News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by Tycho on Saturday October 31, 2020 @08:33AM (#24950889)
If it wasn’t for Twitter I would have literally no clue about the machinations of the intelligence agencies to undermine the president or the corrupt activities of the Biden family. Unfortunately the mainstream media outlets choose not to report or pursue a lot of stuff, and have an alarming habit of citing dubious statements from “the intelligence community” as legitimate evidence that resolves the matter.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by bsenftner on Saturday October 31, 2020 @08:36AM (#24950907)
Wish this was a joke. Twitter is just an idiotic mess.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by swiley on Saturday October 31, 2020 @08:36AM (#24950905)
twitter is a terrible tool for this. It's heavily censored and biased. You could have heard it here or from a decent journalist.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by Tycho on Saturday October 31, 2020 @08:53AM (#24951029)
Twitter can only make meagre attempts to censor. They can stop something from “trending” or whatever. But if you want to hear from independent journalists and researchers and analysts, Twitter lets you do that, and short of shutting down the entire service, it’s unstoppable.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by knaq on Saturday October 31, 2020 @09:03AM (#24951095)
Twitter blocked the nation's oldest and 4th-largest newspaper, the New York Post, for 16 days. This was election interference. Twitter's CEO was called to testify about it in front of congress, where he falsely claimed that the New York Post wasn't blocked. Ted Cruz called him out on the matter, pointing out that lying in sworn testimony to congress is a felony, and the New York Post got unblocked an hour later.

The numerous little independent journalists rarely get that level of help from a senator. They have no chance against the censorship.

Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by Tycho on Saturday October 31, 2020 @09:23AM (#24951254)
It may have been a ridiculous decision, but as a means of stopping the information from propagating, it was wholly ineffectual. There’s always enough people that want to get to the truth of the matter, rather than the version of events that has been shaped for The Narrative. Twitter lets those people easily connect with each other, so it is by far the most powerful tool for “freedom of the press” that we have.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by treeman79 on Saturday October 31, 2020 @10:06AM (#24951586)
This time.

How about next time?

Fact checking became a thing less for facts and more as an attack tool.

I’ve been part of as agencies. They go out of their way to make sure their is only one viewpoint on anything that gets ad dollars.

Makes it difficult for other side to run a media company if they can’t get advertising dollars.

Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by vehemenz on Saturday October 31, 2020 @09:24AM (#24951276)
If you're going to be upset about blocking a company blocking a low-quality, propaganda-laden newspaper, muster some outrage about the actual government suppressing the vote and gerrymandering.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by TheAdamAndChe on Saturday October 31, 2020 @08:48AM (#24951001)
This site is censored too, and the news media is becoming increasingly partisan an consolidated as well.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by ForHackernews on Saturday October 31, 2020 @08:36AM (#24950906)
Uh... is this a clever meta-comment about the kind of nonsense on social media? Poe's law seems to apply extra hard these days.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by Tycho on Saturday October 31, 2020 @08:57AM (#24951061)
I’m not joking. Is it your opinion that there were no attempts, from within the agencies, to undermine the president (or his campaign) and that there is nothing corrupt about what the Biden family has been up to?
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by ForHackernews on Saturday October 31, 2020 @09:06AM (#24951112)
I'm not going to get sucked down this rabbit hole because there are a zillion other sites where you can have this specific argument, but I will say that if you're voting for Trump because you're anti-corruption then you and I have world views too far diverged for any meaningful communication to take place.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by Tycho on Saturday October 31, 2020 @09:25AM (#24951282)
I don’t want to get into an argument with you, I was just curious if that was your actual opinion. Similar to how you asked if I was joking and I answered you.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by ForHackernews on Saturday October 31, 2020 @09:40AM (#24951394)
Yes, my actual opinion is that Joe Biden is a vastly less corrupt candidate than Trump.

Presumably Hunter Biden traded on his famous name to get job opportunities (in a smaller way than the Trump kids), but I've seen no credible evidence (and please don't reply with a gish-gallop of shady twitter and youtube links) that Joe Biden compromised his office to assist his son.

Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by Tycho on Saturday October 31, 2020 @10:13AM (#24951627)
If it wasn’t for Twitter, I too might think that Hunter Biden was just getting a cushy job similar to, say, Bush’s daughter getting a job at the Smithsonian Design Museum. It might not occur to me that of all the jobs he could have landed, these just happened to be big money deals in China and Ukraine, where Joe Biden was active in foreign policy - negotiating trade deals and firing financial fraud prosecutors - that seemed to involve a lot of free money for the Biden family. It might not strike me as corrupt, and I might not notice that the press are clinically uninterested in finding out more, or even asking the Bidens to clear things up.
Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by read_if_gay_ on Saturday October 31, 2020 @09:35AM (#24951348)
> if you're voting for Trump because you're anti-corruption then you and I have world views too far diverged for any meaningful communication to take place.

How ironic. Have you read the linked article? Way to prove its point.

Re:New political polarization casts rivals as alien, unlikab... by iso947 on Saturday October 31, 2020 @08:39AM (#24950933)
I watched a documentary about how covid was caused by a khazakstani journalist finding out about the clintons eating bill gates’ child’s adrenal gland. that was more credible than whatever conspiracy you’re reading about.