←back to thread

707 points patd | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.851s | source
Show context
TechBro8615 ◴[] No.23323187[source]
Forget about the free speech albatross. To me, what Twitter is doing looks like a clear case of election interference. They are basically giving free ads to the opposition of Trump. He tweets something, they annotate it with a link to media sources that are heavily biased toward the democrats.

Will they be giving the same treatment to @joebiden? He has been known to lie and plagiarize throughout his political career.

Who qualifies as a reliable source for fact checking? I see links to sources like CBS and CNN, neither of which are known as bastions of truth, and both of which have failed many fact checks themselves, in recent memory.

replies(3): >>23323392 #>>23323495 #>>23323797 #
1. myvoiceismypass ◴[] No.23323392[source]
If Biden lies in a tweet, they should flag it!

I suspect, however, that he does not have the time to sit tweeting trash all day long while “leading” this country.

replies(1): >>23324317 #
2. TechBro8615 ◴[] No.23324317[source]
Just looking at Biden's twitter timeline, I see plenty of tweets that could be "fact checked," if we're using Trump's voter fraud claim as an example of what needs to be checked. Yet somehow, I doubt any of them will.

Examples:

- "36,000 Americans could be alive today if President Trump had acted sooner." [This is entirely speculative and impossible to prove, similar to Trump's mail-in voting claim]

- "The hard truth is Donald Trump ignored the warnings of health experts and intelligence agencies, downplayed the threat COVID-19 posed, and failed to take the action needed to combat the outbreak." [This is false, and certainly not a "hard truth". He took early action including closing the borders to China, which Joe Biden deemed xenophobic at the time.]

- "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: No company pulling in billions of dollars in profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers." [This is highly misleading, and could benefit from context, e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-amazon-really-pay-no-taxes...]

- "In the middle of this crisis, President Trump is trying to cut food assistance. It’s morally bankrupt." [This is misleading. He's not cutting food assistance; the USDA is attempting to add a work requirement to SNAP benefits.]

- "In the middle of the worst public health crisis in our lifetime, President Trump is actively trying to terminate health insurance for millions of Americans. It's unthinkable." [Highly misleading if not outright false.]

Are any of these black-and-white false? No. But neither is what Twitter is fact checking Trump for. If they were to apply fair standards, they would "fact check" Biden too. But they won't. And we all know why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the person in charge of this new policy has called Trump a "nazi" and a "racist tangerine."

replies(1): >>23324361 #
3. JoeAltmaier ◴[] No.23324361[source]
So much simpler: one guy says outlandish, easily disproven things 100 times a day. Its just shooting fish in a barrel - lazy.