Now if Twitter wants to not allow tweeting of October surprises, I suppose that's their business. But if so, block it for both sides.
I also think it's totally counterproductive for them to (try to) do so. Block links to the NY Post article? Great, but then what? Block links to the BBC article? To the HN discussion? To every random blogger who writes up a post about it, with links to the BBC article, the NY Post article, and the HN discussion? Twitter might be able to stay on top of that, but it's going to be hard, it's going to leak, and it's going to look really bad. It's going to give the story far more legs than it otherwise would have had (Streisand effect). It's going to spawn a whole bunch of new conspiracy theories, with Twitter as part of the bad guys. The net effect of all this is not going to be what Twitter wants...
>During the subsequent summer and fall, Mac Isaac said he became alarmed after browsing through the computer's files. He claims he then spoke with an associate more versed than him in the law and in current events.
>That unnamed person then contacted the FBI, Mac Isaac said.
>Federal investigators from Wilmington and Baltimore then subpoenaed the laptop in December, Mac Isaac said.
>Shortly after, they called Mac Isaac asking him to assist them, technically, in viewing the files on the damaged hard drive, he said.
>Mac Isaac admitted that the request raised his own suspicion, given that the FBI has its own technical staff.
2. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing a reputable shop would be doing with someone's property (poking around inside, sending it to Giuliani). Could it have violated the law?
3. The stories tell what we already knew: Hunter tried to cash in on his dad, while living the loser life of an addict. Won't change my vote.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/feds-exam...
>Federal investigators are examining whether the emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The story is light on details.
To me from pizzaGate to RussiaGate to the impeachment to this Hunter Biden thing is all junk ... arbitrary distractions to the issues that are important ... the economy, healthcare, equality, etc.
Each side will do whatever it takes/strategy to try and win and too many sheep follow along/get soaked up in the soap opera drama.
For me it's all transparent and tiresome!
Just watch closely for a while and you'll see it happening everywhere. There are lies and misinformation and hate and fear directed _everywhere_ no matter what "side" you're on and the volume of it is massive. Then the media and influencers and regular people amplify it and spread it and debate it until they all hate each other and don't trust anyone.
It's working too. America is imploding. The UK got duped into Brexit. Several countries have a growing following of citizens that think immigrants and minorities are the cause of their misfortune even though those tend to be vulnerable groups that are exploited the most. Cancel culture is dialed up to 11. It's crazy and scary.
If you don't want to be banned, read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html over, and you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
This seems like a really bad standard to apply to the president. I'd argue that morally there are two relevant factors when it comes to finding someone guilty: the damage that would be done to others by failing to punish the perpetrator, and the damage that would be done to the alleged perpetrator by punishing them. We choose different standards depending on those two factors. For example, in civil cases, someone specific has lost something and someone else has gained at their expense. And you're not seeking to imprison someone, but to take away some of their wealth. So we pick a standard of evidence (preponderance of the evidence) that's lower than in criminal cases (with a very high injury to the perpetrator and typically lower injury to the community).
In contrast, an impeachment is not a prison sentence. It would injure a president only insofar as that president would no longer keep the most prestigious title and position of power in American society. And failing to impeach for serious corruption or crimes (say, if a president were conspiring with China to weaken America's standing overseas) could be catastrophic. So I think a much weaker presumption of innocence is in order.
Flynn was then charged for lying when he plead guilty, because ht wasn't actually guilty. Seriously. This is a Kafka trap.
On top of that, it's now clear Sullivan was getting e-mail, exparte, and ENTERING THEM into evidence!!!
You really missed all of 2017-2018. My wife is a never-Trumper and this issue got her to tune into Rachel Maddow and all the podcasts and the idea that the collusion was two-sided and went to the highest levels in the Trump campaign was pervasive.
See: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russ...
"A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots." — Mark Twain
Hunter's lawyer has allegedly emailed the store asking for the laptop back
If those two things can be corroborated and they aren't forgeries, it should dispel all speculation about who dropped it off and who it belonged to.
Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign.
Also, your criteria for this story to reek shows your bias. It's not like Joe Biden himself bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired with the threat of holding back a billion dollars. It's on video, just Google it. And Hunter Biden is an admitted drug addict. So nothing that has been exposed from that laptop reeks too much.
You want to say Hunter was set up? Okay, I'll go down that rabbit hole, but to say this is all false? Well, again, your bias is showing.
Of course not. It's selective interference. They're just getting more brazen about it as we get closer to election day.
Also telling is that they have a pinned story at the top of the empty search page with the link titled, "Joe Biden did not push out a Ukrainian prosecutor for investigating his son, The Washington Post reports"
EDIT: Here's a link showing the WaPo headline that Twitter is adding: https://twitter.com/RepLeeZeldin/status/1316523575373893632
Frankly, they should do this much more when officials lie (which the current administration has demonstrably done ad infinitum for four years). There's no reason at all for them to help officials lie about important matters.
As a private platform, it's certainly a matter of whether or not they are helping you do something rather than whether or not they are preventing you from doing something. If we want a reliable avenue for public communication, Silicon Valley ain't gonna give it to us, and they shouldn't.
It would be another thing to prevent people from stating that someone else had said something (given that the statement did actually happen). Sometimes, Twitter does block all posts that even mention a topic. This is definitely a bad approach, and I think they do tend to rectify it when this happens, but they still screw it up pretty often.
Setting aside the speculation at the end, this summarizes the issues with the story: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/14/suspect-provenance-of-hunt...
Things are changing, I don't think we can point to prior behavior of these companies as the line they're going to hold in the future.
Anyway, would not invalidate the story, just because of the way it was leaked.
2) Conspiracy theory
3) Lie by omission (it was sent to the FBI in December, he sent a copy to Giuliani)
Your debunking is objectively poor
It's hard to learn when you've already made up your mind.
edited It seems this particular mac doesn't have the T2 chip. It would still have disk encryption on by default.
The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition that prevented him from actually seeing who dropped off the laptop but that he believed it to be Hunter Biden’s because of a sticker related to the Beau Biden Foundation that was on it." [1].
Then, it gets passed off to Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani back at the start of the year when Guiliani is already trying to get Ukraine to stir up a story on Hunter Biden. They then sit on it for most of the year and release it 20 days before the election.
Something like this, even as absurd as it is, will take weeks to thoroughly debunk. Meanwhile, people are literally in lines voting and stuff like this has an effect. That's probably why it was released right now, because even though it's most likely false, by the time it has flown around the internet unimpeded the damage will have already been done.
[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...