It was already widely criticized at the time(https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/twitter-files-blocked-...): " Twitter subsequently reversed the decision, saying that it had updated its hacked-materials policy and would not retroactively apply it to the New York Post. Other news outlets, including the New York Times, have since reported that the laptop did in fact belong to Hunter Biden and the documents on it were authentic. Predictably, Twitter’s blocking of the Post became a rallying point for Republican politicians accusing the social network of censoring conservative viewpoints. "

So... doesn't seem like a big deal, this is just confirming what was already known?

I agree, nothing we didn't know. Like I suspect the further findings alluded to at the end of the thread. But it's kind of like the Snowden revelations. Anyone a bit tech savvy strongly suspected what the NSA was up to, and would have been surprised of the contrary. But it's interesting nevertheless to see the proof. And to see how political viewpoints are censored at the request of politicians.

Here's a better example: the Canadian trucker protests. GiveSendGo was hacked, and the names of people who had donated to the protests were made public - and Twitter had no problem with those "hacked materials" being shared on its platform.

I'd think that if there was ever a reason to block the publication of hacked materials, it would be to prevent private individuals from being doxxed, not to protect the political interests of the worlds' most powerful people.

(People, please don't reply to tell me why you didn't like the Canadian truckers' political views, it's not relevant.)

Oh but it is. You see, for the people who encourage this behavior, the hacking of the Canadian Truckers' protesters never happened and it was good that it did.

It’s a set of rules selectively applied depending on whether or not your political allies or opponents are on the receiving end.

Taibbi leans left and I don’t but I like reading his articles (despite premises I may not agree with) because he’s at least honest in his arguments and doesn’t try to bury or twist inconvenient facts.

My suspicion is that his grey-tribeism is genuine, but the red-tribe content is what pays the bills at substack.

But he’s not so tribal that he pushes fabrications and half-truths.

If you think a left-wing person who says “whoa, Trump is terrible but lying about him only makes the left look bad” means someone is no longer left wing, we have some serious problems.

Are you talking about the theory of Russian interference? If so, that is not the same as denying the results, that is questioning the integrity. The difference is huge. The later calls into question bad actors and asks for reforms going forward, the former calls into action the removal of the elected president in favor of the looser.

Now as for the conspiracy of meddling with the election. I thought that was pretty well documented fact. We have stuff like the Cambridge Analytica leaks that show actual manipulation of voters.

Maybe you should look into how the US meddles in foreign elections. It is something countries do to each other. Russia has always done that and so have we. There was nothing special about 2016. These complaints about CA are the left's equivalent of when the right says there is mass voter fraud because of one or two minor instances of election fraud.

I don’t understand, do you think we should have blind trust in election, that there shouldn’t be partisan and independent observers, that security measures shouldn’t be scrutinized? And if we find a fault, we shouldn’t call for reforms. We should just “trust” the system?

No, this is not the same as denying the results without evidence. There is no equivalence here.

On the one hand, the leading Presidential candidate on the right has within the last 24 hours said he wants to suspend the Constitution and be reinstated President by dictate on social media. On the other hand, some people were constantly posting he was saying mean things, and some executives at a social media company tried to handle some things.

Totally gotta stand on the side of balance!

I've been sober all my life, I was a teetotaller until 2016 when I developed a 4-drinks-a-day habit which persists to this day. I've been clearly sober dor most of my life though.

TDS was never a real thing amongst the left. It was and is generally a thing amongst liberal Dems and some Repubs. The Lincoln Project is a propaganda PAC attacking TDS and is a great example. It’s by establishment Republicans who have close to the same policies as Trump but want control of the GOP back. A lot of liberal and/or moderate Democrats approve of the Lincoln Project. Too many times have friends been gleeful over their propaganda.

The left did not and is not going to be part of any TDS BS. I consider myself far left and have far more Trump apologetics to say than TDS is overblown.

> the left has had far more saying in what's allowed on social media than the right, so if you have any integrity you'd stand on the side of the right to create some equality/justice

If I may, this is a centrist point of view. Since the left isn’t in the picture, it’s moderates vs the right. How can a call for integrity be to stand with the right when it isn’t binary?

Why not stand with the left? Or even just left leaning American politics like Bernie and the squad. Who are Democratic Socialists. Not even on the left economically. They believe in the Nordic capitalist system. This is one option to stand with and we still haven’t gotten to the left yet. Any one could also stand with the left in these circumstances. Right off the bat we have four options to choose from. With those options, in my humble opinion 99% of the time it takes no integrity to side with the right if youre a left leaning.

How so? In my eyes this is a case for a corrupt businessman that uses political ties for his gains. That’s pretty right wing isn’t it. At the very least there is no critique of capitalism, quite the contrary.

I also find it interesting that freedom of speech has seemingly become a right-wing talking point.

Because hate speech and misinformation is part of the right wing platform...

This is ignoring voter manipulation which was a big part of the 2016 election (as proven by the Cambridge Analytica leaks among other) tilting the voter to the right (see also e.g. brexit’s leave campaign illegal campaign financing and other dodgy behavior).

Compared to these—often flat out illegal—actions by the right, moderating hate speech is nothing.

Stop demonizing.

He’s still left, I still disagree with him but at least he’s intellectually honest (which appears to be the problem you have with him).

Yes…just like the comic Elon tweeted describing his views.

Taibbi and Greenwald haven't moved right on policy, they're still left of center and arguably to the left of the liberals who criticize them.

They just love pointing out inconsistencies from people who fight the news cycle battle week-to-week. They're contrarians, not conservatives.

I don't know what this means. How many people are included in this? Are you on the left or right under this specifications? Is everyone? If someone is defending Hunter Biden and the Dems, are they on the left here? Why would the left be the status quo? What about someone on the left who believes Hunter is not good, nor his family, nor the Dem party^^. How can both of these examples be on the left?

> Taibbi and Greenwald haven't moved right on policy, they're still left of center and arguably to the left of the liberals who criticize them.

> They just love pointing out inconsistencies from people who fight the news cycle battle week-to-week. They're contrarians, not conservatives.

I find this hard to believe. Taibbi didn't need to begin the Twitter thread by writing the left then Dems in parenthesis. No need to muddy the waters by incorrectly using left when he knows what the left means and knows it does not mean the Dems. Meanwhile using that language is sure to stoke up the right.

> They just love pointing out inconsistencies from people who fight the news cycle battle week-to-week. They're contrarians, not conservatives.

There's actual people doing this. That are picking apart both Dem and Repub inconsistencies and showing both establishments are not good. This contrasts Taibbi and Greenwald. Greenwald specifically has clearly been moving more and more to the right. At least publicly. Who knows how much of a grift all of this is. I can always check Fox News (which is just as bad as regularly going on CNN) next week and see Greenwald on again

^^This could be considered being a contrarian.

You're highlighting them needling the democratic line on "news cycle of the week" type things, and I agree they do that.

Re: "the left" vs democrats, I think taibbi was writing for a general audience who doesn't make a distinction there.

They aren’t politicians. They don’t have policies. Right wing agitprop can be done by non policy journos.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1414595359368691712

You can’t love libsoftiktok and not be on the right.

—

I’m highlighting them being some level of propaganda mouth pieces (probably for their own fatter check sizes) for the right. Highlighting Dem stuff repeatedly makes that clear. Mixing the left and Dems makes it even worse. They know what they are talking about. They know blurring the left and Dems helps the right. That’s one of the main right wing GOP cornerstones. Pretend Biden or Harris are on the left. That moves the Overton window to the right or doesn’t let it budge.

This is also another conservative policy. Policy being —- make liberals, Dem voters/politicians, and the left into one bogeyman. Which provides multiple benefits to the right.

You seem to view it as a zero-sum, with us or against us thing. And there may be some validity to that with the realities of politics. But if someone had never once said "I like conservatives" or supported a single conservative policy plank, it's wrong to call them conservative.

You could call them insufficiently loyal and I think they'd agree with that. But on stuff that matters for longer than a 24h news cycle they're consistently liberal.

Taibbi, for example, wrote an entire book about Eric Garner's killing, documenting a ton of NYPD corruption in the process.. and has also spent a bunch of time making fun of embarrassing weepy SJWs on Twitter.

Who is us? I was never on the same side as either of these people. Even 5 or 10 years ago.

> wrong to call them conservative

Libsoftiktok is literally a right wing HATE account/community. Greenwald loves it.

> insufficiently loyal

Loyal to what? I don’t like Democrats…they don’t either.

(Unless you voted green)

Can we agree on the far more important issue of libsoftiktok being a right wing conservative account that is loved by Greenwald? Spreading bigotry and hatred. Smh.

The thing that Bernie understood and most libs don't is that we can be united on class issues or divided on culture war issues. We lose with the latter.

I've never seen libsoftiktok and I don't read a lot of Greenwald lately. I like Taibbi and subscribe to him.

I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to contest things. Once I nailed down Greenwald down you hand waved it away. I wouldn’t remain friends or defensive of someone who publicly supports a hate account/community. That says enough to me about Taibbi and how he sees Greenwald.

I don't think libsoftiktok would self-identify as a "hate account" and I'm positive taibbi and Greenwald wouldn't self-identify as conservative.

Maybe none of us are good enough for you and you'll have to be content with green party candidates

Your responses remind me of Joe Rogan saying people like Ron DeSantis are good people trying to give people freedom because that’s what Desantis told Joe to his face.

You’ve shown your true colors wrt libsoftiktok. This is one of countless examples of the hate libsoftiktok spews. It’s not hard to come by: https://god.dailydot.com/libsoftiktok-facebook-account-banne.... I should not have kept holding out hope you came in good faith.

I’ll let my transgender friends know they shouldn’t worry about the hate that comes their way because it isn’t real.

I suspect the people who have had death threats and such thrown at them because of the account don’t feel the same way you do.

You can question if its ethically appropriate to re-post these stuff as it frequently seems to be from people with severe mental problems. The claim however that people get death threats because of that account is silly. If something causes people to send death threats then if more people see it it would result in more death threats but that is not the fault of whoever made it visible. If this is the hill you want to die on then you should advocate for total censorship of everything since everything could trigger some unstable or evil person to send out death threats.

So then then question here is why do you write comments on HN? It's dangerous! Your posts and the posts you help push could increase the number of death threats being send. I'm sure you dont care about that at all. You write and post whatever you want and feel zero responsibility for other peoples irrational (re)actions. Obviously that is how it should be.

> if this is the hill you want to do die on…

> So then then question here is why do you write comments…

To make it clear. People have gotten threats because of the way libsoftiktok has editorialized stories. The moral bankruptcy is squarely on the account.

The pseudo-intellectual attacks you’re doing are weird. Changing the argument to pretend I’m upset that any one can be triggered by anything is weird. Pretending libsoftiktok is not an anti-lgbtq hate account is weird. Supporting hatred is weird.

If, for example, some hacker found out the President is a spy for China they’d suppress it but if a CIA agent breaks the law and leaks it’s fine?

A hacker doesn't even know what the information is before the attack and is likely an adversary who will use any information to damage, regardless of public interest.

And as as the Twitter files show and the Democratic rep (Ro Khanna) highlighted, they were banning a “news article” about hacked materials, no hacked materials themselves. Are we prepared to even ban the media from talking about hacked materials?

Access is not the same as authorization.

https://sgp.fas.org/jud/snowden/complaint.pdf

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/641

"Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof; ..."

It's definitely possible to imagine a situation in which Snowden "knowingly ... sells ... any record ... or thing of value of the United States" to Russia, namely a copy of the information he had available to him while working for the NSA.

I'm not sure how courts have interpreted "record ... or thing", and whether (for example) a copy of a page from an internal government wiki would count, but let's assume that digital information is a "thing" and that copies of it are still "of the United States".

I'll further grant, for the sake of argument, that the US government has secret evidence that such a selling did take place (perhaps witnessed by a double agent working at the Kremlin, who could be called upon to give a witness statement at a trial held in secret), although I don't actually believe such selling occurred.

My main point, though, was that I don't know of any court interpreting "steals" in a statute to mean "making an unauthorized copy of" or "leaking". You're right, though, that there are other laws that cover what Snowden did.

Is there some reason you would know this? Intellectual property and classified information are things. You can steal them.

So-called "intellectual property" is neither intellectual nor property. If I randomly mash the keyboard for a few minutes, the resulting jumble of letters can have its redistribution restricted by copyright law, despite not requiring any intellectual feat to produce. It is also not property, since I cannot own ideas that exist within your head or the sound waves that emanate from your mouth when you whistle a tune I wrote.

> You can steal them.

No you can't. The legal definition of "stealing" requires that the perpetrator takes someone else's property (which an idea isn't) without permission with the intent to deprive them of the property. You can't deprive someone of an idea by making more copies of that idea, much less is that the intent behind copying, so the label of "stealing" is completely inapplicable.

Heck even if the new articles about the topic would have used hacked material as source it dint not include that material itself and thus wound not fall under that policy anyway. Not even articles about a confirmed hacks fall under this policy even if the hack is confirmed with the hacked material itself.

This is and was a excuse from the very start.

Also, nothing that Snowden released was publicly available, but Biden's staffers were using tools that were available to the general public in the way they were intended. They're completely unrelated.

Some of us did know, that's true, but we were labeled as conspiracy theorists and the like. And when the truth came out in the open those calling us conspiracy theorists of course that embraced the "that has always been a known fact! What are you on about?". Rinse and repeat.

Jack Dorsey and Rho Khanna. That’s who benefitted the most.

Amazingly the democrats are upset about this. It tells me what I need to know about those people.

Some of those changes should have happened anyway. Snowden's revelations pushed people to use https ubiquitously. It doesn't just protect against NSA spying but other countries do stuff like that too as well as non state actors. (There was that time I switched on wireshark on WiFi for 5 minutes and was like damn... I've got a lot of email passwords.)

Like it or not, driving from DC to the airport in Baltimore you drive past the puzzle palace at Fort Mead and it's got a huge parking lot and one of the worst traffic jams in America when the quitting bell rings at the end of the work day. If they weren't spying on people but instead spending the money on ski chalets or beautifying the inner city or something, that would be a real scandal.

I hope that clears things up.

If it was done at this scale, it’s likely similar censorship happened at the company on a smaller scale as well.

Because of this it’s accurate to say that Twitter’s leadership team created the optics that it was a town square that only supported a specifically political philosophy and was hostile to other political philosophies.

Can you honestly and truly say that if a laptop was abandoned at a repair shop with similarly explosive revelations about Donald Trump jr that this story would have been censored to the same degree on Twitter using the same policy excuse? I can’t.

No, because Donald Trump and his family's dealings are already well documented, and because he was the one who created the atmosphere of misinformation which led to the censorship to begin with, in order to undermine and subvert the peaceful transfer of power.

But if we're going to ignore context entirely for the sake of hypotheticals, who knows? Donald Trump censored environmental data from government websites and banned government employees from discussing climate change on social media, he declared the press enemies of the state and had reporters he disagreed with barred from the White House, and allegedly assaulted and arrested, he wanted TikTok banned because someone was mean to him, he wanted to send the military in against political protestors. He, like Musk, seems like a charlatan and authoritarian who only cares about what serves his own interests. I can certainly imagine a scenario in which Trump would want to silence a story, but he's so corrupt, and no one cares when a Republican does it, so he wouldn't bother.

Also, what "explosive revelations?" Like Trump's hotel businesses being used to launder money for the Russian mob and Iranian military? Ivanka being involved in policymaking despite having no qualifications? Tax fraud disguising gifts as "consultant fees" to avoid estate taxes? Accepting gifts from foreign governments in violation of the Emoluments Clause? Numerous sexual assault lawsuits? Jared Kushner selling visas to Chinese investors? Something like that? Anything that even rises to the level of "Just another Tuesday at Mar-A-Lago?"

I mean, if nothing else, even conceding there is a story here, it isn't the story people want it to be, and the sheer mass of hypocrisy behind the outrage is threatening to collapse into a singularity.

Taibbi is about as muckracking-leftwing as it gets.

Now, I'm not saying Muskovite won't take cash for "moderation" from the political parties.... this is going to be a MASSIVE cash spend presidential cycle.

What I'm shocked about is that there isn't a "moderation" bidding system. Democrats give twitter 10 million to suppress this story... does the RNC want to up it to 15 million to not suppress, or 20 million to PUSH it?

Maybe Elon will make a profit after all.

1. it's conspiracy theory

2. it was obvious to everyone

3. forgotten

People's first mistake is getting their news from Twitter, or Fox News for that matter. This is not a free speech issue. If you are interested in the Hunter Biden story there are about 300 other sources you could find information about it within about 1/2 a second, it was one of the most widely reported stories in 2020 if I remember correctly.

I guess the story is that the people that ran Twitter were left leaning? Which we already knew going into it?

We discussed this years ago when it first started. When you’re the defacto town square then no, you shouldn’t be able to kick people out for whatever reason.

> Why don't we analyze Fox News's decision to run or not run certain stories.

How do you justify the left ignoring stories in their media? For instance the story about Chase Staub.

> People's first mistake is getting their news from Twitter, or Fox News for that matter.

There’s always an assumption it’s Fox. Try WSJ.

> This is not a free speech issue.

Very much disagree. Ask yourself why you’re so upset at this information. Or if you’re not upset, ask why there is so much anxiety around this story. Clearly some the left are concerned about what this will result in.

> I guess the story is that the people that ran Twitter were left leaning? Which we already knew going into it?

Yes and that’s a problem when they use their political viewpoints to control the conversation.

Has anyone been arrested or imprisoned for running the Hunter Biden laptop story? Has any government authority threatened anyone with arrest for running the Hunter Biden story? No? Then not a free speech issue. Twitter is not a government agency. Don’t like their moderation practices? Start your own twitter which is exactly what Trump did and is the correct response. He can then push or censor whatever stories he wants and people decide whether or not they want to traffic on that site. That is the beauty of the free market we play in.

If Fox wants to be the propaganda arm of the Republican Party while masquerading as news, good for them. If Elon wants to unban everyone on Twitter and let everything go unfettered with no moderation, good for him. There are lots of other choices out there.

None of this is new or interesting. This seems like more of a school cafeteria food fight than any kind of “free speech” issue.

If I host a comment section on my blog and someone starts posting nazi propaganda I should have the right to remove those posts. Or any other posts I don’t like. Twitter is just a bigger version of that.

If you don’t like twitter’s moderation policies don’t use twitter, use truth social or Parler or 4chan or whatever.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/retired-navy-seal-made-famous-com...

While CNN has many many articles on the individual, they’re missing this one.

I'm guessing that "the premier media source for LGBTQ Georgia"[1] is probably left-leaning and they've covered it. Same for "a central part of Washington, DC’s gay and lesbian community"[2]. Reasonably sure that [3] lean left.

[1] https://thegavoice.com/today-in-gay-atlanta/police-arrest-ch...

[2] https://www.metroweekly.com/2022/12/atlanta-man-arrested-for...

[3] https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/11/28/chase-staub-arrest-ma...

> Your search - "chase staub" site:foxnews.com - did not match any documents.

I guess if CNN, WaPo, etc. had Atlanta local affiliates, they'd probably have covered it locally as well.

[1] https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/atlanta-police-charge-perso...

But some did. You just disagree that they count even though at least one of them (PinkNews) has more reach than WAGA-TV (Fox5Atlanta).

There is clear distinction between content producers (like TV or newspapers) and platforms (like social networks, Youtube, and others). Content producers produce content with some bias, their consumers have (hopefully) similar bias and everyone is happy. Bias is here, it is editorial policy and nobody is understand it. It has some disadvantages in contrast to unbiased producers, but that is probably unreachable ideal.

With platforms, you have matching content producers and consumers (or just parties trying to communicate) and then you have third party (platform) who 'moderates' the content regardless of whether communicating parties are interested or not. Because it is not supposed to be editorial, it tries to dress it as rule enforcement. But biased rule enforcement is just much less acceptable than biased editorial policy.

I don't understand why this is a story to begin with.

So we're now at stage 2.

Makes me wonder, if conspiracy theorists might have a point.

I just said that:

A) Got vaccine and got infected right after second dose (1 week)

B) Noted some unvaccinated friends had no symptoms, so it's not like Covid vaccine has a provable lessen the symptoms effect.

At this point Deus Ex was a credible prophetic game, where a "vaccine" that doesn't cure but postpones symptoms is seen as a miracle cure, which is eerily similar to "we'll need to be vaccinated every few months" that was present in media at some point. That's pretty much every pharma's wet dream.

Edit: As someone outside of USA, I find it remarkable how people seem to associate vaccine skepticism, despite pharma in US having strong motivation to push novel drugs that don't solve the issue, just treat the symptoms.

That's not the result that can be inferred from seeing unvaccinated people having no symptoms. In other words, people having no symptoms without vaccine or even having side effects from the vaccine itself does not disprove the statistic of vaccinated people having lesser symptoms on average.

And afaik the mRNA vaccines were fast tracked, leaving room for possible errors.

So as Usual in studies - through data collection, statistics, and correcting for bias in cohorts.

> afaik the mRNA vaccines were fast tracked, leaving room for possible errors

There's already lots of information about the details of what the fast tracking meant. I would recommend reading some to understand it better than your summary.

Please double check yours. There's a few common vaccines that people assume are "life long" but actually have a recommendation for boosters when you're an adult.

But yeah, in general the length of immunity differs, some vaccines work forever, some not. It's a limitation of what we can produce.

> So what was then the point of getting everyone vaccinated?

Multiple reasons. Prevent many deaths, lower symptoms, make recover easier, lower emergency departments load, lower transmission, etc. None of those were going to be perfect or work independently of people's behaviours.

Which works for some diseases. Others are only effective for shorter periods of time and/or against specific variants. The flu vaccine should be a familiar example to most people, needing periodic refreshers that are most effective against certain variants and not others.

It's also worth noting that the diseases that are treated as a "one and done" are generally those where you're unlikely to be exposed in day to day life for a variety of reasons.

Yes, it's unfortunate that the vaccine has side effects. But if you're seriously concerned about the risk of heart problems the vaccine is the safer bet.

The question is only: did you want higher or lower chances of survival? Cherry picking a situating you think you may have experienced and worrying about it is not useful. Attribution is hard. In single cases close to impossible.

The day I had issues I was camping. Given the testing I certainly didn’t have COVID unless the tests are wrong. No unrelated heart issues prior to this, EKGs everything prior showed normal.

I’d rather not have heart issues to help someone else feel safe. And if my chances are lower, then how come after taking the first dose and having issues, then ceasing further doses at my Drs request, how come I never got it? You see you can isolate yourself and invalidate the need for increased survival rates. Bonus, you don’t have heart issues either!

Really all this shows me is its “every man for themselves”. All anybody cares about is if they survive or if they get a hospital bed if needed. And they’ll force, or attempt to force, others to do things to give them an extra level of safety. Because of this, you’ve created a “new vaccine” antivaxer

Even the flu vaccine has known potential side effects

And guidance hasn’t changed because the benefits still outweighed the risks, though more studies are warranted and are in process in light of updated vaccines and mutating variants.

We didn’t wait until the studies could be completed because we had enough data.

The flu vaccine also does not grant long term immunity, but it has the same utility for public health.

Since you got such a basic fact wrong, you might consider what else you've misunderstood and why. Then you can take steps to correct it.

Also you do realize you’re contradicting yourself? You’re saying nobody forced anything but if you want to live in society you must follow the rules. There were no laws forcing me, it was my desire to keep my job. My job created the mandate, not society.

Regarding your new argument, which doesn't seem to be pointing out a perceived contradiction in any interpretation I can make of it, your job created the requirement because society said it didn't want age discrimination in employment. If your employer forced only older employees to get the vaccine in order to keep its insurance costs low, there would have been lawsuits. Forcing all employees to get vaccinated has well-established legal precedent and has the benefit of reducing insurance costs slightly more.

Yea I’m not sure my job has many older people, nor would they care about their insurance costs.

Most vaccines are broadly comparable to the Covid vaccines in this respect, requiring multiple doses over months or years and often not entirely blocking infection. They are not perfect at preventing infections or symptoms in all recipients. Indeed, many important vaccines are significantly less effective than the Covid vaccines. Then consider the many viral diseases (e.g. human coronaviruses) that we do not yet have any vaccine for at all: this is because making vaccines is hard, not because we aren’t trying.

Every virus and every vaccine is different, but in broad strokes the way vaccines work is by building herd immunity in the population, enough to drop the reproductive number of a virus below 1 and prevent exponential spread through the population. (Of course, they also protect people individually. But you are the only person vaccinated you end up much less protected than if everyone else also gets vaccinated.)

Covid is a particularly tricky case because (a) we were starting from limited knowledge of a novel virus and designing vaccines based on new technology, (b) this virus has mutated quickly over time, evading antibodies from vaccines and past infections, (c) this virus, especially later variants, is exceptionally contagious making it hard to drop the reproductive number of the virus below 1 by any single intervention (including vaccines, masking, mass testing, ...), (d) Covid is a very serious diseases especially for the elderly, more than an order of magnitude more dangerous than the flu.

> what was then the point of getting everyone vaccinated

The point was saving literally tens of millions of lives.

The confusion here is your own misunderstanding.

- previously deleted this content because it was too aggressive and condescending but adding back since another replied before I could modify -

> The other issue is that like other vaccine skeptics if you have a particular issue with mRNA (which doesn’t make sense given you don’t know anything about vaccines, or the differences between mRNA vaccines or other vaccines or even how vaccines work) you could have taken a non-mRNA vaccine.

The J&J vaccine was pulled pretty early due to the clotting issues and AZ was not available in the US.

It was puzzling to me early on why they'd make a vaccine with a single protein (the case with both mRNA and viral vector vaccine). It seemed obvious a whole virus would have many more opportunities for your body to generate an immune response.

Even more puzzling is why China and other countries haven't adopted mRNA vaccines.

Why do you find this puzzling? What countries haven’t adopted mRNA vaccines and what do you mean by “adopted”?

> The J&J vaccine was pulled pretty early due to the clotting issues and AZ was not available in the US.

And Johnson&Johnson is still available now in the US. They pulled it out of an abundance of caution and because there were other vaccines on the market. If Johnson & Johnson was the only vaccine on the market it wouldn’t have been pulled because of the risk of clotting.

-edit-

This also doesn’t take into account risk analysis. Extreme likelihood of contracting a highly contagious disease with unknown severity and unknown long-term effects versus the unlikelihood of a blood cloth from Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. Obviously any casual analysis would show that you’d get the vaccine.

> It was puzzling to me early on why they'd make a vaccine with a single protein (the case with both mRNA and viral vector vaccine). It seemed obvious a whole virus would have many more opportunities for your body to generate an immune response.

Why would this be puzzling? Can you share some scientific resources that describe the differences in using a “whole virus” versus “part of a virus” and how that affects vaccine effectiveness? I’d like to read the same materials you did.

> This also doesn’t take into account risk analysis. Extreme likelihood of contracting a highly contagious disease with unknown severity and unknown long-term effects versus the unlikelihood of a blood cloth from Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. Obviously any casual analysis would show that you’d get the vaccine.

There is a saying in aviation: if it hasn't been out five years you're a test pilot. How did you calculate the unknowns of using a vaccine never deployed widely in humans?

In addition there are other ways to avoid the virus, myself I moved to a less populated area. My interactions in public were limited to one about 3 people. Never personally contracted covid until about two months ago. In addition pretty early on it was obvious the high risks were to the obese and elderly. You could have prioritized a more healthy lifestyle.

The risk calculation for someone under about sixty doesn't seem that straight forward, and hedges primarily on how scared you are of the virus vs an industry that routinely kills it's customers and lies about it.

We routinely widely deploy vaccines. The flu vaccine, vaccines for newborns and children, etc.

> In addition there are other ways to avoid the virus, myself I moved to a less populated area. My interactions in public were limited to one about 3 people. Never personally contracted covid until about two months ago. In addition pretty early on it was obvious the high risks were to the obese and elderly. You could have prioritized a more healthy lifestyle

Alternatively I’ve been vaccinated, and boosted twice, and maintain a health lifestyle and haven’t contracted COVID-19 that I’m aware of while living in a city, interacting with other people, and traveling. These are just anecdotes and don’t generalize. There are also people who are “perfectly healthy” who get severely ill, some people who didn’t know they had an underlying medical condition who died, and people who were otherwise healthy suffering from long COVID. I’m surprised it’s not very clear to you here that you are not in control. Rural areas were some of the hardest hit because of vaccine skepticism.

“It’s ok for me to smoke cigarettes because so and so smoked a pack a day and lived to be 100”

> The risk calculation for someone under about sixty doesn't seem that straight forward, and hedges primarily on how scared you are of the virus vs an industry that routinely kills it's customers and lies about it.

It seems pretty straightforward. You get a vaccine and then you most likely don’t get COVID, or if you do the severity of the virus is typically not as bad as it could be, or you don’t get the vaccine and you roll the dice for no real reason.

> https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-reveal-key-differences-i...

Ok but what is puzzling about this?

mRNA vaccines? Most of the vaccines widely in use prior to 2021 were quite old.

> I’m surprised it’s not very clear to you here that you are not in control. Rural areas were some of the hardest hit because of vaccine skepticism.

Are you more likely to get a disease being in contact with 500 people a day or 5?

> You get a vaccine and then you most likely don’t get COVID,

In my personal circle I know two people who didn't contract covid. One was vaccinated and one was not. The sheer numbers infected make me highly skeptical it did anything at all to stop transmission. mRNA vaccines never worked in the past, but suddenly they work under an emergency situation.

I'm not aware of any study comparing the vaccine vs lower mortality of new variants. Vaccine proponents say mRNA vaccination shows lower mortality and the numbers all things being equal make it seem it does. However there are new variants. Maybe the vaccine did nothing at all, but launder billions of tax payer dollars? Maybe it's just the new variants being less deadly we have to thank? Or maybe it's a little of both.

> Ok but what is puzzling about this?

The fact they chose mRNA, never widely used and even downplayed the immunity gained by contracting covid naturally. To the point people with prior infection were fired if they refused the vaccine.

What. This isn't how reasoning works. "My friend wasn't wearing a seatbelt when they got in a car accident and they didn't die but this other person was wearing a seatbelt and did die, so it's not like seatbelts have a provable positive impact on collision safety."

This is just flat-out wrong, and shows stunning ignorance of how clinical trials and medical research is done, which is probably why you were accused of spreading conspiracy theories.

There’s an enormous body of research demonstrating the effectiveness of vaccines minimizing symptom severity.

Effortless.

Biden team asking Twitter to "handle" tweets they don't like. This rubs me the wrong way, nobody in government should be telling Twitter to remove speech.

The Biden team never asked Twitter staff to “handle” anything. They forwarded tweets that [violated twitter’s ToS][1], a Twitter staff member forwarded them for review, and at that point the reviewer said they “handled these.”

That’s what content moderation is supposed to do!

[1]: https://twitter.com/parkebench/status/1598841731763810304

[1] The tweets referenced by the biden team were Hunter Biden dick pics, you can check yourself in the Wayback Machine

Pretty sure “playing ball” helps build goodwill with the people who decide whether to break your company up or not.

The Taibbi tweets clearly indicate that "connections" buy influence within Twitter. So clearly Twitter sees some benefit to "helping" those in power.

Edit: It's specifically called out in Taibbi's tweets. "NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it's a "tipping point,""

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/intimate-medi...

This page goes back to 2018, too, so it’s hardly new: https://web.archive.org/web/20180103200035/https://help.twit...

> Sharing explicit sexual images or videos of someone online without their consent is a violation of their privacy and one of the most serious violations of the Twitter Rules. In addition to posing serious safety and security risks, it may also result in physical, emotional, and financial hardship for the person whose media is shared.

I mean, I guess it's ok to expand the definition, but let's be clear that's what we're doing here. Also, it isn't particularly rhetorically effective.

> Sharing explicit sexual images or videos of someone online without their consent is a violation of their privacy and one of the most serious violations of the Twitter Rules. In addition to posing serious safety and security risks, it may also result in physical, emotional, and financial hardship for the person whose media is shared.

The hacked content in general is covered by this. Given the contents, it doesn’t appear that the news exemption covers most of the material:

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materi...

Here’s the history on the above quote for those that missed the allusion: https://englishhistory.net/middle-ages/will-no-one-rid-me-of...

Moderating content isn't the goal. Moderating behavior is.

It drives me mad that the right somehow turned this into a persuasive argument to people.

You could also summarize the findings as “no evidence of tampered emails or hacking was found on the laptop”. But you didn’t (and I wouldn’t) as that too would be disingenuous.

Neither summary is a fair framing, particularly for techies.

For at least some of the details, see the march 2022 Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-... or https://archive.ph/b1Ser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

But let me guess Wikipedia is also part of the fake news media?

Third parties on the emails have come forward to verify some of the emails.

> No criminal activity by the Bidens was ever found.

Hunter Biden is guilty of lying on a federal firearms application. For starters they should throw the book at him for that since Democrats are “tough on guns” right?

The corruption angle has never been fully investigated either. The whole Ukraine do nothing job was clearly payment for access to his father. We’ll see what comes up when they finally look into it next Congress.

> It should be impossible to look at this objectively and conclude that this wasn't a carefully timed misinformation campaign.

Just because something has a political angle doesn’t mean it’s immediately false.

> It drives me mad that the right somehow turned this into a persuasive argument to people.

The blinders worn by the half the left, and forced onto the eyes of the other half, are a much worse problem.

Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t mean the public cannot discuss the matter or present it’s opinion on the legality.

The laptop isn’t meaningless. It’s a data dump of evidence of guilt. Everything from brandishing an illegally obtained firearm while under the influence of narcotics to admitting to taking a cut of deals on behalf of his father (“10% for the big guy”).

> Hunter is being investigated by the FBI. If the house wants to spend it’s time investigating a single individual fine I guess.

The House absolutely should look into these allegations. Because till now nobody had taken them seriously.

> But if influence of someone not in office being investigated is going to open the door wide to Trump and his kids.

The Trump hate is so strong that the left cannot even admit an investigation of corruption should be done into a meth addict who was clearly selling influence to his father without some kind of whataboutism.

If there was actual Trump corruption, him and his whole family would be in prison by now. They’ve been investigating him non stop since 2015. But they haven’t found anything worthy of charges.

Then you go on to list a bunch of meaningless things to me. Hunter Biden brandishing firearms and taking drugs is meaningless. He’s a private citizen. His problems are well known. The brandishing of the firearm thing is especially hilarious, because the people who are most concerned about taking down Hunter Biden wouldn’t even consider that a crime.

Actually I take that back, Hunter Biden allegedly trading on his fathers name and giving kickbacks to “the big guy” has been normalized by the Trump family as standard operating procedure for top political families in this country.

How are any Republicans even mad about this? Oh right, they are not. What’s really going on here is that Republicans hope the laptop will be to Biden as Whitewater was to Clinton, and Benghazi was to Hillary — the pretext that allows investigation, which will hopefully reveal or cause the other prey to make a mistake.

That’s all this is, which is frustrating, because a total of 0 people involved in pushing this care about the things you listed as not meaningless and evidence of guilt. It’s just a political playbook that’s been run nationally 3 times already, at least. The fact not everyone can see through it is worrying.

> the left cannot even admit an investigation of corruption should be done

And yet, the FBI is investigating and Biden isn’t pressuring the AG or firing the director of the FBI as Trump did.

But regardless, you say it’s about “Trump hate” and whataboutism but it’s really about normalization. Republicans shouldn’t be surprised people yawn about accusations of nepotism and self dealing after they told people for years it’s not a big deal. Why should anyone care about Republicans suddenly crying about self dealing now, after brushing it off for so long?

> If there was actual Trump corruption, him and his whole family would be in prison by now.

Trump was President since 2016 and was not only immune from prosecution, but it was found he used his position as President to obstruct the investigation into himself. People thought the system would be capable of quickly removing such an obvious tumor, but apparently only voters have enough power to do that. Apparently controlling the AG and DOJ is enough to keep one from being indicted, who knew?

With most prosecutions of the scale that would be needed to take down someone as powerful as Trump taking years, Trump probably won’t see a courtroom for another 12-18 months.

That's completely bullshit. Legal gun owners are the number of advocates for actually enforcing gun laws on the books. Not creating cockamamie new ones that go after cosmetic features or make criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens.

Being a drug addict and purchasing or even being in possession of a firearm is a serious crime and it should be investigated. I guarantee you that 100/100 legal gun owners would endorse prosecuting drug addicts illegally in possession of firearms.

The true hypocrisy is that while the left wants to disarm the populace, will not endorse doing so when it's one of there own that clearly should not be in possession of firearms. They want to throw the book at legal gun owners for some newly created minutiae, but won't endorse charging a literal meth addict brandishing a firearm with a felony.

> Actually I take that back, Hunter Biden allegedly trading on his fathers name and giving kickbacks to “the big guy” has been normalized by the Trump family as standard operating procedure for top political families in this country.

Great talking points with zero actual evidence. Like I said, if there was any actual evidence, there'd have been some charge in some jurisdiction by now. But there isn't.

> How are any Republicans even mad about this? Oh right, they are not. What’s really going on here is that Republicans hope the laptop will be to Biden as Whitewater was to Clinton, and Benghazi was to Hillary — the pretext that allows investigation, which will hopefully reveal or cause the other prey to make a mistake.

You see no issue with Hunter taking a cut on behalf of his dad in exchange for shaping policy? You don't see anything worthy of investigation in the $250K/month deal he was getting from that Ukraine gas company for his "expertise"?

> That’s all this is, which is frustrating, because a total of 0 people involved in pushing this care about the things you listed as not meaningless and evidence of guilt. It’s just a political playbook that’s been run nationally 3 times already, at least. The fact not everyone can see through it is worrying.

Clearly at least I care and the House majority that is going to take up the investigations.

> And yet, the FBI is investigating and Biden isn’t pressuring the AG or firing the director of the FBI as Trump did.

You mean the FBI that asked Facebook and Twitter to scrub the laptop story?

> But regardless, you say it’s about “Trump hate” and whataboutism but it’s really about normalization. Republicans shouldn’t be surprised people yawn about accusations of nepotism and self dealing after they told people for years it’s not a big deal. Why should anyone care about Republicans suddenly crying about self dealing now, after brushing it off for so long?

I've yet to see you point to any actual corruption. It's just the same, "Can't you see it! It's everywhere!!" over and over again. Show some actual corruption. Show an investigation that went somewhere. Show a charge that actually stuck.

> Trump was President since 2016 and was not only immune from prosecution, but it was found he used his position as President to obstruct the investigation into himself.

Immune from prosecution is not immune from investigation. They've investigated him non-stop for years and it has lead to nothing. If not, point to something meaningful.

> People thought the system would be capable of quickly removing such an obvious tumor, but apparently only voters have enough power to do that.

Referring to a human being as a cancerous growth is disgusting. You're clearly incapable of any kind of unbiased analysis.

> Apparently controlling the AG and DOJ is enough to keep one from being indicted, who knew?

Apparently absence of an indictment can only mean rampant corruption and the additional crime of a conspiracy by Trump to prevent an indictment. Read up on Occam's razor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

> With most prosecutions of the scale that would be needed to take down someone as powerful as Trump taking years, Trump probably won’t see a courtroom for another 12-18 months.

They've had all kinds of investigations for years. The truth, or I guess "sad truth" for you, is that there's nothing there to actually charge him with.

I don't know who you've been talking to, but my family members who are very mad about this Hunter Biden laptop also believe there's no such thing as an illegal firearm, and anything labeled as such is a violation of the 2nd amendment. That's the basis for my amusement.

> the left wants to disarm the populace, will not endorse doing so when it's one of there own that clearly should not be in possession of firearms.

Again, don't know who you've been talking to, but I'd challenge you to actually produce an instance of someone on the left who would defend Hunter Biden's guns. The general line I've seen is that if he did something wrong, Hunter Biden should go to jail. No one on the left (that I've seen) is defending him like the right is imagining. Again, show me. I'm not seeing it.

> Great talking points with zero actual evidence. Like I said, if there was any actual evidence, there'd have been some charge in some jurisdiction by now. But there isn't.

There have been charges in jurisdictions. The first charges landing so far are that his namesake company is actually a front for massive fraud. The trial for that is currently under way. Trump was also named as an unindicted co conspirator on a crime someone else went to jail for. The only reason Trump himself wasn't indicted was, again, because he was President and his Justice Department couldn't do anything to indict him. In fact, political appointees in the DoJ worked to scrub Trump's fingerprints on the Cohen case as much as possible. Really all you're saying is that the other shoe hasn't dropped yet, and we should take that as evidence it never will.

> You see no issue with Hunter taking a cut on behalf of his dad in exchange for shaping policy?

Sure, investigate the hell out of this claim. But no one has been able to show that any of what you say is even remotely true, and in fact the opposite is true. The biggest claim made I've seen so far is that Hunter somehow influenced Biden to go after a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son. But this claim completely falls flat on its face when you realize that Joe Biden's actions were supported by the entire government, including Republicans. Why does Hunter Biden need to use back channels with his father to get him to do something that literally everyone agrees needs to be done?

No one can answer that without the entire narrative collapsing, so all these other unrelated conspiracy theories are added onto the pile about child porn and other nonsense. No matter what the results of this investigation are, they're already tainted to the point that no one will listen. So investigate all you want, but it's so partisan now that no one who doesn't care already will be paying attention.

> Clearly at least I care and the House majority that is going to take up the investigations.

I wonder if you were just as concerned with Whitewater and Benghazi and Durham. I wonder if you will be disappointed yet again when Republicans fail to deliver on their claims, and they resort to "well no laws were technically broken but we feel it was improper!"

> You mean the FBI that asked Facebook and Twitter to scrub the laptop story?

Yes, I mean the FBI that is traditionally staffed by very conservative people, and has always been run exclusively by conservatives. Indeed that one. They've shown evidence, and given Jan 6 and recent events, I'm inclined to believe them.

> I've yet to see you point to any actual corruption. Show an investigation that went somewhere. Show a charge that actually stuck.

Okay, the first and most obvious would by Trump's charity, which was found to be a self-dealing grift instead of a non-profit and was directed to be shut down by New York. So there's no question Trump and his entire family (they were guilty of the charity fraud too) are not above committing fraud to enrich themselves. Republicans cheered this behavior enthusiastically.

If you want to talk about Trump's government corruption, look no further than his grift with the Secret Service, where he charged them astronomical rates to stay at his own properties, while telling the public that he was only charging them at cost. Or take Trump's lease of the post office, which was found by the GSA Inspector General to have violated the Constitution's emoluments clause. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I don't want to be here all day.

All of these instances were met by yawns and shrugs by conservatives. That's how they normalized it. If they had pushed back against Trump's grift, they would have more of a sympathetic ear from me today when they complain about a supposed Biden grift. But they didn't then, so I can't take their outrage seriously now.

> Immune from prosecution is not immune from investigation. They've investigated him non-stop for years and it has lead to nothing. If not, point to something meaningful.

The Republican-lead Senate Intel Committee investigated his campaign for colluding with Russia, and found that his campaign manager was coordinating strategy with a Russian intelligence officer. The Mueller report found that Russia attacked the 2016 election and Trump welcomed their help. They also found Trump obstructed justice into this investigation 11 times. Further it was found by the House that Trump extorted a bribe from Ukraine, but although the Senate didn't disagree, Senators from his party were swayed by Trump's argument that he did so for the good of the country. Which... okay, sure. Then the House found that Trump incited insurrection, and while the Senate agreed with the facts, they didn't agree they had the power to impeach.

Notably the investigations that got the furthest were mostly beyond Trump's reach to impede. Also notably, none of the investigations have come up as empty as Whitewater, Benghazi, and the Durham probe. For every single investigation into Trump, where there was smoke there was fire. Republicans don't have the same track record.

> Referring to a human being as a cancerous growth is disgusting. You're clearly incapable of any kind of unbiased analysis.

Kindly, I noted the former President was corrupting the system he was supposed to run, as a tumor might. If you don't care for my analogy, move past it. No need to police my tone. I didn't claim to be unbiased, and I'm not pretending to be. Although I'm curious now if you think you're behaving in an unbiased way, because that's clearly not the case.

> Apparently absence of an indictment can only mean rampant corruption and the additional crime of a conspiracy by Trump to prevent an indictment.

Trump's untoward influence on the DoJ and the lengths went to to protect him are not hypotheticals. Read the Mueller report, it sells it out. Read the accounts of the USAGs who resigned under political pressure from Trump and Barr. I mean, the whole fact that Barr was appointed in the first place is evidence of this. The whole fact there was a need for a Special Counsel after Comey was fired is evidence of this.

> They've had all kinds of investigations for years.

I don't know why you keep harping on this point. "For years" the investigations have been in the hands of Trump's political allies. Until "recently" i.e. the last two years, during which said investigations have rapidly progressed after political influence was lifted. Since then Trump's company has been in court and looks about to receive a death sentence, and his home has been raided by the FBI, where they found clear evidence of a crime. But despite these recent developments, because some arbitrary time has elapsed, by your estimation he's squeaky clean?

Trump's FBI.

Chain of custody is a problem.

> Everything from brandishing an illegally obtained firearm

Conservatives supporting denying American's their right to bear arms. Gotcha.

> while under the influence of narcotics

So?

> to admitting to taking a cut of deals on behalf of his father (“10% for the big guy”).

Private citizen not in government.

> The House absolutely should look into these allegations. Because till now nobody had taken them seriously.

Gotcha. The FBI and Trump never took this seriously.

> The Trump hate is so strong that the left cannot even admit an investigation of corruption should be done into a meth addict who was clearly selling influence to his father without some kind of whataboutism.

Private citizens vs Government officials. Conservatives and their big government overreach and policies and their anti-1A stance.

> If there was actual Trump corruption, him and his whole family would be in prison by now.

So Clinton wasn't corrupt. Gotcha.

Also, the investigations are still ongoing. See Taxes, for example. And all the previous charges filed against him and case after case he lost.

But sure, Manafort, Papadopoulos, Flynn, Stone, and Cohen are nobody related to Trump.

> They’ve been investigating him non stop since 2015. But they haven’t found anything worthy of charges.

They've found evidence they could charge, but not enough they want to risk a trial on as it's not a "slam dunk" case.

But hey, the Clintons are not corrupt, and the elections weren't stolen! Those are interesting points of view for you.

EDIT: In fact, let's not rely on our memories. Here's the original NY Post story, the one which you weren't allowed to share on Twitter:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden...

This article doesn't make any kind of allegations about CP. Why are you making things up?

"The conservative radio host Wayne Root claimed without evidence in a tweet shared tens of thousands of times that Hunter Biden's laptop contains videos of him sexually abusing Chinese children."

That's just one article, I remember seeing many YouTube comments and 4chan posts about it, which could suggest they were bots pushing a narrative.

The Hunter Biden story is, and has always been, about him selling access to his father to Ukrainian powerbrokers so that what we're seeing unfold now over there would be possible. His claims to be saving "10% for the Big Guy" clearly allude to money being kicked back to his dad the Vice President at the time, and current man in charge of delivering billions of dollars to those same powerbrokers in Ukraine now.

This is what the investigation is about. Nobody cares if Hunter was a drug addict or a douchebag it's always been about the above.

Posted today:

https://twitter.com/JoanneRansing/status/1598963377984135183

"Hunter Biden had sex with his niece Natalie. His dead brother's underage daughter - he was also banging her Mom. Will they manage to keep this video secret forever? Lots of people have seen it including me."

https://twitter.com/kuckieman/status/1598895748636372992

"One question, Are you ok with the pictures of Hunter Biden and clearly underage girls? You and Hunter are the problem."

https://twitter.com/wokeantag0nist/status/159901527380973568...

"Hunter had sex with underage girls and used his dad to broker deals against America’s best interest, “ what’s the big heal lolz” congratulations you’re dumb and pathetic enough to be Biden’s next diversity hire"

Me: shows credible proof demonstrating that's not the case

You: feigns confusion

Why are you playing dumb?, sure seems like you get "confused" a lot.

Well, I think we've identified the issue. Please don't look up flat earth tweets, it will break you heart.