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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31649 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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So, uh, the latest Twitter Files just dropped. This one is about Trump and his removal.

Taibbi claims the following.

  1. Twitter post-Trump-ban was now willing to carry forward a policy of "the president can be banned" no matter what.

  2. At least 1 executive did not consider Trump's tweets in isolation i.e they considered the context surrounding the man, his policies, and supporters as well, and they were discussing this with Gadde.

  3. Trust and Safety team members were meeting with the FBI and DHS regularly during this time period.

  4. Twitter was actively engaging in fact-checking against some class of tweets (the particular example is whether Trump's claim about a rigged election would count as a violation if the supporting facts were wrong).

  5. Twitter was aware that they would not necessarily look good if it came out that they were partnering with the FBI/DHS to evaluate misinformation.

In my opinion, this one is somehow even weaker than the first reveal. Most of this was already known through other sources, it just gives additional information to existing claims about bias. Nothing new was revealed, which is now an argument many are using to claim that this is all a waste of time.

I'm totally down to believe that Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi had to post their reveals on Twitter, but the theatrical nature of the reveals is, in my opinion, actively hurting whatever points they want to make. The discussions are increasingly becoming about how the information is being handled over what, if anything, is being shown to us.

I subscribe to the Sunday edition of the Seattle Times. I've noticed that for two weeks in a row there has been no story on The Twitter Files. There is one story online.

Some stories printed in the A section this week that made the cut (headlines my own): Joe Biden supported gay marriage ten years ago (front page); some Americans still working in Russia (also front page); Santa Claus visits a native village in Alaska; rural voters less likely to approve of Biden's climate efforts.

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