-
Friendly reminder: The politics section is a place where a lot of differing opinions are raised. You may not like what you read here but it is someone's opinion. As long as the debate is respectful you are free to debate freely. Also, the views and opinions expressed by forum members may not necessarily reflect those of GBAtemp. Messages that the staff consider offensive or inflammatory may be removed in line with existing forum terms and conditions.
Elon Musk announces Twitter suppressed Hunter Biden Laptop Story
- Thread starter x65943
- Start date
- Views 16,904
- Replies 325
Yeah, could be. We'll never know though, and Repubs won't drop it until the Bidens leave office. So honestly, who cares?
well,i do, and you should too. putting aside the politics a leader of the free world abused his position and colluded with a foreign country to make money, you should care about that
Jayro, stop being so fucking useless. If you are mad about the laptop existing, just say so. Don't do this crap like "well, we can't be sure". Wtf is wrong with you? It's real. We know it. Everyone knows it now.
I know it's off topic, but my personal favorite Chan was 420chan. I'm not even a drug addict, but the site was so relaxed. Then the admin went off the deep end, and his exgf ruined the site. 8chan made me remember that.
Ontopic: As for Twitter suppressing Hunter's laptop, yea, no shit? Next you'll be telling me that big tech kisses China's ass. Big tech needs to be broken up.
What the hell man, even Wikipedia verifies it. How can you be this much of an asshole to protect pedophiles. Is it only to own Trump? Fuck that guy. Be real and stop being an asshole.
I'm not being an asshole. I just think
A.) There's no way in hell the evidence will hold up in court due to severe tampering,
and
B.) I don't give two fucking shits about a goddamn cokehead's private life.
You clearly don't understand tampering.
Sure it does. Do you believe the last 2 elections were stolen too, buttercup?
Now you're trying to assume shit and attempting defamation against me. People get sued over that shit, you know. Alex Jones is a fine example of that.
The fact that there’s a system which allows the government to directly request take-downs of content is in and out of itself a violation of the 1st to me. Social media companies are private entities and they have a right to moderate their sites however they please, but it’s not supposed to function under duress. There’s an imbalance of power here, an implication of consequences if a story “reported” by the government isn’t “handled” accordingly. There’s no reason for such a system to exist other than to bury stories - it benefits the government and does nothing for the site - CDA 230 shields them from liability for user-generated content, so even if a post contains information that could be construed as illegal, the party that bears liability is the user.
Imagine for a moment that we’re not taking about social media - imagine we’re talking about the press. Imagine that such a system existed just a few decades ago - a system to suppress any information the government deems inconvenient. We’d never see the Pentagon Papers, we’d never hear about Watergate, we wouldn’t even imagine that PRISM was a thing. As it stands, social media are the modern public square - it’s where information is being shared and discussed. If the government can tinker with that square through thinly-veiled “threats”, it’s not free or public anymore.
I don’t like it. I didn’t like it before the Twitter Papers and I don’t like it now. I didn’t like when Biden’s admin was using this system and I didn’t like when Trump’s did the same, albeit with significantly less success (their bias is showing pretty badly here). These “portals” need to be dismantled, more people should be outraged by their existence, but for whatever reason most are interested in the specific content being suppressed rather than the core issue, the fact that a suppression mechanism exists at all.
Imagine for a moment that we’re not taking about social media - imagine we’re talking about the press. Imagine that such a system existed just a few decades ago - a system to suppress any information the government deems inconvenient. We’d never see the Pentagon Papers, we’d never hear about Watergate, we wouldn’t even imagine that PRISM was a thing. As it stands, social media are the modern public square - it’s where information is being shared and discussed. If the government can tinker with that square through thinly-veiled “threats”, it’s not free or public anymore.
I don’t like it. I didn’t like it before the Twitter Papers and I don’t like it now. I didn’t like when Biden’s admin was using this system and I didn’t like when Trump’s did the same, albeit with significantly less success (their bias is showing pretty badly here). These “portals” need to be dismantled, more people should be outraged by their existence, but for whatever reason most are interested in the specific content being suppressed rather than the core issue, the fact that a suppression mechanism exists at all.
If there was actual evidence of that, then sure.
The way the republicans have acted over hunter biden's laptop makes me think there is nothing to see.
It's not. The speech was allowed, they weren't prosecuted for it. The first amendment doesn't say anything about deleting social media content.
I don’t know if you’re pretending to be ignorant or you’re just being facetious. The entire debacle here is about a news story, published by a legitimate news source, being suppressed on a social media platform specifically at the behest of the government. The New York Post was blackballed on the platform, their story was blocked from being shared in spite of being true. You might not think that this is an infringement of freedom of the press principles - I do. The government couldn’t stop the New York Post from publishing the story (see below, NYT v. U.S.), but it certainly interfered in its proliferation on the Internet. There’s no precedent for this, and there should be. If you remove the medium from the equation, it’s as if a paper was allowed to put something to print, but the government directly approached news stands and requested that the paper be removed from sale - the only thing that’s different is that it happened on the Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States
Edit: My sentiment expressed in the form of a Tweet. Elon’s on-point about this - the government shouldn’t have this kind of power.
As I said in my initial post, I don’t care about Hunter or his laptop - all we found out from that is that he’s a crackhead with shady dealings and a penchant for weird sexual activities. What bothers me, specifically, is that the report portals exist at all. They should be dismantled - the government should not have the power to influence moderation decisions of the staff with their “suggestions” without judicial review - only content officially found illegal should be subject to removal.
Last edited by Foxi4,
I could say the same about you.
If Twitter decides on it's own it's not a 1st amendment issue.
If Twitter says to the government, "just tell us if there is anything you want removed and we'll do it", is also not a 1st amendment issue.
Unless the government threatens Twitter with legal action, it's not a 1st amendment issue.
The first amendment does not guarantee access to social media.
FWIW Democrats and Republicans both asked for tweets to be removed.
Last edited by smf,
We can agree to disagree, your counter-argument is nothing more than an extra degree of separation. The request is a thinly-veiled threat - the government makes those reports with the expectation of the content being removed. The question of “or else what?” hangs over the entire process. What you’re effectively saying is that the government isn’t at fault because rather than restricting access to the information directly, it “sub-contracts” a moderation team to remove it on its behalf, and that makes it a-okay. That’s a ridiculous notion. It is none of the government’s business what is or is not published on social media *unless* the content has been deemed illegal and there’s a warrant justifying the removal - it should not be able to colour the decision-making process with “suggestions”.
The reporting system was used by democrats and republicans.
AFAICT it was voluntarily set up by Twitter.
Whether you think it's ok or not is irrelevant to whether it's a 1st amendment issue.
When the hunter biden tweet was removed in 2020, the democrats weren't in government. What "or else" are you imagining?
You're both wrong, but smf is at least on the right track. The speech clause of the United States' 1A states that "Congress shall make no law...": but it has since morphed into a general free speech clause via the power of the judicial branch. While the men who wrote it wanted to hoard the power of censorship for themselves (when you note how many patriotic Americans revolted against Congress for King and Country - and that men like General Washington were quite rare amongst the US political elite - this makes a lot more sense) it's better for the
The moment someone starts screeching about "LITERAL NAZIS" is the moment that he admits either that
A: He is so weak-willed that he would become a LITERAL NAZI just by hearing them speak.
B: He's lying and wants to shut people up.
Fascists gonna fascist. The fact that it was voluntary actually makes it worse, because at least if it was government censorship, democracy could theoretically defeat it like with John Adams' Sedition Act. Remember that Twitter elites didn't comply with requests from the Trump administration (probably because they flagged things like child porn rather than anti-regime opinions)
Twitter shouldn’t have made the tool in the first place, and the government shouldn’t have abused it to remove inconvenient material from public discourse. It *should’ve* been used to remove content that is inherently illegal, not to restrict freedom of the press. As it stands, if this is how the tool is to be used, we’d all be better off if it didn’t exist at all.
Indeed. But, as I said: fascists are gonna fascist. What's better for fascists to gain power with a constitution like the United States? Government control of corporations, or corporate control of government? It's the second option. Twitter's elite had discretion on what they did - which is why they complied only with requests from their little fascist buddies. If any non-fascists tried to even the score, they'd beat them down with the US Constitution.
- No one is chatting at the moment.
-
@ HiradeGirl:
Any TV with your PC connected with Citra and any smartphone to use as a screen using a free play store app.+1 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
@
NinStar:
quite ironic that brawlhalla has a far superior netcode compared to smash bros ultimate while offering free online play with crossplay support -
