it's honestly irrelevant about the credibility of the emails and other data at this point, its the blanket censorship of this article that's now the real story.
Is it? Because the factuality of the story seems like a pretty big deal here. If it's completely bogus, how is it different from any of those Russian trollfarm posts that the US government was worried about?
Of course the factuality is a big deal. But Twitter didn’t discover the story was false and then remove it. Rather they decided that because the information came from a hack that it couldn’t be posted on their site. If anything they confirmed it was true by doing this.
There are two possibilities: Either it's really a hack or it's a felonious attempt to manipulate an election. Or it's both -- a hack of personal private photos and also fake emails feloniously manipulating an election. Either way, a ban is appropriate.
Saying "if it's true, it's ban able for X" without out bothering to say that obviously it's bannable if it's false, isn't saying it's true. How could Twitter even know?
I’m not sure what you’re arguing for. If we had ignored everyone claiming there were WMDs then a million people would still be alive, not to mention the trillions of dollars saved.
they did learn from their mistakes.
they learned that there's zero consequence in trafficking the right lies for the right people and were professionally rewarded for doing so. it should be no surprise that the exact same people latched so heavily onto the steele dossier and the cult of mueller-ism
WMD information was provided by government officials and it was official government position on it, the news were reporting what officials said and provided.
The factuality is what we should be debating. When Twitter bans its dissemination that becomes as big a story and - like it or not - makes folks believe there’s more truth to the story than they perhaps would have in absence of such blatant, double-standard censorship.
The New York Post is not a serious newspaper; it is a sensationalist tabloid. Sometimes the NYPost will report on real news, but I believe absolutely nothing they report until it is verified by the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, or other major broadcast outlet with actual journalistic standards.
> New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, or other major broadcast outlet with actual journalistic standards.
"Actual journalistic standards" yeah right! They literally carried out a fake news story about Nick Sandmann without any sort of verification. CNN settled 250 million $ lawsuit followed by Washington Post. Other publications are in the line next. They have zero credibility... especially after causing irreparable damage to a child's reputation by labelling him a racist when he was anything but. The real racists at the rally were those who accused this kid of racism. For full video of the actual altercation you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwNyOD8FIQk and decide for yourself.
They settled the lawsuits but there is no indication it was anything like $250M (more like $25K!). And notably none of the organisations was required to retract or apologize as part of the settlement.
> And notably none of the organisations was required to retract or apologize as part of the settlement.
Because that is the settlement. To save themselves from embarrassment and having to admit they faked the entire thing. I give credit to Nick Sandmann for being the bigger man here and settling instead of taking it all the way and making sure these media houses get crippled.
Anyways, the point here is not the amount of money settled. The point is that they faked the news and labelled an innocent boy a racist. You still haven't given a reply on that. Not that you are required to, but that is what is the crux of the matter here, not the money.
Do not dismiss tabloid journalism. There's a long and happy history of Democrats being undone by lurid tabloids. Think Drudge Report breaking the (Bill) Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, or National Enquirer breaking the John Edwards affair, or NYPost breaking the Anthony Weiner sexting. This is tabloid journalism at its best.
The difference is those stories had supporting details, with the reporters attempting to follow up.
None of them are serious. NY Times made a big deal out of trumps taxes when everyone knows depreciation offsets revenue in real estate, its 101 stuff. You get taxed when you sell the asset which happens infrequently but in large magnitude. Most people in the industry were laughing at the gaslighting they did on that story but they fooled their little pawn readers. Just one example out of many. Every news source is full of shit even the ones that are supposed to be reputable.
I feel sorry for you for getting downvoted, anyone with a basic understanding of accounting and tax should know this. Also the issue picked on in later comments, yes you absolutely can report different valuations to different entities, in the US, UK, and probably everywhere else too.
Tax accounting is completely different to accounting you show to a bank for a loan. This is normal because they are used for different things, and are accounting for different things. For example - the tax rate and taxes paid have a real impact on cashflows which would impact your eligibility for a loan. In tax returns taxes paid are not included in profit and loss, because that would lower the tax paid by businesses.
No it is not. Inventory, for example, can have two basis values, taxable inventory, and fixed asset inventory value. One is what the IRS requires via GAAP reporting, and the other is used to secure lines of credit.
Yeah, that’s not true, though you may wish it were. Many industries operate essentially three sets of books - one for the IRS, one for regulators, and one for the street. The requirements for valuation and burdening can be different based on audience. I don’t know whether it applies in trumps case but the headlines and righteous talking points got pretty silly. “Trump offset gains by losses” - yep. Meanwhile let’s talk about how many of these senators (particularly some of the most self-righteous) after decades of only federal employment have somehow become multimillionaires.
We have no information on this except what the NYT's reports in half truth. For instance if there was a time gap between reporting that could cause a mismatch as finances change over time. You can also have retroactive amendments as almost every major company has which are reported in different years. I havent dug deep into this as its not an important topic for me but I just wouldnt take the around the edges reporting at face value from a source as biased as the times.
You realize the real story re: Trump's asset depreciation is that he reported one valuation to the govt and one to his banks when seeking loans, right?
In my tax report I think my house is valued at 400 000 NOK.
When I talk to the bank it will probably be worth 4 200 000 NOK.
Tax authorities here know as banks update them every year.
Also in accounting it is common. I remember asking my teacher about it when we had basic accounting and it is simple: if you depreciate (?) an item to less than it is worth you just have to report a profit when you sell a "worthless" asset. (I'm not an accountant and English is not my first language but I think it should be possible to understand.)
The story headline that was coordinated and gaslight was "trump didnt pay any tax". Everything else was anecdotal, I didnt look into this specific matter because I was rolling my eyes from the start. If they cant be honest about the main story I'm not following them for the rest of the allegations.
The three outlets you cited lean left and regularly avoid articles inconvenient to the left (and paint much of the remainder as "Republicans pounce on reports that..."). Consider balancing with centre-right outlets like National Review.
Centre-right, National Review.... You made me spit out my tea when I read that. I'd ask you to go to the op-ed section, and tell me it's even close to "centre-right" and not fully right.
They lost an editor for posting a mainstream opinion by an elected Republican... Note that they then shared the same sentiment about supporting police cracking down on protests in Hong Kong and received no internal pushback whatsoever.
The op-ed section isn't the news section. NYT is centre-left, NR is centre-right.
Anyway it won't hurt you to read things from the other perspective. The truth is often "in the middle" or only something you can triangulate after reading both sides.
It could be easily argued while they are not rewriting the story they selectively choose the facts they present as "fact checked" information. In the recent past both FB and Twitter have linked to "fact checked" articles/sources that represented only the narrative they wanted you to read. If they wanted to show neutral behavior they could have linked to articles that represented both sides of an argument which would keep their independence and educate their audience better since rarely is one side 100% correct.
Democrats base their arguments on some bombshell mistruths. Like trillion dollar mistruths. The idea that America underinvests in schools and social welfare, for example, when we spend more than European countries per person on both metrics.
Problem is that both sides see the other as exactly this. I’m sure I can argue the point on behalf of either side selected by a coin toss. In today’s example though we have the side that dominates academia, media, big labor, healthcare, public sector workers, and big tech using that dominance to censor a story harmful to their candidate with very disingenuous reasoning.
It's one of those papers in the strange intersection of "mainstream tabloid". It's clearly not serious, as you can see from a quick glance at their typical cover pages, but it's also not one of the papers everyone knows is untrustworthy schlock.
Is information being gated by private universities, that only the elite have access to? This may have had validity in the pre-internet era, but information is everywhere now. There's nothing wrong with "public education".
Limiting distribution to filter out what you don't want to rise to the top has the same effect as explicitly picking winners.
Think of it like shooting the tires of all the cars you want to lose in a race. Sure you didn't push the winner across the finish line, but you made it damn near impossible for anyone else to even get there.
Yeah, but that's still not editorial control. And maybe we do actually want Twitter to pick some winners. I don't think the platform needs any more death threats, Russian-backed misinformation campaigns or other bullshit.
And this is exactly what social media does all the time, or rather their recommendation algorithms. Which, for some reason, is no problem at all. Now that the bias of these algorithms is changing, also by directly intervening, it is a big problem.
I don't think so. You could perhaps make an argument that banning all NY Post articles would be distribution control, although even then I'm skeptical. But if I picked up a physical copy of the New York Post, and found that the newsstand had snipped just this one article out with a pair of scissors, I'd call that an unambiguous act of editorial control and censorship.
Both are important. Censoring something important without knowing whether it's true or not is pretty worrisome. If it does turn out to be true then it's much worse. If it turns out to be false, the censor got lucky or knows something we don't.
One thing I'm wondering is how can they censor it without getting either some evidence that it's fake or at least a clear denial? (Biden's campaign released a statement refuting it, but that's not the same as Biden himself publicly denying the claims.)
Thin evidence (someone found some damaging-looking emails) can be dismissed with thin counter-evidence (a denial). But it can't be dismissed with nothing.
twitter and the journo sphere launder misinformation every single day with no consequence. the russian bounty story had little relation to factuality but it was still widespread with no objections or even much if any in the way of post facto correction. it's entirely permissible to write complete fiction just as long as you preface it with 'intelligence sources indicate...'
Can't people do their own research and choose whether or not they believe the contents of a story before they retweet it and lose their own credibility?
The problem here that this "bombshell" article did not provide enough information to do any kind of verification.
The main evidence is a PDF file of a print of an e-mail (without even providing a header information).
- we don't know if it's Hunter's laptop as claimed (kind of odd that somebody bothers with laptop repair (let's be honest, a lot people here probably buy a new one) and then leaves it there?
- we don't know if this is a real e-mail (headers could be used to prove that)
- we don't know that the sender e-mail is an e-mail connected to the person Hunter is accused talking to (the ".ukraine" in e-mail is very odd, who would put their country in an e-mail address, it's long and is not like he has a super common name)
- we don't know Hunter responded to it (since they have his laptop, you would think they would have his e-mails as well)
- we don't know the meeting actually happened
- this story is obviously an October surprise (the time is picked exactly to impact voting, there's also not enough time to prove it is false)
I agree with all of your points but why is it Twitter or Facebook's responsibility to check all of those things for every article posted to their platform? Why is the onus not on you as the reader to do your own fact checking?
Because the timing of this piece (if you look at the PDF was created a year ago, but published just in middle of October). It is clear that it is timed to affect election results.
They are not responsible, to check all things. But it's mostly ethics and self preservation. I don't think anyone will deny that they actually have real impact now (even greater than MSM now) and I believe if Democrats win, there will be some laws passed adding some checks. I also believe trump with executive order about section 230 also probably contributed.
In a normal situation, publication would be followed by scrutiny, possibly correction, more information. Incorrect information isn’t such a big problem then.
One major problem right now is that it’s 3 weeks from an election. Scrutiny and fact checks would risking being only after the election. I’m happy to see the requirements for credibility tightened right now, for issues related to the election.
Considering many people have already voted and probably do not care about this issue it would be unlikely to affect the outcome of the election anyway.
Oh, i definitely agree that as a private company Twitter is well within its rights to censor what it believes is "misinformation" but an important line has been crossed today by Twitter and Facebook.
A story about potential corruption of a candidate for the US president has been censored by two of the largest information brokers in the world. Also interestingly, no denial from Joe Biden about the authenticity of these emails. Wouldnt that be the first thing you'd do if this wasnt true? lol
>Wouldnt that be the first thing you'd do if this wasnt true?
If i was Joe Biden and the yellow press came after me honestly I'd do exactly what Joe Biden does and ignore them rather than giving them oxygen.
If people like Biden or Clinton responded every time someone tries to capitalise on some bullshit attached to their name they'd not be doing anything else
> I'd do exactly what Joe Biden does and ignore them rather than giving them oxygen.
Joe Biden ignored the reports? The article says Joe Biden responded, saying the meeting didn't take place:
> In a Thursday afternoon statement, the Biden campaign said the paper “never asked . . . about the critical elements of this story,” and that a review of “Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time” show that “no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” The Biden campaign did not dispute the veracity of the emails, though no other media outlet has confirmed the Post’s story so far.
That reply seems eerily similar to their response to Tara Reid’s allegations - “we have no official record of that in our boxes of records that we looked through”
> Also interestingly, no denial from Joe Biden about the authenticity of these emails. Wouldnt that be the first thing you'd do if this wasnt true?
I assume most politicians at the presidential candidate level have some sort of PR team that works to come up with some official response to these sorts of controversies
"JOE BIDEN SPOKESMAN ANDREW BATES hits back at the N.Y. POST STORY, via NATASHA BERTRAND and KYLE CHENEY: “Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.
“The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani - whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported - claimed to have such materials. Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”
Why would they have documented illegal/potentially illegal activity in the "official schedule" anyway? The claim that the official schedule somehow supports the rebuttal is pretty flimsy.
yeah exactly, that's what I was trying to convey. Like why include this qualifying language about "checking the official schedule" but for some funny business being afoot?
It's just a kinda legalistic answer, you'd give in a deposition but is kind of besides the point now.
I mean I don't particularly have much stake in whether its true or not, I'm just saying I'm not shocked he's not responding to it immediately for vaguely similar reasons to why people tell you not to talk to the police without a lawyer, whether you're innocent or not.
that's a fair point, just if its not true its pretty easy to say "not true, fake news" instead, what the answer that's provided is "we checked the schedule and didn't see it there" which is kinda suspicious.
Like the censorship of "misinformation" would be more persuasive then I think.