One of the biggest political news stories of 2020, Hunter Biden's laptop, was falsely declared misinformation, and the NY Post was accused of being a low quality site. Now we know it's true.
On the other hand, the Steele Dossier was considered legitimate news at the time and "many of the dossier’s most explosive claims...have never materialized or have been proved false."[1].
So I'd like to know exactly what the study's authors considered low-quality news, but unfortunately I couldn't find a list in the paper you linked. In my experience, most people tend to declare sources "high-quality" or "low-quality" based on whether they share the same worldview.
I had the same skepticism as you, but the study authors did attempt to be fair by letting a set of politically balanced laypeople (equal number Democrat and Republican) adjudicate the trustworthiness of sites. They also had journalists rate the sites, but they present the results of both results (layperson-rated and journalist-rated).
I wish they had included the list so we could see for ourselves. It's still possible that there are flaws in the study. But the it appears to take the concern of fairness more seriously than most.
This is a tangent. Twitter declared this story a story about hacked material which they treated as rule-breaking at the time. They changed their rule afterwards, but it is a legitimate rule to have.
The quality was measured by a group that was selected due to their broad range of leanings. It should be in the final paper.
Hunter Biden's "laptop" is a misdirection campaign.
The contents appear to be from Biden but whether or not it was actually sourced as claimed will likely never be verified (the recipient is conveniently effectively blind).
But those that care about this story only seem to care about the story about the story, i.e., that there was effort to prevent propagating it.
I find it fascinating that every person who is hung up on this story doesn't care about the substance or relevance of it.
In regards to substance, it's a story about corruption. The corruption on its face is irrefutable (i.e., Hunter Biden was paid money in an attempt to purchase the influence of his father). That's genteel, old school corruption.
But the relevance of it is that Hunter himself is a private citizen and his (mis)conduct is not really newsworthy. But the implication of it is that his father is equally corrupt (which has not been shown), and that is the entire point of the story.
That charge of corruption is important to deflect any reports of corruption by the political rival of Hunter's father (of which there's significant reporting of such).
My commenting here is pointless yet necessary: pointless because I've yet to see a cogent rebuttal, and necessary because this topic is toxic and should be countered as best possible.
It wasn't my intention to litigate this story here. I was simply citing it as an example of the difficulty of identifying misinformation.
Also, I think a fair discussion of Twitter moderation should include a post-mortem of one of their most famous mistakes, discussing what Twitter did and what should they have done differently, and not so much the story itself.
(Of course, the substance is also important, but this isn't the right place for that discussion.)
That's just it: I don't think it was a mistake (if we're talking "censorship" about the laptop story).
The story is radioactive. The veracity of it means nothing -- just the phrase is now a talking point, a campaign slogan.
If my points are correct per the prior comment, what good does it serve the people to be amplified in a short attention span economy? Why shine light on dialog that sucks oxygen out of the room?
HN is not the place to come to blows over tribal politics, but I think that discussing policies, strategies, and other political hacking is worthy of being explored if there's willingness to examine the impacts that these actions have.
This is an extraordinary technological measure. Plenty of things posted on Twitter turn out to be false, misleading, or not worth shining light on. This one turned out to be true, and yet earned the most extreme sanction Twitter is capable of: prior restraint on speech.
My original comment in this thread never contested that. There's worthy conjecture of the provenance of same, but that's a different discussion.
What was found to be true was that Hunter Biden was open to profiting from his association with his father (among other distasteful things).
What has not been found to be true (read the report and tell me otherwise), and that is that Joe Biden himself was corrupt and sold favors. If you cite the "10% for the big guy" quote, you also have to acknowledge that it was ready to be offered, but never shown to be accepted.
Don't you find it odd that will all the investigation that happened by his political enemies that Joe Biden was never charged with anything? Do you think that they would pounce on any opportunity to do so?
But it's been shown by people such as yourself that actual guilt doesn't matter -- just the accusation is good enough.
Also note that I offer no defense to Hunter because what he did was sleazy. I also note that those obsessed with the affaire d'laptop don't care about the corruption of his predecessor and family (specifically his son in law), which was far more vast in scope and in venality.
I am against corruption regardless of which party engages in it. Would you say the same is true for you, and if so, demonstrate that in some way?
Yes I am against corruption regardless of which party engages in it. Trump is as corrupt as they come, the only way he knows how to run anything is like a mob boss who expects loyalty above all.
But we're commenting on a story about moderation of online forums, not corruption of politicians. I don't find the emails especially incriminating, and I honestly find Joe Biden to be a pretty admirable person, not especially corrupt as politicians go. But I will never forget the way that the media and platforms like Twitter used their power to bury a story that turned out to be true. I believe they did so because it was inconvenient to their own personal biases and their investment in seeing Biden elected. I was invested in seeing Biden elected too! But our highest commitment must be to the truth. I have a deep distrust of people who would suppress true facts, especially when so many false or misleading narratives are circulated all the time.
As a great example of this, my comment that you replied to is currently rated at -1. It directly answers your question, it is not rude or impolite, and it is unquestionably true. And yet at least two people disliked it enough that they wanted to bury it. I don't know why those two people had that reaction, but that is exactly the behavior that I feel so distrustful of.
Contrast the Biden Laptop story with the Steele Dossier. That story was repeated endlessly in the media, with far more numerous and salacious accusations, which turned out to be almost totally discredited. Now I find Trump to be a repugnant figure, but the double standard here is infuriating to me. The truth should matter above all.
I didn't downvote you earlier (and upvoted you now), I save downvotes for special occasions (and I think HN rations them, which is an interesting angle).
I share your opinion of Biden (not my first choice but a breath of fresh air after his predecessor).
I'd really like to come to a true understanding with you, because I want the truth to be promoted and lies and misinformation to be unamplified.
But I still don't understand what "true story" you are concerned about. The facts about Hunter himself seem to be true (corrupt and sleazy). But the whole point of the story wasn't about Hunter, it was an implied corruption of Joe.
So squelching the laptop story was about silencing effectively baseless conjecture that impugned the integrity of Joe Biden. That was the only point of the story -- to smear Joe.
Just like with Hillary's emails -- all that mattered was "she did bad" (which she did do, but in context it was quite insignificant. The amazing thing is these stories only seem to work one way: agains the Dems. There doesn't seem to be a single accusation against Trump that would dissuade his followers (his shooting someone on 5th Ave quote was frighteningly prescient).
The Steele Dossier was lurid but there's so much shady shit about Trump that it did raise credible concerns: is there kompromat on Trump? His behavior suggests so (absolute deference to Putin, money laundering accusations, etc.)
The essence of my concern is that we're flooded by misinformation and it's horribly effective, and more horribly so in the direction it seems to be effective (against the Left).
The laptop story is a lose/lose scenario. We lose if the story continues to echo and destabilize trust, and we lose when we try to prevent that act of erosion.
I'm not a fan of censorship but I also see the results of unfettered hate speech and lies that have literally demonized the Left and divided this country with no sign of letting up.
I think the leak of thousands of authentic emails from a direct family member of a presidential candidate is newsworthy, regardless of what is in the emails. People should get to decide for themselves whether "10% for the big guy" is incriminating or not.
If the story had gotten to run its normal course, my overall opinion would be that it actually makes Biden look pretty good (20k emails and this is the most incriminating line that they could find?)
But the moment that Twitter took unprecedented measures to prevent the story from even being discussed, it became something that bothered me a lot.
The way to gain credibility in an age of misinformation is to make the truth your north star. To have credibility, you have to be willing to call out misinformation on your own side, like the Steele Dossier. To say that it "raises credible concerns" is to excuse misinformation. You asked me to demonstrate that I am against corruption regardless of which side does it. Can you demonstrate that you are against misinformation regardless of which side does it?
> People should get to decide for themselves whether "10% for the big guy" is incriminating or not.
I applaud your faith in humanity but the same population isn't likely going to read the exonerating report that I cited elsewhere and will note here. Read the conclusion at the end and then tell me again why the laptop story still needs to be promoted:
> If the story had gotten to run its normal course
Nobody pushing that story cares about anything other than the story sticking around to be a campaign talking point.
The Steele Dossier is far more complicated because of its origins and handling (yes Clinton helped fund some of it but McCain and Comey were alarmed by it). It was also always framed as raw, unverified intel that, once public, compelled verification of it. At that time it was also paired with the Buttery Mails investigation which likely tipped the scales away from Clinton.
Read the wiki and you can see that it's not cut and dried. Meanwhile that whole thing has been turned into RussiaGate and categorically denied. MSM has dropped that line.
Nobody on the left is defending Hunter Biden. But again, he's not the candidate, so why is there such concern? Because it's ButteryMails v2. The laptop story is the story.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to condemn about the Dossier affair -- it had its moment in the sun and then was squashed, with the bonus that it's now projected that Trump is 100% innocent in regards to dealing with Russia and that just ain't the case.
As mentioned elsewhere, the laptop story was not restricted for being misinformation, it was restricted due to Twitter's policy (at the time) on hacked materials.
And, following the laptop story, Twitter changed their policy on hacked materials.
And that's the thing with content moderation - specific examples of content moderation often themselves go viral, but often also shed the actual context of said moderation (as was the case in your example), and thus feed into existing narratives around bias in content moderation. With full context, one might still disagree with the policy, but the narrative falls away.
As a European I don't know much about the Hunter Biden story, but it wasn't a political news story because it doesn't even cover a politically relevant person. It is a celebrity story and even two years later no allegation of substance seems to have come from it (skimming wikipedia).
From a European perspective it was just outlandish hearsay and speculation. Hard to understand why Americans get so invested when no criminal case materializes.
This is a political minefield/one of the most polarized topics of conversation in a minefield of extremely polarized topics, and I greatly value this forum as a place for intelligent conversation. Please don't jump to any assumptions about my presentation of this perspective, or endorsement of crazy people who say similar sounding things, this is simply a summary of why this story is important to the right.
The Hunter Biden story is significant because there are emails which suggest Hunter Biden had ties to foreign companies that wanted access to his father. This could be grounds for a criminal case implicating his father.
Now, in a sane society during a less polarized election, this would have been discussed in the open, and people would make cases as to the relevance or irrelevance of the evidence, relevance to Joe Biden specifically, and whether the evidence merits investigation through proper channels in an open and transparent way.
Since Trump was viewed as even more corrupt and more of a threat by enough people capable of suppressing the story, the story was suppressed, and this conversation didn't happen until after the election. That does not mean the entire FBI and judicial process is broken like some people on the right claim, which is an extremely dangerous accusation, and the lack of a proper case means we do not know the extent or non extent of corruption, but the suppression of the story was a violation of public trust by those who suppressed it and poured a lot of fuel on an already raging fire.
> The Hunter Biden story is significant because there are emails which suggest Hunter Biden had ties to foreign companies that wanted access to his father. This could be grounds for a criminal case implicating his father. Now, in a sane society during a less polarized election, this would have been discussed in the open, and people would make cases as to the relevance or irrelevance of the evidence, relevance to Joe Biden specifically, and whether the evidence merits investigation through proper channels in an open and transparent way.
I agree with that in principle. The idea that a presidential candidate's son has obviously nepotistic business appointments in industries and countries that he has no business being in presents a facial conflict of interest and should invite a debate on quid pro quo corruption. I would say these kinds of stories are a feature of both political parties in the U.S. and across a wide swath of time -- this is effectively the same role as the Clinton Foundation played in the previous election, for instance. And I think it makes sense to debate or investigate this kind of thing in public, including during the election. In fact, Hunter Biden's role in these companies was scrutinized to some degree earlier in the presidential election and also in the primary and also indeed over the last four years. So I reject the notion on the right that this is an issue that "could not" be discussed because "the elites" suppressed the discussion. My sense is that the eventual conclusion was what it seemed from the very beginning: Hunter Biden is a colossal fuckup, everyone around him tried to help him not be a fuckup, he kept being a fuckup, and it should be to no one's surprise that he tried to leverage his father even though there's no to limited evidence any such quid pro quo occurred.
The laptop, though, is a pretty complicated thing. It feels more like a direct parallel to the Podesta email hacking in the 2016 election (which, among other things, spawned Pizzagate). Bad actors (in 2016, foreign intelligence; in 2020, a domestic political adversary) took steps to secure a large cache of material, potentially by committing crimes to do so, and released it to the public on the very eve of a presidential election as an October surprise. The framing of the stories on the right was that the _existence_ of the material (emails in 2016, laptop in 2020) was proof that the allegations against the candidate were true, even though basically none of the material seems at all connected to the allegations.
Furthermore, the nature of the release was that the people who secured the damaging material obfuscated and laundered it. The press had neither the time nor the resources necessary to verify the contents of the material. Finally, the biggest risk was that large amounts of true material would be combined with knowingly fabricated material in a way that laundered the reputation of the false material. This is hardly an empty false flag thing, it's literally exactly what a nefarious actor _should_ do if they come into possession of huge amounts of stolen material to make the greatest impact.
Although the reactions to the Hunter Biden story were overreactions, that's the framework that I think people had adopted. I think people were thinking back to the Podesta email hack and to the FBI confirmation of the Weiner stuff causing a significant late disruption in 2016 election and wanting to avoid the possibility of a similar disruption here. And I think in principle there is a responsibility to avoid this kind of chaos: for instance, if a candidate is accused of a heinous crime (say rape or murder) the day before an election, it is possible both that the accusation would have a serious impact on the election and that not enough time exists to validate, refute, or contextualize it.
I can't say the exact length of time before an election that should be a sundown period, informally or formally, but I just recognize that you might imagine some combination of late breaking, serious, and difficult to verify that would merit a deliberate choice to not interfere with the election. The same thing occurred in France about 36 hours before the 2017 presidential election: Huge cache of Macron emails were hacked and distributed (probably by foreign intelligence). Opponents of Macron said, without evidence, that this was proof of Macron's perfidy and would sink him. The media generally refused to engage the story because it was the fruit of a poison tree and 36 hours is not enough time to work it out. The far-right party noted that this was censorship and the end of free speech and investigative journalism is over.
The only winner in a situation like this are the agents of chaos.
The only notable thing about the Biden laptop story is that normally cynical people believe all of it; they should be able to recognize an intelligence op when they see one.
(Some of the emails are validated through DKIM. This does not actually prove anything in general.)
Also, they should be happy reading a story that he took bribes and then didn't do the thing he was bribed for. That means the criminals have less money now! It's clearly a virtuous action.
One of the biggest political news stories of 2020, Hunter Biden's laptop, was falsely declared misinformation, and the NY Post was accused of being a low quality site. Now we know it's true.
On the other hand, the Steele Dossier was considered legitimate news at the time and "many of the dossier’s most explosive claims...have never materialized or have been proved false."[1].
So I'd like to know exactly what the study's authors considered low-quality news, but unfortunately I couldn't find a list in the paper you linked. In my experience, most people tend to declare sources "high-quality" or "low-quality" based on whether they share the same worldview.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-pr...