I’m not talking about the overall scope of the program. Obviously the Patriot Act is much broader. I’m talking about the double standard of those supporting the FBI. The same people cheering on the FBI now would have flipped out if the FBI was engaged in the same communications with Twitter about imams preaching radical Islam. The same people justifying Twitter working with the FBI to respond to supposed “radicalization” and “domestic terrorism” were against the FBI when the target was foreign terrorists.
I don’t support or cheer on the FBI but I also don’t care at all about them sending these emails.
Doesn’t seem like a great use of FBI resources though — maybe they could put some focus on the crypto scams on Twitter that people keep falling for, or better yet the threads of thousands of videos of police brutality on Twitter from the last 2.5 years alone.
> The same people cheering on the FBI now would have flipped out if the FBI was engaged in the same communications with Twitter about imams preaching radical Islam
Citation needed. The vast majority of the complaints during that era were due to portraying all Muslims as radical or focusing the efforts on Muslims without applying the same standards to the far more numerous (in the U.S., anyway) Christian extremists making anti-gay, anti-black, etc. messages. Clear rules which are fairly applied are a very different level.
> Clear rules which are fairly applied are a very different level.
The disclosure here is that Twitter didn’t have “clear rules which are fairly applied.” It was filtered through people who believed wacky things—for example, ones so blinded by anti-Christian bias they think there is any comparison between Christian “extremism” and the global problem of Islamic radicalism.
Which disclosure was that, specifically? I haven’t seen any evidence of “anti-Christian bias”. If you’re referring to my comment, note that my position is that all radicals should be treated with concern, but their coreligionists shouldn’t be assumed to share their beliefs. In the United States the most common religion is Christianity so we have lots of people making various hate crimes using language derived from that tradition or expressing fears about Islamic immigrants seen as dangerous outsiders, so I’m only talking about risks to the country where the FBI is focused. The Mossad no doubt has a different perspective.
The Twitter internal discussions we are talking about.
> I haven’t seen any evidence of “anti-Christian bias”. If you’re referring to my comment, note that my position is that all radicals should be treated with concern
The anti-Christian bias is in creating a false equivalency between Christian “extremists” and Islamic radicals. You responded to my comment by bringing up “anti-gay anti-Black” statements from “Christian extremists.” That’s an absurd comparison. What you’re talking about is the average person in my Muslim home country: https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2.... The FBI shouldn’t be investigating those people. What I’m talking about is a different level entirely: https://time.com/4365890/bangladesh-arrests-5000-crackdown-r...
The bias reflected in your comment is exactly the sort of biases through which Twitter moderation decisions are filtered. Your average Twitter moderator is the kind of sheltered person who thinks his racist uncle back home in Indiana bears mention in the same breath as Islamic radicalism. These are the same people who flipped out when the FBI was investigating Islamic fundamentalism, but now cheers in the FBI now that the target is white Christians.
> The Twitter internal discussions we are talking about.
Can you point to a specific detail supporting this claim? I have read the thread and don’t know what this is based on.
> You responded to my comment by bringing up “anti-gay anti-Black” statements from “Christian extremists.” That’s an absurd comparison.
Not if you’re looking at who’s threatening or committing crimes here in the US. School children aren’t doing active shooter drills because of Muslims, public events aren’t being cancelled because of bomb threats made by Muslims, etc. This is exactly what I’d expect based on demographics, so again my point is simply that I’m not surprised that the FBI is finding more crimes committed by nominal Christians in a majority Christian country.
Comparing Twitter getting reports about ToS violations from FBI via email instead of from users via the report button isn’t in the same galaxy.
I am struggling to think of a more bad faith argument than comparing this to the Patriot act.