The Twitter files

[stevil]

Since none of them are "facts", there's nothing to challenge.

Really?
You dispute

• FBI warned Facebook that there might be some Russian disinformation doing the rounds in the lead up to the presidential election

Are you calling Zuckerburg a lier?

 

[Aldebaran]

Really?
You dispute

• FBI warned Facebook that there might be some Russian disinformation doing the rounds in the lead up to the presidential election

Are you calling Zuckerburg a lier?

Why would I be doing that when I'm the one that posted the video of exactly what he said?

 

[stevil]

Why would I be doing that when I'm the one that posted the video of exactly what he said?

And yet when I bullet point the facts from that very conversation you are telling me that none of those bullet points are facts.

Very bizzare

 

[DaisyDay]

My post. The one I wrote in response to yours.

What was your response to post #99? You seem to be just going in circles without saying anything.

 

[Aldebaran]

What was your response to post #99? You seem to be just going in circles without saying anything.

I'm following you. Or at least I was.

 

[DaisyDay]

I'm following you. Or at least I was.

Post #115.

 

[probinson]

The government don't own these social media platforms, but they are free to communicate with the owners.

Sure. And to make "suggestions".

The social media platforms aren't an anything goes environment, they choose to moderate based on various criteria

Awesome. And you're apparently cool with that. Just be aware that the power will shift, and when it does and you're not allowed to discuss J6 or whatever else the powers that be determine is taboo, you will be the reason why.

There is nothing to say that the social media platforms can't listen to what governments or organisations such as WHO or CDC have to say, and can't factor that into their decisions for moderation.

Sure.

It is quite different.

It is not.

Noone is dying due to Laptop misinformation, and it isn't a congaious deadly disease and isn't something the WHO, CDC or Dr Faucci are experts on.

You're acting as though people haven't died due to mitigation measures. Are you blissfully ignorant of the fact that excess deaths are up all over the world, and NOT because of COVID? What good are all of these "expert" proclamations if they reduce COVID deaths but result in a rise in all excess deaths?

But, as a complicating factor, this popped up just a few short weeks prior to the general election. The timing was suspicious and the circumstances were suspicious and people hadn't had enough time to fully investigate it.

It's almost like you've never heard of the "October surprise". The timing of EVERY October surprise is suspicious.

By who?
Government or by the social media owners?

Right. Your theory is the government held regular meetings to make "suggestions" and the social media companies just decided on their own what to do. Don't expect most people to believe that.

Huh, are you talking about investigating Twitter's moderation practices or investigating CBS?

Each day that passes shows more and more how Twitter was doing what they called "visibility filtering" of content, which is a fancy way of saying they were censoring data they disagreed with. The latest dump of files shows conversations amongst Twitter employees that searched for ways to deamplify Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from the day he joined Twitter. According to his Stanford bio, "Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics." Yet Twitter flunkies took it upon themselves to declare themselves arbiters of what was and was not "misinformation" and elevated themselves above Dr. Bhattacharya. If you read the communications, they were frustrated that the good doctor wasn't violating any of their rules so they couldn't ban him, so instead they "shadow banned" him, not because he was saying anything untrue, but because they didn't particularly like what he said. This practice led to useful idiots believing that there was a "scientific consensus", because the playing filed was not level. The few Fauci-approved doctors were amplified on all platforms, but doctors who held different opinions were not given the same platform. They were intentionally de-amplified and Twitter ensured that their posts would never gain the same traction. This is particularly interesting, because Francis Collins emailed Dr. Fauci saying that there needed to be a "devastating" takedown of these ideas. And what's absolutely amazing to me is that you are seemingly OK with this.

It's always been a possibility.

Right. But it was deemed "misinformation" to suggest it as such. Further, there are internal communications from Dr. Fauci revealed by the FOIA of his emails that show, at the very least, a correlation of the timing of Fauci's orders via email and when it was no longer acceptable to discuss in public.

But Trump and his guys were saying it was definitely a lab leak. I think the details are getting quite confused here.

No, what's happening here is that you're engaging in historical revisionism. You admit that the lab-leak theory was always a possibility, but fail to see the problem with that position being censored. If it was always a possibility, why the censorship of that viewpoint?

I don't see any problem here.

And that really is the biggest problem.

Dr Fauci was in charge of coming up with the official response to Covid (from a science perspective)

Very little of what Dr. Fauci did had anything to do with science. His haphazard and foolish recommendations in conjunction with the regulatory capture of the FDA and the CDC and their willingness to be used as political pawns has done immense damage to public trust, and it will have dire consequences.

There was lots of conflicting information being spread around by every man and his dog that had an opinion at the time.

Again, we're not just talking about every man and his dog. We're talking about credible doctors who held contrarian viewpoints to Dr. Fauci.

If Fauci made it clear to social media platforms what the official line was, then I have no problems with that.
If the social media platforms decided to take down information that was contradictory to that, then that is their right.

This is a stunning statement. Let's pretend that social media existed during World War II and you and I are having this same conversation. Would you have said:

If Hitler made it clear to social media platforms what the official line was, then I have no problems with that.
If the social media platforms decided to take down information that was contradictory to that, then that is their right.

Please note that I only changed one word, the name of the person, in your comment. Can you now see how foolish it is to grant one person the authority to declare "the official line" while silencing all other viewpoints?

Noone was ever considering lockdows forever.

Oh, but they were considering lockdowns for far more than the "15 days to slow the spread" that we were told. In Dr. Birx's book, she freely admits that they knew they needed far more than that, but they lied to the President and to the American people. Specifically, she said this in her book;

"No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that."

Do you remember anyone telling you that this 15-days to slow the spread was "a start"? I don't. Public health officials lied from day one about their intentions.

Of course now that vaccinations and medication is available, most countries have opened up.

So vaccines were the way out of lockdowns, and no one was ever considering these lockdowns "forever". I am continually amazed at how much people stuff down the memory hole. Fauci told us at the beginning of the pandemic that the development of an effective vaccine could take "years". So if they believed that was true, and that lockdowns were only needed until the vaccines became available, then it follows that they believed lockdowns would be needed for "years", right?

I'm sure many scientist were involved in the official scientific position. It wasn't just Fauci.

You're right. There were numerous bureaucrats involved in "the official scientific position", or what I and many have deemed, THE SCIENCE™!, but few recommendations were based on sound evidence.

Dr Fauci was not controlling or coercing the social media platforms.

That remains to be seen.

He was merely presenting the official scientific stance.

No, he was presenting his stance.

If they choose to follow him and moderate the conflicting stuff, then that was the social media platform's decision

Right. I'm sure the government didn't persuade them to censor anything that went against THE SCIENCE™! Of course, that's nonsense. If you read the Twitter files, you see time and again the government asking for content to be banned, and Twitter employees struggling to find a reason why since it didn't violate any of their rules. Yet they found ways.

Good,

Good? You think it's "good" that Twitter flunkies were allowed to censor board certified doctors and professors of medicine?

but Dr Fauci had no control over that.

You can't be this naive, can you?

He did not decide who would be moderated and who would not. If you have issues with moderation then take that up with Twitter and youtube and whoever.

I don't need to. There's already a lawsuit that will uncover more.

Only this isn't the case.
Fauci had a clear job to do, and he did it, in collaboration with the scientific community.

No, Fauci did not work with "the scientific community". He impugned those that disagreed with him. He did not have discussion based on scientific merits. He resorted to character assaults, labeling people as "fringe" who disagreed with him. Don't forget that Fauci holds the purse strings to research dollars. There was a clear power imbalance. Fauci failed dismally at his job. Not only did his recommendations fail to "save lives", excess deaths are up because of the foolish and ill-advised mitigation measures. Kids are committing suicides at alarming rates since the pandemic, and suicide is now the number two cause of death in young people.

Fauci had no authority over the social media platforms. Moderation was not something Fauci had control over.

We'll see.

It really is important to have evidence, rather than to simply parrot unsupported nonsense being broadcast by Opinion show hosts.

Except you know that's not what I'm doing.

The core difference here is that you're seemingly perfectly fine with the state determine what may and may not be discussed in the public square. I am not. Your position will enable an Orwellian world where speech is regulated and there are consequences for daring to speak against "the official line". It disturbs me that not only do you take this position, but countless others obviously agree with you as evidenced by the multiple accolades on your last post. I am shocked at the number of people willing to surrender free speech in favor of "the official line". But here we are.

The pandemic has taught the powers that be that fear of public health is how you get people to not only willingly surrender their rights, but actually to beg for those rights to be taken away for the illusion of "safety".

 

[probinson]

And it is weird not having any evidence at all but still going to internet forums and spreading unsupported allegations.

We've already determined that your standard for "evidence" is impossible to achieve. You, apparently, believe that when the government does shady things, they'll do so in plain sight on government letterhead with an official embossed seal.

These aren't "unsupported allegations". You just choose to reject the evidence. You try to spin it away saying that a regular governmental meeting with social media companies seeking to control speech is perfectly OK in your book. So of course you think there is no "evidence", because you (and others) are cool with controlling speech to conform to "the official line". George Orwell is looking more prophetic by the minute.

 

[stevil]

We've already determined that your standard for "evidence" is impossible to achieve. You, apparently, believe that when the government does shady things, they'll do so in plain sight on government letterhead with an official embossed seal.

Trump and Guiliani did many shady things. Especially in trying to coerce the Ukraine government to fabricate an investigation into Joe Biden just prior to the upcoming election. Lot of evidence of that. The phone call recording, the firing of loyal diplomats, the witness testimonies, the firing of the witnesses, the firing of the witnesses brother.

We didn't just have Democrats and media opinion show hosts running around saying this happened and that we should believe them. We had Republicans and officials presenting eye witness accounts, and recordings etc.

These aren't "unsupported allegations". You just choose to reject the evidence.

I am open to assessing the evidence, but noone has presented any.

 

[stevil]

The core difference here is that you're seemingly perfectly fine with the state determine what may and may not be discussed in the public square.

I've never said that, so please stop mischaracterising me.
The government don't own the social media sites. The social media sites freely chose by themselves how to moderate content.
They wisely listened to the official scientific advise of Fauci and WHO and CDC, but of course it was their choice. They could have chosen to suppress vaccine information and instead promote Disinfectant and Ivermectin if they wanted to. It was their choice.

 

[stevil]

Awesome. And you're apparently cool with that. Just be aware that the power will shift, and when it does and you're not allowed to discuss J6 or whatever else the powers that be determine is taboo, you will be the reason why.

Yes, I am a supporter of moderation.
Currently they are moderating away dangerous things, calls to violence, biggotry, and misinformation about life saving things during a deadly global pandemic.
If there is a platform that decides to moderate away information that is inflammatory of D Trump and his MAGA supporters or his Proud Boy or Oath Keeper supporters then that will be up to them. I'd be interested to know what rules are broken, but I wouldn't be calling for the Democrats to do investigations into it.

You're acting as though people haven't died due to mitigation measures. Are you blissfully ignorant of the fact that excess deaths are up all over the world, and NOT because of COVID? What good are all of these "expert" proclamations if they reduce COVID deaths but result in a rise in all excess deaths?

What evidence to you have to support this? Perhaps the excess deaths are due to an underreporting of Covid deaths?

Right. Your theory is the government held regular meetings to make "suggestions" and the social media companies just decided on their own what to do. Don't expect most people to believe that.

The government held daily press briefings, they were the taskforce briefings, held in public to let everyone know what was going on.

Each day that passes shows more and more how Twitter was doing what they called "visibility filtering" of content, which is a fancy way of saying they were censoring data they disagreed with. The latest dump of files shows conversations amongst Twitter employees that searched for ways to deamplify Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from the day he joined Twitter.

Twitter employees are allowed to have these conversations, and since it is their job to moderate, I just assumed this is how they went about it. I never thought the owner of Twitter made the calls himself, I always assumed there were a team of moderators who deliberated and discussed and made well thought out and considered judgement calls.
But you guys keep saying it was the government, but the evidence clearly shows it was Twitter staff.
Nothing to see here folks, move along.

 

[stevil]

The latest dump of files shows conversations amongst Twitter employees that searched for ways to deamplify Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from the day he joined Twitter. According to his Stanford bio, "Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.

The global pandemic was a contagious deadly virus.

It seems to me that Dr Fauci is much more qualified for contagiouns deadly viruses

Anthony Fauci - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Anthony Stephen Fauci is an American physician-scientist and immunologist serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president.

As a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Fauci has served the American public health sector in various capacities for more than fifty years and has acted as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. He has been director of the NIAID since 1984 and has made contributions to HIV/AIDS research and other immunodeficiency diseases, both as a research scientist and as the head of the NIAID.From 1983 to 2002, Fauci was one of the world's most frequently cited scientists across all scientific journals. In 2008, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, for his work on the AIDS relief program PEPFAR.


I can see why both Trump's Admin and Biden's Admin gave Fauci the responsibility of leading the pandemic taskforce from a science perspective. I can see why they didn't give the job to Bhattacharya who is grossly unqualified.

 

[probinson]

Some people are apparently perfectly OK with governments suppressing speech contrary to "the official line" through "suggestions" to social media companies. I will never agree with that position, so any further discussion is pointless.

 

[probinson]

Regarding excess deaths (emphasis added);

Since April 2022, deaths in England and Wales have been higher than expected when compared with preceding years, prompting concern and speculation about the causes.12 From 2 April to 30 September 2022 there were almost 26 000 (11%) more deaths than expected.3 About half (54%) of the excess deaths involve covid-19, which remains a major cause of death. However, this doesn’t explain the large number of non-covid excess deaths since spring. Why are more people than expected dying? Several factors appear to be contributing to this trend.​

​

What is driving excess deaths in England and Wales?

Why are more people than expected dying? Veena Raleigh unpicks the data Since April 2022, deaths in England and Wales have been higher than expected when compared with preceding years, prompting concern and speculation about the causes.12 From 2 April to 30 September 2022 there were almost...

www.bmj.com

​

​

​

While Covid deaths overwhelmingly afflict senior citizens, absolute numbers of non-Covid excess deaths are similar for each of the 18-44, 45-64, and over-65 age groups, with essentially no aggregate excess deaths of children. Mortality from all causes during the pandemic was elevated 26 percent for working-age adults (18-64), as compared to 18 percent for the elderly. Other data on drug addictions, non-fatal shootings, weight gain, and cancer screenings point to a historic, yet largely unacknowledged, health emergency.​

​

Non-Covid Excess Deaths, 2020-21: Collateral Damage of Policy Choices?

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

www.nber.org

​

 

[Aldebaran]

Some people are apparently perfectly OK with governments suppressing speech contrary to "the official line" through "suggestions" to social media companies. I will never agree with that position, so any further discussion is pointless.

When Trump was in office and people thought he was being a fascist, the MSM were happy to promote that narrative.

Donald Trump and his two forms of fascism.

There may be more.

www.motherjones.com

But now that we have a government led by the opposite party doing fascistic things (a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control), they use projection to take the attention away from themselves.

 

[stevil]

Some people are apparently perfectly OK with governments suppressing speech contrary to "the official line" through "suggestions" to social media companies. I will never agree with that position, so any further discussion is pointless.

The government did not suppress free speech. They did not threaten social media platforms. They did not legislate nor take control.

The government merely put together an official Coronavirus task force, and presented a channel for the official stance on government information about things related to the pandemic, e.g. vaccinations, mask wearing, social distancing, etc

It was entirely up to the social media platforms to decide on their own moderation policies.
There has thus far been no evidence presented at all that the Government pressured these companies.

The statements of Zuckerberg and the information released by Twitter, show only that these organisations themselves made their own determinations on moderation of these related topics

 

[probinson]

The government did not suppress free speech.

I guess we'll all find out in the pending lawsuit(s) if that's true or not.

 

[KCfromNC]

We've already determined that your standard for "evidence" is impossible to achieve.

Who is this "we" and when was the determination made?

 

[KCfromNC]

Some people are apparently perfectly OK with governments suppressing speech contrary to "the official line" through "suggestions" to social media companies.

Which people, specifically?

Kinda weird to fail to quote and respond to their posts directly in this thread, assuming those posters and posts actually exist and aren't just a strawman manufactured to avoid talking about what it actually going on in the thread.

 

[probinson]

Which people, specifically?

Well, let's see...

Do you have a problem with governments having weekly meetings with social media companies to "suggest" what should be removed? If so, I'm talking about you. If not, then I'm not talking about you.

See how simple?