I agree

There's several Trump supporters on this forum and I think you're the only one who actually believes the election was stolen. You're clearly not a smart person, are you mentally ill in some way? That's how you come across through your posts. Not trying to hurt you, just curious.

The election was very clearly and transparently illegitimate

The censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020 happened while I was observing Twitter in real time, so any argument to the contrary is contemptible.

I would ask these two questions:

1) Was the directed censorship of the story by Democrat allies in the FBI etc. legitimate? If so, why?

2) If the censorship of the story was not legitimate, would it constitute direct election interference, specifically by denying (through authoritarian force) access to a free and fair press?

Not many people believe that votes were directly tampered with to sway the election in favour of Biden (though it is *highly* plausible, it requires direct evidence to prove).

On the contrary, the media censorship was transparent and deplorable.

This post was edited by El1te on Jan 20 2024 07:19pm

What does the "election being illegitimate" mean? Does that mean it was stolen? Or does it mean something different? Trump says it was stolen, so you'll have to explain why he's wrong if you think it wasn't stolen.

Twitter blocked the sharing of the link to the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story for 16 days, which created the Streisand effect of drawing more attention to it. Legitimate media outlets didn't cover it at the time because it was a highly suspect story(Rudy getting a hardrive from some weirdo in Delaware), and they weren't going to stick their necks out to help Trump.

Social media companies doing things is not authoritarian force, lol. If Facebook or Twitter were to take an overt stance in favor of a certain party or candidate, I would disapprove because they should facilitate conversation and not be overt political actors, but they still have that right.

That's why I don't like Elon Musk taking over Twitter, because he's an overt political actor who has endorsed Republicans and condemned Democrats, while pushing bullshit narratives aligned with the Trump cult. His company pays one of the most dishonest and inflammatory voices on the right, Tucker Carlson.

Facebook is a place where right-wing propagnda spreads... far more than any other perspective. So this whole narrative that social media companies are supressing Trump and the right is complete nonsense. Facebook and Twitter facilitate the spread of right-wing propaganda every day.

This post was edited by IceMage on Jan 20 2024 07:32pm

It means the election was not legitimate. Illegitimate, stolen, fraudulent, you can use whatever synonym you want but they're all referring to the same thing, illegitimate is the proper word I would use here. "Stolen" is not the word I would use but it's easier for the masses to understand which is likely why Trump himself uses it.

I would argue there was nothing at all suspect about the story, which was verified, other than the bogus letter by Democrat operatives declaring it as such (with no evidence that it was Russian disinformation or anything else). The argument of "they're a private company, they can do what they want!" was plausible up until it was revealed by Elon Musk (who acquired the company, taking a massive financial loss in the process, specifically because of this issue of Democrat collusion) that it in fact was not the decision of Twitter, but pressure from outside Democratic operatives, of course with many Twitter members happily going along with it. This was illegal. What happened in Twitter even caused the founder himself to leave, understanding the monster he had created. Millions of voters were denied access to this information through their own media streams (social media being the largest one) which was a direct infringement of their rights.

Publishers of course have the discretion to publish what they please (no surprise, left-leaning publications e.g. The Atlantic decided to ignore the story altogether). Twitter (which is not a publisher and as such is entitled to legal benefits) had no right to censor the story, as it violated none of their rules. I do not believe that the censorship of the story brought more attention to it, but the opposite- this is supported by evidence brought via polls that a chunk of people would have changed their vote if they were aware of the story.

I was never a fan of Elon Musk, I really didn't like him when the expat diver debacle happened, and he's clearly a manchild and a terrible father despite being highly intelligent. But his acquisition of Twitter was purely altruistic and I gained alot of respect for him when he went through with it. It's disingenuous to say Elon is a political actor (he is now) but that the previous management of Twitter wasn't.

Facebook and other places have a ton of right wing support - but this is coming from the users themselves, not Facebook management. Zuckerberg is a Democrat donor. Hell, because of Elon's absolute perspective on freedom of speech, Twitter is inundated with vile antisemitism and pro-terrorist content.

Facebook blocked the story because they were specifically warned by the FBI to expect Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden, and to expect a dump near the election. By this time, the FBI had already ascertained that the laptop was genuine. When Facebook asked directly, the FBI declined to give Facebook any sort of confirmation on the veracity (or lack thereof) of the laptop story.

Collaboration between Twitter and various government agencies (and individuals), including the FBI, is incredibly well documented. It's beyond any sort of point where you can believe that Twitter was not overtly taking a partisan stance, just as "shadow-banning"conspiracy theories are in retrospect just an accurate depiction of what was happening at the time.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Jan 20 2024 08:07pm

So what? The FBI was right to warn social media companies to expect disinformation before the election. Do you actually think they were wrong to do that? If so, explain why.

The FBI(contrary to Trump lunatics, and I guess you now fall into that category) isn't some monolith run by one guy or a group of people. Just because some in the FBI had information on the laptop doesn't mean others in the FBI knew and/or were informed enough to change what they did at the time. Your example is illustrating... should the FBI provide feedback to the media based on the evidence they've gathered for every story in the news? Where does that lead?

So to get this straight, your answer to my question 1) posted in post #1753 is in essence "Yes, the FBI can do whatever it wants, deal with it you lunatic". Myself & have both put forth our viewpoints why it was certainly wrong to do that, with documented evidence.

Do you truly believe this is a compelling argument to change the hearts and minds of Trump supporters? How about people that believe in a free democratic form of government? This viewpoint you espouse here is more in line with fascist & communist ideologies - this is why Trump continually describes your political faction & others as fascists & communists, because that is exactly the viewpoint that you espouse here. People who believe in a free democratic government do not support an unbounded secret police.

In order to convince people that the election was not stolen/illegitimate (which to my understanding is believed by 100% of Trump supporters, which comprise >50% of the Republican voterbase), you will have to put forth more compelling arguments. I would have hoped that your observation that massive swaths of the Democrat party voterbase are deplorable supporters of terrorists would have convinced you that Trump & his supporters are not the boogeymen you think they are, the dominant faction of your own party is.

This post was edited by El1te on Jan 20 2024 09:15pm

that you cant question an election that had poll watchers kicked out and then counted in secret. all just happen to happen in swing states............
5-6 states

could only imagine leftie shrieking if bogus dude was way ahead and the same scenario played out

This post was edited by TiStuff on Jan 20 2024 09:28pm

It was trivially easy to confirm that photos from the laptop were legitimate. It took a matter of seconds for anyone with remote technical know-how, even with contemporary AI tech they couldn't be faked so in detail and expansively, and that didn't exist then. Those same outlets could have run very conditional stories with disclaimers like they did later in their faux mea culpas, stating that just because some photos are authentic, doesn't mean they all are- but there was zero evidence to suggest any of them was fake. And of course, none of themw ere. They could have tried to downplay it and be overly cautious. Instead what we saw was a very militant crusade to actively suppress the story. Look at NPR's statement along lmao

That's where you're really at a disconnect with what happened. It wasn't just a matter of one platform censoring it or a few outlets being slow to cover it. It was a sustained and coordinated effort to suppress a story, which included overt participation by not just newspapers and social media platforms but the FBI and other government actors. And that is absolutely an authoritarian force running amok. The FBI put out its bogus statement for the sole purpose of trying to give a credible excuse to actors looking to censor the Biden laptop, there was no other reason for them to comment. And they knew it was real, even more than the publicly confirmable details and authenticity of the photos, but the fact they had the laptop when they issued the statement. They knew it was all real, and instead played interference to support Biden.



What's the angle here? That the FBI are so woefully incompetent that they'd comment on a story of national interest- and an active investigation, in violation of protocol- without consulting anyone involved? That the FBI were just miraculously stupid in this one instance and completely unable to have their right hand tell what the left was doing? C'mon, man. The FBI had proof that this story was authentic and that Russia had zero involvement. They knew the origin of the documents, they had the copies themselves and ample time to confirm it, and yet they purposefully chose to put out a statement in response to the New York Post's reporting to give their own plausible-deniability-doubletalking-prevaricating version of suggesting its Russian propaganda while at the same time urging social media platforms to censor such stories, wink wink nudge nudge. It was overt.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jan 20 2024 09:59pm