Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 204 posts

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#111

Post by ellius »

revelation wrote: post #60
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> another mainstream media publication shilling hysterical articles about Russia Imagine if Germany found out that Rocket Internet, a large European venture capital firm, was actually CIA backed. It would be a scandal and a lot of people would need to, rightly, question whether they had been compromised. The problem isn't solely the identity of the backer. It's the surreptitious deployment of state power deep into an…

Compromised? Compromised the shoe retail business? You are going to need some more meat other than James Bond language and a lot of money.

You don’t understand that states covertly use money to exercise power? I’m confused why you’re harping on that word unless you genuinely don’t understand what he’s getting at.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#112

Post by YuriNiyazov »

virtuabhi wrote: post #100
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, I am really confused about what the point that's being made here is. > If a state-backed investor invests in your company, and you don't know about it, that's cause for alarm in itself. Is the only difference between today and yesterday is that yesterday there was no direct evidence that rich people associated ("backed by", "working in" - I am not sure what terminology you prefer to suggest nefariousnes…

> In that case, I am really confused about what the point that's being made here is. I think you are being intentionally ignorant. Maybe you have rationalized that it doesn't matter if the money comes from authoritarian regimes because it pays your bills.

There's no response to your statement that would lead anywhere.

I believe that every American VC fund has objectionable limited partners even when they are not authoritarian regimes and no VC-funded company has clean money coming in. All those Monsanto and Goldman pension funds have to be parked somewhere. The obvious response is that I am deflecting or that "two wrongs don't make a right" or something like that.

The only implication would be that I rationalized away all ethics by working in the industry.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#113

Post by jgome »

jryan49 wrote: post #73
malvosenior wrote: post #36

I’m having a very hard time understanding why anyone would be upset by the Russian government making technology positive investments. Especially technologists! I wish more money was deployed into software development. Russia seems to be a positive influence here.

So if blood money is used to invest in tech to clean it, and make them profit it's okay?

As opposed to the "blood money" invested by the US govt. in technology companies? Do you also have problems with Twitter, Google and Facebook getting money from the US govt.?

Let's not forget, the US govt., both Republicans and Democrats, have directly or indirectly killed millions of people in the last decade...

I don't see you complaining about that "blood money" here or anywhere, though.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#114

Post by pheldagryph »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #106
pheldagryph wrote: post #80

Senate Intelligence Committee has expressed concerns that Jack Dorsey is favoring the Russian government over the United States government. Senator Tom Cotton, CIA Director John Brennan, transcript from Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on June 2016: https://www.cotton.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=414 SENATOR COTTON: I want to discuss cooperation with our Intelligence Community from Silicon Valley, specificall…

Do we have a source on the Wall Street Journal articles Cotton references? More broadly, we would need to know if Dataminr is sharing (a) its full fire hose with RT, or just a subset of it and (b) any data with the subcontractors to the Intelligence Community, in which case we can assume they made a policy decision to not work with state intelligence agencies, misguided as that may be in today's hybrid world. TL; DR…

Good questions. Another I'd add is: are there any contractual/legal requirements preventing these intel subcontractors from proxying the full firehose to CIA? If so, it's possible those requirements would be respected on the government side.

I'm skeptical there would be any practical restrictions in RT's case.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#116

Post by dang »

postramus wrote: post #93
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone who believed yesterday that Milner was not $funded (once again, insert preferred terminology) by the Kremlin is an idiot Then more of us are idiots than you give credit for :). At the very least, I was an idiot and pg was an idiot [1][2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3144475

Without making any specific accusation I would simply point out that the user with whom you have been conversing is present in [1] and playing the “it’s no big deal” card even then.

This crosses into personal attack, even though you don't specify what you're insinuating. That breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you to be civil and assume good faith, so please don't comment like this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#117

Post by jackcosgrove »

I will not dispute anything in this article, and it is discouraging if the allegations are true. However I will point out that an outlet like the NY Times is threatened by Twitter and Facebook financially. I would keep that in mind as to one reason the legacy media have been choosing to report on topics (and they don't always choose to report just what is newsworthy) concerning foreign influence and "fake news" emanating from social media.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#118

Post by davesque »

In a business culture that values growth above all else, is it really any surprise that this happened? American corporations have an ethics problem and we're going to learn our lesson one way or another -- whether it's the easy way or the hard way.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#119

Post by orsenthil »

Everyone knew "Yuri Milner" was a Russian and Russian is not an open system or democracy or system run by a rule of law. Why is the news any surprise now?

What I think is happening is - Russia by bring up these topics in news (in outlets like nytimes) so that it can de-emphasize it's partnership with Trump government and the role it played in bringing that egoist to power.

Post reply on HN