At long last, this week we got the Covid Edition of The Twitter Files. I focus here only on this edition, and not focusing on Musk or the Twitter Files more generally. Is there a there there? Seems like the answer is, yes, but the there that was there seems not so out there?
Depending on the circumstances, it can be illegal for the government to pressure companies to censor speech, especially if there is an implied threat like "that's a nice business you have there, it would be a shame if it gets investigated by the FTC". Sometimes affected users can sue in such situations. A failed lawsuit of this type is described here:
You seem to be focused a lot on what Twitter was doing, and whether they did anything wrong. I understand the focus because that is who these files are about, but I feel like it misses the big takeaway: that the government was pressuring private companies to moderate their discussion in certain ways.
There is a huge and obvious power imbalance issue here. A relationship between a boss and subordinate is always assumed to be non-consensual, because bosses have almost all the power in the relationship. Governments can only "express a preference" to naive companies, to anyone with a hint of political acumen ... they know its basically an order/demand.
Congress spent multiple years dragging tech executives in front of committees to make this point clear. The tech companies clearly haven't forgotten this point, neither should we.
Nitpicking, but Kulldorf said “Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should”. The statement “everyone must be vaccinated” is Obvious Nonsense, no? You’re arguing that “everyone should be vaccinated” is a reasonable statement but that’s not what he said. I mostly point this out because this is the same argument as plays out with regard to vaccine mandates (where opposition to mandates is conflated with opposition to vaccination)
Also:
> I find it quite hard to get worked up about the labeling and restrictions, as opposed to the strikes that accumulated and led to his suspension, which is where we should focus
In the context of Twitter (and most social media), preventing engagement and surfacing of a tweet is like 95% of the way to deletion of a tweet in terms of practical effects on visibility and being able to influence public opinion. Almost everyone interacts with the site through their algorithmic feed, and if you prevent or suppress something from showing up in people’s feeds you’ve effectively silenced it. If you're upset with message deletion (or people being suspended, and maybe I shouldn't be conflating deletion of tweets / suspension of users), then shouldn't you be 95% as upset about message labeling / suppression?
If Twitter wasn't influential, I wouldn't care much about them moderating in whatever fashion they want. On Something Awful you could get banned for anything and it was often hilarious. But Something Awful only influenced Internet humor.
Twitter influences a lot. Culture, corporate policy, government policy can be downstream of what gets spread on Twitter. When Twitter puts a thumb on the scale, it matters a great deal.
I also wonder if the journalist just haven't gotten to the good stuff yet, given how much Covid inanity I observed at The Other Big Social Media Company. It was internal Covid censorship that was the final push for me to leave. The company announced we would have a booster mandate. I argued against a mandate, and cited the latest IMHE report that had modeled the impact of boosters and said that the pandemic was moving too quickly for policy to have an appreciable impact.
My comment was removed for citing a non-authoritative source. I plead my case to the moderators and discovered that they were working with a definition of "authoritative source" that included only government public health agencies and peer reviewed papers. I tried to demonstrate how absurd this definition was, that the CDC uses the outputs of IMHE models, Fauci cites them, etc. I was unsuccessful. I was also told that I couldn't share the authoritative source definition.
I'd also said in a separate comment that as a company we were at less risk than the general public because we're much younger than the population as a whole. I was told I didn't have a source for the claim about age distribution at the company.
So as a general reply to everyone saying similar things and offering similar evidence, I think it is right to say that we should worry in general about government pressure on SM companies to censor and that they might do this via implicit threats of regulation.
None of the evidence that is concerning, however, was in the Twitter file in question, quite the opposite in fact - we failed to see that much evidence of impact on this issue.
>Also, his statement is pretty false and definitely misleading. The idea that ‘everyone’ should be vaccinated (air quotes because everyone presumably in context means ...
I'm sorry, but the Kulldorff tweet did not say "should", but said "must". This is a crucial difference. We can argue semantics all day, but it's pretty straightforward to steelman his tweet into something true.
>Who then, if this thread is any guide, showed remarkable restraint in dealing with the situation. Compared to almost all other times and places, we should be grateful.
Sure, but with enough context, any action can be justified. Think of e.g. a child abuser being abused as a child/having mental issues etc - the child abuse is still bad. Similarly, Twitter having "society-issues" doesn't make their censorship better just because it could have been worse, given the context.
All* very fine. And very reasonable. What made my jaws drop, though, was how ChatGPT finishes. Awed.
* except: i read that "fire-in-theater" link, It showed where the quote comes from and says some say its kinda irrelevant (not really saying why - except that the quote if from a judge's opinion in a 1919 case). It did not say anything about it being legal when there IS a fire. (Well, sure, if it IS legal to shout even if there is no fire ... . )
One, as others have pointed out, is that there are government officials poring over a vast quantity tweets and trying to make decisions on them.
Two, it's great that so many of the Twitter censors were so thoughtful and careful and restrained. That is good luck. Should they have been doing all that censoring at all?
It's like, if you're stuck in a bureaucratic labyrinth and one worker is particularly efficient and zealous on your behalf, helps you cut through the red tape and solve your issue. Does that make it right that you were caught in the bureaucratic maze to start with? Should it depend on the existence of that one worker?
In respect to James Baker...the Twitter legal who asked about Trump’s optimism” quote: Baker was a strident anti-Trump actor while at the DOJ and was a key player in promulgating the Russia hoax. That’s why he’s been singled out here, his bias is well known now. Baker left the DOJ under suspicion.
Depending on the circumstances, it can be illegal for the government to pressure companies to censor speech, especially if there is an implied threat like "that's a nice business you have there, it would be a shame if it gets investigated by the FTC". Sometimes affected users can sue in such situations. A failed lawsuit of this type is described here:
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/10/19/no-government-action-and-thus-no-first-amendment-violation-in-suspension-of-plaintiffs-youtube-accounts/
You seem to be focused a lot on what Twitter was doing, and whether they did anything wrong. I understand the focus because that is who these files are about, but I feel like it misses the big takeaway: that the government was pressuring private companies to moderate their discussion in certain ways.
There is a huge and obvious power imbalance issue here. A relationship between a boss and subordinate is always assumed to be non-consensual, because bosses have almost all the power in the relationship. Governments can only "express a preference" to naive companies, to anyone with a hint of political acumen ... they know its basically an order/demand.
Congress spent multiple years dragging tech executives in front of committees to make this point clear. The tech companies clearly haven't forgotten this point, neither should we.
Nitpicking, but Kulldorf said “Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should”. The statement “everyone must be vaccinated” is Obvious Nonsense, no? You’re arguing that “everyone should be vaccinated” is a reasonable statement but that’s not what he said. I mostly point this out because this is the same argument as plays out with regard to vaccine mandates (where opposition to mandates is conflated with opposition to vaccination)
Also:
> I find it quite hard to get worked up about the labeling and restrictions, as opposed to the strikes that accumulated and led to his suspension, which is where we should focus
In the context of Twitter (and most social media), preventing engagement and surfacing of a tweet is like 95% of the way to deletion of a tweet in terms of practical effects on visibility and being able to influence public opinion. Almost everyone interacts with the site through their algorithmic feed, and if you prevent or suppress something from showing up in people’s feeds you’ve effectively silenced it. If you're upset with message deletion (or people being suspended, and maybe I shouldn't be conflating deletion of tweets / suspension of users), then shouldn't you be 95% as upset about message labeling / suppression?
If Twitter wasn't influential, I wouldn't care much about them moderating in whatever fashion they want. On Something Awful you could get banned for anything and it was often hilarious. But Something Awful only influenced Internet humor.
Twitter influences a lot. Culture, corporate policy, government policy can be downstream of what gets spread on Twitter. When Twitter puts a thumb on the scale, it matters a great deal.
I also wonder if the journalist just haven't gotten to the good stuff yet, given how much Covid inanity I observed at The Other Big Social Media Company. It was internal Covid censorship that was the final push for me to leave. The company announced we would have a booster mandate. I argued against a mandate, and cited the latest IMHE report that had modeled the impact of boosters and said that the pandemic was moving too quickly for policy to have an appreciable impact.
My comment was removed for citing a non-authoritative source. I plead my case to the moderators and discovered that they were working with a definition of "authoritative source" that included only government public health agencies and peer reviewed papers. I tried to demonstrate how absurd this definition was, that the CDC uses the outputs of IMHE models, Fauci cites them, etc. I was unsuccessful. I was also told that I couldn't share the authoritative source definition.
I'd also said in a separate comment that as a company we were at less risk than the general public because we're much younger than the population as a whole. I was told I didn't have a source for the claim about age distribution at the company.
So as a general reply to everyone saying similar things and offering similar evidence, I think it is right to say that we should worry in general about government pressure on SM companies to censor and that they might do this via implicit threats of regulation.
None of the evidence that is concerning, however, was in the Twitter file in question, quite the opposite in fact - we failed to see that much evidence of impact on this issue.
That doesn't mean other stuff was fine, etc.
>Also, his statement is pretty false and definitely misleading. The idea that ‘everyone’ should be vaccinated (air quotes because everyone presumably in context means ...
I'm sorry, but the Kulldorff tweet did not say "should", but said "must". This is a crucial difference. We can argue semantics all day, but it's pretty straightforward to steelman his tweet into something true.
>Who then, if this thread is any guide, showed remarkable restraint in dealing with the situation. Compared to almost all other times and places, we should be grateful.
Sure, but with enough context, any action can be justified. Think of e.g. a child abuser being abused as a child/having mental issues etc - the child abuse is still bad. Similarly, Twitter having "society-issues" doesn't make their censorship better just because it could have been worse, given the context.
I just want to say I appreciate the Firefly theme reference.
All* very fine. And very reasonable. What made my jaws drop, though, was how ChatGPT finishes. Awed.
* except: i read that "fire-in-theater" link, It showed where the quote comes from and says some say its kinda irrelevant (not really saying why - except that the quote if from a judge's opinion in a 1919 case). It did not say anything about it being legal when there IS a fire. (Well, sure, if it IS legal to shout even if there is no fire ... . )
Thank you for this balanced review.
However, there are two issues.
One, as others have pointed out, is that there are government officials poring over a vast quantity tweets and trying to make decisions on them.
Two, it's great that so many of the Twitter censors were so thoughtful and careful and restrained. That is good luck. Should they have been doing all that censoring at all?
It's like, if you're stuck in a bureaucratic labyrinth and one worker is particularly efficient and zealous on your behalf, helps you cut through the red tape and solve your issue. Does that make it right that you were caught in the bureaucratic maze to start with? Should it depend on the existence of that one worker?
In respect to James Baker...the Twitter legal who asked about Trump’s optimism” quote: Baker was a strident anti-Trump actor while at the DOJ and was a key player in promulgating the Russia hoax. That’s why he’s been singled out here, his bias is well known now. Baker left the DOJ under suspicion.