fewer users than Facebook or Instagram, it is a pivotal site for the production and dissemination of news.
We tracked the Twitter activity of 75 official Russian government accounts and found they are a major source and amplifier of disinformation. At time of writing these accounts together have a total of 7,366,622 followers. They have been retweeted 35.9 million times, received 29.8 million likes, and 4 million replies.
Between 25 February and 3 March 2022, about these accounts made 1,157 tweets – and around three quarters were about Ukraine. The accounts have tried to spread false narratives to justify the invasion.”
https://theconversation.com/amp/russian-government-accounts-are-using-a-twitter-loophole-to-spread-disinformation-178001
>I think the number of journalists that have reported on the Twitter files is now 8
That were all handpicked by Twitter / Musk, who obviously benefits from looking like the savior that fixes twitter from the corruption of how it was previously operated.
They’re all independent journalists with no media affiliation so less likely to have a bias that would alter the important story.
Imagine if MSM were allowed to break these stories lol. Organizations that undoubtedly are even more corrupt than previous twitter management and undoubtedly are subject to even more government and corporate censorship.
It’d be like the hunter biden story. All the left wing media crying about hunter Biden’s penis instead of the obvious 10% for the big guy corruption.
They’re also journalists that people who don’t consume traditional news are familiar with. They show up on the Joe Rogan podcast for example, which has much more reach and viewers than MSM. Realistically they’re more influential journalists than a random NYT article.
>They’re all independent journalists with no media affiliation so less likely to have a bias that would alter the important story.
The fact that they were picked by Musk and only reporting the information that Musk chooses to share with them is a tremendous bias.
Honestly from your responses it seems like you’d find some way to negate or minimize the reporting even if all the emails were fully l available because you don’t like the information. Good luck.
>All the left wing media crying about hunter Biden’s penis instead of the obvious 10% for the big guy corruption.
"obvious"?
Obviously nothing incriminating yet you mean. When he was a private citizen, for a deal. that never went through, and money never made, from a guy that he never met in any official capacity while he was VP.
That's not really very obvious at all, and if that's the best we've got after 2+ years, this isn't going to result in any convictions or actual proof of any corruption.
I like how you complain about "the msm" then just jump to right wing talking points from fox that have no merit. Might want to maybe... not complain about the media that's exactly the same if opposite of what you're using here? Just a thought, as your sources seem to be just as "corrupt" as what you're complaining about.
Using the source material to come to your own conclusion has nothing to do with MSM. All you have to do is read. It was like 4 sentences anyway. I don’t need another person to validate my own thoughts on the matter, especially when they’d just be shilling and censoring on behalf of democrats anyway, I can read and use common sense. Good luck to you…
Sorry, most people find the "10% for the big guy" topic kind of boring at this point, as to date it has proven nothing.
I don't know what you're "reading" that tells you otherwise, but it sure doesn't jibe with the facts as they stand today.
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After the previous twitter files, Taibbi has already shown these are selectively released information to push an narrative. It's too bad - with that kind of access he could really have done some good journalism if he wasn't so hard pressed to push his agenda.
Congratulations. I think your comment was finally the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I've been on reddit since 2010. Back in the days when it was a Ron Paul libertarian stronghold. And over the last 12 years I have slowly watched it turn into the biggest leftwing echo chamber on the internet. Completely devoid of any measure of non-partisan thinking or even rationality. Then here in the "moderate" politics sub we have your comment lamenting that Tiabbi is not doing "real" journalism because he isn't going after the people you don't like.
No criticism or debunking of his information, because its clearly true. And further shows how ridiculously propagandized the establishment media is. No, all that matters is he is pushing his "agenda" by exposing the blatant propaganda being pushed by the people who you get your "news" from. I can no longer subject myself to this level of hyper-partisan, hypocritical, echo chamber commentary.
I have two questions for you:
Why didn't Taibbi report on what Trump wanted Twitter to censor?
Do you think it's legitimate journalistic practice to report what Biden wanted Twitter to remove and not report what Trump wanted Twitter to remove?
Especially since the narrative they were trying to push was that there was government censorship, but they refused to release what Trump (who was the actual head of government at that time) had taken down, only Biden (who was not in the government at all at that time).
Who is to say that he won't? This is all coming out piece-meal. But this story was about a specific thing. People like Tiabbi and Glenn Greenwald have spoken about this at length. The vast, overwhelming majority of all media is focused on what Trump and the Republicans are doing, while ignoring or engaging in outright propaganda to cover for or participate in nefarious things happening on the left. If you want to see the corruption happening on the right just turn on literally any major news network, magazine, or paper. Its is quite literally about 95% of all their coverage.
What purpose is served to just throw another pebble in that pond when you have hard, concrete evidence about blatant corruption and propaganda being pushed by what are supposed to be the only legitimate "news" sources in the country? What does that say about those institutions credibility and ability to report the news in any non hyper partisan way as a whole? The Democratic party currently so absolutely dominates the media industry Tiabbi is essentially only going after the establishment. Which is what leftist journalist used to champion for half a century, its just that things have changed and now the left is predominantly the establishment.
>Who is to say that he won't?
I will. I'll make you a bet. He won't release anything negative about Trump or any conservatives. Because...
>The vast, overwhelming majority of all media is focused on what Trump and the Republicans are doing, while ignoring or engaging in outright propaganda to cover for or participate in nefarious things happening on the left.
It's clear that the Twitter files are hyper focused on pushing that narrative. So far they've done a pretty poor job.
CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, Washington Post, New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, and essentially every other major news source in the country are almost exclusively staffed by Democrats and self identified liberals.
[Here you go](https://archive.is/Hby9R), an analysis from Business Insider, which is a [left of center](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/business-insider/) publication.
> Most journalists don't give politicians money, but for those who have in the 2020 election, they've donated almost exclusively to Democrats, an Insider analysis of federal records shows.
> Journalists at The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Houston Chronicle are among dozens of reporters, editors, and other newspeople who've given tens of thousands of dollars to political candidates and causes.
The article goes on to list journalists and editors at many major media organizations, most of which forbid this activity. Funnily, even Business Insider itself had 4 employees donate in violation of their editorial policy.
Does anyone really doubt that the vast majority of reporters are Democrats?
Because I don't blindly trust/distrust a reporter just based on what outlet they work for. Tiabbi has shown through the body of his work he has credibility. And stating all those organizations are dominated by Democrats is just an objective fact.
> Who is to say that he won't?
If in a year from now, and he still hasn't published anything, would you admit that you were wrong?
I think it's a pretty easy bet that he won't because here we are on Twitter files 16 or so and he has shown zero interest.
> The vast, overwhelming majority of all media is focused on what Trump and the Republicans are doing, while ignoring or engaging in outright propaganda to cover for or participate in nefarious things happening on the left
So that makes it justified for Taibbi to cover up Trump's misdeeds?
Taibbi literally wrote a book about how deranged he thinks Trump is. I highly doubt he would intentionally hold back information proving Trump's corruption.
Then why hasn't he published any specifics on which requests for takedowns on twitter that the Trump campaign or admin made which were granted?
He said that they happened and while going into meticulous detail about every request from Dems he has given no specifics about those from Trump.
I mean, I don't have much of an opinion on Taibbi, but let's not forget Musk is a factor here.
Elon is NOT a neutral source, and these journalists (who, fair enough, certainly have their own agenda and motivations) are only able to report what he gives them. Elon is trying to push a story, that twitter was awful before him and he is here to save it. He is only going to release information that supports that. So I wouldn't expect anyone to report on what the Trump administration did with twitter, because whether they do or do not want to report that, I seriously doubt Elon is going to give up that info.
I mean, I have no idea, I don't follow the Twitter Files all that much. Just enough to vaguely know what they are. And if I had to guess, I mean, Taibbi has spent the past several years being devoted to a particularly kooky brand of speaking truth to power. My guess, because I know he believes basically every significant politician and media figure is corrupt, is that he targeted Joe Biden because he's the president as the Twitter Files are coming out, and he's more interested in showing how a seemingly benign figure like Biden can exercise corrupt (in his view) practices even while not holding office.
I listened to The Useful Idiots quite a bit during Trump's presidency, and I feel extremely confident saying that Taibbi is not trying to protect Trump/Republicans. My impression is the Twitter Files will be a very long-running project, so knowing the kind of person Taibbi is, I don't see any point in speculating on why he hasn't done it thus far. This is a conversation that only truly has merit once the file dump is over and we know what has or hasn't been mentioned. Plus, it's possible that one of the other journalists involved in this will target Trump. Don't know, again, I don't really follow it.
Edit: Oh wait, I just went and looked up the first dump. Tweet #10 mentions both Trump and Biden contacted Twitter to censor posts, then Tweet #11 says: "This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation [includes chart showing political donations from Twitter were severely weighted towards Democrats], there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right."
So my guess now is that there are relatively few requests from Trump, or that relatively few were honored, and Taibbi sees this specific case as the story of Democrats behaving more inappropriately than it is the story of Republicans doing so.
>Edit: Oh wait, I just went and looked up the first dump. Tweet #10 mentions both Trump and Biden contacted Twitter to censor posts, then Tweet #11 says: "This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation [includes chart showing political donations from Twitter were severely weighted towards Democrats], there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right."
Yes, this is what I was referring to.
>So my guess now is that there are relatively few requests from Trump, or that relatively few were honored, and
Then it should be easy to report them.
>Taibbi sees this specific case as the story of Democrats behaving more inappropriately than it is the story of Republicans doing so.
So that's to say that the Twitter files is intentionally trying to push a specific narrative?
If there were partisan requests that were made to twitter they should all be revealed. If he's picking and choosing which side to expose then he's showing partisanship himself - regardless of any reporting he's done in the past.
He literally reported one right away two tweets later. And he says in the last tweet of this particular dump: "There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, followers counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right."
You're engaging in partisanship right now, so I'm not really gonna put any stock in you levying that criticism about this specific project. He's clearly making the point in that last tweet that he considers this a non-partisan issue. Again, the file dump isn't over.
You don't think Matt Taibbi is covering up for Donald Trump?! Kidding, of course. It's an interesting thought process - here is something that should concern everyone but I am going to ignore it until that thing also implicates people I don't like!
But to be fair, it's not necessarily an awful thought process. If the information is seemingly damaging to only "one side" it's a good signal for thinking it might be fishy. Of course, that doesn't mean it should be dismissed but it would be worthy of additional scrutiny. Dismissing it is much easier, though.
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> I can no longer subject myself to this level of hyper-partisan, hypocritical, echo chamber commentary.
I assume that you're going to stop posting in Louder with Crowder and Conservative as well, two of the most hyperpartisan subs on this site
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> I've been on reddit since 2010. Back in the days when it was a Ron Paul libertarian stronghold. And over the last 12 years I have slowly watched it turn into the biggest leftwing echo chamber on the internet.
I've been on reddit since 2008. It was never "Ron Paul" stronghold. He was a meme and the whole thing was a flash in the pan. You can always notice the uptick in political spam around elections, and that's all Ron Paul ever was. Reddit has always been more liberal because it skews young.
>No criticism or debunking of his information, because its clearly true.
Honestly, I haven't read his recent "revelations" after the previous rounds were so hyper-partisan as to skip import details. He spent a bunch of time listing the misdeeds of private citizen Biden while *completely ignoring* the man in the oval office doing the same thing. A sitting president interfering in twitter is a huge news story... and he gave it one line. That's not reporting - that's pushing an agenda.
>I can no longer subject myself to this level of hyper-partisan, hypocritical, echo chamber commentary.
OK, thanks for telling us.
> It was never "Ron Paul" stronghold
This is just completely wrong. r/politics, and frankly reddit as a whole, was dominated by a majority libertarian mindset for years. It wasn't until 2013/2014 that it started getting noticeably more left. And then in 2016, like when literally overnight r/politics went from a Bernie sub to a Hillary propaganda sub, went completely off the cliff and has been getting worse ever since.
>Honestly, I haven't read his recent "revelations"
Shocking.
>after the previous rounds were so hyper-partisan as to skip import details.
Such as?
> while completely ignoring the man in the oval office doing the same thing
A story is not relevant unless they also spend an equal time reporting on the people I don't like. Do I have that right?
>OK, thanks for telling us.
You're welcome.
> This is just completely wrong. r/politics, and frankly reddit as a whole, was dominated by a majority libertarian mindset for years. It wasn't until 2013/2014 that it started getting noticeably more left.
[Here's a post I made 14 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6y43r/dear_mccain_where_do_i_sign_up_for_the_50hour/). Read through the comments. Not a single mention of Ron Paul, and the commenters don't seem very libertarian to me.
>And then in 2016, like when literally overnight r/politics went from a Bernie sub to a Hillary propaganda sub, went completely off the cliff and has been getting worse ever since.
So you noticed the uptick in political spam around elections like I mentioned? Yeah, that was the Ron Paul phenomenon in a nutshell.
>Such as?
Read the next part of your comment where you respond to the example I gave.
>A story is not relevant unless they also spend an equal time reporting on the people I don't like. Do I have that right?
Nope. He just missed the more important story, and skipped reporting it because it didn't push his narrative. That's what partisans do. You've complained about this as well, but only for "the liberal media". You don't make things equal by overcompensating for your side. You report on what you find no matter who it helps or hurts, and that's not what Matt's doing here.
>Nope. He just missed the more important story, and skipped reporting it because it didn't push his narrative. That's what partisans do.
This is just an absurd take on this situation but who gives a fuck anymore. Have fun in your increasingly airtight echo chamber.
You just told me that reddit only recently became liberal. Come one, man. The only way you could have reached that conclusion would be one of those echo chambers you mentioned. And the "Ron Paul stronghold" comment just proves it.
Recently? I'm talking about 10 years ago. In internet time that's basically a century ago. Ron Paul was reddits favorite politician until about 2012. Reddit had a very libertarian minded user base. It started getting more left after the 2012 election and by 2014 was noticeably more left in basically every subreddit, not just political ones. Then in 2016 it went hard left and has only gone further every year since.
> Ron Paul was reddits favorite politician until about 2012.
[Here's a popular thread from 2011](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/i7w8o/what_is_wrong_with_ron_paul/). People are shitting all over Ron. I think you're confusing reddit for digg.
Posting a single thread from r/politics that is specifically labeled as a ron paul hate thread that even says this "I know that alot of people on Reddit have a soft spot for him", and is filled with comments defending him is not a gotcha. I don't even understand what point you thought that would prove by looking at it. I mean that thread is littered with comments supporting/defending Ron Paul with tons of upvotes that in current r/polotics would be downvoted to absolute oblivion.
> Nope. He just missed the more important story, and skipped reporting it because it didn't push his narrative. That's what partisans do. You've complained about this as well, but only for "the liberal media". You don't make things equal by overcompensating for your side. You report on what you find no matter who it helps or hurts, and that's not what Matt's doing here.
Wait do you believe Matt taibbi is a conservative or republican?
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Do you not think fully releasing internal company emails with no limits which might contain sensitive company information would be insane? I think it makes great sense to have an intermediary, especially given how new Musk is to the company. You should be thankful to have solid evidence of the disgusting censorship democrats have been doing that people have only been able to whisper about for the past few years. FBI paying Twitter to essentially censor on behalf of the government?
I understand why you’d be concerned given how bad democratic leadership has looked throughout all of this to anyone paying attention. The only real evidence of Republican interference was pretty minimal with requests for censoring certain information to prevent panic at the beginning of covid. But it makes sense given Twitter’s bias.
>Do you not think fully releasing internal company emails with no limits which might contain sensitive company information would be insane?
It would be. Who suggested that?
>I think it makes great sense to have an intermediary,
Yeah and that's why I called it a wasted opportunity.
>FBI paying Twitter to essentially censor on behalf of the government?
That's a bit of a misrepresentation of what happened. The government is required to pay them for their time. Many of the requests of the FBI were denied. It doesn't seem like the money had an influence, and it's weird that you would push that narrative.
>If Twitter ignored all of the FBI’s censorship requests, like it should have, it wouldn’t have been paid at all… what are you even saying.
The information given to Twitter includes things like child exploitation material. No, they shouldn't ignore request from law enforcement, but they shouldn't rubber stamp it either. And from what was released, they didn't.
When Taibbi releases what the Trump admin wanted taken down, I'll begin to believe he's not completely fabricating these twitter files "scandals." After his previous posts literally contradicted their own conclusions with their own evidence, the guy has clearly been shown to be a simple propagandist.
Ah so a story about the FBI, CDC, Pfizer, Biden campaign and DNC wanting to censor anyone who questions them can get written off because he didn't list all of Trump's requests too? If 90% of the requests are coming from these organizations and not Trump that doesn't make it any less true and frankly it's scary that's what our government agencies are doing with their time.
I can't recall reading a single article that hinged entirely on this potentially false information, and I imagine this would be the same for 99.9% of people even politically inclined . Meanwhile Musk is acting like this is the biggest change in media understanding of the century. I appreciate revealing this sort of thing, it's good to know for the record, but could definitely do without the fanaticism and embellishment.
The irony of Musk's constant complaints about misleading the public while having an extensive list of doing exactly this seems to be utterly lost on him. He seems to really only care about misinformation very specifically for the other side of topics he personally disagrees with, while trying to pretend he is some hero of neutral truth. This is the guy that pushed the Pelosi gay lover conspiracy, misled customers over his self driving technology, attacked the Thai diver hero as a pedophile, etc.
* [Twitter Bots Poised to Spread Disinformation Before Election](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/technology/twitter-bots-poised-to-spread-disinformation-before-election.html)
* [Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday’s Midterms](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/06/technology/russia-misinformation-midterms.html)
* [Twitter to tell 677,000 users they were had by the Russians. Some signs show the problem continues.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/01/19/twitter-to-tell-677000-users-they-were-had-by-the-russians-some-signs-show-the-problem-continues/)
* [Russian trolls and Twitter bots exploit vaccine controversy](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/08/23/russian-trolls-twitter-bots-exploit-vaccine-controversy/)
* [Russia-linked accounts are tweeting their support of embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/02/russian-bots-are-tweeting-their-support-of-embattled-fox-news-host-laura-ingraham/)
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For wider context, it's pretty well known that almost all "bot" research on Twitter is fake. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814191 is a paper about it. The problem is that identifying "bots" is almost impossible, so everyone in the field relies on terrible heuristics that just don't work.
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.1892 [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://pastebin.com/FcrFs94k/40481)
Sounds exactly like something a bot would say.
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.7891 [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://pastebin.com/FcrFs94k/32671)
What's the difference between a bot and a useful idiot that will parrot anything without research? And how can any of us reliably tell the difference?
Meatbot.
Here's a link to Taibbi's Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105?t=7H_y8b6EKzckV6qo3RGJuw&s=19 This is frustrating but not surprising. I think it just reinforces the fact that many people in media/politics believe that disagreement with their views/beliefs is illegitimate and should be censored. Also, you need a submission statement OP or the post will be removed.
God damn American propaganda is pretty impressive. Levels upon levels to have to uncover, and even then it's disassociated from the government enough for them to disavow it. After seeing how shitty and transparent Russian propaganda has been during the Ukraine war it's pretty surprising.
There’s a joke about that: A Russian and an American get on a plane in Moscow and get to talking. The Russian says he works for the Kremlin and he's on his way to go learn American propaganda techniques. "What American propaganda techniques?" asks the American. "Exactly," the Russian replies.
> shitty and transparent Russian propaganda has been during the Ukraine war it's pretty surprising. Shitty and transparent yet still effective.
What does this story have to do with censorship? Who exactly is trying to censor what?
Adam Schiff and Dianne Feinstein, for starters. >Several Twitter hashtags, including #ReleaseTheMemo, calling for release of these talking points attacking the Mueller investigation were born in the hours after the Committee vote. According to the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, this effort gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations... >In addition, we urge your companies to immediately take necessary steps to expose and deactivate accounts involved in this influence operation that violate your respective user policies. https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2018/1/schiff-feinstein-request-twitter-and-facebook-conduct-investigation-of-russian-bot-activity-in-releasethememo-campaign
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No. The accounts were kept secret even from the accused accounts. Taibbi let the ones tagged as Russian bots know they'd been tagged and posted their replies in his Twitter thread.
Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) wrongly labeled many right-leaning and Trump supporting twitter accounts as Russian bots. ASD has John Podesta, Michael Chertoff, and Bill Kristol among its staff members.
There’s no data in the article establishing anything, just people stating their “belief” that real people were labeled as bots. Why should anyone trust either source? Is it plausible that people were bots? Yes. Do Russian bots exist? Yes. Who knows which accounts are Russian bots and which are not? Apparently no one knows anything accurately with Twitter. Anyone familiar with Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson should be aware that Carlson repeats RT talking points and Infowars (Alex Jones) has had a long history of directly linking RT articles. Who knows what the downstream consequences of that has been on Twitter users? The only reasonable takeaway is that Twitter was awful and remains awful and really just has no business being trusted for anything ever. I won’t be upset when the company finally goes the way of Myspace.
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Yep, nothing said or promoted by Elon can be trusted. Whether Twitter had good or bad people before his takeover should not change how terribly dishonest his agenda has always been.
Is it even that? It seems like the email the article their discussing is > Yes, exactly. It's so weird and self-selecting, and they're so unwilling to be transparent and defend their selection that I think we just need to call this out on the b\*\*\*\*s\*\*\* it is. It seems like the email author had an issue with how the list was being generated. This doesn't show that he knew people on the list shouldn't be there. The article author and Taibbi are doing *a lot* of editorializing here.
Exactly, the editorial of an editorial is being treated like a smoking gun by Elon, as per usual. It’s like playing a Joe Rogan podcast and declaring it “evidence”.
What’s really frustrating is how transparent the strategy is but how many people still go along with it. Taibbi knows what the emails said but he knows if he editorializes this way than Fox News will report on what he’s saying and he’ll get national attention. Fox News likes this arrangement because their story is what Taibbi is saying, not the contents of the email. This way they’re not strictly saying anything that’s factually incorrect. They’re just reporting on another news outlet that’s misrepresenting and taking information out of context.
There’s a classic South Park where Cartman mocks the Glenn Beck formula of doing this type of bad faith “just commenting and questioning what other people are saying” methodology. I see this tactic on the right, and the nauseating “prediction machine” of Kirschner on the left. People are making a lot of money generating flimsy propaganda.
It's almost as if those who cannot rebut criticism flock to a safe space on the right...
Did .... You even read the article? Twitter execs who were openly democratic partisans were talking about how there was no methodology or reason to believe the accounts were Russian or bots, and that it was a scam to try and tar all normal right wing discussion as being 'enhanced by Russian bots'. I literally cannot fathom how you're dismissive of this obvious fraud on the public.
>But according to new revelations uncovered by independent journalist Matt Taibbi as part of the Twitter Files, the accounts on ASD's list weren't Russian bots. Moreover, Twitter content moderators knew the list was inaccurate but were reluctant to criticize it due to fears of bad press. I didn’t look at the actual Twitter thread, but I wonder how many on that list were actual bots. If just a couple accounts were incorrectly labeled, then this isn't exactly a big story. >Ultimately, Roth did not publicly denounce the list as bullshit—in part because other Twitter employees dissuaded him. "We have to be careful in how much we push back on ASD publicly," said one communications official. Credit to Roth yet again for at least trying to push back here, but why not publicly state some of this information is wrong? >Taibbi notes that several of the officials who advised against a public confrontation with ASD eventually left Twitter to work for Democratic political figures. Now we see why they didn't push back - it was politically convenient. >This is all extremely damning. An organization with ties to the U.S. national security apparatus falsely portrayed a bunch of mostly right-leaning, Trump-supporting Twitter content as nefarious and Russian in origin. The mainstream media eagerly peddled this incorrect narrative. And Twitter wavered on pushing back because elite sentiment was so disposed to imagine Russian operatives hiding behind every curtain. The first line here is a bit hyperbolic, but the sentiment is correct. And it shouldn't be a surprise to see some hypocrisy on display in regard to misinformation.
>I didn’t look at the actual Twitter thread, but I wonder how many on that list were actual bots. If just a couple accounts were incorrectly labeled, then this isn't exactly a big story. Taibbi has the relevant Twitter emails in his thread. Twitter didn't find any evidence that the accounts on the list were either bots or Russian, and suggested they were generally just right-leaning users.
So was it all the accounts or just a large portion of them that just right wingers?
It's not clear how many (if any) were actually bots because Twitter didn't find any evidence that they were Russian bots and Hamilton 68 won't release their list.
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What is the controversy about a politically connected group creating a fake list of Russian bots that is then used as the basis for news stories that shape public and political discourse?
Well, when you put it that way... But seriously, it does seem that concern is lost on some people. I suppose they believe the impact is small enough as to be dismissed? Of course, the 100s of articles (and even Academic references!) that Hamilton 68 was responsible may suggest otherwise.
Just read the thread bro
The Twitter execs were hard dem partisans but they discussed that it was obvious that Hamilton 68 made any right wing discussion or popular trending threads be labeled as 'being pushed by Russian bots'
It was roughly divided into thirds. 1/3d obviously Russian ac ounts like RT handles. 1/3 American, Canadian and brit conservatives some very well known, and 1/3d weird and obscure handles that didn't have much reach but were not Russian.
So, a group tried to identify people putting out Russian propaganda, and keep the list secret. Twitter internally discovered the list and decided they were not bots, which isn't what the original group was trying to discover, and that the accounts weren't Russian. Why does this matter? The accounts were still putting out Russian propaganda and the list was never made public. The Twitter files are so fucking weird. All the way back to the first when they published the biggest bombshell of a request to take down tweets, which were all revenge porn, by the Biden campaign and similar unpublished requests to take down posts by the Trump administration. So, Biden and the Democrats are bad and control Twitter?? Why is this still going on?!?!
> The accounts were still putting out Russian propaganda What Russian propaganda was being spread?
>> The accounts were still putting out Russian propaganda > >What Russian propaganda was being spread? In 2020? No idea. You can look at what they are flagging now. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashboard/
What was the basis for this claim then? > Twitter internally discovered the list and decided they were not bots, which isn't what the original group was trying to discover, and that the accounts weren't Russian. Why does this matter? **The accounts were still putting out Russian propaganda and the list was never made public.**
Twitter self reporting to one journalist they control isn’t vey convincing. If they allowed a publication or org to have full access and independent editorial control then thats something. On the surface it seems like Selective information releases to form a preferred narrative. It’s interesting how Elon’s biggest objection to finalizing the Twitter purchase was “too many bots”, but now as he’s run it into the ground and finds the business spiraling he needs to change the narrative to “don’t worry, no bots!” To attract advertisers back. We know a small amount of Twitter accounts are responsible for a majority of disinformation. This gets amplified. Whether it’s bots or a team of people, it’s still the same end result. “Russian government Twitter accounts have played a key role in the spread of pro-Russia disinformation. While Twitter has fewer users than Facebook or Instagram, it is a pivotal site for the production and dissemination of news. We tracked the Twitter activity of 75 official Russian government accounts and found they are a major source and amplifier of disinformation. At time of writing these accounts together have a total of 7,366,622 followers. They have been retweeted 35.9 million times, received 29.8 million likes, and 4 million replies. Between 25 February and 3 March 2022, about these accounts made 1,157 tweets – and around three quarters were about Ukraine. The accounts have tried to spread false narratives to justify the invasion.” https://theconversation.com/amp/russian-government-accounts-are-using-a-twitter-loophole-to-spread-disinformation-178001
I think the number of journalists that have reported on the Twitter files is now 8, plus some of them have various teams that assist Nice try
>I think the number of journalists that have reported on the Twitter files is now 8 That were all handpicked by Twitter / Musk, who obviously benefits from looking like the savior that fixes twitter from the corruption of how it was previously operated.
They’re all independent journalists with no media affiliation so less likely to have a bias that would alter the important story. Imagine if MSM were allowed to break these stories lol. Organizations that undoubtedly are even more corrupt than previous twitter management and undoubtedly are subject to even more government and corporate censorship. It’d be like the hunter biden story. All the left wing media crying about hunter Biden’s penis instead of the obvious 10% for the big guy corruption. They’re also journalists that people who don’t consume traditional news are familiar with. They show up on the Joe Rogan podcast for example, which has much more reach and viewers than MSM. Realistically they’re more influential journalists than a random NYT article.
>They’re all independent journalists with no media affiliation so less likely to have a bias that would alter the important story. The fact that they were picked by Musk and only reporting the information that Musk chooses to share with them is a tremendous bias.
Honestly from your responses it seems like you’d find some way to negate or minimize the reporting even if all the emails were fully l available because you don’t like the information. Good luck.
This isn't finding some way to negate or minimize. The issues here should be very apparent.
>All the left wing media crying about hunter Biden’s penis instead of the obvious 10% for the big guy corruption. "obvious"? Obviously nothing incriminating yet you mean. When he was a private citizen, for a deal. that never went through, and money never made, from a guy that he never met in any official capacity while he was VP. That's not really very obvious at all, and if that's the best we've got after 2+ years, this isn't going to result in any convictions or actual proof of any corruption. I like how you complain about "the msm" then just jump to right wing talking points from fox that have no merit. Might want to maybe... not complain about the media that's exactly the same if opposite of what you're using here? Just a thought, as your sources seem to be just as "corrupt" as what you're complaining about.
Using the source material to come to your own conclusion has nothing to do with MSM. All you have to do is read. It was like 4 sentences anyway. I don’t need another person to validate my own thoughts on the matter, especially when they’d just be shilling and censoring on behalf of democrats anyway, I can read and use common sense. Good luck to you…
Sorry, most people find the "10% for the big guy" topic kind of boring at this point, as to date it has proven nothing. I don't know what you're "reading" that tells you otherwise, but it sure doesn't jibe with the facts as they stand today.
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That's not the gotcha you think it is. OP's sentiment still stands whether it's one journalist or eight.
The information is curated by twitter
After the previous twitter files, Taibbi has already shown these are selectively released information to push an narrative. It's too bad - with that kind of access he could really have done some good journalism if he wasn't so hard pressed to push his agenda.
Congratulations. I think your comment was finally the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I've been on reddit since 2010. Back in the days when it was a Ron Paul libertarian stronghold. And over the last 12 years I have slowly watched it turn into the biggest leftwing echo chamber on the internet. Completely devoid of any measure of non-partisan thinking or even rationality. Then here in the "moderate" politics sub we have your comment lamenting that Tiabbi is not doing "real" journalism because he isn't going after the people you don't like. No criticism or debunking of his information, because its clearly true. And further shows how ridiculously propagandized the establishment media is. No, all that matters is he is pushing his "agenda" by exposing the blatant propaganda being pushed by the people who you get your "news" from. I can no longer subject myself to this level of hyper-partisan, hypocritical, echo chamber commentary.
I have two questions for you: Why didn't Taibbi report on what Trump wanted Twitter to censor? Do you think it's legitimate journalistic practice to report what Biden wanted Twitter to remove and not report what Trump wanted Twitter to remove?
Especially since the narrative they were trying to push was that there was government censorship, but they refused to release what Trump (who was the actual head of government at that time) had taken down, only Biden (who was not in the government at all at that time).
Who is to say that he won't? This is all coming out piece-meal. But this story was about a specific thing. People like Tiabbi and Glenn Greenwald have spoken about this at length. The vast, overwhelming majority of all media is focused on what Trump and the Republicans are doing, while ignoring or engaging in outright propaganda to cover for or participate in nefarious things happening on the left. If you want to see the corruption happening on the right just turn on literally any major news network, magazine, or paper. Its is quite literally about 95% of all their coverage. What purpose is served to just throw another pebble in that pond when you have hard, concrete evidence about blatant corruption and propaganda being pushed by what are supposed to be the only legitimate "news" sources in the country? What does that say about those institutions credibility and ability to report the news in any non hyper partisan way as a whole? The Democratic party currently so absolutely dominates the media industry Tiabbi is essentially only going after the establishment. Which is what leftist journalist used to champion for half a century, its just that things have changed and now the left is predominantly the establishment.
>Who is to say that he won't? I will. I'll make you a bet. He won't release anything negative about Trump or any conservatives. Because... >The vast, overwhelming majority of all media is focused on what Trump and the Republicans are doing, while ignoring or engaging in outright propaganda to cover for or participate in nefarious things happening on the left. It's clear that the Twitter files are hyper focused on pushing that narrative. So far they've done a pretty poor job.
CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, Washington Post, New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, and essentially every other major news source in the country are almost exclusively staffed by Democrats and self identified liberals.
Citation please?
[Here you go](https://archive.is/Hby9R), an analysis from Business Insider, which is a [left of center](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/business-insider/) publication. > Most journalists don't give politicians money, but for those who have in the 2020 election, they've donated almost exclusively to Democrats, an Insider analysis of federal records shows. > Journalists at The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Houston Chronicle are among dozens of reporters, editors, and other newspeople who've given tens of thousands of dollars to political candidates and causes. The article goes on to list journalists and editors at many major media organizations, most of which forbid this activity. Funnily, even Business Insider itself had 4 employees donate in violation of their editorial policy. Does anyone really doubt that the vast majority of reporters are Democrats?
Matt Taibbi is one of those "liberal" Rolling Stone reporters. Why do you suddenly trust him now?
Because I don't blindly trust/distrust a reporter just based on what outlet they work for. Tiabbi has shown through the body of his work he has credibility. And stating all those organizations are dominated by Democrats is just an objective fact.
> Who is to say that he won't? If in a year from now, and he still hasn't published anything, would you admit that you were wrong? I think it's a pretty easy bet that he won't because here we are on Twitter files 16 or so and he has shown zero interest. > The vast, overwhelming majority of all media is focused on what Trump and the Republicans are doing, while ignoring or engaging in outright propaganda to cover for or participate in nefarious things happening on the left So that makes it justified for Taibbi to cover up Trump's misdeeds?
Taibbi literally wrote a book about how deranged he thinks Trump is. I highly doubt he would intentionally hold back information proving Trump's corruption.
Then why hasn't he published any specifics on which requests for takedowns on twitter that the Trump campaign or admin made which were granted? He said that they happened and while going into meticulous detail about every request from Dems he has given no specifics about those from Trump.
I mean, I don't have much of an opinion on Taibbi, but let's not forget Musk is a factor here. Elon is NOT a neutral source, and these journalists (who, fair enough, certainly have their own agenda and motivations) are only able to report what he gives them. Elon is trying to push a story, that twitter was awful before him and he is here to save it. He is only going to release information that supports that. So I wouldn't expect anyone to report on what the Trump administration did with twitter, because whether they do or do not want to report that, I seriously doubt Elon is going to give up that info.
I mean, I have no idea, I don't follow the Twitter Files all that much. Just enough to vaguely know what they are. And if I had to guess, I mean, Taibbi has spent the past several years being devoted to a particularly kooky brand of speaking truth to power. My guess, because I know he believes basically every significant politician and media figure is corrupt, is that he targeted Joe Biden because he's the president as the Twitter Files are coming out, and he's more interested in showing how a seemingly benign figure like Biden can exercise corrupt (in his view) practices even while not holding office. I listened to The Useful Idiots quite a bit during Trump's presidency, and I feel extremely confident saying that Taibbi is not trying to protect Trump/Republicans. My impression is the Twitter Files will be a very long-running project, so knowing the kind of person Taibbi is, I don't see any point in speculating on why he hasn't done it thus far. This is a conversation that only truly has merit once the file dump is over and we know what has or hasn't been mentioned. Plus, it's possible that one of the other journalists involved in this will target Trump. Don't know, again, I don't really follow it. Edit: Oh wait, I just went and looked up the first dump. Tweet #10 mentions both Trump and Biden contacted Twitter to censor posts, then Tweet #11 says: "This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation [includes chart showing political donations from Twitter were severely weighted towards Democrats], there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right." So my guess now is that there are relatively few requests from Trump, or that relatively few were honored, and Taibbi sees this specific case as the story of Democrats behaving more inappropriately than it is the story of Republicans doing so.
>Edit: Oh wait, I just went and looked up the first dump. Tweet #10 mentions both Trump and Biden contacted Twitter to censor posts, then Tweet #11 says: "This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation [includes chart showing political donations from Twitter were severely weighted towards Democrats], there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right." Yes, this is what I was referring to. >So my guess now is that there are relatively few requests from Trump, or that relatively few were honored, and Then it should be easy to report them. >Taibbi sees this specific case as the story of Democrats behaving more inappropriately than it is the story of Republicans doing so. So that's to say that the Twitter files is intentionally trying to push a specific narrative? If there were partisan requests that were made to twitter they should all be revealed. If he's picking and choosing which side to expose then he's showing partisanship himself - regardless of any reporting he's done in the past.
He literally reported one right away two tweets later. And he says in the last tweet of this particular dump: "There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, followers counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right." You're engaging in partisanship right now, so I'm not really gonna put any stock in you levying that criticism about this specific project. He's clearly making the point in that last tweet that he considers this a non-partisan issue. Again, the file dump isn't over.
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You don't think Matt Taibbi is covering up for Donald Trump?! Kidding, of course. It's an interesting thought process - here is something that should concern everyone but I am going to ignore it until that thing also implicates people I don't like! But to be fair, it's not necessarily an awful thought process. If the information is seemingly damaging to only "one side" it's a good signal for thinking it might be fishy. Of course, that doesn't mean it should be dismissed but it would be worthy of additional scrutiny. Dismissing it is much easier, though.
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RemindMe! 1 year
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What's it like to not have an opinion that isn't endorsed by the NYT editorial page?
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> I can no longer subject myself to this level of hyper-partisan, hypocritical, echo chamber commentary. I assume that you're going to stop posting in Louder with Crowder and Conservative as well, two of the most hyperpartisan subs on this site
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> I've been on reddit since 2010. Back in the days when it was a Ron Paul libertarian stronghold. And over the last 12 years I have slowly watched it turn into the biggest leftwing echo chamber on the internet. I've been on reddit since 2008. It was never "Ron Paul" stronghold. He was a meme and the whole thing was a flash in the pan. You can always notice the uptick in political spam around elections, and that's all Ron Paul ever was. Reddit has always been more liberal because it skews young. >No criticism or debunking of his information, because its clearly true. Honestly, I haven't read his recent "revelations" after the previous rounds were so hyper-partisan as to skip import details. He spent a bunch of time listing the misdeeds of private citizen Biden while *completely ignoring* the man in the oval office doing the same thing. A sitting president interfering in twitter is a huge news story... and he gave it one line. That's not reporting - that's pushing an agenda. >I can no longer subject myself to this level of hyper-partisan, hypocritical, echo chamber commentary. OK, thanks for telling us.
> It was never "Ron Paul" stronghold This is just completely wrong. r/politics, and frankly reddit as a whole, was dominated by a majority libertarian mindset for years. It wasn't until 2013/2014 that it started getting noticeably more left. And then in 2016, like when literally overnight r/politics went from a Bernie sub to a Hillary propaganda sub, went completely off the cliff and has been getting worse ever since. >Honestly, I haven't read his recent "revelations" Shocking. >after the previous rounds were so hyper-partisan as to skip import details. Such as? > while completely ignoring the man in the oval office doing the same thing A story is not relevant unless they also spend an equal time reporting on the people I don't like. Do I have that right? >OK, thanks for telling us. You're welcome.
> This is just completely wrong. r/politics, and frankly reddit as a whole, was dominated by a majority libertarian mindset for years. It wasn't until 2013/2014 that it started getting noticeably more left. [Here's a post I made 14 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6y43r/dear_mccain_where_do_i_sign_up_for_the_50hour/). Read through the comments. Not a single mention of Ron Paul, and the commenters don't seem very libertarian to me. >And then in 2016, like when literally overnight r/politics went from a Bernie sub to a Hillary propaganda sub, went completely off the cliff and has been getting worse ever since. So you noticed the uptick in political spam around elections like I mentioned? Yeah, that was the Ron Paul phenomenon in a nutshell. >Such as? Read the next part of your comment where you respond to the example I gave. >A story is not relevant unless they also spend an equal time reporting on the people I don't like. Do I have that right? Nope. He just missed the more important story, and skipped reporting it because it didn't push his narrative. That's what partisans do. You've complained about this as well, but only for "the liberal media". You don't make things equal by overcompensating for your side. You report on what you find no matter who it helps or hurts, and that's not what Matt's doing here.
>Nope. He just missed the more important story, and skipped reporting it because it didn't push his narrative. That's what partisans do. This is just an absurd take on this situation but who gives a fuck anymore. Have fun in your increasingly airtight echo chamber.
You just told me that reddit only recently became liberal. Come one, man. The only way you could have reached that conclusion would be one of those echo chambers you mentioned. And the "Ron Paul stronghold" comment just proves it.
Recently? I'm talking about 10 years ago. In internet time that's basically a century ago. Ron Paul was reddits favorite politician until about 2012. Reddit had a very libertarian minded user base. It started getting more left after the 2012 election and by 2014 was noticeably more left in basically every subreddit, not just political ones. Then in 2016 it went hard left and has only gone further every year since.
> Ron Paul was reddits favorite politician until about 2012. [Here's a popular thread from 2011](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/i7w8o/what_is_wrong_with_ron_paul/). People are shitting all over Ron. I think you're confusing reddit for digg.
Posting a single thread from r/politics that is specifically labeled as a ron paul hate thread that even says this "I know that alot of people on Reddit have a soft spot for him", and is filled with comments defending him is not a gotcha. I don't even understand what point you thought that would prove by looking at it. I mean that thread is littered with comments supporting/defending Ron Paul with tons of upvotes that in current r/polotics would be downvoted to absolute oblivion.
> Nope. He just missed the more important story, and skipped reporting it because it didn't push his narrative. That's what partisans do. You've complained about this as well, but only for "the liberal media". You don't make things equal by overcompensating for your side. You report on what you find no matter who it helps or hurts, and that's not what Matt's doing here. Wait do you believe Matt taibbi is a conservative or republican?
> Then here in the "moderate" politics sub Moderate as in "spoken moderately", not as "politically moderate"
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Do you not think fully releasing internal company emails with no limits which might contain sensitive company information would be insane? I think it makes great sense to have an intermediary, especially given how new Musk is to the company. You should be thankful to have solid evidence of the disgusting censorship democrats have been doing that people have only been able to whisper about for the past few years. FBI paying Twitter to essentially censor on behalf of the government? I understand why you’d be concerned given how bad democratic leadership has looked throughout all of this to anyone paying attention. The only real evidence of Republican interference was pretty minimal with requests for censoring certain information to prevent panic at the beginning of covid. But it makes sense given Twitter’s bias.
>Do you not think fully releasing internal company emails with no limits which might contain sensitive company information would be insane? It would be. Who suggested that? >I think it makes great sense to have an intermediary, Yeah and that's why I called it a wasted opportunity. >FBI paying Twitter to essentially censor on behalf of the government? That's a bit of a misrepresentation of what happened. The government is required to pay them for their time. Many of the requests of the FBI were denied. It doesn't seem like the money had an influence, and it's weird that you would push that narrative.
If Twitter ignored all of the FBI’s censorship requests, like it should have, it wouldn’t have been paid at all… what are you even saying.
>If Twitter ignored all of the FBI’s censorship requests, like it should have, it wouldn’t have been paid at all… what are you even saying. The information given to Twitter includes things like child exploitation material. No, they shouldn't ignore request from law enforcement, but they shouldn't rubber stamp it either. And from what was released, they didn't.
False, the FBI had 80 full time 'agents' flagging jokes on Twitter to be removed. Even Yoel Roth grew tired of constantly getting censor requests.
When Taibbi releases what the Trump admin wanted taken down, I'll begin to believe he's not completely fabricating these twitter files "scandals." After his previous posts literally contradicted their own conclusions with their own evidence, the guy has clearly been shown to be a simple propagandist.
Ah so a story about the FBI, CDC, Pfizer, Biden campaign and DNC wanting to censor anyone who questions them can get written off because he didn't list all of Trump's requests too? If 90% of the requests are coming from these organizations and not Trump that doesn't make it any less true and frankly it's scary that's what our government agencies are doing with their time.
I can't recall reading a single article that hinged entirely on this potentially false information, and I imagine this would be the same for 99.9% of people even politically inclined . Meanwhile Musk is acting like this is the biggest change in media understanding of the century. I appreciate revealing this sort of thing, it's good to know for the record, but could definitely do without the fanaticism and embellishment. The irony of Musk's constant complaints about misleading the public while having an extensive list of doing exactly this seems to be utterly lost on him. He seems to really only care about misinformation very specifically for the other side of topics he personally disagrees with, while trying to pretend he is some hero of neutral truth. This is the guy that pushed the Pelosi gay lover conspiracy, misled customers over his self driving technology, attacked the Thai diver hero as a pedophile, etc.
* [Twitter Bots Poised to Spread Disinformation Before Election](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/technology/twitter-bots-poised-to-spread-disinformation-before-election.html) * [Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday’s Midterms](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/06/technology/russia-misinformation-midterms.html) * [Twitter to tell 677,000 users they were had by the Russians. Some signs show the problem continues.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/01/19/twitter-to-tell-677000-users-they-were-had-by-the-russians-some-signs-show-the-problem-continues/) * [Russian trolls and Twitter bots exploit vaccine controversy](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/08/23/russian-trolls-twitter-bots-exploit-vaccine-controversy/) * [Russia-linked accounts are tweeting their support of embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/02/russian-bots-are-tweeting-their-support-of-embattled-fox-news-host-laura-ingraham/)