The goal seems to be to distract from Musk selling off Tesla at breakneck speed. Every time there is a big hoopla around Musk the first thing I do is check the stock price and sure enough it seems to be dropping like a stone in tandem with the news releases.
I think the goal is to drive engagement. Unfortunately for Musk the engagement will cost him more compute resources even though he's lost a lot of advertising revenue.
If Twitter had a proper functioning board doesn't everyone think they would have prevented him from driving away advertisers and then threatening them with lawsuits for not advertising? If I was an investor in Twitter I would be livid. It appears most investors take it in stride because they worship Musk.
I replied to a tweet that referenced Musk and Tesla, and simply mentioned that I sold my Tesla shares at the beginning of this week (and made a loss) because I didn't want any association with Musk any more.
The replies I got from Musk fans were shockingly (maybe not so shockingly) vile.
Turns out Musk sold his Tesla shares at the same time as I did — I wonder how those people replying to me would square that with their insults.
As a Musk fan (well, sorta, this twitter posturing is mega cringe), I applaud your common sense in selling a grossly overvalued stock (which I am confident Musk also thinks is overvalued).
I'm certainly not going to defend the people insulting you, but suggesting that you sold for moral, and not financial, reasons comes off as very sanctimonious and invites that type of reply in a cesspit like Twitter.
Good point, Musk is now in direct competition with Truth Social, Parler and so on. I had not given that any thought but it explains some of the more bizarre moves of the last weeks.
It would be foolish to see this as a left v. right issue. This is an authoritarian vs. libertarian battle.
This sort of activity is what the government 100% shouldn't be involved in. Having a department of What is Allowed To Be Said is one of those ideas that gets tried regularly and has a terrible track record that - inevitably - ranges between a source of mild shame in hindsight to a nightmare influence on society.
There are nearly no scenarios where it is acceptable for the FBI to be in regular contact with Twitter asking for Tweets to be taken down, and if there are it should be transparent and documented - in public, in real time. It shouldn't take Elon Musk spending too much money to get details on the FBI's censorship programs (similarly it should have taken Assange-Manning-Snowden to get details on the pervasive spying).
Are there any scenarios where it is acceptable for the President to threaten private companies to change their moderation policies to suit his needs? That's what Trump did repeatedly.
There's a fundamental contradiction in the narrative presented in the Twitter Files, apparently we're supposed to believe that Twitter is this overwhelmingly liberal place where employees were highly biased against conservatives in their content moderation and also the FBI, of course that famously leftist institution, coerced Twitter in a highly biased way to get them to silence conservative narratives. If Twitter and FBI were aligned, there's no coercion. If Twitter was being forced, it remains to be shown exactly how. And to the extent that Twitter is institutionally biased towards liberals, then it's those that sit on the opposite political spectrum that are most suspicious. After all, if Twitter was going out of their way to help the Democrats, why would they need to be coerced in that same direction?
There's plenty of public evidence that Republican politicians including the sitting President threatened Twitter and other social media companies in order to influence their moderation policies. Where's the outrage among the "FBI asking Twitter nicely is a First Amendment issue" crowd?
> Are there any scenarios where it is acceptable for the President to threaten private companies to change their moderation policies to suit his needs?
If he's asking for something completely reasonable that ~80+% of people think is a good idea, sure. The appropriate thing for Twitter to do would still probably be to ignore him.
Giving Trump influence of Twitter's moderation policies is one of those obviously bad ideas (much like giving the FBI influence, in fact, for similar reasons).
> If Twitter and FBI were aligned, there's no coercion.
Yeah it isn't really a question of coercion, obviously if Twitter wants to support the FBI in political causes they are free to do that. The issue is that the FBI is being funded by taxpayers, not leftists, and shouldn't be deployed in a political capacity to support partisan management policies like what Twitter turned out to have. The easy way to achieve that is a blanket rule - something like "the government doesn't police what people say" which is fair and reasonably objective.
> ...also the FBI, of course that famously leftist institution...
There was the institutional support for the Trump-Russia hoax and the FBI's help in suppression of the Hunter Biden story. While I agree the FBI probably isn't leftist (I'm arguing it is authoritarian and status-quo biased, for what it is worth - they'd pull all the same tricks on someone like Bernie Sanders if he had made it through the primary), it is politically active and spreading a lot of this "misinformation" stuff to try and keep Trump out of office. That is corrupt, and it shouldn't be working with Twitter like it is.
So the big scandal here isn't that the FBI is implicitly threatening Twitter in a way that raises 1st Amendment concerns, but rather that the FBI is using public funds to help a social media company do its job. This has nothing to do with free speech and there's also no evidence the FBI's actions were motivated by partisan concerns.
To me, it's rather clear that a bunch of people who are not particularly principled or have a strong understanding of the ethics or laws involved, but are prone to thinking that anyone working against their own agenda must be evil or nefarious in some ways, reverse-engineering their way into finding faults with how things more or less have always worked. This also isn't some nefarious hidden secret motivated by partisan concerns. Trump's own Director of FBI, Christopher Wray stated that Russia was attempting to interfere in the presidential election:
> Russia is determined to interfere in U.S. elections despite sanctions and other efforts to deter such actions before the next presidential election in 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday.
And he specifically told the public what the FBI is doing about this:
> FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, said social media remains a primary avenue for foreign actors to influence U.S. elections, and the bureau is working with companies on the problem.
> “What has continued virtually unabated and just intensifies during the election cycles is this malign foreign influence campaign, especially using social media,” Wray said. “That continues, and we’re gearing up for it to continue and grow again for 2020.”
Well, the scandal here is the FBI were rolling in, giving Twitter a list of random bystanders with the expectation that they will be silenced. US Federal government agencies are specifically not supposed to do that.
All the stuff observing that the FBI is politically active (and has been pretty much since inception I suspect) is interesting but not really news. It is context for why they are supposed to avoid chummy relationships with Twitter's team of moderators.
> Trump's own Director of FBI, Christopher Wray stated that Russia was attempting to interfere in the presidential election
Yeah, but the Muller report came out around the time he said that and basically debunked the issue as a serious problem; raising the question of what exactly Wray was trying to stir up. He looks like part of the anti-Trump crowd that has been active in the FBI for the last few years.
> Well, the scandal here is the FBI were rolling in, giving Twitter a list of random bystanders with the expectation that they will be silenced. US Federal government agencies are specifically not supposed to do that.
Which is substantially less problematic that the sitting President threatening Twitter. Yet here we are.
> Yeah, but the Muller report came out around the time he said that and basically debunked the issue as a serious problem; raising the question of what exactly Wray was trying to stir up. He looks like part of the anti-Trump crowd that has been active in the FBI for the last few years.
This is so far off the mark that it's hard to take you seriously. The Mueller report extensively documented Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2016 election.
> However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion
It didn't exonerate the Trump campaign either. It more or less said that it couldn't prove the collusion in large part due to extensive attempts by the President's attempt to torpedo the investigation. It describes these attempts at obstruction of justice, without specifically accusing him (or exonerating) because Mueller didn't think it would be fair even if he believes a crime occurred:
> The report describes ten episodes where Trump may have obstructed justice while president and one before he was elected, noting that he privately tried to "control the investigation". The report further states that Congress can decide whether Trump obstructed justice and take action accordingly, referencing impeachment
> Mueller's belief that it would be unfair to accuse the president of a crime even without charging him because he would have no opportunity to clear his name in court; furthermore it would undermine Trump's ability to govern and preempt impeachment
> Which is substantially less problematic that the sitting President threatening Twitter.
No, in fact quite the reverse. It is quite problematic. Active cooperation between the FBI and Twitter is a threat to the institutions of democratic governance. That is why it is a scandal and there are things like the 1st amendment that basically say "government shouldn't do this, it is illegal".
Part of the draw of Trump was his ongoing battles with every reporting institution on the face of the earth. His Fake News routine was entertaining. And, critically, all happening publicly and with extensive documentation of every act and insult. Compare that to the FBI here where it is almost coincidence that we even have firm evidence of what is going on despite the fact they were handing out names to be blocked.
> The Mueller report extensively documented Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2016 election.
Which aspects of the Russian interference do you think are a bigger deal than the FBI interference in the political process that are being documented in the linked twitter thread?
You can refer to the Muller report if you like. I ask people to cite which bits of it they are worried about and usually their turn out to be bluffing about there being anything defensible in it. There is a lot of bark and no bite, it looks like to maintain credibility they were relying on the report being so think that nobody reads it.
To take the Muller report seriously requires someone to believe in devious Russian plans to reveal the truth to Americans. And that the Chinese are all angels and have no influence operations of note whatsoever. The whole scenario that Muller tried to paint is an insult to the intelligence, which casts a poor light on Wray because he had presumably read and understood the report.
> It didn't exonerate the Trump campaign either.
I'm going to be polite and listen to your opinion despite you likely not being exonerated for any horrible crimes.
That was always political weasel language, and goes a long way to discrediting Muller as purposefully adding spin to the situation. He was looking very hard for a problem and couldn't find anything. When the politicians are forced back to insinuation that means they don't have any actual evidence - because if they have it they lead with it.
It's virtually impossible for the government to do its job without the private individuals and institutions "actively cooperating" with them. Nearly all interactions between the government and private institutions can be described that way.
> That is why it is a scandal and there are things like the 1st amendment that basically say "government shouldn't do this, it is illegal".
This is completely incoherent - the first amendment of course does not say that the government shouldn't cooperate with private individuals or institutions. Like how is it even possible to interpret the first amendment that way? I mean, it's very obvious you have no idea what you're talking about and your motivation here is entirely political, but how is it possible to get things so wrong?
I mean there are so many things wrong here, but one additional thing is that the Constitution enumerates and limits the power of the federal government. The Constitution does not grant the FBI any power whatsoever, except indirectly through the President.
What you're saying (rather extremely incoherently) amounts to saying President Trump was unconstitutionally abusing his powers to hurt his own campaign.
Also, this is how you started:
> the Muller report came out around the time he said that and basically debunked the issue as a serious problem
And this is where you ended:
> To take the Muller report seriously requires someone to believe in devious Russian plans to reveal the truth to Americans
> That was always political weasel language, and goes a long way to discrediting Muller as purposefully adding spin to the situation
And no the Mueller report doesn't insinuate - it extensively documents criminal ways in which Trump obstructed the investigation. He simply felt it was the job of Congress to act on the evidence he found.
The stupid H Biden lap top story shows that factually the government can twist a private company's arm outside of legal channels and said company will do as it is told. That is very bad. I'm not sure people realize this. Every incriminating leak showcases it more and more and yet people are generally not worried about it because they themselves have not been affected. Yet.
We learned before Taibbi's scoop that Twitter disallowed sharing of the story including in DMs. Blocking content in DMs was supposedly only used for illicit underage material until that story. Facebook's Zuck outright admitted in plain English that they got contacted by the government (maybe FBI, can't remember) so they buried the story. This is not my opinion or guessing. We know this to be absolute fact.
> We learned before Taibbi's scoop that Twitter disallowed sharing of the story including in DMs. Blocking content in DMs was supposedly only used for illicit underage material until that story
You might not have been aware of that but it was common knowledge years before. During the hours when that story was blocked using the same mechanism they used for other hacked materials like you might have seen if some celebrity’s nudes had been leaked. Within a day that was removed for the NY Post news story since they were individually taking down the tweets with the actual nudes.
> This is not my opinion or guessing. We know this to be absolute fact.
What we know as absolute fact is that you’re getting your information from people who carefully lie to you, and you didn’t verify the source. It sounds like you’re referring to Zuckerberg’s interview with Rogan, where he said this:
“The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'."
That’s important because what he said doesn’t support that narrative:
Rogan: “Did [the FBI] specifically say you need to be on guard about that story?”
Zuckerberg: “No, I don’t remember if it was that specifically, but it basically fit the pattern.”
Now, this is all off topic from the “Twitter Files” but again it’s important to remember that the mythology around conservative oppression is being used to distract from the real point that the laptop story failed to have the impact Giuliani & Trump wanted was because there wasn’t much of substance there and the evidence was tainted by sloppy handling. They’re trying to market it as a tale of censorship because they know that it wasn’t effective as a scandal.
It's common knowledge yet here we are arguing whether these social media outlets block useless content that happens to be embarrassing to the State when suggested to by the FBI. You seem to agree with this but frame it as a counterpoint. "Mythology around conservative oppression"? I don't follow conservative whinings about how their hate speech is oppressed.
"arm twisting" doesn't mean flat out forcing but strongly recommending with the idea that it may go further if their recommendation isn't followed. The laptop story being suppressed is now fact and admitted by both Twitter and Facebook and months before these Taibbi stories.
I kind of wonder whether Tesla, a company making cars with GPS, microphones and video cameras embedded in it is also regularly contacted by crime agencies.
It's weird that it's turned into some sort of naive left vs right issue.
I'd be asking what the goal is, but apparently it's that. Point fingers, suggest no solutions beyond vote for us.