Which, at that point would have been a welcome article, since at that point the world war hadn't started yet, and countries like the UK weren't even involved yet. It wasn't until the invasion of Poland that UK got pulled in because of the guarantees they made earlier to Poland.
That said, people probably didn't understand "propaganda" in those times as well as we do today, so probably would have been even welcome back then than today.
"The platform refused to provide DRI with publicly accessible data, such as the reach or the number of likes and shares of posts. The Berlin Regional Court ruled that X must hand over the data. DRI aims to use this data to study the influence of social media platforms on the upcoming Bundestag election and to increase transparency regarding potential manipulations before the vote."
Because not doing what is legally required is called breaking the law, and Musk et all do not care about the law.
> X Prevents Research on Potential Election Interference
Just because you assume it's about the US the headline is clickbait? Feels a bit strong. I agree it could have been more clear, but then I saw the domain and correctly understood the context without even opening the article.
> Second, they have no evidence of "potential election interference" -- this post is literally about them suing X to get the data to do the research which might back up such a claim.
That's true, but I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here? Is it the "potential election interference" that is problematic? There is a potential for election interference, no matter if they have evidence for it or not, I'm not sure how anyone can deny the potential. They don't make any strong claims regarding the election interference at all, and they're asking for data so they can see if it's accurate or not.
It's only click bait if you aren't in Germany and think any non-US election should be labelled as such in a headline.
The headline does use the words "research" and "potential" in it, because it is literally researching election interference that might come up in Germany.
Given the ... participation that X's owner has engaged in so far regarding German politics [1] [2] [3] it doesn't seem that outrageous.
Not entirely surprising. Musk doesn't want anyone looking into his businesses. Every public agency that DOGE has shut down so far had an active investigation into Musk or one of his businesses.
> the government has been actively pushing their ideology down the throat of companies too
can you provide some details here on what you mean. The phrase "pushing their ideology down the throat" does not exactly scream "non-partisan thought process" to me, but I'm always open to learning and listening.
The Twitter files are one example I was thinking off. A quote from Wikipedia [1]:
> Stanford University's "Virality Project", in cooperation with several nonprofits, "worked with social media platforms to flag and suppress commentary on COVID vaccines, science, and policy that contradicted public health officials' stances, even when that commentary was true."
Put differently, this means that the government "flag and suppress"ed information even when it was true. Imagine being banned from Twitter by the government when saying something that is true. How can scientists, for example, do their job when that's the case? And I don't think we should accept this from the government because it's not the governments job to decide what we should or should not hear. Especially if the government overrules facts if they do not correspond to stances from the health officials.
The quote you posted doesn't support your assertion that "this means that the government "flag and suppress"ed information even when it was true", it's not even related as Stanford University is not a government agency.
Stanford has received more than $1 trillion in funding [1], so even while they are not an government agency, I would not call them independent. I also don't think this is bad. As Heather Douglas argued in her book, science is never completely independent of policy. But I think if policy overrules scientific evidence, then things are going too far.
There is also a government document that states that
> "The EIP and VP provided public factual findings to multiple entities, including government agencies and social media platforms" [2].
Here VP is the aforementioned Virality Project (VP) by Stanford. The document mentions that
> "The VP provided public information about observed social media trends that could be used by social media platforms and public health communicators to inform their responses and further public dialogue. Rather than attempting to censor speech, the VP’s goal was to share its analysis of social media trends so that social media platforms and public health officials were prepared to respond to widely shared narratives."
This defense is highly questionable I think. Why do social media platforms need to be prepared to respond to widely shared narratives? How can a social media platform prepare for a "widely shared narrative"? Why can the scientists not write a public paper and then communicate via that way instead of directly to the social media platform? If this is based on the assumption that the general public doesn't understand, then who says that the government understands? Is the government more clever than the general public? Do scientists know better than the general public? I think scientists are experts in their domain usually. But does that make them experts in general? Should a scientists in an university decide what's best for people outside university?
It's hard to me to read all of this and conclude that this is in any way related to or equal to Elon ripping down entire federal agencies.
I agree that there's some cause for concern and oversight, and that you're describing an imperfect system that has some natural and potentially unavoidable conflicts of interest.
But I'm just not making the connection to whatever it is that DOGE is doing.
There is a big difference between shutting down questionable funding that push an ideology, and shutting down whole agencies because they have an active investigation against you personally.
> couldn't they just subscribe to Pro and use the API?
Since X serves German users, X needs to follow German law. Since German law says researchers need to be able to access data, the researchers tried to get the data. X says no (breaking the laws), so now they continue with the correct pipeline for getting the data anyways.
If this all sounds new and foreign to you, checkout the Digital Services Act (DSA) which seems to be the directive they're using for requesting the data.
Subscribing to Pro and using the API would be like admitting X didn't actually break laws here, so not surprising they try to go the right way about this. Not only for themselves, but would make it easier for others in the future when they win.
> This Regulation therefore provides a framework for compelling access to data from very large online platforms and very large online search engines to vetted researchers affiliated to a research organisation within the meaning of Article 2 of Directive (EU) 2019/790, which may include, for the purpose of this Regulation, civil society organisations that are conducting scientific research with the primary goal of supporting their public interest mission.
Users are flagging them whether they're positive or negative, critical or uncritical. The issue is not how favorable they are, it's how repetitive they are. Repetitive submissions on divisive topics—and who/what is more divisive right now—invariably turn into flamewars, so these flags are consistent with HN's intended purpose.
I've been posting a lot lately about how we (mods) handle this sort of situation. If you didn't see those, here are some starting points:
If you (or anyone) take a look at those and the links they point to, and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
The fact that the German government won a lawsuit against X is clickbait? The same X that is headed by a guy who is vocal in his support of a politcal party in Germany?
41 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 31.3 ms ] threadThat said, people probably didn't understand "propaganda" in those times as well as we do today, so probably would have been even welcome back then than today.
Twitter does not seem very interested in transparency or stopping behavior favoring certain views
https://www.canva.com/design/DAGesRcirKQ/4-mOPKQEfWtozFtO_jU...
Maybe this should have been the title?
"The platform refused to provide DRI with publicly accessible data, such as the reach or the number of likes and shares of posts. The Berlin Regional Court ruled that X must hand over the data. DRI aims to use this data to study the influence of social media platforms on the upcoming Bundestag election and to increase transparency regarding potential manipulations before the vote."
Because not doing what is legally required is called breaking the law, and Musk et all do not care about the law.
Sounds more like they want X to do the work for them.
Just because you assume it's about the US the headline is clickbait? Feels a bit strong. I agree it could have been more clear, but then I saw the domain and correctly understood the context without even opening the article.
> Second, they have no evidence of "potential election interference" -- this post is literally about them suing X to get the data to do the research which might back up such a claim.
That's true, but I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here? Is it the "potential election interference" that is problematic? There is a potential for election interference, no matter if they have evidence for it or not, I'm not sure how anyone can deny the potential. They don't make any strong claims regarding the election interference at all, and they're asking for data so they can see if it's accurate or not.
The headline does use the words "research" and "potential" in it, because it is literally researching election interference that might come up in Germany.
Given the ... participation that X's owner has engaged in so far regarding German politics [1] [2] [3] it doesn't seem that outrageous.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/01/27/nx-s1-5276084/elon-musk-germa...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/31/nx-s1-5243166/germany-accuses...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/germany-scholz-elon-musk-far-righ...
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02....
can you provide some details here on what you mean. The phrase "pushing their ideology down the throat" does not exactly scream "non-partisan thought process" to me, but I'm always open to learning and listening.
I appreciate that.
The Twitter files are one example I was thinking off. A quote from Wikipedia [1]:
> Stanford University's "Virality Project", in cooperation with several nonprofits, "worked with social media platforms to flag and suppress commentary on COVID vaccines, science, and policy that contradicted public health officials' stances, even when that commentary was true."
Put differently, this means that the government "flag and suppress"ed information even when it was true. Imagine being banned from Twitter by the government when saying something that is true. How can scientists, for example, do their job when that's the case? And I don't think we should accept this from the government because it's not the governments job to decide what we should or should not hear. Especially if the government overrules facts if they do not correspond to stances from the health officials.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
There is also a government document that states that
> "The EIP and VP provided public factual findings to multiple entities, including government agencies and social media platforms" [2].
Here VP is the aforementioned Virality Project (VP) by Stanford. The document mentions that
> "The VP provided public information about observed social media trends that could be used by social media platforms and public health communicators to inform their responses and further public dialogue. Rather than attempting to censor speech, the VP’s goal was to share its analysis of social media trends so that social media platforms and public health officials were prepared to respond to widely shared narratives."
This defense is highly questionable I think. Why do social media platforms need to be prepared to respond to widely shared narratives? How can a social media platform prepare for a "widely shared narrative"? Why can the scientists not write a public paper and then communicate via that way instead of directly to the social media platform? If this is based on the assumption that the general public doesn't understand, then who says that the government understands? Is the government more clever than the general public? Do scientists know better than the general public? I think scientists are experts in their domain usually. But does that make them experts in general? Should a scientists in an university decide what's best for people outside university?
[1]: https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-federal-funding-a-momen...
[2]: https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/...
I agree that there's some cause for concern and oversight, and that you're describing an imperfect system that has some natural and potentially unavoidable conflicts of interest.
But I'm just not making the connection to whatever it is that DOGE is doing.
https://docs.x.com/x-api/getting-started/about-x-api
Is the problem that they don't want to pay?
Since X serves German users, X needs to follow German law. Since German law says researchers need to be able to access data, the researchers tried to get the data. X says no (breaking the laws), so now they continue with the correct pipeline for getting the data anyways.
If this all sounds new and foreign to you, checkout the Digital Services Act (DSA) which seems to be the directive they're using for requesting the data.
Subscribing to Pro and using the API would be like admitting X didn't actually break laws here, so not surprising they try to go the right way about this. Not only for themselves, but would make it easier for others in the future when they win.
> This Regulation therefore provides a framework for compelling access to data from very large online platforms and very large online search engines to vetted researchers affiliated to a research organisation within the meaning of Article 2 of Directive (EU) 2019/790, which may include, for the purpose of this Regulation, civil society organisations that are conducting scientific research with the primary goal of supporting their public interest mission.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
There is a bunch of more mentions of "research" too if you have the free-time to go through it.
But in short; Yes, VLOPs (https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-vlops) need to provide data to researchers, for free.
I've been posting a lot lately about how we (mods) handle this sort of situation. If you didn't see those, here are some starting points:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43051836
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011
If you (or anyone) take a look at those and the links they point to, and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.