Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#211

Post by SauciestGNU » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:23 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #149

hackbinary wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how do you explain the successive insanely excessive right wing governments in the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia over the last 30-40 years? Have you even read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky? What do you even mean by conservative? Liberal? You do realise that liberal and liberalism means keeping the government out of people's lives. The USA is a liberal nation by definition, for example 'The separatio…

> insanely excessive right wing governments in Canada Calling anyone who disagrees with your political philosophy "insane" is....I don't even know what word to use. EDIT: Perhaps instead of a downvote, you could give a few examples of the insanely excessive things right wing governments in Canada have done recently (extraordinary claims and all that....).

The biggest thing that comes to mind (as a non-Canadian) was the Harper government banning scientists from making public statements. It's as if they knew all evidence contradicted the policy they were trying to enact, so rather than enact better policy they just decided to silence anyone who could provide evidence of their malfeasance.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#212

Post by codeisawesome » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:05 AM UTC

It is indeed very interesting to consider that the vast majority of internet enabled people across the world don’t read Hacker News, don’t read Bloomberg editorials - they just check their Facebook feed...

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#213

Post by scrollaway » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:05 AM UTC

JSONwebtoken wrote: post #191

jancsika wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating two very different concepts. The mantra is not "journalists are Democrats, owners are Republicans." Cable news and entertainment fawned over Hilary, not Bernie.

Hillary is a democrat, Bernie Sanders is an extremist. So the mantra stands.

As a european it's always funny hearing some americans call Bernie an extremist.

Here he's just an average left-leaning politician, we elect plenty of people like him all the time. US politics are so absurdly shifted right it's mind blowing.

Edit: Does anyone here actually disagree with this or am I just being downvoted because people are upset this is the case?

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#214

Post by wavefunction » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:18 AM UTC

shostack wrote: post #165

wavefunction wrote: post #10

Here's what I don't get. I got back onto facebook about six months ago after deleting my previous account. I was using the account to auth into news article commenting systems. Within 24 hours I apparently had ticked someone off who had reported me, because my account was locked until I scanned a photo ID of myself and uploaded it. If that happened to me, why isn't it happening to _everyone_?

I'm not sure you ticked someone off who reported you vs. tripped an automated check on FB's end that looks at new accounts that use old account identities, and locks them as suspicious (in case they were hacked, or someone trying to steal someone's identity) which is why they request the additional authentication via photo...

I "deleted" my original account via facebook's deletion mechanism. Then, six months later I created another account with the same email address and received a different account (the url to my profile was different).

I commented with this account for a few weeks before getting into a heavy argument with a Trump supporter in a comments thread who even accused me of being a fake account because I had no picture uploaded.

Not saying your scenario isn't plausible, just unlikely.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#215

Post by wavefunction » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:21 AM UTC

tux1968 wrote: post #207

pstuart wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was serious disenfranchisement of voters through onerous laws designed to keep people from voting.

The laws didn't change drastically from the time a few years earlier when all those people managed to get out and elect Obama. That doesn't seem like a deciding factor at all.

Voter ID laws definitely changed. All the kicking people off voting rolls definitely got stepped up.

Quite a few things were different.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#216

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:22 AM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #170

paganel wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are different the closer to Russia a country is (like Romania, from where I'm from). The thing with the fake FB accounts only showing "nice girls" as profile photos is all too real, I think I've reported 2 or 3 of them directly to FB, nothing happened, at which point I started calling them out as shill accounts directly. It's interesting seeing Russian propaganda in action. For Romania they have a website call…

I agree, Russia has invested the most capital toward this tactic, and it has paid off. It also has had more historical success with this “sowing discord” tactic than the US, which preferred to spend money on puppet revolutionaries and coups during the cold war. I would rather that instead of the US government responding in kind with sockpuppets, it would do the much harder work of coming up with an enormous transpare…

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Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#217

Post by heartbreak » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:29 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #201

tajen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m outside USA and studied the election from a feminism axis. Geek as we all are here, I tracked the original studies and discovered that literally every statistics said by feminists, namely Hillary Clinton and Obama, is false. It’s mind blowing, they just misrepresent the studied group, or the hypothesis, they omit a whole part of the study, every-single-time, not a thing from feminists can be trusted. You will bel…

>I tracked the original studies and discovered that literally every statistics said by feminists, namely Hillary Clinton and Obama, is false. Nope. Whenever someone tries to imply that the "enemy" is perfectly evil or malicious, as you are attempting to do here, you can be certain that someone is trying to propagandize you. I'm going to be charitable per HN guidelines and assume you're not commenting in bad faith, bu…

Not to mention that someone who has studied this alleged phenomenon as much as the commenter claims would be less reluctant to post evidence in support of the allegation.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#218

Post by MaysonL » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:31 AM UTC

MaysonL wrote: post #172

Helmet wrote: 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…

If you want a case study of how the Republican party has sunk to extreme dunk-on-ability, read the Twitter feeds of David Frum, Bill Kristol, and Rick Wilson: three stalwart Republicans.

Curious about the reasons for downvotes. In case I wasn't clear, those three are very critical of the current Republican party, especially the current administration

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#219

Post by killjoywashere » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:49 AM UTC

Facebook is different. Their leadership has clearly aligned with the Republican party on an operational level. Remember, Zuckerberg gave King Bush the Second his first big public engagement after his retirement. People who support Democrats may use the machinery of Facebook, but when Facebook wants steer the machine, they steer it, ever so slowly and quietly, toward Lakoff's strong father, and away from his nurturant parent.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#220

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:54 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #144

jancsika wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating two very different concepts. The mantra is not "journalists are Democrats, owners are Republicans." Cable news and entertainment fawned over Hilary, not Bernie.

The error is in thinking Hillary is majorly opposed to the Republican agenda. A lot of Bernie supporters switched camps to Trump, as insane as that may sound. The rich would continue to accumulate more money either way, more war in the Middle East, etc. I viewed Trump as kind of a last ditch hail Mary, which seems to have been a bad guess in retrospect.

[deleted]