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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 the new management didn't want the files to be vetted, at least by him?
Not wanting the files to be vetted by Baker makes some sense, with the assumption he would improperly filter things out. Not wanting them to be vetted at all would be, frankly, an extremely stupid position. Unless Musk wants the company he just bought to be exposed to civil or criminal litigation as a result of this release.
Not really. Some people tried to whip up a scandal, because Taibbi agreed to "certain conditions". It's not clear what exactly they were but "you get to look into anything, but double check with us before you publish" wouldn't be beyond the pale. In that case you wouldn't need to vet anything, let alone have someone insert themselves to do it for you.
I would describe the process of someone at Twitter reviewing documents a journalist wanted to publish about the company, that they got from the company, before they were actually published as "vetting."
Now you're just arguing semantics. A process where they get to look into everything, but the company can review what's published is better, because if Taibbi and Weiss decide it is extremely important for the public to know something, but Musk disagrees, they can still choose to violate the agreement, and let the chips fall where they may. They have no such option if they never get to see certain documents in the first place.
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