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Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

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Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#121
post #48

Its a time of political upheaval worldwide. Nationalists are rising or at least becoming more vocal in at least Britain, India, United States, Austria, Germany, Korea, and Japan. They are direct threats to the established status quo. Censoring their political speech will cause a "Streisand Effect" and only further galvanize a backlash against the establishment. Social Media will probably be broken up by country (Ex.…

Not all of these protests or nationalism were organic, they were engineered by Russia. ex) Brexit There is increasing number of evidence that points to the ex-KGB officer now leading a nuclear armed 2.5 world country. If they can pull one on the US, the rest of Eastern Europe, or frankly any country facing an authoritarian government will face this new 'hybrid war'--combining cyberattacks, psy-ops on social media and…

> Not all of these protests or nationalism were organic, they were engineered by Russia. ex) Brexit

Nothing scares me more than unfalsifiable claims like this. "The vote didn't go my way, so it must have been illegitimate. If only people weren't entranced by Russian propaganda! My side would have won!"

Truly disgusting. We're already seeing justifications for limiting speech. This is a very dark road we're going down.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#122
post #78
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on. More so than the media leaning "left", I think they lean populist. Human interest stories, people falling on hard luck, natural disasters, terrorism. Some of these things 'feel' left-leaning, some 'feel' right-leaning.

>Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on. Quite the opposite actually. As the contemporary left has taken over mainstream culture and turned into the de facto "establishment" that it originally railed against, it's grown intellectually soft and dishonest. Both sides play to populist emotional appeals and sentiments, but the left-wing outrage industry…

This article?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-cri...

In no way, shape or form does that "bemoan" efforts to fight _serious_ crime in changing neighborhoods. It DOES take into account the impact of gentrification on the less affluent residents. Is actually discussing that impact considered "liberal"?

If you want to criticize liberalism honestly, then you probably shouldn't grossly mischaracterize your evidence.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's human nature, but I wouldn't call that reality. Humans have to adapt or progress to survive. I think OP here was referring to things like global warming, it's a reality, but many (most?) conservatives in the United States believe it isn't happening. Another example is creationism. 60% of Republicans believe we were created by God 10,000 years ago, and evolution played no role. Yet, we know this isn't tru…

I would consider myself centrist (which is conservative by Silicon Valley standards). Personally, I believe global warming to be real, but I find the alarmism to be an exercise in popular histrionics. I remember being a kid in 1992 and being told that by this point in my life I would have to wear a special suit because the hole in the ozone layer would get so bad the suns rays would start frying us. The same is happe…

We addressed the ozone depletion problem by banning CFCs. It didn't magically go away. The issue of global warming has yet to be addressed.

You probably recall being told about endangered species when you were a kid too. The fact that they still exist does not indicate that you experienced alarmism but that people actively protected those species.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#124
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on. Quite the opposite actually. As the contemporary left has taken over mainstream culture and turned into the de facto "establishment" that it originally railed against, it's grown intellectually soft and dishonest. Both sides play to populist emotional appeals and sentiments, but the left-wing outrage industry…

The left has not taken over anything. We have lived in a very conservative, anti public services regime since the early 1980s. Rollbacks and defunding public schools, health and infrastructure has been on the basis that media has systematically attacked taxation and public spending as wasteful while military spending never seems to be targeted like other social programmes. We have stop perpetuating this narrative tha…

>The left has not taken over anything.

I specifically said that the dominant culture is left - and it most certainly is, not the economic order.

Virtually every major newspaper in every major city is left-leaning, almost every single cable news network, and all the major tech giants, who are a gateway to content, are undeniably liberal. And academia...well that goes without saying - half are card carrying communists, while the other half are in the ballpark.

In fact, it's heresy to even be conservative at most major tech companies.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#125

Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15790687 To some extent it's still going on. Protests are still happening (and it's really bad) so lately I've been noticing a bunch of - what I think are - shill accounts. Couple of days before I went through some of the posts in news post about the protests and identified several profiles with no personal pictures, no posts, posting in broken Romanian about: - ant…

How do you know what goes on outside of your direct perception anyway? It used to be conventional media channels and they would print what was arguably propaganda, but there wouldn't be any Russian trolls to poke holes in it. Imagine if the Iraq WMD story broke now. All those Russian trolls spamming Facebook running around saying it was bullshit. That would be total chaos! Why don't people trust the mainstream? The r…

When the Iraq WMD situation unfolded, it was met with plenty of skepticism. “MSM” gave it air time, but it was overcome by the deception of the administration at the time, e.g., Sec. Powell’s statements and the cherry-picked CIA assessment.

Your example actually undermines your argument.

If anything, we need honest actors around to poke holes in narratives produced by authorities, not ones with the goal of weakening society.

This goes for nations that experience interference from the US as well. It makes sense that Iranian society should protect itself from covert US attempts at influence.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#126
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on. Quite the opposite actually. As the contemporary left has taken over mainstream culture and turned into the de facto "establishment" that it originally railed against, it's grown intellectually soft and dishonest. Both sides play to populist emotional appeals and sentiments, but the left-wing outrage industry…

The left has not taken over anything. We have lived in a very conservative, anti public services regime since the early 1980s. Rollbacks and defunding public schools, health and infrastructure has been on the basis that media has systematically attacked taxation and public spending as wasteful while military spending never seems to be targeted like other social programmes. We have stop perpetuating this narrative tha…

ISPs, in basically every conversation about net neutrality for the last two weeks.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#127
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on. Quite the opposite actually. As the contemporary left has taken over mainstream culture and turned into the de facto "establishment" that it originally railed against, it's grown intellectually soft and dishonest. Both sides play to populist emotional appeals and sentiments, but the left-wing outrage industry…

The left has not taken over anything. We have lived in a very conservative, anti public services regime since the early 1980s. Rollbacks and defunding public schools, health and infrastructure has been on the basis that media has systematically attacked taxation and public spending as wasteful while military spending never seems to be targeted like other social programmes. We have stop perpetuating this narrative tha…

The media is biased towards the left because they chose to promote the neoliberal who said she'd back a $12.50 minimum wage versus the one who said starve.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand why people put Fox News and MSNBC on the same pedestal. Fox News is an an outreach of Trump's political apparatchik. MSNBC was never particularly close to Obama.

Why are people downvoting this? What is incorrect here?

Fox News is following its viewers’ sentiment; it originally favored anti-Trump stories prior to his nomination by the Republican Party.

Now it pushes the Trump line, but this is due to the fact that Fox News rightly recognizes that its viewers want their biases confirmed.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#129
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left has not taken over anything. We have lived in a very conservative, anti public services regime since the early 1980s. Rollbacks and defunding public schools, health and infrastructure has been on the basis that media has systematically attacked taxation and public spending as wasteful while military spending never seems to be targeted like other social programmes. We have stop perpetuating this narrative tha…

>The left has not taken over anything. I specifically said that the dominant culture is left - and it most certainly is, not the economic order. Virtually every major newspaper in every major city is left-leaning, almost every single cable news network, and all the major tech giants, who are a gateway to content, are undeniably liberal. And academia...well that goes without saying - half are card carrying communists,…

> In fact, it's heresy to even be conservative at most major tech companies.

I've found more self-professed libertarians in this field than I've found of their left-leaning counterparts.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's human nature, but I wouldn't call that reality. Humans have to adapt or progress to survive. I think OP here was referring to things like global warming, it's a reality, but many (most?) conservatives in the United States believe it isn't happening. Another example is creationism. 60% of Republicans believe we were created by God 10,000 years ago, and evolution played no role. Yet, we know this isn't tru…

I would consider myself centrist (which is conservative by Silicon Valley standards). Personally, I believe global warming to be real, but I find the alarmism to be an exercise in popular histrionics. I remember being a kid in 1992 and being told that by this point in my life I would have to wear a special suit because the hole in the ozone layer would get so bad the suns rays would start frying us. The same is happe…

There was a global effort to eliminate causes of ozone layer depletion. It took a significant amount of political will and resources to ensure that we'd get to the point we are at today[1].

The people crying wolf back then prevented us from depleting the ozone layer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Public_policy

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