This is why social media censorship is so dangerous, even despite the blatant partisanship from a DNC operative working as a senior manager at Facebook.
Stories that damage the established world order are suppressed and "fact-checked" (by biased partisan organizations, or worse, literal operatives working at these companies).
These organizations are looking a lot more like political machines as every day passes. They have their fingers on the scales in a multitude of respects. Google by boosting and deboosting certain political content, Facebook through algorithm manipulation, shadowbans and banning and Twitter through hashtag suppression, "trending" manipulation, "fact checks" and banning.
What do people expect? The centralization of power in DC made it susceptible to lobbying, with well documented deleterious effects. The centralization of information reins in the hands of a handful mega-corporations makes them targets of the same kind of corruption, if not worse since there are no FOIA requests. US needs at least 50 Googles/Facebooks if not multiple that number to even begin address the problem. Which will never happen short of some miraculous reincarnation of Teddy Roosevelt because network effects and economies of scale are impossible to fight against.
FWIW, I made a post on HN pointing out that at least some of the claimed hunter emails were cryptographically verifiable using DKIM (e.g. that at least google had attested to them being faithful) and the post was immediately flagged.
I don't have any real opinions about the hunter biden emails, rather I think that DKIM is an interesting and relevant danger to your privacy because it creates a non-repudiation vector that few expect to exist.
Unfortunately, it seems that too often political partisans are unwilling to tolerate the distribution of facts that might support their opponents narratives.
The same can be said about using SSL/HTTPS to access websites. People say it's secure because no one can intercept, but at the same time it verifies you are the one who did that at that time.
You can cryptographically prove that the server signed this payload with a valid certificate, I'm not sure if there's tools to do that but that's a possibility...
A simpler explanation is that it was just flagged by a mixture of highly partisan readers and readers who are just tired of any politics-involved drama.
Conspiracies make for great narratives, and they do sometimes happen but far more often bad calls are made for really boring reasons.
Not obvious from the title, but in this article Greenwald takes the opportunity to air some of the dirty laundry about why he left the Intercept. Worth reading.
Recall that some of the people who got copies of this laptop's drive image felt they had a legal obligation to report the contents to (iirc) Delaware State Police almost immediately thereafter.
Remember: A "footjob" is different than a pedicure.
1. Who cares where it came from? What matters is whether it is true or not.
2. This is the first time I've heard anyone suggest this and I followed this story form the start. Can you cite your sources for where this topic was consideres "the issue"? And besides, if some of it is misinformation, why is the obviously not misinformation stuff still censored? All the pro-censorship people I read wrote the whole thing off as Russian disinformation. It was clearly to influence the election because so many prioritized "Trump Losing" above the truth. Something I can't get on board with. I thought Trump was terrible, but censorship like that was obviously gross. It was some ends justify the means type stuff, and it really showed the CIA/Media links, which is what Greenwald specialises in.
The issue was always about censorship and bias in the media. That's what Greenwald talks about a lot. It's trivially verifiable to confirm Greenwald's suggestions of DNC bias in these institutions. Seems as though you have something against this concept or against Greenwald? This seems common lately, is it because he attacks DNC institutions? For me, I just value truth above politics. I value Greenwald's reporting because I trust him.
I thought it was astounding that the media wrote this off so quickly and thoroughly. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. As soon as it might be "Russian disinformation", everyone except the craziest far right people immediately stopped wondering about the meaning of "10 points for the big guy". It was right on the cusp of providing some conclusive evidence that Hunter Biden's international antics were part of a family scheme of corruption as opposed to just fishing his last name around for perks. But because the story was essentially buried, it seems we'll never know.
It wasn't "written off", it was hushed up. It wasn't "as soon as it might be Russian disinformation", it was as soon as it was obvious how damaging it could be to the political objectives of those who pretend "report the news" if people were aware of this news.
If it's not obvious on its own (de)merits, imagine if it had been information that potentially damaging to Trump. Would it have been "written off" at the first suggestion that it might be disinformation or shouted from the rooftops 24/7 every day until the election? That's the difference between reporting it or not based on "disinformation" or not vs. reporting it or not based on whether it would help or hurt the candidate you are campaigning for.
Indeed. It was pretty breathtaking to see it happen so completely and quickly (it had to, the election was fast approaching).
Normally they’d wait for the story to die on its own after a few news cycles.
And your comment about “crazy far right people” is correct and why we shouldn’t censor. The same websites that everyone rails against as “kooky and conspiratorial” (many are!) were the only ones actually reporting on this.
All of the stakeholders involved - CIA, mass media, political parties - have a vested interested in labeling websites as “disinformation” and pushing them out of the mainstream conversation.
Yes, it's now the second very visible example of the censorship model failing to correctly inform people (many examples, but 2 really recent major ones). The lab leak theory being the other egregious example.
NPR’s treatment of the Hunter Biden Laptop story that appeared in the NY Post was typical—they just hushed it up. Here is a statement regarding this decision to avoid the story from their own newsletter[1]:
“We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR Managing Editor for News Terence Samuel told me. “And quite frankly, that's where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.”
This is what makes me tear my hair out. why is it that despite serious flaws that are nearly impossible to attribute to ignorance, do people trust and treat his opinions as quality reasoning?
> 1. Was the laptop/information stolen, and then "laundered" through the repair shop.
The problem is that this standard is not consistently applied. If the US intelligence apparatus launders some information through "anonymous officials", they are taken at their word and their statement is parroted. Only when the Bad Guys reveal some bit of information do we become more concerned with where the information came from, than whether it's true.
I would argue you're missing the point since he's arguing that the media never tried to confirm the story. It took the narrative that this was "Russian disinformation" and made it seem that that's probably what it is, without actually doing the work that is expected of journalists. Obviously had this laptop belonged to Don Jr., they would have certainly done the due diligence to dig through it and confirm its contents. The issue is Joe Biden is part of the "system" and is therefore protected, unlike those that don't come from it.
> 2. Was true information mixed with false--a classic misinformation technique.
This point only applies to the the extent that the true material isn't the activities of concern.
The existence and content of the email from "v.pozharskyi.ukraine@gmail.com" to "hbiden@rosemontseneca.com" was itself directly thing people were raising a concern about, and it's something which you can check for yourself and is essentially indisputable.
> 1. Was the laptop/information stolen, and then "laundered" through the repair shop.
This seems totally irrelevant. A few months back propublic published a series of articles which exposed that they received the complete tax documentation including audits and supporting documentation for a significant fraction of the Americans (potentially all Americans, they don't specify but the description of their validation of the info doesn't make sense unless it was a very large percentage). The data was unambiguously stolen, and the distribution of tax records is a felony. No social media site censored these articles because they don't censor journalists who publish articles based on illegally obtained information. ... yet they claimed to be required to do so by their policy in the case of the Hunter Biden data.
Twitter even added a separate reporting category for "hacked material" -- yet when nutball rightwing heavy sites or org get hacked and people are posting private PII from the hacks on twitter (e.g. recent EPIK hack or GAB hack) twitter takes no action in response to these reports, even for tweets whos content directly contains doxing information that would be generally prohibited under twitter's rules, even absent the hacking.
Moreover, hunter could easily have made a public statement that the laptop had been stolen but did not do so. Even if the information being lawfully obtained was a consideration, it's kind of absurd to act as though it was unlawfully obtained absent a claim of that by the victim.
What is the author's main critique? The author is stating that the CIA, the "liberal-wing of the corporate media", and Big Tech companies conspired to suppress and censor information that was politically damaging to their preferred candidate. Even if that information was verified to be correct.
According to the article, the authenticity of the laptop's information was verifiable.
> "From the start, the evidence of authenticity was overwhelming. The Post published obviously genuine photos of Hunter that were taken from the laptop. Investigations from media outlets found people who had received the emails in real-time and they compared the emails in their possession to the ones in the Post's archive, and they matched word-for-word."
The counter point would be that the "intelligence community" declared it a Russian disinformation campaign. But, as the author notes, they did so without evidence.
> "in their words — “we do not know if the emails are genuine or not,” and also admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.”"
You don't have to take the author's word for it. You can read the statement issued by former intelligence officials which is linked in the source.
> "We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -- just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case."
The assertion or "concern" that the laptop is Russian disinformation has never had any evidence to support it. And yet that was sufficient to completely censor the story on facebook and twitter.
So with all the said, let's recap your points.
> 1. Was the laptop/information stolen, and then "laundered" through the repair shop.
There is no evidence for this.
> 2. Was true information mixed with false--a classic misinformation technique.
There is no evidence for this.
> 3. If either 1. or 2. was true, was it through the intelligence efforts of Russia or the like.
We do, but Biden liquidated everyone from the campaign finance committee in an unprecedented move, and guess which party controls the white house and congress?
But this all started over a year ago when he wasn't supposed to have been in power yet, why was nothing done in that time? Why always blame a specific party if neither one does any action to effect change?
Users flagged it. I've turned that off now. If there's significant new information here, we can roll back the clock on the submission—we'd need a more neutral title and I don't see any easy candidate. Both the main title and the subtitle are certain to produce an instant flamewar. What is the significant new information?
For me who doesn't follow it to closely the fact that significant more proofs - including from officials in Sweden - have been coming out since the case was dismissed as cased closed by fact checkers was the big one.
For someone who follows it closely this is yesteryears news.
For me this was the first time I read that. (edit: it -> that)
Edit: as for the title if we don't have to honor the original in this case, could something like "Summary of developments in the Hunter Biden case previously dismissed as false news" work?
What Big Tech really does should be a principal focus of a tech discussion forum. What they really do is to use their unprecedented power to hide and censor information and silence people in order to influence opinion on a mass scale. They admit they do it every time they explain why they do it. But they hide the specifics of what they are trying to get people to think and how they do it. They hide the internal discussions of their agenda and the methods they employ to hide and censor and silence.
What they intend to get people to think, the means they employ, and the extent to which they do it are fundamental to understanding tech in society. How ironic is it then that every time a report of details and extent of their censorship and hiding is submitted to HN, the same people doing the censoring are allowed to flag the article out of existence on HN, censoring and hiding information about their censoring and hiding of information?
And if the argument is that reports of what Big Tech is doing to bias discussion will "ignite flamewars", well they know that means they can further bias discussion by threatening to rage until potential critics submit and self-censor. Certainly trillion-dollar tech corporations working to control society don't impose upon themselves any need to provide "new information". On the contrary, they repeat claims over and over that would not stand up to evidence, confident that any reports of the evidence can be severely limited and quickly swept from view.
Big Tech has vast power to limit what people find out about in almost every venue. I would love for HN to be an exception where the details that they try to hide are always in full view.
> every time a report of details and extent of their censorship and hiding is submitted to HN, the same people doing the censoring are allowed to flag the article out of existence
You're pushing the door in the wrong direction! We're open to these topics being discussed on HN. They've been discussed a lot and they can, should, and will be discussed more, as significant new information arises. But the underlying submission needs to be substantive enough to support a substantive HN discussion. The initial conditions of a thread are the article and the title. If those are flamebait, we're guaranteed to get a flamewar, and that's not what this site is for.
In this case I tried several times and didn't see a way to salvage either the title or the article in a way that would clear that bar. That's a quite different problem than the one you describe. If you want to see this topic discussed on HN, you should understand and work with the goals of the site, not assume that the people running it (or the community at large) are somehow against you.
>> every time a report of details and extent of their censorship and hiding is submitted to HN, the same people doing the censoring are allowed to flag the article out of existence
> You're pushing the door in the wrong direction! We're open to these topics being discussed on HN. They've been discussed a lot and they can, should, and will be discussed more, as significant new information arises.
I'm not a native speaker but I wonder if you are talking past each other:
SiVal - as far as I can read - describes ordinary users flagging stories before the rest of us can see them.
You describe that HN mods doesn't do that and quite the opposite: you reopen discussions like this one.
Both of you are correct in my opinion and I think the point that I and possibly also SiVal feel is that moderation is good but some users are abusing the flag feature and it is too easy to do that.
I don't for a minute think the people running HN are against me. And there is no "community at large". There are what you describe as people with a variety of opinions, among whom are probably thousands of Big Tech employees.
Many of them and people like them are using the powers of trillion-dollar corporations, Hollywood, mainstream media, agencies like the CIA, universities that are gatekeepers of employment, etc. to aggressively employ the unprecedented powers at their disposal to suppress information that they want to keep hidden. Every time they justify why they do so, "Surely you can't expect us to allow opinions that people like us label as 'misinformation'", they admit that they do so.
And the ultimate irony is that they insist that this biasing of information is necessary because they speak for the voiceless who don't have power. If they are correct, it is the critics of the most powerful organizations in history whose voices actually need to be amplified. If they are incorrect, all voices should be allowed with none allowed to be silenced.
They, not you, will flag any attempt to report on the things they want to hide until your algorithm silences it for them. And they will flame as much as necessary until you learn to treat anything they want to silence as "flamebait". They have endless techniques for limiting the distribution of information that doesn't support them.
I'm just hoping that your policies will not be such that they can silence criticism here, as everywhere else, by flagging and flaming as necessary until your reasonable-sounding "substantive" and "new information" and "no flamebait" and so on are properly trained to self-censor what they don't want people to hear.
Ok, I hear you. The positive way to deal with this would be to submit better (for HN) articles about it, i.e. ones that provide a good basis for substantive, thoughtful discussion. Then we at least have a chance to moderate the threads. With hellish flamewars there's little we can do.
You seem to be making up a story, though, about who's flagging those articles. How do you know that it's Big Tech employees? I haven't seen such a pattern. No doubt some are, but whether they're anything close to the majority is a different question.
In my experience, it's important not to jump to the mind's preferred narrative about what/who are producing the phenomena you don't like on HN (and maybe elsewhere too). It's a huge Rohrschach diagram—people see what they read into it (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Of course we all do this kind of thing, these biases are built into how the mind operates, but it's important to get more conscious about it, because it's not harmless - it fuels polarization, for one thing, and even paranoia. For example when you write this:
> And they will flame as much as necessary until you learn to treat anything they want to silence as "flamebait". They have endless techniques for limiting the distribution of information that doesn't support them.
... I think you've entered the wilderness of mirrors, at least in an HN context. I haven't seen evidence of this.
I don't want to take even more of your time, sorry, but you asked a question, so I'll answer and then leave you in peace.
"...who's flagging those articles. How do you know that it's Big Tech employees?"
It doesn't matter whether they are employees or not. I'm talking about the subculture of people who dominate the Big Tech companies. When seen from China or India or Middle America, the subculture dominating Big Tech is just as culturally distinct from the rest of humanity as the equally self-reinforcing, compliance-demanding subcultures that dominate Japanese Big Auto makers or the Southern Megachurch industry.
The difference is that Japanese auto makers can only enforce their cultural preferences on their own employees, not on all car drivers. Imagine if Megachurches made so much money that they ended up owning almost all TV & radio, which they then extended to all entertainment: streaming, Hollywood, the news, and used their cultural agenda for "codes of conduct" and "terms of service". Fundamentalist Christians wouldn't have to actually be employees of a Megachurch to participate in the anti-"hate speech" enforcement.
If there were reports of what the Megachurches did in secret, it wouldn't matter whether the Christians who flagged such reports to get them hidden were church employees or not. They would simply be members of the same subculture using the unprecedented powers uniquely available to their group to silence their critics.
If this were a Japanese-language forum for discussion of the auto industry, I would expect it to include an atypically high percentage of people who were members of the salariman subculture. Likewise, if it were God Talk, we would expect an unusually high percentage of people who would flag and treat as flamebait all criticism of megachurches. But it's Hacker News, so it is heavily weighted with people who are fully on board with the Big Tech companies' enforcement and information hiding policies. They are of the same subculture and will cooperate in whatever ways they can.
HN being a worldwide forum thankfully means it is less dominated by that subculture than Big Tech itself, but there is still so much overlap that Big Tech will have as many allies flagging and flaming here (whether employees or not doesn't matter at all) as Big Church would have on a God Talk forum. But unlike other world subcultures, the one that dominates Big Tech has enormous power to promote their social agenda and silence opponents.
So, I think that here on HN, reports that Big Tech would want to hide ought to be regularly in full view and difficult for their allies to constrain.
It isn't just big tech. It is that big tech decided to join fully with the rest of the power structure of the country: government, military, military industrial complex, media, law, health, education, etc... Those are the groups that actually run the country.
Now you have censorship by tech instead of just by government, propaganda by tech in addition to media, mandates by corporations and by government.
Before, tech just told government to compel them via law. Now, government works with tech and corporations to achieve governmental aims without writing laws. It is extrajudicial.
I don't think the USA is a democracy or it is less and less of a democracy.
Centralized organizational structures (governments, corps and ngos) in the US and abroad must be treated with extreme prejudice and avoided for decentralized/federated and open alternatives if available.
For those orgs above (or those who work apart of them) who will actively fight those from pursing decentralized/federated and open alternatives for all aspects of ones life: there is subversion, exfiltration, exploitation and demolition. The best of those orgs will help people bridge the gap to future where power isn't nearly as centralized to the degree it is now.
I think the significant new information is the politico reporter confirming things that have been said in other sources, which other sources had been widely dismissed.
It's a bit buried but there's significant information about Greenwald's own interaction with The Intercept re: the Biden laptop story. Given Greenwald's history with that outlet, this seems worthwhile enough.
If everyone knows it and it has been discussed extensively by everyone except me I'm just slow.
If this is news to everyone like me that CIA and Facebook and the fact checkers got caught lying then it is a big story and it probably should affect how fact checkers work and how much we trust them.
NH doesn't like Greenwald. I only posted this because HN also does not like BigTech so it at least had a chance to get seen by some people who are interested.
The community is divided on that, as it is on every other divisive topic. You can't expect HN to differ significantly from the population at large—the community is too large for that.
Greenwald may be right but he seems rather angry in this article, which diminishes his credibility a bit. He sounds angry at the media who doesn't agree with him, so they must be in cahoots with CIA and the big tech. Does that sound a bit like a "conspiracy theory"? It sounds that way to me, of course he may be right. And curiously it seems he laments the fact that this information was not covered more widely before the election, which could have helped Trump win so it seems he laments the fact that Trump didn't win, because he is angry at Biden and the mainstream media.
Every act of opinion writing is political, what you write about and what you don't write about. Do you criticize Biden or do you criticize Putin? Either way you (try to) move the public needle to one direction or other.
OK, so I read an interview of Greenwald at https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/now-we-re-talking/en/gle... and, now I think I know where he goes wrong, at least in my view. He seems to blame "USA" a lot for its past misbehaviors. What's wrong with this view, in my view, is that there is no single "USA". There is the US government. But the current government is totally different from the government of last 4 years. There are two political parties one of which doesn't seem to like democracy much at all. Doesn't seem to care about people dying of Covid because of vaccine misinformation. Whereas in the case of Russia there really is singular entity "Russia" meaning its current government because that government seems to be in power permanently. That is not the case with USA. US government this year is totally different from last year. Why? Because there are two political parties. Greenwald doesn't seem to see this difference, he thinks (or wants us to think) that Russia and USA are a pair of evil twins.
The last thing I will say, in light of guidelines like "Assume Good Faith" and "avoid Political/flamebait"... submissions like this do not seem to be in that spirit.
Guidelines also ask not to make comments, and instead flag content... except the flag button was removed... so it seems like a rock and a hard place?
We’re mad that the Bidens profited from coverups but assume the Trumps haven’t ever benefited from the same type of coverup? Do people really think Trump became a billionaire by just being a sweet person? Do people really think that Trump hasn’t ever used his influence to squash a story or report that he didn’t like?
I don’t see that as the central issue here. On gut, I generally think Trump is at least five times more guilty than Biden, per the reasoning you gave.
The issue is that we’re verifiably living under a pervasive propaganda machine that has most well-meaning people, intelligent ones, fooled. That it’s supporting the lesser of two evils, is beside the point that the truth is being deliberately concealed.
> We’re mad that the Bidens profited from coverups
In the area of $1 billion from the CCP and Ukraine, with Hunter flying with Joe Biden on official business to those countries. The US was literally for sale.
Also, the Clinton Foundation took over $2 billion from Saudi Arabia, which stopped when Hillary lost the Presidential run.
> the Trumps haven’t ever benefited from the same type of coverup?
No financial benefit when in office.
> Do people really think Trump became a billionaire by just being a sweet person?
He inherited around $1 billion from his father, a major NY real estate developer.
> Do people really think that Trump hasn’t ever used his influence to squash a story or report that he didn’t like?
Not for monetary benefit.
The major incentive for Trump to run as President was patriotism. The major incentive for his Dem. opponents was wokeism and Marxism.
Greenwald kind of reminds me of Anakin taking a knee in front of the emperor in Revenge if the Sith. It's not really convincing but he's doing what's expected of him. It's sad what happened to my "heroes" of the early 2010s.
> Intercept editor Roger Hodge theorizes that money is probably behind at least some of Greenwald’s adventures in right-wing media.
>
> “He needs subscribers and he’s giving people what they want, which is hatred and rage,” Hodge told The Daily Beast. “He’s tapped into the rage machine. He understands that there’s no engagement like rage engagement.”
This kind of hyper-partisanship is what is destroying the media. The left turned on Glenn because he was no longer willing to just throw punches at the other side - he was willing to call out his own side as well, and if that mean talking to (gasp!) folks on the other side, well, that's what he'd do.
It's not that Glenn changed what he always did, it's just that you didn't like who was in his spotlight.
Greenwald's increasingly taken to saying plain stupid stuff without substantiation, and doubling down on it. It's one thing to be poking in areas with little available evidence and doing the best that can be done, another simply to make stuff up and play for drama and views.
Stories that damage the established world order are suppressed and "fact-checked" (by biased partisan organizations, or worse, literal operatives working at these companies).
These organizations are looking a lot more like political machines as every day passes. They have their fingers on the scales in a multitude of respects. Google by boosting and deboosting certain political content, Facebook through algorithm manipulation, shadowbans and banning and Twitter through hashtag suppression, "trending" manipulation, "fact checks" and banning.