1. it's conspiracy theory
2. it was obvious to everyone
3. forgotten
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.
I just read this: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-pfizer-vaccine-tra...
> The same presentation slide describes “Other benefits likely uncertain at approval and only clearer after the vaccine is used” to include the vaccine’s “long term protection,” “prevention of infection (asymptomatic cases),” and “prevention of virus transmission in the community - needs specific studies post-approval necessary to show.”
This implies they only checked it reduces symptoms in affected. Transmission prevention and long term immunity would be tested at later point.
So what was then the point of getting everyone vaccinated? Weren't vaccines supposed to contain its spread?
When I got vaccinated for various diseases, it gave long term immunity, not 4 doses over months to lessen the symptoms.
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.
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.
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.
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
People double check yours. There's a few common vaccines that people assume are "life long" but actually have a recommendation for a 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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."
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.
You seem pro echo chamber and I still cannot for the life of me understand why you want to control speech so much. It’s almost like you’re scared a second voice in the room because it’s harder dispense misinformation that leads to support.
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.
Effortless.
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.
Ahh yes, whatabousism. You realize of course that the fact that you can easily repeat this list just underscores that there was literally no media censorship of these stories, even GOP friendly media covered them. Even if there was an attempt by the Trump campaign and presidency to request and suppress these stories the media and social media companies specifically didn’t, wouldn’t, and shouldnt censor them. That alone makes this an apples to oranges example.
I stopped reading here. This is a blatant lie. DT didn’t create the “atmosphere of misinformation”. This is blatant, biased, emotional response. You are the problem with this country.
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.
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.
You'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.)
Names are explicitly listed as exceptions to the ban in sharing personal information.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Yes…just like the comic Elon tweeted describing his views.
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).
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.
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.
I can simply go look what that account posts and I did exactly that and it is in fact re-posts of stupid tiktoks form deranged people. No one questions that they have a bias or push a narrative by selecting what they re-post. That is literally what every person on the internet does. Yet they are not in any way responsible legally or ethically for any threats someone else sends out "because" of them. Just like if someone would send a threats to libsoftiktok because of what you wrote here. Clearly you would not be responsible for that.
>Pretending libsoftiktok is not an anti-lgbtq hate account is weird. Supporting hatred is weird.
I never said any of that. You seem so emotional bout it you make up stuff.
I could not care less what they are anti about. My whole point was that they are not responsible for the action of others. There is no incitement for such actions. I dont support hatred I support logic. Blaming someone for the action of others is illogical and probably a result of your emotional involvement rather than rational thought. You can only blame that account for what that account actually did. I highly doubt it is sending out threats because then it would have been deleted.
> Clearly you would not be responsible for that.
Because I am not an influential propaganda mouth piece. Also I did not direct any one toward any one else nor am I saying some wild accusation like saying any one is a groomer. I also am in no way directing any one to have libsoftiktok or any one else “cancelled”.
> You seem so emotional bout it you make up stuff.
Yes, this is such a good faith reading of my comments…
>Also I did not direct any one toward any one else nor am I saying some wild accusation like saying any one is a groomer. I also am in no way directing any one to have libsoftiktok or any one else “cancelled”.
Sure you didn't but neither did libsoftiktok. You write this as if this separates you from what that account did and thus indirectly accuse them of doing these things. But where is the proof? Why cant you just link to the "offense". Why is here not a single tweet that encourages people do do any kind of harmful action to anyone?
>Yes, this is such a good faith reading of my comments…
You aren't replying in good faith if you make stuff up. I'm calling you out and obviously this is not a good faith argument and its not meant to be one. Its meant to give you an opportunity to self-reflect instead of doubling down on accusation that you can not provide any evidence for.
It seems reasonable to assume the accusation originated in emotional coping because that is how it reads like. If you have a different reason why you made these accusations then feel free to tell me but I'd much rather had evidence for the claims than debate about why you lie to me, fully aware that I can and did look into what the account posts and its none of the things you accuse them of. You just dislike them which is fine. I dislike what FlatEarthZone posts on twitter. But I'm not gonna accuse them of hurting people trough the extended hypothetical harmful action of their followers, that would be silly.
Libsoftiktok was put on hidden black list[1] by twitter because they where unable to ban the account as it did not break the twitter rules. (The rules obviously include the stuff you accuse them of.)
They repeatedly temporary suspended the account[2] and accused them of "hateful conduct"[3] similar to your accusation. Then later the highest "authority" on twitter internal confirmed "[they have] not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy."[4]
The suspensions where then justified by a variation of your bogus accusations for "encouraging harassment"[5] while if that would have been the case they would have simply terminated the account.
And while not relevant to the content the account posted its still quite interesting that when Libsoftiktok got doxed, which is actually against twitter rules, they did nothing.[6]
[1] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601018810495995904#m [2] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601019593606107136#m [3] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601019900071288833#m [4] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601020845224128512#m [5] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601021201815457793#m [6] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601022887556571136#m
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 was 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.
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 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 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.