from the about-that dept

I’ve a confession. Whereas yesterday the Home Oversight Committee took up six hours (sorta, as there was an enormous energy outage within the center) losing everybody’s time with a listening to on “Twitter’s Position in Suppressing the Biden Laptop computer Story,” I selected to not watch it in real-time. As a substitute, afterwards I went again and watched the video at 3x pace (and passed over the enormous energy outage half), that means I used to be in a position to watch the entire thing in lower than two hours. Should you, too, want to topic your self to this abject nonsense, I extremely suggest doing one thing related. Although, a greater choice can be simply to not waste your time.

Sadly, the panelists — 4 former Twitter workers — had neither choice at hand and needed to sit by means of all the craziness. By this level, I’m type of used to utterly ridiculous hearings in Congress attempting to “grill” tech execs over issues. They’ve a well-recognized sample. The elected officers have interaction in pure grandstanding, sarcastically intentionally designed to attempt to make clips of them go viral on the very social media they’re criticizing. However this one was even worse. Truthfully, the 4 witnesses — former deputy normal counsel James Baker, former authorized chief Vijaya Gadde, former head of belief & security Yoel Roth, and a former member of the protection coverage crew, Anika Collier Navaroli — barely had time to say something. Virtually all the politicians used up most of their very own 5 minutes on their very own grandstanding.

To the extent that they requested any questions (and this was, tragically, principally true on either side of the aisle, with only some restricted exceptions), they requested deceptive, confused questions, and when any of the witnesses tried to make clear, or to precise something even remotely approaching nuance, the elected officers would steamroll over them and transfer on.

Nothing within the listening to was about discovering out something.

Nothing within the listening to was about exploring the precise points and tradeoffs round content material moderation.

Lots of the Republicans needed to simply complain that their very own tweets weren’t given sufficient prominence on Twitter. It was embarrassing. On the Democratic facet, most of the Representatives (rightly) known as out that the entire listening to was silly nonsense, however that didn’t cease a number of of them from pushing their very own questionable theories, together with the suggestion from Rep. Raskin (whose feedback have been principally good, together with calling out how clearly ridiculous the identical panel can be in the event that they known as Fox Information to elucidate its editorial selections) that Twitter’s failure to cease January sixth from taking place was unlawful or Rep. Bush’s suggestion that social media must be nationalized. On the GOP facet, you had Rep. Boebert counsel that the panelists had damaged the legislation in exercising their 1st Modification rights, and a number of different Reps. insist time and again — even because the panelists highlighted the rivalry was blatantly false — that Twitter intentionally suppressed the Biden laptop computer story.

In fact, in the event you’ve learn Techdirt, you already know what the Twitter files actually showed, which was that the choice to dam the hyperlinks to that one story for at some point was a mistake, however had nothing to do with politics, or stress from Joe Biden or the FBI. However the listening to was extraordinarily brief on information from the Representatives, who simply saved repeating false declare after false declare.

However… the largest reveal was truly that the Donald Trump White Home demanded that Twitter take away a tweet from Chrissy Tiegen which Trump felt insulted by. Keep in mind, within the authentic Twitter Information, Matt Taibbi had insisted that the Trump White Home despatched takedown calls for to Twitter, however in all the Twitter recordsdata since then, nobody (not Taibbi or any of the others who received entry) have stated something about what Trump needed taken down. As a substitute, it was Navaroli who talked about how the Trump White Home had complained about this tweet, and demanded Twitter take it down.

lol what a pussy ass bitch. tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president.

That tweet was in response to Trump whining that after he signed a Legal Justice Reform invoice he didn’t get sufficient credit score. Within the brief 4 tweet rant, Trump mentions “musician @johnlegend, and his filthy mouthed spouse, are speaking now about how nice it’s – however I didn’t see them round once we wanted assist getting it handed.” Tiegen then responded as seen above.

And it truly feels like Twitter did the identical factor it does with each observe from anybody — authorities official or different — and reviewed the tweet towards its insurance policies. Apparently, there was some kind of coverage that might take down tweets if there have been three insults in a tweet, and they also needed to analyze if “pussy ass bitch” was three insults or one big insult (or two? I dunno). Both means, it was decided that it didn’t meet the three insult threshold and remained on the location.

Nonetheless, this definitely raises the query: in all the “Twitter Information,” the place is the discharge of the main points about Trump getting his panties in a bunch and demanding that Tiegen’s tweet get taken down?

Now, I’m anticipating that each one the individuals in our feedback who’ve insisted that the FBI highlighting tweets which may violate precise insurance policies is a Constitutional violation will now admit that the previous President they worship additionally violated the Structure beneath their understanding of it… or, nah?

Talking of the previous President, Navaroli additionally revealed yet one more means during which Twitter bent over backwards to guard Trump and different Republicans. She relayed the dialogue over a tweet by Trump, during which he suggested that Congressional Representatives of coloration, with whom he had coverage disagreements ought to “return and assist repair the completely damaged and crime infested locations from which they got here.”

On the time, Twitter’s insurance policies had a rule towards attacking immigrants, and even known as out the precise phrase “return to the place you got here from,” as violating that coverage. Navaroli mentioned how she flagged that tweet as violating the coverage, however was overruled by individuals increased up on the crew. And, quickly after that, the coverage was modified to take away that phrase for example of a violation.

Now, there are arguments that may very well be made for why that specific tweet, in context, may not have really violated the coverage. There are additionally fairly robust arguments for why it did. Affordable individuals can disagree, and I might think about that there was some stage of debate inside Twitter. However to make that decision after which quickly after delete the phrase from the coverage definitely suggests going the additional step to not “censor conservatives” however to present them additional leeway at the same time as they violated the location’s insurance policies repeatedly.

The entire thing was as parade of nonsense, and I even heard from a Republican Congressional staffer afterwards complaining about how the entire thing fully backfired on Republicans. They got down to “show” that Twitter conspired with the US deep state to censor the Hunter Biden laptop computer story. And, in the long run, the witnesses fairly successfully debunked every level of that, whereas as a substitute the important thing takeaway was that Trump demanded a tweet insulting himself be taken down, and Twitter explicitly modified its guidelines to guard Trump after he violated the foundations.

Only a whole shitshow throughout.

However, not less than I received to observe it at 3x pace.

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Corporations: twitter


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