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Notes -
An update on the Twitter Censorship saga.
The original thread contained the following exchange:
Now, as much as I sympathize with the response, I have to admit it's rather high on copium. As we all know from our Internet Atheist days, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim, and how would confirming that the federal government did not contact Twitter directly to censor stories look like anyway? An Email saying "we totally were not asked to delete this by the federal government"? That would seem even more suspicious. No, I believe that it's unreasonable to expect your opponents to prove a negative, and sometimes you just have to admit when your theory comes up short on evidence.
Anyway, onto the update:
In it's own right this is also an interesting follow up to a thread from the old place about ex-CIA people getting new jobs at Facebook moderation, and how "extremely inflammatory and uncharitable" it was to claim they might care more about CIA than Facebook interests.
In this case the response is correct, but that's mainly because the person they are responding to make such an absurdly strong claim. I think it's fair to say "it doesn't appear that the FBI contacted Twitter asking them to suppress the laptop story". It's another thing to say "he confirmed that the federal government, FBI, CIA, etc., did at no time, for any purpose, contact Twitter directly regarding the laptop story".
I also am really having a hard time understanding why this Baker guy was fired. He was fired for vetting the files without knowledge of new management? But new management is the one who is keen on disseminating these files. Why on earth would they fire him for advancing their goals? It makes no sense.
Because he wasn't supposed to be vetting them. Somehow he managed to insert himself into the process, against the wishes of Elon, and began slow walking and obfuscating access to the documents Elon wanted the journalist to have.
Elon called him in to explain his actions, and in Elon's own words, he found the explanations "unconvincing".
It also seems incredibly likely, given Jim Baker's placement in Russiagate, that he was one of the backdoor channels political operatives used to have Twitter censor things. So him "vetting" the information that gets released to journalist covering that connection is highly suspect. Doubly so when he inserts himself into that process completely unbidden.
This doesn't make sense, Jim Baker has been the Deputy General Counsel and Vice President of Legal for Twitter since June 2020, he's absolutely supposed to vet records that will be released to an outside party. That's basically foundational to his job as general counsel for a company. Some of the things a general counsel would want to review are relatively banal (e.g. employee SSN) and others would be making sure that a disclosure doesn't violate an NDA, disclose trade secrets, or otherwise runs afoul of the overbearing National Security Letter gag orders.
The point of a legal department is to protect a company from legal liability, and releasing these files without any lawyer reviewing the disclosures would have been an idiotic move. So unless Musk specifically asked to release the files without involving legal, it's presumed that the legal department would do its job. That Taibbi seems surprised by this makes me think he doesn't understand what a general counsel's job is.
Musk claims that Baker's explanations were "unconvincing" but why should we take him at his word? He could easily tell us what the reasons are. I think it's plausible that Jim Baker would at least have a strong motive to conceal things that would impugn the FBI which is his previous employer, but motive is not the same thing as commission. If Baker did indeed conceal things from the reveal, then Musk can just tell us. If Baker did indeed have unconvincing reasons for being involved, then Must can just tell us. The fact that he's light on the details makes me think Musk's reasons for firing him may have been more personal than anything else.
Aaand this is exactly the kind of response that makes me lose faith political debate in good faith can ever happen.
Nope, if your boss fires you, we can assume it's not because you weren't doing your job the way he wanted you to. The burden of proof is now on you that Baker was actually doing everything as was expected of him.
it is possible to fire someone for a bad reason! e.g. from musk. Bosses make mistakes sometimes!
I'm not sure I buy your example, but that's beside they point. Sure when you're firing, what was it 50%? 80%? of the company, some good people are going to be caught in the splash damage. It's a bit different when someone gets fired when they're caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar, and someone else goes "there is no evidence that those weren't his cookies".
Fair - but this wasn't "looking for people who will say arbitrary bad things that about musk", danluu is ex-twitter, knew a lot of people there, and I was reading him before the musk saga.
The error rate is certainly higher in mass layoffs - that's just the musk-related example I had on hand - but it's still very possible for a manager/ceo to make an individual firing for a bad reason, and that happens all the time.
Sure, it happens all the time, but rarely enough, that in most cases when someone gets fired, people don't presume wrongful termination. This case is even more specific, when the company owner, and 2 journalists unaffiliated with the company caught the guy with his hand in the cookie jar, and the only argument for wrongful termination is "there is no evidence those weren't his cookies".
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I think you meant "we can assume it's because you weren't doing your job the way he wanted you to". If so then yes, I agree, but that would be an unremarkable observation. The real question is what exactly Elon Musk was upset about that led to this guy's firing. Musk has fired Twitter developers that criticized him or talked back at him. It's his right to fire them, but it comes across as petty and vindictive. Because he has a very recent history of this kind of retribution against his employees, I don't think it's reasonable for me to assume that Musk fired Baker for lofty high-brow reasons. It could be true, but I don't have evidence to believe that at this point.
Funny how the burden of proof is never on you.
Is there any evidence that Baker was fired for petty reasons, did he even claim to be? Is there any evidence he inserted himself in the process in good faith? It could be true but I don't have evidence that at this point.
I'm not sure how you misread what I wrote to this degree. The post you are directly responding to explicitly said that it's possible that Musk fired Baker for lofty high-brow reasons. It's perfectly reasonable to place the burden of proof on the one making an assertion and my assertion in this case is "I don't have evidence to believe that". What objection do you have with my assertion?
You are instead asking me to provide evidence that Baker was fired for petty reasons, or that Baker acted in good faith. I never asserted either positions! I don't know if either of those things are true! How many different ways do I need to say this?
The objection I have is that despite inserting a thousand technicalities you can hide behind when called out, we're not in court, and I don't need to let you hide behind these technicalities, and pretend you didn't just say what you clearly said. The content of your comments clearly says that "it doesn't make sense" for Baker to not be involved. You're wrong, it does, and you have not provided any evidence for that not being the case.
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This is a lot of willful obfuscation. The documents were supposed to be vetted. According to Taibbi they were being vetting by a lawyer Musk trusts who was brought in. At some point, Baker managed to usurp that lawyer without Musk knowing, and immediately interferred in the process in ways Musk and Taibbi and the original lawyer agreed wouldn't happen.
All these crocodile tears about how they simply have to be vetted, and Jim Baker is a lawyer, so why can't he vet them is completely detached from the events that actually occurred. The entire point of the disclosures is that the prior regime at Twitter has no public trust. To not have another "We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong." In that light, having Jim Baker vet things is absolutely inappropriate, letter of the law qualifications or not.
I was not aware of this, where did you read this?
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This just sounds like manipulating procedural outcomes by saying "look, there has to be a procedure. It's not our fault that our partisans who control every step of the process make all the procedural decisions in ways that seem disfavorable to you: you just don't understand The Procedure."
It's an ironclad defense for setting policy by backchannel insider consensus while stonewalling any outside input, even from the guy who is nominally in charge (insert your favorite Yes Minister clip here). It's a very lawyerly way of going about things, and so far it's been absolutely foolproof for imposing everything from ESG mandates to Title IX tribunals under the guise of implementing necessary value-neutral systems that only anarchists would oppose.
Edit: especially when you immediately follow up the "unbiased, just neutrally reporting The Procedure" by retweeting this screed. God damn dude, it's as if the entire point is having something to fall back on to muddy the issue in places where consensus enforcement isn't a viable tactic.
If Musk has evidence Baker acted badly (which I already said is perfectly plausible) there's nothing stopping him from showing it. He's not showing it. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to withhold judgment and not take Musk at his word when he's being so vague and cagey.
Which part of the above exactly do you take issue with?
I don't see how my retweets of what other people said are relevant. If you have an objection to something I myself actually wrote then just make your argument about what I actually wrote. No need to play offense archeology across other platforms, it's not like anyone can accuse me of being too terse to quote.
Because it makes it look like you go for partisan consensus enforcement when you think you can get away with it. When you can't, you fall back on what's carefully crafted to look like objective analysis with the partisanship hidden to muddy the waters as much as possible.
Like I said, it's a lawyerly debating method.
And I wasn't playing archeology: Singal retweeted you a few hours after I made that post, and I saw your account.
"You retweeted something I think is a partisan screed" is not an argument. You can continue scrying the tea leaves or you can actually address what I, myself, actually wrote and argued. I already laid out my position above and you've side-stepped addressing it. So once again:
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The very presence of Baker makes me assume that the FBI would have a role in being able to determine what Twitter censors. He may well be bright enough to not send emails that say "YEAH THE FBI SAID TO DELETE THIS", but having a former FBI guy around to set policy will tend to lead to the FBI having a say in policy.
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