Most concerning thing here is that this proves political parties (including the white house[0]) have a direct line to Twitter[1] to get stuff they dislike removed. One would have to assume that there was also a direct line to other social medial platforms. It's so wild to have the slimy-ness of our American political system be revealed in yet another way. So in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online?!?!
Since this is true, then where else are political parties trying to get unflattering speech suppressed that we don't even know of yet?
It’s blowing my mind to see people on Twitter reading the story and thinking this is an issue of whether or not Hunter Biden is a problem. This is clearly the much more pernicious issue that 1. social media companies are massively influencing the dissemination of information on an ad hoc basis informed by personal political whims and 2. even the leaders of these organizations are unable to rein in these influences.
This is a common delusion from people who want to believe it. Those pictures are all over my timeline all the time, he's doing a bad job banning people who post them.
I saw an article about a bunch of antifa accounts, but they were posting how to disrupt protests with violence which seems like a pretty clear violation.
It'd be great if Elon published all removal requests coming in from political operatives, public figures and PR firms. Commandeer one of the myriad bot accounts and turn it into an automated take-down-request publishing-bot.
Well, people will probably maintain the same level of belief that they have now. Given the timing, are these leaks arranged to make Musk look one way, or Twitter look another?
If we take the most innocent sounding version of this, where the White House points out that a tweet is in violation of Twitter's stated policies and asks for those policies to be applied, I think it's pretty clearly not.
Of course those requests can and will be made in a biased manner, and it's naive to assume that the nature of the request isn't going to influence how Twitter responds to it, but it's definitely a murky grey area at that point.
government used to be weary of any appearance of impropriety, lest people believe they are acting improperly -being slimy. That seems to have gone by the wayside.
two, if the requests were to suppress sensitive government information --secrets, ok, I might lend a sympathetic ear, if they could prove it was so (not because they said "take our word". But this is "don't make us look bad" --sorry, but no, it stays.
And now we are hearing the gov wants to amp up domestic surveillance. The ACLU and EFF, etc should get off their butts and perform their claimed duty. We're not China in that sense yet, but if we let them, we'll get there.
> government used to be weary of any appearance of impropriety, lest people believe they are acting improperly -being slimy. That seems to have gone by the wayside.
Voters used to punish politicians that seemed improper. They don't anymore. The Trump administration was the capstone on this, obviously, but the trend has been developing for decades.
It was clearly the common media informing the voters of improper behavior. Now voters can pick their own media and avoid unflattering stories. This then has led to terrible politicians getting away with far more than they ever could before.
Eh, the media has been corrupt and shaping and staging. They probably sunk Gary Hart's ambitions by insinuating he had an affair with Donna, so the Dems ended up with some damned Goofball against the desiccated GHW. Of course for the coup de grace they bum rushed Ross the next round.
Good to observe that 1) the white House resided then president Donald Trump 2) the tweets submitted for removal were H Biden's genitalia, which are in clear violation of Twitters PoS.
The wording probably matters too. The Biden team asked Twitter to "review" certain tweets instead of "remove" certain tweets. So technically they're not suppressing speech explicitly but implicitly we (and twitter employees) all know what they mean by "review".
You do realize this was the Trump Whitehouse? and that both Trump's campaign team and White House staff made requests that were honored? And that when Biden's team asked for the reviews it was not the executive branch?
Yep! Dont really care who's in the White House in this instance.
I referenced the Biden team's verbiage because that's the only verbiage that was posted with the implied intent on getting tweets removed (besides the DNC). I'd love to see the email's from the White House asking for tweets to be removed.
I wonder why these Twitter Files didn’t include any partial emails from Trump’s staff, only the DNC where they expedited a ToS violation review.
Oh wait, it’s because clearly this information from a “Twitter source” (aka Elon) is disseminated with a viewpoint and is hardly impartial.
All of this should be viewed with extreme skepticism, and so far none of this seems damning in any way. I haven’t seen anything that says Elon is remotely operating in good faith.
I suspect some of these slimy outcomes (parties and offices having special access to request review) are pretty hard to avoid in practice. Like, if you know for a fact that there will be illegal actors targeting both campaigns, do you not listen to direct requests from the targets? And if you offer it to one side, would you offer it to all? I bet there are more principled ways to do it but I also think this is what it would like if a reasonably well intentioned but also selfish / risk averse staff tried to react in realtime to a really new situation.
The power structures in society having arbitrary influence is what matters. A c-tier candidate would never have the same pull as not-yet elected Biden. Nor would a controversial candidate even from a popular party.
The only solution is to not provide the power in the first place instead of trying to fix it with layers of easily bypassed rules. You can’t have easy censorship if there isn’t an established censorship system already in place.
A system that is limited by law and very fundamental policies is much less prone to abuse (ie, a constitutional republic with transparent but limited policy making power vs monarchical systems with backroom dealing by elites). The minute it became about broadly policing speech via backroom dealing was the minute it became wide open to abuse.
> You can’t have easy censorship if there isn’t an established censorship system already in place.
This creates a new kind of abuse. If Twitter has no way of removing illegal content from its platform, then your opponent can use that fact to post illegal content about you (i.e. hacked pictures of your naked body), and you have no recourse.
Clearly it's not about the first amendment if it's a request. The constitution is clear that congress (and by extension the executive branch as it's been interpreted for two centuries) "shall make no law" (or regulation or rulemaking or enforcement action, ditto). A request is just a request. In fact a request is pretty clearly just speech and can't be restricted because of the very same amendment. Twitter doesn't have to listen to id, but Joe or whoever has every right to ask.
Now, if there's lawmaking/regulation/rulemaking/enforcement aimed at Twitter by the executive branch, that's a very different thing.
But in this particualr case it's also sorta nonsensical. The stuff released today is about the Biden campaign, which was a private entity. Biden himself held no government position at all, so the point gets pretty strained.
As stated in tweet #11, Twitter is overwhemingly staffed by people of one political orientation, and the company as a whole would thus have no issue with helping their political party win the election. They had no reason to sue.
I'm going to assume that you are confused by the linked chart and are not being intentionally obtuse.
The chart displays a breakdown of total employee contributions to the two political parties. As you can see, the "% to democrats" column contains 95%+ for the last 4 years. It would be safe to assume that this metric is a reasonable proxy for Twitter staff's political leanings.
Fair enough that I misread the chart, but are we sure that those contributions are evenly distributed throughout the employee population and not, for example, mostly from executives? I can't tell where this data is sourced from.
>It would be safe to assume that this metric is a reasonable proxy for Twitter staff's political leanings.
No it wouldn't be because it doesn't way what percent of employees donate at all. I assume the percentage is pretty low because it's <$200,000 going to Democrats from the entire company.
Ignoring that we have no idea where the data ultimately comes from (or are private contributions public in the US?) it is highly misleading by omission.
If we look at the linked page [1] we see that 2014 and 2016 much higher fractions went to the Republicans (31% in 2016 and 11% in 2014) with the total contributions varying wildly from year to year, but the chart was cut to show single-digit values only.
As part of the donating to a political campaign, that information is required to ensure it is a real person donating, prevent employees from prohibited companies from donating (e.g. federal contractors have a conflict of interest) and preventing or recording coercion from management to donate a particular way.
> For each contribution that exceeds $200, either by itself or when added to the contributor’s previous contributions made during the same calendar year, records must identify that contribution by:
Amount;
Date of receipt; and
Contributor’s full name and mailing address, occupation and employer.
If a person has already contributed an aggregate amount of over $200 during a calendar year, each subsequent contribution, regardless of amount, must be identified in the same way.
Please note that contributions to authorized committees are aggregated on a calendar-year basis for recordkeeping purposes, but are aggregated on a per-election basis for purposes of monitoring contribution limits, and on an election-cycle basis for reporting purposes.
---
And thus open secrets is getting the aggregate data that and releasing that.
Fun fact : you can just put unemployed and you don't have to list your employer. Most tech people I know are so paranoid about personal information that they would most likely go that route.
Fun Fact: Lying on a Federally required election financial disclosure document is breaking the law and asking for trouble.
Please don't post this type of advice here or elsewhere. Don't think that if you are paying with a credit card in your name, that your employer information can't be easily determined if there is an FEC investigation of a candidate receiving a large number of contributions from "unemployed" people. You are telling people not only to break the law, but to do so in a very public way that is impossible for them to hide.
Always tell the truth in all legally required financial disclosures, especially when this is touching campaign financing.
A media company favoring a political party is not illegal. It’s indeed quite normal. That said, removing revenge porn isn’t favoring a political party.
The white house in this case was the Trump white house so it could have been received positively by the media that twitter is standing up to Trump by suing.
Could you elaborate on why you dont think it would be a free speech violation? Is internet communication not considered speech?
Internet communication is considered speech. But, the speech on Twitter's website belongs to Twitter. They get to decide what is on their website. They can, as far as the First Amendment goes, more or less ban or censor anything they want for any reason, because they are a private actor.
If Twitter decided to remove Hunter Biden content completely on their own, that would be legal. If Twitter decided to remove that content because someone asked nicely- regardless of who that person is, whether they are President or not- that would be legal. It's only a legal issue if the government forces Twitter to remove the content, which is not something Twitter has asserted.
What if Twitter agreed with the motivation for the pressure? Shouldn’t the government not be pressuring people in pursuit of limiting free speech whether the current recipients of the pressure happen to be of the same political persuasion or not?
Otherwise what happens when the party in power changes?
"What if Twitter agreed with the motivation for the pressure?" Then it's not pressure. It's Twitter doing something they want to do. Just because the government and Twitter agree on something doesn't mean the government "forced them" to do it, which is what the 1A and prior restraint law care about.
"What happens when the party in power changes?" Twitter, like every other company, gets to decide whether or not they want to support or oppose the party in power, and if Twitter feels the government is violating their 1A rights, Twitter can sue them
> Twitter has not asserted they were pressured. If they feel they were, they should say so, and sue.'
You do understand that they can collude? It's funny we have spent countless hours hearing about Trump Russia collusion. Now suddenly people can't seem to figure out there is a thing called collusion.
Censorship of this story doesn't exist in vaccum. There is a legitimate argument why this shouldn't be investigated as election interference when we've spent countless hours based on Steele dossier, which turned out to be a political ploy.
For collusion to be noteworthy there still has to be a crime committed. The allegation in the Trump-Russia collusion case is that they conspired to have foreign operators influence the election. This would have been an illegal act that they colluded on.
There is nothing illegal about requesting review of tweets even through special channels. If Twitter actually has evidence of an illegal act to coerce the review then they should probably rehire whoever was coerced and file suit.
Collusion as you're using it would not be a 1A violation. It also would not qualify as election interference any more than any other newspaper choosing what stories to run or what candidates to endorse (legally speaking).
This is not the detail that matters. Anyone in government, including Congress, can ask someone to do anything. They cannot coerce or appear to coerce regulation of speech. This is extremely well established.
No. The 1st Amendment is a restriction on the Legislative branch: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Congress passed no laws in this regard. Whether or not this was illegal activity on the part of the Executive Branch is another question entirely -- and a good one.
The 1st amendment has long been interpreted to apply to the entire federal government.
> The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. It prohibits any laws that establish a national religion, impede the free exercise of religion, abridge the freedom of speech, infringe upon the freedom of the press, interfere with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibit citizens from petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted into the Bill of Rights in 1791. The Supreme Court interprets the extent of the protection afforded to these rights. The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Court as applying to the entire federal government even though it is only expressly applicable to Congress. Furthermore, the Court has interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the rights in the First Amendment from interference by state governments.
Despite the phrasing being "Congress shall make no law," the First Amendment absolutely applies to the executive.
The mainstream test just looks for a "state actor" but even if you want to go textualist, things probably break down like this: if a law empowers the executive to do an act that violates the First Amendment, the law itself is a violation of the First Amendment. If no law empowers the executive to do the action at issue, then the action is illegal by virtue of being in excess of the executive's authority.
Just to further clarify, by "mainstream" I meant "the actual test courts use." The "textualist" version is more something to write a law review article about, a theory of how you might get to roughly the same place we are in reality while giving weight to the word "Congress."
Take the state actor doctrine in combination with the fact that the First Amendment is incorporated against the states, and you get the reality that it even applies to, for example, state colleges and universities disciplining students and teachers, despite them not being "Congress," a "law," or even an agent of the federal government at all.
Going down this technical path doesn’t aid your case: it destroys your case.
This is because the Constitution only authorizes Congress to make any laws in the first place, so only Congress could be guilty of making a law impacting speech. Taking all of the document in the narrow sense you’re taking it would mean the executive branch couldn’t limit speech either because they couldn’t do 99.9% of the things they do today in the first place.
I'm not a lawyer, I don't know much about the technicalities of these things.
But by this reasoning it sounds like the president could just create an executive order limiting free speech and that would be just fine? Is the president really aloud to create an executive order saying "anyone with red hair is no longer aloud to speak in public" (obviously silly example)?
It's a loophole of practicality that is often exploited by executive branch regardless of political party.
Initiate a policy or order, mitigating the immediate damage. Then, days, months or years later, a court will decide you didn't have that power and will reverse it. But the threat or problem was already dealt with and there are no repurcussions except political capital spent.
Executive orders impact how the executive branch of the government acts.
They are instructions from the head of the executive branch (be it President or a state's governor) for an agency in the executive branch to do a certain thing.
> HHS Actions. In furtherance of the policy set forth in section 1 of this order, the Secretary shall, consistent with the criteria set out in 42 U.S.C. 1315a(b)(2), consider whether to select for testing by the Innovation Center new health care payment and delivery models that would lower drug costs and promote access to innovative drug therapies for beneficiaries enrolled in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, including models that may lead to lower cost-sharing for commonly used drugs and support value-based payment that promotes high-quality care. The Secretary shall, not later than 90 days after the date of this order, submit a report to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy enumerating and describing any models that the Secretary has selected. The report shall also include the Secretary's plan and timeline to test any such models. Following the submission of the report, the Secretary shall take appropriate actions to test any health care payment and delivery models discussed in the report.
This directs the Department of Health and Human Services (under the executive branch) to do certain things.
> Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the executive branch to:
> (a) secure the southern border of the United States through the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border, monitored and supported by adequate personnel so as to prevent illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism;
> ...
> (d) Except as otherwise noted, “the Secretary” shall refer to the Secretary of Homeland Security.
> Sec. 4. Physical Security of the Southern Border of the United States. The Secretary shall immediately take the following steps to obtain complete operational control, as determined by the Secretary, of the southern border:
Note again, the Department of Homeland Security is under the executive branch.
---
And so, the "could you create an executive order ordering {department} to arrest someone with red hair speaking in public?" The answer is "no" because the ability to arrest someone is under the Judicial branch - not the executive branch.
Secondly, you will note that all of the executive orders are citing the law under which the president (or governor) is given that authority from congress. To arrest a red head for speaking congress would need to have a law (First Amendment!) that allows the executive branch to silence someone.
---
I will also point out gag orders which are, well, fairly straight forward censorship. Except that the gag order is from the judicial branch - not the legislative branch.
I don't think it's quite that simple. For instance, the establishment of religion clause has been read to deny public entities the ability to put up Christmas displays, despite no "laws" being passed to facilitate them.
The government "asking" a private entity to take some action is inherently coercive due to the power imbalance.
I think it should also mean that if Twitter was able to successfully do this, they no longer require any protections from Section 230. They're in full editorial control of the property, they shouldn't enjoy any further legal shields while simultaneously enjoying this apparent total oversight.
You are intentionally being uncharitable, and in your rush, you ignored the first two words of my statement. I'm glad large tech monopolies got yet another giveaway from our congress, and if that's a flag you want to wave, be my guest; but, I still stand by my assertion.
Yes. And a properly-endowed Justice Department would begin prosecution for Twitter employees that colluded with the government to defraud US citizens of their fundamental rights.
Twitter officers conspired with rogue elements of the US government to defraud US citizens of their constitutionally protected rights.
This is not a game. The people involved should be facing 30 year prison sentences.
Twitter officers conspired with hostile, rogue actors inside the US government to defraud United States Citizens of their constitutional rights
They abused technology designed to prevent the spread of child pornography to censor information harmful to their preferred political candidate at the behest of government officials.
It's not that Twitter stopped people from posting. It's that Twitter did that at the behest of the government. That is a clear violation of the First Amendment.
The government can ask private companies not to publish things, it does that for "national security" all the time. The company can tell them to pound sound - that's been well established. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/16/wh... for example. But there's nothing illegal (and most certainly not 30 year prison sentence illegal) about the government saying "hey could you review these tweets please"?
Do we know what they contained? Were they threats? Spam? Copyright infringing? Disagreements about tax policy?
It's called "soft power," and the use of "review" in those messages is clearly meaning something more than that. Otherwise, the government would not have suggested anything at all.
It’s clearly illegal, it’s conspiracy to defraud the United States.
United States citizens have explicit rights, and corporate employees colluding with government officials to “voluntarily” nullify those rights are guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States
The government represents us, a collusion to defeat our rights is conspiracy against us and subject to civil and criminal action
> It's that Twitter did that at the behest of the government.
Could you describe the government at the time this action was taken? What relationship did the people asking Twitter to do things with the government? Did the people making the requests have any authority to direct any department of the Federal Government to take any action?
Rogue elements of the FBI colluded with private corporations and elements of the Democratic Party to defraud US citizens of their fundamental rights for the benefit of their preferred political candidate.
They committed conspiracy to defraud the United States, and will in due time be charged as such by the Department of Justice.
In one case, you literally have a government official threatening a private business. In the other, you have the campaign of a private citizen asking for a review. In the first you have actual threats of government power. In the latter, there isn’t even an implied threat.
Campaigns ask many private businesses and people for things they don’t receive.
Officials at the FBI, operating under color of law, mislead Meta/Facebook to believe that the hunter biden content was Russian misinformation prior to an election.
In parallel we have a “political campaign that totally isn’t colluding with the government” ordering some of the most powerful tech companies in the world to “review” content tony soprano style.
The most charitable take is that you are naive, the realistic take it that you are downplaying criminal acts by major entrenched political entities in the US
Zuckerberg said the FBI told Facebook they had intelligence there was going to be a Russian misinformation campaign right before the election. The FBI didn't tell them _this_ was that campaign, that was an assumption made by Facebook.
I see. So now a demand for review by a campaign is actually the FBI.
And the FBI should not engage in countering foreign influence campaigns like the hacked emails in 2016. Foreign adversaries should have free reign to hack and release private data and the media should encourage and distribute it all without any caution.
It’s worse than that, rogue members of FBI illegally acted under its law enforcement authority to collude with a presidential campaign to threaten a private entity to censor constitutionally protected speech.
As I previously stated, (lengthy) prison time is the best possible outcome for all involved.
> The general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, creates an offense "[i]f two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.
You are misreading that very severely. Even if it was a first amendment violation to ask twitter to review certain tweets.
"The intent required for a conspiracy to defraud the government is that the defendant possessed the intent (a) to defraud, (b) to make false statements or representations to the government or its agencies in order to obtain property of the government, or that the defendant performed acts or made statements that he/she knew to be false, fraudulent or deceitful to a government agency, which disrupted the functions of the agency or of the government."
What false statements/representations were made, by anyone?
In addition, they had to in some way "defraud the United States" which is: "They cheat the government out of money or property; They interfere or obstruct legitimate Government activity; or They make wrongful use of a governmental instrumentality." - None of which apply.
As an employee of the government there is the presumption that you are knowledgeable of your role, and that said role is charged with upholding the founding document of your organization.
For example, a teacher hired at a school cannot argue that they could not be expected to teach.
Much in the same way, a government employee cannot in good faith argue that they cannot be expected to uphold the constitution.
By secretly colluding with private companies (that the government has failed to regulate, I might add) to suppress otherwise constitutionally protected activity government employees are criminally liable
And yet it's treated as just the latest Twitter drama. Reactions like the ones I'm seeing--"Republicans are just obsessed with Hunter's ****!"--are the reason why the "I Support the Current Thing" NPC meme exists.
> This is clearly the much more pernicious issue that 1. social media companies are massively influencing the dissemination of information on an ad hoc basis informed by personal political whims
Of course mainstream TV and print "news" has been doing this for decades, but for some strange reason people assume they're somehow "better".
I personally think it's great all this is coming out, because it shows how dangerous and manipulative large media (in all forms) really is.
The problem isn’t doing it per say. The problem is that they lied and basically gaslighted everyone as to the reason they censored the post. It was a total fabrication and they knew it.
The important part to keep in mind is that every news organization, social media site, print newspaper, magazine, radio station and everything else you can think of does exactly the same thing. This is actually not news, or anything new at all.
At least there's competition in legacy media. If one newspaper buries a story because of naked political bias, you might still read about it in other newspapers. If Twitter decides you're not allowed to read something, where else can you go?
They say if you don't like it you can just start your own Twitter - but when Parler tried to do exactly that, Big Tech colluded to destroy it.
While I applaud added clarity in all things, I wonder if there is anything unique about social media here at all? Is there obvious reason to think that the dynamic between, the, say, NYT and the Gov works or has ever worked any differently -- or have we simply been less aware of what went on in the past?
What was the content of the "handled" tweets, though? I think that matters a lot. For example, the RealJamesWood tweet (from [0]) seems to be a leaked nude of Hunter; it was most likely (safe to say) posted non-consensually, and I don't really see a big difference between that kind of tweet and revenge porn.
Having "stuff they dislike" removed would be one thing, but using the direct line at Twitter for reporting explicit ToS violations isn't a big deal.
Lots of people talking about ToS as if it's applied consistently and without bias. Let's assume that the oft-storied "pee tapes" were real, published by a mainstream news outlet and posted to Twitter. Would those same individuals regurgitating ToS violations agree that should receive the same treatment, or would they have been complicit in spreading it as far and wide as possible?
The situation is clouded by the extreme bias of the employees at Twitter. They seemed to believe they were applying the ToS consistently and fairly despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
It was interesting when they banned Trump that they cited "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." as a notable incitement of violence. Someone who can put that up and think of it as a serious interpretation is not working from the same reality as most people.
> It was interesting when they banned Trump that they cited "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." as a notable incitement of violence.
We could be looking at a classic case of groupthink [0]. I've read a lot of political speeches with half-truths to try and gain an advantage, but the Twitter statement stands out as something that might be their honest take. Someone, probably a couple of someones, with high intelligence and communication ability was in such a state that they interpreted the Tweet as inciting violence.
I can. The idea is that he’s signaling that an attack on the inauguration won’t injure him, and so it’s mafia talk for “attack the inauguration”.
I don’t support this as a grounds. It’s so flexible that you can see or not see it at will, so, you can give a charitable read to someone you like or a threatening read to someone you don’t. It also relies on mind reading.
Nevertheless a lot of people can read it that way.
Sources or it’s false. This claim is a pants on fire lie.
No police were killed on that day, contrary to initial reports - but one protester was.
Trump never specifically called for violence but remarked to show protest “peacefully at the capitol” on Twitter. For the lack of evidence, the Jan 6 committee has been running in circles begging for people to step forward.
I don’t have to like Trump or support him to know this claim is asinine.
There is a very lengthy blog posts about why Trump was removed on Twitter's website. I am surprised you pretend like his actions and Tweets around that time are no biggie and that you downplay the violence and actions that occurred on Jan 6 to make it seem like the protestors were the ones who were innocent and harmed, and just FYI the police officer that later died was specifically tied to the events on Jan 6 and several others were seriously injured.
In no way do I want to downplay the actions of the protesters. However, reading what Trump actually said and at the times he said it, it’s way too much a stretch for me to believe that is what he meant.
Also, I think any explainations from Twitter, considering who was running them, are one-sided and should not be taken on face value. That still is the case for who is running it now. I do not trust either for a remotely unbiased assessment.
I think there is a big difference between the sitting POTUS who was known to ask for and receive Russia's help getting elected being shown to have kompromat on him vs the unelected son of a presidential candidate's hacked iCloud nudes being posted
Especially given that in the "pee tapes" trump is clothed while the women are nude and unknown individuals
The pee tape story was completely fabricated, as was the Russian collusion narrative, and that was revealed although carefully subtexted and de-emphasized in the Mueller Report.
No one has exonerated you either. Shouldn't you get cleared of your crimes before commenting?
> the likelihood of some sort of kompromat on Trump is possible and probable.
What "kompromat" could possibly be a big enough deal to compromise Trump at this point? His enemies are trying to persuade the world that he attempted to overthrow the US government and he is still a top-10 candidate for the presidency in the next election.
It's a bit naïve to seriously think this story has anything to do with nudes. The real story was about corruption at the highest levels of government, selling influence, etc. The crack rocks and related pornographic content were a convenient if not shocking distraction. Embarassing? Yes. Scandalous? Sure. But it wasn't what made it news worthy at all.
I know the Trump White House made requests for stuff to be taken down via email, (instead of the Report Tweet button), but I didn't see that President Trump requesting a ToS review for some tweets was this kind of corruption.
Sigh, this is why discussing politics with Americans gets exhausting. It's difficult to get a serious answer out of someone, because all they really care about deep down is making their party look good and the other party look bad.
So often they'll reach for "it's different when my party does it because the other party are nazis/communists/russians/pedophiles/etc." It's just so tiresome and anyone outside the circus can see how unproductive it all is, but people in the thick of it really do see it as Marvel vs Thanos.
Not just that, but revenge porn is literally illegal in the state of California, where Twitter is HQ'd.
I'm getting increasingly annoyed by people pointing to those removed tweets as a smoking gun while being completely unaware that we know the contents of said tweet and said tweets can easily be interpreted as violating Twitter's ToS at minimum and actively violating California law at worst.
The case in point was the removal and censorship of the NY Post's story on the laptop, which was incredibly relevant to the Presidential election. It revealed Hunter as a degenerate crackhead, and an unqualified man-child who benefited directly from his father's position as Vice President to get a powerful, paid position on the Burisma Board of Directors, a favor for which he committed "10% to the big guy" (among other positions, Burisma was not the only one). It underscored the corruption of the current U.S. president, who used his power and influence over foreign relations with Ukraine to enrich his own family and himself.
The pornographic images, to what extent they were shown in the NY Post, were redacted. The main function they played is in showing that the laptop contents couldn't have been fake.
There's an important distinction here. It seems there were some tweets the Biden campaign raised with contacts at Twitter - they contained porn, and were rightly taken down.
Then there was a NY Post story blocked by Twitter - that move is much harder to defend, but crucially it seems Twitter took it upon themselves to remove that story, with no evidence presented that the Biden campaign had anything to do with it.
A lot of the debate here seems to be conflating those two things.
I question the integrity of the journalist reporting those tweets (Matt Taibbi) at that point I must admit.
So many people seem to conflate the requests for review of ToS violating messages with some kind of power the Democrats had to get Twitter to block the story.
If the Democrats had that kind of power and it was visible in the info available, no doubt this would be shown upfront. Instead we get pretty loaded (lying?) mentions of "requests from connected actors to delete tweets" when the message clearly mentions tweets to review.
In fact the answer "handled" doesn't even imply anything was deleted. Also this so called journalist didn't even try to see what had been deleted in the end to see if it wasn't just blattant ToS violations and worse, material that had really nothing much to do with the campaign in the first place. I fail to see how the right of some tweets of revenge porn to survive a few hours longer because they had to go through the regular queue of moderation was of any import.
It's easy to paint a team as having excessive influence on Twitter. Just have your own team post a lot of ToS abusing materials then later on show the stats of deleted tweets to show the "bias"
I think there’s a lot more at play than lack of good faith. It’s incredibly tantalizing and comforting to buy into a narrative that the other side is engaged in an unforgivable scandal that will eventually result in your side regaining power or moral superiority. We’re all trapped in an out of control rumor machine just in time for the arrival of AI generated misinformation.
As has been lengthily defended by Twitter, the developing situation was that the material might have been hacked, and the product of an adversarial state government. If that were true in that situation, imagine the implications for Twitter for having amplified it
That's a very convenient excuse for blocking anything you want unt it is irrelevant. I also like how, now that the provenance of the laptop is not doubted, and hacking and Russia were not involved, people say "it doesn't matter, there was nothing incriminating on the laptop anyway". What a strange OP for Russia to pull off, you'd think they sold forge something juicy if it was their plan.
The provenance of the laptop and it’s contents, are doubted. That’s the whole point of all of this.
Seriously, Rudy Giuliani spent most of 2020 in Ukraine trying to dig up dirt on Biden. He would send his findings to the DoJ, and they were so out there that Barr had to set up a to quarantine the noise he was generating.
Then all of a sudden in a classic October surprise, a blind computer repairman finds out what he is in possession of, and instead of calling the FBI he calls none other than Rudy Giuliani.
And wouldn’t you know, what he has found is exactly the kind of bullshit Giuliani had been trying to dredge up in Ukraine for a year but couldn’t get past the DoJ.
So no, the provenance of this thing is in deep question.
> So in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online?!?!
I looked at the tweets mentioned by Taibbi in the Wayback Machine, and they didn't actually appear to be unflattering speech or even speech at all but rather photos. The first tweet, for example, was some explicit photos (which I assume would violate Twitter's rules whether or not they were of Hunter Biden).
I believe all three are pornographic in nature. So while it’s still notable that the Biden team reached out manually to report them it does seem all the tweets were in violation of Twitter policy and fair game for removal.
Twitter is used by sex workers all the time for pornographic images. What specifically about them violates the rules? Is it the fact that the person did not intend on those images being released? Do they have a claim if those images were no longer their property given the terms of service of the repair shop where the laptop was abandoned?
>California legislators passed a revenge porn law making it a crime for anyone to post online photos or videos of someone's intimate body parts without consent. The revenge porn law is defined under California Penal Code 647(J)(4) and often considered a type of nonconsensual pornography.
>Is it the fact that the person did not intend on those images being released? Do they have a claim if those images were no longer their property given the terms of service of the repair shop where the laptop was abandoned?
I can understand the repair shop owning the hardware and being able to wipe the data and resell it. But do those terms also give the repair shop the right to login to bank accounts via saved passwords and transfer money? Or use the SSNs to apply for loans? Where is the line drawn?
If your company HR's data including your SSN and bank account numbers were on a laptop they abandoned at a repair shop, does the repair shop get to post them on their website?
Sex workers agree to posting these pictures (at least we hope they do).
Are you arguing that it would be ok to post intimate pictures of you or someone in your family, or anybody, basically, without them explicitly agreeing to?
Are you seriously saying that a repair shop could take your personal data and publish it online as they wished because they just got access to your laptop (however they got it)?
In what world does a laptop repair shop has terms of services that would explicitly allow that?
Twitter's policy against "revenge porn" was likely the controlling factor. Also, in general, posting private photos of someone, without their consent, is disallowed on most/all platforms.
They = Twitter in this instance, not the Biden team. Taibbi jumps from one event to the other as if to draw a line between them but there is an important distinction. None of the evidence presented shows the Biden team asking Twitter to take down the NY Post story, just the pornographic images posted.
Twitter censored everything to do with the Hunter Biden laptop story, they also took the extreme position of locking the NY Post account down over the article.
Matt Taibbi is showing requests to remove tweets related to the Biden laptop story from the Biden team and from the DNC, and showing Twitter rubber stamping those requests. No pushback. No review. Just "handled". It wasn't just pornographic images. It was buried as much as possible and flagged as disinformation across the platform.
> Matt Taibbi is showing requests to remove tweets related to the Biden laptop story from the Biden team and from the DNC, and showing Twitter rubber stamping those requests. No pushback. No review. Just "handled". It wasn't just pornographic images.
But that's exactly it: by the evidence presented it was just the pornographic images. Taibbi lumps the NY Post issue together with the tweets to insinuate a connection but there's no presented evidence to prove that the Biden team requested the article removal. You’re following Taibbi’s narrative, not the evidence.
> some have alleged it contains child pornography as well (with Hunter in the scene)
This is a tremendously incendiary and defamatory claim to make on the basis of "some have alleged". Unless you're willing to name your sources you should not post claims like this.
> It was actually consensual legally, given the paper her signed deferring ownership of all contents upon forfeiture to the computer repair company.
C'mon. Don't pretend like that's legally ironclad in the face of California's revenge porn law, it very obviously isn't and you're doing your case a total disservice here.
Californias censorship law itself is unconstitutional, but that doesn’t mean Twitter had to take it down globally. They could have only taken it down in CA.
But we all know that’s not why they did what they did, they conspired against the people of the United States.
They did this under the order and direction of United States Government employees
Zuckerberg didn't actually say that FBI ordered him to do anything. Facebook silenced the story on their own. He mentioned FBI to confuse people and make himself look good. I guess he succeeded.
>We have members of the Biden campaign linking tweets and high level Twitter officers replying “handled” (read in your favorite Italian accent).
Twitter censoring the Hunter Biden story (the NYPost article) was unacceptable. But I really don't see anything wrong with reporting tweets containing revenge pornography, which 1) violates Twitter ToS 2) is illegal in California.
I see. So how a media company handles bias has no relevance to how a social media company can handle bias. They’re completely different and social media company executives get jail time.
You’re the one howling for jail time for Twitter executives. I’m applying your logic to comparable situations to demonstrate its absurdity and help you stop hyperventilating.
Whataboutism is used to excuse bad behavior. Are you implying that Fox News bias is also illegal? Because I’m not. Media companies can be biased. They can favor candidates. Twitter isn’t on an ivory pedestal. Screaming jail time shows your ignorance to our legal system.
My understanding was that those were examples and that he was implying that there were vastly more that had been requested and removed by both parties before those tweets. Did I misinterpret his tweet?
If these removals were fine but Taibbi has other examples that are actually bad… why didn’t he just post those instead? It’s a huge stretch to say that removing revenge porn is somehow evidence of corruption. If Taibbi had real dirt he should’ve just led with it.
I'm scratching my head here. It's quite a leap to go from:
> political parties... have a direct line to Twitter to get stuff they dislike removed
...to:
> in America you cannot say negative things about political leaders online
Twitter is not the internet. It's a tiny part of the internet. You can say whatever you want on many, many platforms. In fact, people can't stop talking about some of this stuff on HN and Reddit.
I'm on the same page. Frankly I was actually wiling to buy the argument that Twitter suppressed the story on direct orders from Biden himself, or whatever, and that such a level of coordination continued once he took office. It's... not unreasonable. Certainly Musk sold that as what the story was about.
But it's not there! All Taibbi has is some bland emails pointing out that the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets. That's it! Were they bad tweets? Was there salacious content censored? Did Twitter even remove them? We don't know! But Taibbi and Musk clearly want us to think this is bad, and most of the posters here seem to be on board.
Someone point me to the smoking gun here? Where's the actual censorship? Who said what that Biden managed to suppress? Where was the unfair moderation by Twitter?
I'm... a little stunned actually. This isn't just a non-story, it's almost a smear job.
It’s the very type of behavior they claim the MSM engages in. And it’s not even well done.
Snippets of email conversations with the context removed. Why not share the whole email? If it’s this weak with this much context removal, the context must be pretty detrimental to the smear job.
The smoking gun is "the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets."
I don't think that is something the government, outside of maybe a court order through the judicial branch should be doing.
Ever.
It doesn't matter what is in the tweets it whether or not they were taken down.
> The smoking gun is "the Biden administration requested Twitter look at a handful of tweets."
What Biden administration? What government? This was in the summer of 2020.
I repeat: if that happened, it would be bad. The government, indeed, shouldn't be doing that. But Taibbi doesn't have the story! The evidence doesn't exist. He pushed this thing out, with Musk's backing, implying strongly (strongly enough to fool you) that he had evidence for this. But he doesn't.
You get that, right? It really feels like we're being played. They have Twitter emails from two years back but nothing incriminating from a month ago? That argues strongly that they don't have it.
How is it not OK, exactly? I mean, Twitter has a "report" button. I can report a tweet right now. Is that not OK? Clearly it's OK. I can likewise send an email to report tweets. Twitter doesn't have to read it, but I can send it. That's OK too. What exactly not OK about someone else doing the same thing that's OK for me?
I suspect your answer is going to rely, as I point out, on facts not in evidence. You are just assuming that (1) Twitter did as the Biden campaign demanded for political reasons and (2) the tweets were valid and should have been left up. And if those facts are true, you're right! That's not OK.
So now let's go back to the Taibbi article and see if you're right. And... you're not. He doesn't have that evidence. He just wants you to believe it, so he (and Musk) are pretending that the article says things it doesn't.
You read HN; you're not a normal person. 95% of everyone you know didn't hear about the Hunter Biden thing at the time, and most of them probably still don't know about it.
Exactly: the vast majority of people don't use Twitter and aren't part of anyone's "follower count".
Most people outside of your (and my) bubble don't read the news, don't pay much attention to politics, aren't particularly well educated, don't think very hard about who they're going to vote for (if they even vote), and if they use Twitter at all it's to post cat videos and keep up with the Kardashians.
You might not cross paths with this kind of person much in your daily life, but I promise you they're everywhere - and most of them would struggle to tell you what Joe Biden's son's name is, let alone what controversies he's been involved in.
i think the government has direct lines to many industry leaders. im pretty sure it's commonplace for officials to regularly communicate with e.g., oil executives or religious leaders.
we've known about the business world having direct lines to governmental agencies for decades.
many have been screaming at the tops of their lungs for decades to remove these communication lines between religious leaders/industries and the government.
to add some very relevant context to this, we just saw texts between elon and kanye yesterday. kanye is running for president in 2024. all week long has been doing interviews attacking jewish people, praising hitler, and posting swastikas. again, elon has been texting directly with him as recently as yesterday.
this communication between political figures and industry seems to be entirely commonplace. is it right? i don't personally think so. i think its problematic as hell. but the problem is significantly larger than twitter. significantly larger. religions, extractive industries, transportation companies, etc.. etc... etc...
while some may personally have a problem with it, i'll believe elon thinks its a problem when he ceases communication with all political figures, including for business related reasons.
Have some perspective man or woman, you're acting like we're supposed to treat you like some babe in the woods and pretend this is genuinely shocking to you? Please. Yes, powerful governments influence actors within their nations. We get it. Let's all feign surprise for a few hours online.
But that's not what bothers me. The most frustrating thing is that your perspective fails to acknowledge how this is so painfully, hilariously, boringly mild compared to the corruption and abuses of power that are the baseline norm. It's like when people treat "gig workers" like they're the new 10-year-olds in a coal mine. Yes, all abuses of power are bad, we agree. But do you really expect us to pretend this is anything other than an extremely mild, boring footnote in the grand legacy of abused power?
That's comparing two different issues. I'm talking about long-term trends regarding the same issue, and how people fail to acknowledge the trendline and instead cherry pick recent examples, usually relating to political opponents, and then present the example without relevant historical or transnational context.
Pragmatism in a political thread in hackernews? Did you get lost somewhere? I agree wholeheartedly with this view. People in these threads pretend to hype the outrage, I guess because it makes for more juicy comments, it feels like some kind of role-playing of finding bigger issues than they actually are.
These same people that are "censoring speech" be removing some pictures from Twitter, create wars - ukraine the latest - risk nuclear war, print money at will disrupting huge numbers of people and plant narratives about "the economy needs to cool down", and this is somehow the biggest issue of the day. You can call it whataboutism, but if you're worrying about drops of water on the floor while there's a raging fire in the living room, and someone mentions the raging fire, is it really whataboutism?
How is having a direct line to Twitter the most disconcerting thing for you? Of course they have a direct line. I expect that all major political parties, the white house, various legislative committees, etc... would all have a direct line to communicate with Twitter. It's explicitly said that both major parties had these lines of communication, so it's hard to see a problem with the existence of back-channel methods of contact.
The only things that I'd be concerned about are (a) why is it informal? and (b) what did Twitter do about the requests?
Re (a): This should not be an informal process based upon personal contacts. This should have been a well documented procedure, if for not other reason than to remove the appearance of bias. Sure, Twitter could have assigned a "case-manager" type of contact for each group. But the process for requesting such access should have been formalized (and reviewable).
Re (b): Having a direct line to flag to request review/removal of posts is fine. You can request all you want. It's only an issue if Twitter felt like they couldn't reject the request. Again, because it was an informal process, it's not possible to have any sort of comprehensive statistics on who requested what, how often, and how many requests were approved. And again, the biggest benefit would have been to avoid the appearance of any bias.
Trying to say censorship is fine as long as the current party in power also gets it like the last guy isn’t a persuasive argument.
You can’t abuse power you don’t have. We stopped letting monarchs control things via backroom dealings with their elite friends back in the 1700s for a good reason.
Creating a system with zero transparency that’s at the whims of whoever currently has power and influence is not a healthy way to build a system of governance.
Having a limited set of publicly defined powers + transparency is the only way to prevent abuse and biases. Neither an anarchist free-for-all nor a system directly controlled by elites and influence groups. Bias and power will always exist, all you can do is create systems that reduce those inherent risks in the most optimal way possible.
Backchannels can be used for good. Both parties had back channels (simultaneously), so it's not like the availability for a back channel was restricted to the party in power. And so long as we are talking "requests" and not "demands", there is no issue. The lack of transparency is an issue though, which was kinda my point... informal systems don't have transparency.
But backchannels can certainly be helpful. Twitter is the backchannel for customer service for many companies. But let's take HN as another case.
How many times has HN been used as an informal mechanism to get Google to fix something? There are few formal methods to contact Google customer support, so having an informal method (HN) has been quite helpful.
Is this an optimal method? Certainly not, but the existence of an informal communication method to request a review of a tweet is not an issue.
Sure…backchannels can be good? But channels to do what?
Google fixing broken things in the products? Sure I guess that’s good absent alternatives.
A whale type customer getting a backchanel to the CEO is also good for business.
Twitter using backchannels to censor what the influential parties want? I don’t see who that is valuable to. It doesn’t help Twitters business and I doubt it’s how the public expects their speech to be censored. So only really their friends at Twitter benefit? Or anoint themselves gatekeeper and public benefactor.
Idk why you keep bringing up “both sides do it” as some excuse. Of course both sides have power/influence over big tech employees. Even unelected ones. It is entirely natural for established institutions and powerful individuals to have influence.
That’s why you should build in protections and processes to prevent that from happening. And if you do end up doing it then be transparent… have a public list of times you censored tweets at the request of public servants and powerful individuals.
It’s for the public’s good right? It’s not just about their own personal gain…right?
It is well-known that Hannity among many others are in direct communication with republicans and directly coordinate their messages. Nobody bats an eye because nobody is surprised that Fox/Murdoch are conservative media despite an explicit mission to be "fair and balanced" news. Yet somehow reading emails from Democrats makes Twitter a complete traitor to their mission.
Many people (at least on Twitter currently) are conflating a "request" with a "demand". Just because some tweets were flagged doesn't mean they were removed. If they were removed, they might have been against the Twitter ToS and this back channel operated as a batch "report tweet" button.
I "request" Twitter to remove Tweets all the time. Normally it's a spam message... sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't.
My point is that as an informal mechanism, there is no way to know what was happening. We have no idea how many requests were made, and of those, how many were approved/denied/etc...
That is an issue, but the request itself isn't...
(Now, if any of these parties had unrestricted, automatic "veto" power over tweets they didn't like, then that would be a major issue. But thus far, I haven't seen that... but I'm still reading)
I had a really interesting and probably too speculative article about Terry Davis over 10 years ago and it got pulled from Reddit and HN after hitting the front page of both within a minute or so of each other. They had been on both front pages for a few hours and then bam, wiped from both.
Nobody reached out to me but I think even a statistician skeptic would have to entertain the idea that there's some "red phone" style back channel between them mods that occasionally is triggered.
I pulled the article and replaced it with a description of what happened because out of sincerity I felt compelled to follow in whatever footsteps those were. I never got an explanation about it.
Kind of a pity. I had been working on a book on tech and mental health but I abandoned it. Seems like it's an obvious topic these days
Politicians should be excluded from what you're talking about IMO.
They're elected to serve the people and stand for our American beliefs including the freedom of speech. A political party (the DNC in this case) getting tweets removed probably isn't a 1st amendment violation. But it's really shady and anyone from government (the white house in this case) getting tweets removed is likely violating the first amendment (or coming REALLY close to it).
I’m pretty sure first amendment does not apply to corporations and their services. The test I normally ask ppl to perform is this. If you think there is some sort of fallacy in it happy to discuss it
Can I kick you out of my hours if I disagree with your view?
Can I kick you out of my bar if I disagree with your views?
Can I kick you out of my platform if I disagree with you?
One thing that is easily forgotten in context of at least this Hunter Biden story is that in 2020, a large cohort of Americans including presumably most Twitter employees not only really didn't want Trump to get re-elected, but were very fearful of what might happen if he did. Not saying that justifies anything, but whether we like it or not humans are very prone to impulsive decision making based on emotions.
I think a distinction should be made between abusing position & relationships to spin a narrative vs abusing position and relationships to silence individuals.
Both are slimy and abusive but the latter is a violation of constitutional rights.
This reminds me of past "you have to know an employee to get you ban fixed" discussions about not-Twitter here.
I'm now wondering about a general - as in not specific to any one company - "favors for friends" culture at the brand-name tech places, over what I guess would be called a "rule of law" culture.
Apparently Meta has an explicit policy that you cannot help anyone you personally know, although you can bump their appeal to the top of the queue or something.
> Most concerning thing here is that this proves political parties (including the white house[0]) have a direct line to Twitter[1] to get stuff they dislike removed. One would have to assume that there was also a direct line to other social medial platforms
This is the historical norm not anything new. This is very true about Fox News, CNN, and especially all the other "old media" major (alphabet soup) networks
Speaking internationally, there's no stronger propaganda force than the US. Americans very often fail to acknowledge this when criticizing "foreign election meddlers" (which the US has BY FAR the longest and most egregious record of doing)
i also have a direct line to twitter to get posts removed. it's called the report button. i wouldn't be surprised if many individual twitter superusers have removed more content than the white house
"One would have to assume that there was also a direct line to other social medial platforms. "
I would say its not a huge leap to think that.
I would even say its more than just other social media platforms. I would say it goes into main stream media on BOTH sides, Hollywood, sports, etc including global corporations.
To note, is that during the period the White House resided a president other than the one the thread implies to implicate. So the accusations of government interference is purposefully deceptive.
Some of this material was posted during October of 2020, when Trump was President, so it wasn't the "White House" asking that this material be taken down.
Exactly. And not just in the US, we have had significant indications that the government in Sweden "collaborated" with social media prior to the election.
They lost anyway, but we have no idea what kind of effect they had and what stories were suppressed.
In Poland they raided someone house for exposing prime minister. You can see how Aaron, Snowden or Assange ended. Society needs a way to fight back especialylly now as AI could help with controling/manipulating population
This impacts the perennial argument that these companies are private organizations and the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to them. As it turns out, their censorship regimes are government sponsored censorship.
i thought the lack of support channels was that they try to work like google. Instead it's just a way of handling the scarcity of a resource - a scarce resource is a means of selling it high!
Algorithms, Shmalgorithms - in the end it's just some guy in the backroom who is takimg phone calls from the political commissars, just like in the old Soviet Union and nowadays China...
The previous White House admin saw their press secretary’s account suspended because the campaign didn’t like the fact that she tweeted about this story.
The current White House likely wouldn’t see that same fate.
That’s still fundamentally not the issue here. It shouldn’t matter that there was a certain bias at Twitter at a particular time. What matters was there was a) a serious lack of transparency into decision making and b) a very broad policy/culture of censorship, where ill-defined and ever expanding “misinformation” and “threats to democracy” was enough to silence not only public messages but private DMs between individuals.
People say it’s a hard problem to define the limits of content moderation, but when you have politicians and influence groups sending lists of tweets to silence and the only response is “thanks we handled it” then obviously the limits have gone out the window.
We don’t have to have a free-for-all to massively reduce the risks in the current system.
Limitations and transparency are what defines a good system of governance. Bias in administrations will always exist, but honesty and shining sunlight on it is the only thing that will stop it from turning into a cancer.
This is a very important point. While the US is ready to preach its values and tries to implement its values across the world, at home these parties colludes with companies to suppress what it does not like. However, in other countries, US tells them to NOT suppress.
I'm going to need a bigger smoking gun than nicely asking for revenge porn to be removed before putting the USA on the level of Russia or China. If this is the worst they've got then things are a lot less corrupt in the USA than I was expecting.
Plus the US airs its dirty laundry in ways Russia, China, or the Middle East could never allow. Their power structures are too weak for actual freedom.
Since this is true, then where else are political parties trying to get unflattering speech suppressed that we don't even know of yet?
[0] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598828932395978752
[1] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064