In this case reporting two dozen small fry accounts to moderator teams is very weak as far as censorship goes. They’re doing the same thing as everyone else who hits report on Twitter does, except cutting in line. But you can bet there are tens of thousands of businesses, especially Twitter’s advertisers, who have the same if not closer relations with Twitter and, if made displeased, could cause Twitter to censor you even quicker than the FBI could.
I don't see anything about being a "small fry" mattering when it comes to the law. It's pretty cut and dried. What the FBI is doing is unconstitutional and illegal. Why are you minimizing it? That they are doing it all is extremely alarming. It's like saying "the concentration camp only has 5 people, what's the big deal?"
And why are you comparing them to private companies? Private companies are not covered by the same laws when it comes to the first amendment.
Why is the FBI spending tax payer dollars trying to influence media outlets at all? Do you not find this alarming? It's absolutely outside their realm of responsibility.
The FBI accepts reports from the public about people interfering with elections, and they forward on those reports to the relevant platforms. I would like to see the FBI and other law enforcement agencies considerably reduced in scale and power, but as long as they exist I think monitoring threats to free and fair elections is one of the better things they can do with said taxpayer dollars.
No government entity should be involved in the slightest in policing media in order to "protect" elections. It's very subjective and extremely ripe for abuse.
The only reason election outcomes are so vulnerable to media manipulation is because the US political system is captured by cynical corporate interests that draw an arbitrary line unrelated to idealism across a set of issues to split voters almost perfectly at 50/50, then do everything in their power through corporate media to minimize third parties and use legal challenges to remove them from the ballot.
If viable candidates that actually served the interest of the public rather than the ruling class were given fair access to the process, then we wouldn't be so vulnerable to manipulation.
The FBI's role is to protect interests of the corporate elite in their backdoor dealings with various media outlets.
> No government entity should be involved in the slightest in policing media in order to "protect" elections. It's very subjective and extremely ripe for abuse.
The FEC can impose all sorts of fines, they arguably have more teeth than this.
> Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime.
> However, not all publicly available voting information is accurate, and some is deliberately designed to deceive you to keep you from voting.
Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting. This can include inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods, such as false information suggesting that one may vote by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction.
> Help defend the right to vote by reporting any suspected instances of voter suppression—especially those received through a private communication channel like texting—to your local FBI field office or at tips.fbi.gov.
So it sounds like they're actively doing this outside of Twitter or social media in general.
IANAL, but here's a Georgetown Law info sheet about how that works, and cites several federal law statues that are applicable:
The Pentagon routinely screens Hollywood blockbusters to ensure the content does not offend the military, and makes suggestions to studio executives as to how to best portray the military. The government is constantly influencing media outlets, none of this is new.
Let me cut and paste my comment with a minor change:
Why is the Pentagon spending tax payer dollars trying to influence media outlets at all? Do you not find this alarming? It's absolutely outside their realm of responsibility.
What does being "new" have anything to do with whether it matters or not?
It's not alarming because it's so pervasive it's the way things are. Thus when something new is brought up their impact needs to be weighed accordingly to prioritize.
Growing up in a fascist regime may make it seem normal but at some point you need to raise your hackles and feel alarmed regardless of the past, because it's a fascist regime.
The FBI says "won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?" while the majority party in congress is dragging social media CEOs to testify about content moderation isn't enough to make you at the very least, suspicious?
The FBI said they are "notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter's Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy". One of the accounts was an account parodying a pro wrestler by suggesting he frequently poops in his pants. Not really seeing any evidence of a coordinated political agenda here.
What is the law that is being broken here, and how are punishments measured for its infraction? Is it based on amount of impact? Because if so, then asking moderation for a dozen or two accounts with limited reach is something that might carry a small amount of punishment, if any at all.
The first amendment is about the government making laws to infringe upon free speech. I see no laws being made here. So it is the government behaving exactly like a private company. Which may be problematic, but not unlawful.
I already am. The FBI just shut down the Z-Library with the help of Google and Amazon, which is a far more significant scandal over unjust power than this is. This is nothing more than chaff meant to distract from that atrocity. You are all crying about two dozen low-follower accounts while the FBI has successfully shuttered an immense knowledge repository.
The FBI is putting pressure on Apple to drop Enhanced Encryption, and still refusing to declassify their JFK files. Those are far more urgent issues than getting mad at mods.
We are just trying to achieve concensus on facts here, not strategize on our plan to prosecute the FBI. This is a pseudo anonymous forum, not a law firm or activist group. We can talk about all of these things at once, despite your protestations.
Yes, and my free speech as protected by the First Amendment gives me the right to call this as plainly falling into the FBI's distraction trap, not to mention the whole giving cover to the sell-off of TSLA stock thing.
So how about describing the FBI's dasterdly distraction plan rather than dropping random sketchy details every couple comments as an argumentation tool?
You're posting in it. We're all here while those other threads remain low in replies. I'd say their plan has succeeded, wouldn't you? The proof is, as they say, in the pudding.
Every time the government tells anyone that something possibly harmful is happening, with the hope that folks stop that, it's censorship. The government shouldn't be involved at ALL in talking or thinking about what its citizens do or say. Any time the FBI posts a most-wanted list it's clearly an attempt to shut down speech or behavior. This is censorship and is just like a concentration camp.
Twitter isn't a media outlet; content moderation isn't censorship; routine communications over email aren't "behind closed doors"; suggestions that Twitter investigate certain accounts carry no legal weight.
> What you call a "suggestion" can easily be interpreted as a threat
Anything can be interpreted as a threat if you're paranoid enough, but the text of the emails (if you ignore Taibbi's commentary) is pretty clearly inconsistent with that interpretation.
