This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Twitter Files 6
I thought we were done with this, but it seems not. Link
TF6 is written by Taibbi and covers the relationship between Twitter and the FBI + DHS. The arguments in order:
Twitter's senior/important staff were in constant contact with the FBI (Evidence/Example: 150 emails between Yoel Roth and the FBI from Jan 2020 to Nov 2022)
The FBI had a task force centered on identifying alleged foreign interference in our elections. This was made in 2016 and grew to 80 people eventually.
The FBI and DHS had separate entry points into Twitter's reporting system compared to other people so that Twitter knew it was the federal government requesting moderation, not just some randoms.
There were a great deal of requests made, with Taibbi alleging that humorless people must have been doing the ground-level collection because many of the flagged posts were obviously jokes (or, not obviously serious). Supposedly, the requests weren't that completely partisan, with a few left-wing jokesters getting flagged by the FBI as well.
Many accounts were tiny, with some having follower counts below 10. It seems whoever was collecting all this from the government's side took no chances and combed through everyone, something even Twitter's staff noted.
State governments were also involved, with one incident involving California officials asking Twitter why no action was taken against a flagged tweet.
Taibbi closes with the following:
I've said before that not every TF release is equal, with several coming across to me as limp and very much known to both sides beforehand. This is no exception, The Intercept had thoroughly covered attempts by the DHS to remove "misinformation" from social media a few months ago. I'm genuinely unsure what Taibbi or any of the other TF reporters think was revealed here. More evidence to throw onto an argument is always good, don't get me wrong, but there's nothing here that wasn't provable prior to this.
That's not to say what was going on is acceptable, I outlined my rejection of this state of affairs here. Only that none of this was even unknown or outside the mainstream.
What I like most in this one is FBI dressing Twitter down for not giving them enough fodder for their narrative of foreign government constantly attacking the US democracy over social media and heroic efforts necessary to combat this imaginary onslaught. Even Roth is kinda taken aback - he thought less foreign meddling would be good? Looks like he still didn't get the game - it's not about achieving some end goal, it's about establishing control. Oceania has always been, and will always be, at war with Eastasia. Foreign governments has always meddled and will always meddle, and always require heroic censors to stand in their way. And if to prove that you need to mine 10-follower accounts for ancient jokes about Wednesday elections - then so be it.
It's the same in offline world btw - how many "plots" turned out to be constructed by the FBI out of the whole cloth recently? That's what happens when you corrupt the watchdogs.
When it was first reported, it was "libelous accusations without any proof, we won't lower ourselves to discuss such baseless rumors". When the proofs started appearing later, it's "old news, everybody knew that, we already discussed it years ago, nothing to discuss here, move on already!". Simple trick, but surprisingly effective.
More options
Context Copy link
This is evidence, laid down in broad swaths in specific tranches, so left-media figures can’t say “Musk claimed, without evidence, …” on later, more investigative reporting from right-media.
More options
Context Copy link
There are two ways to react along the lines above:
(1) I was hoping/expecting/wondering if we would get new information, but there's nothing here we haven't seen before.
(2) Nothing to be seen here, move along please. What is all the big deal the right-wingers were making out of this, we knew they were just trying to spread fake news.
(1) is non-partisan, anyone on any or no side could make this observation - 'no new info'. (2) is partisan, in the 'it's a private company and they can do what they like, it didn't happen but if it did they deserved it, this is not censorship or government interference this is needed crackdown on hate speech' way, and generally yes, it does come from the left side (the right would do it as well when it's their outgroup getting "hey Twitter, Man From The Government Here, why are you letting this stochastic terrorist spread their propaganda" treatment).
To combat (2), more information is better, even if it's "we already knew this" or "nothing new here", because the counter-argument will always be "that was only one source/nobody else is reporting on it/that's a crackpot guy why should we believe what he says?". If you have one guy saying "this happened", it can be challenged. If you have twelve guys saying "this happened", it can still be challenged, but not as easily, and not as easily hidden.
More options
Context Copy link
So uh... there's a wikipedia page about the recent suspensions, and it's dubbed the "Thursday Night Massacre". Three letter agencies involved in the generation of such pages? I'm genuinely asking.
"Thursday Night Massacre" is something dreamed up by some online keyboard-basher. Journalists are so self-important, they really do need to realise that they are not Lois Lane and this is not The Daily Planet, their job is to generate eyeball-grabbing content so their employers can sell ad clicks.
What makes it even funnier is that the suspension only lasted one day, so Mr. "I Am So Important, I'm One of the Gang Of Eight Persecuted" barely had time to get his piece out to make the most of his martyrdom. Though apparently he also fancies himself as a techie, which makes me ask "so why does he need a sideline churning out written content?"
I absolutely hate the fact that, due to the reactions that 90% of what Elon does now causes in the likes of this guy, they're starting to make me take his side. I don't like Elon! Back when these same guys were all over him as their tech hero I didn't like him! But the self-important inflated notions that journalists and online activists have about themselves, that come pouring out once he does or doesn't do something, are so annoying that I have to say "yeah, the chubby billionaire who thinks he's God is in the right here".
I mean, look at this, which our Thursday Night Massacre hero is "a member of the Distributed Denial of Secrets advisory board". It's supposed to be journos working to make information free or something, so of course they had to include the newest version of the Pride flag. Of course they did. What the hell does "yay we are good allies if you're BIPOC queer" to do with ensuring secrecy isn't misused? Nothing, but it signals so hard you could use it to contact any possible alien civilisations (to warn them 'don't bother trying to paperclip us, we're managing that just fine by ourselves').
We don't have any personal leanings, we don't support any message, sure we don't (look at our logo! look at our logo! that reassures you that we are the right kind of thinkers!)
Now you understand why some people voted for Trump, even though they didn't like him.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Contemporaneously, the defenses of 'FBI misinformation teams', not just in the last few months but even eg the Jankowicz controversies well before that often involved some combination of :
the FBI had a valid role in combating fraud or other federal crimes related to false statements, and it wasn't going far outside of that here,
the majority of stricken content involved Bad Actors, either likely foreign governments, foreign-government-inspired 'third parties', and/or domestic near-criminals, and/or
the government's requests were 'just like anyone else', in that they were not prioritized, and did not result in takedowns that were unlikely if reported by normal people.
Note even in your Intercept link -- in addition to the low trust a lot of people have with the Intercept specifically -- mentions that "the extent to which the DHS initiatives affect Americans’ daily social feeds is unclear." The lawsuit the Intercept links is impressively limited in its references to the FBI (consisting almost solely of mentioning the FBI-Zuckerberg meeting mentioned in a Rogan interview), but more generally spends little focus on blocking of specific content, almost purely limited to the CDC's use of example posts. Those are controversial enough, but they were highly limited in both scope and topic. And while part of that reflects poor competence from the lawsuit's filers, more of it reflects that simply not being known anywhere. Because it was never known if any given censorship action was driven from state actors, it has been trivial to avoid object-level claims. People still pretend the Hunter Biden laptop was organically blocked!
This seems kinda like a pretty major revelations for all three of these things!
A number of posts are clearly protected political speech, satire, or rarely even plausible (if wrong) beliefs. The accounts do not show signs of domestic terrorism, nor of "boosting" or other signs of foreign intervention. And while Twitter didn't suspend 100% of posters the FBI gave, they are clearly willing to err far further on the side of moderating anyone brought through these formats than any posts brought forward through normal reports would be.
The strong case that it doesn't matter goes like: the removed content doesn't really have any strong political affiliation, and removing it is perfectly in like with twitter's retarded moderation policies generally. There were all sorts of people suspended for making election-fraud-related obvious jokes in 2016, but that isn't exactly out of the norm from people being suspended for entirely benign uses of 'kill' or 'die'.
The accusations were like "the FBI ordered twitter to suppress conservatives", and this isn't that, none of the FBI's actions here had large-scale 'suppress conservative' effects.
More options
Context Copy link
That's entirely fair. I keep assuming that people would conclude, like me, that "the government is trying to tell private actors what to censor" to be a maximally red flag and all following evidence just icing on said flag, but I shouldn't doubt that there are people who unironically would say that there isn't anything inherently wrong with that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't really understand why the response to the FBI wasn't "feel free to click 'report this tweet' if you think it violates our AUP".
The fact that they wanted an inside line but still couldn't produce any legal process compelling them to take tweets/accounts down doesn't look very good? If you were Twitter would you want to normalize this? Why would you want to be in a place where you're continuously negotiating with law enforcement about what you can and can't take down?
This seems like humoring computer illiterate people at the FBI slash keeping them from getting mad and asking for burdensome regulation.
It seems like an appropriate response to this would be to say "sure, we'll take all government legal requests. Just send it to this address, clearly stating it is a legal request."
The problem is not that the government can make demands, it's that the government, or Twitter laundering censorship through the government, can make demands backed by government force, but then retreat to "we were just warning them about the AUP, no threat of force here" when called on it.
More options
Context Copy link
Good Boy Points from the hegemon are the world's most valuable currency, and this generates them. If I were Twitter I would certainly be tempted to be owed favours by Alphabet Agencies.
Your examples are:
Refuses to help a Republican attorney general silence a blogger who's critical of him
Refuses to dox an Occupy Wall Street guy
Refuses to shut down an account parodying a California Republican
Refuses to shut down accounts tagged @OccupyBoston at the request of local PD
NONE of these examples represents Twitter spurning the hegemon. They're all Twitter spurning the Red Tribe.
More options
Context Copy link
Is it just me or do these 4 examples seem kinda like they're fighting subpoenas for left wing causes?
More options
Context Copy link
See also: JPM adding Ukraine to its bond index immediately before the invasion (when the news was reporting USA predictions of invasion nightly). Addition to the index of a country that could see its entire economy destroyed is utterly insanely irrational... Unless it was done to please the US government by making Ukrainian financing mildly easier.
Big corporations are creatures of big government, one cannot exist without the other. They're perpetually trading favors.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When you think you are some important opinion-shaping national influencing world player, not a gossip site? I think the journalism and activist side of Twitter have a vastly inflated notion of their importance and vital role in protecting democracy (which will die in darkness, remember!), possibly because for journos it has become part of their job and a performance metric about "how much did you tweet under the company masthead, how many views did you get, are you being quoted online?" In reality, I think most people who use it, use it like they would have used Facebook when that was the popular thing - tweeting snippets of their lives, chatting with friends online, sharing links, etc.
And I think whoever the powers that were at Twitter were, they thought they were this big important "democracy dies in darkness" social media project, so working with law enforcement about 'hate speech' and 'fake news' was all part of the War On Badthink. Also, co-operating with the government/law enforcement to prove you are a good citizen because they were a business enterprise after all, and didn't need to be cracked down on themselves.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's worth noting that one account inexplicably targeted was a parody account primarily about professional wrestler The Undertaker shitting his pants.
More options
Context Copy link
It's one thing to have it from the govt's side via FOIA, it's another to have it from Twitter directly. Independent corroboration is always good, and making this stuff even better-known, even common knowledge (which I don't think the Intercept story did), also seems like a plus.
More options
Context Copy link
This is as simple as just doing Twitter searches for keywords "voting" or "vote" . I am sure the FBI has some people whose job it is to go through keywords during elections
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link