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WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

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Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The winning candidate spent significantly less money in this instance. Also I tend to agree with Citizens United. Unions and Corporations should be allowed to express their views on a candidate. If there is someone running for office and making a BS claim about steel workers, I would want steelworkers unions to have the right to advertise and inform me that it is BS. Also if you get into issue based stuff, it becomes…

The winning candidate won by something like negative three million votes. What other country would consider that a democratic outcome?

In Canada the Government is occasionally elected without the majority of votes. It is also where the Prime Minister is simply the "first among the caucus" and not elected in a separate election.

These are referred to as "minority" Governments.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The winning candidate spent significantly less money in this instance. Also I tend to agree with Citizens United. Unions and Corporations should be allowed to express their views on a candidate. If there is someone running for office and making a BS claim about steel workers, I would want steelworkers unions to have the right to advertise and inform me that it is BS. Also if you get into issue based stuff, it becomes…

The winning candidate won by something like negative three million votes. What other country would consider that a democratic outcome?

[deleted]

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The winning candidate spent significantly less money in this instance. Also I tend to agree with Citizens United. Unions and Corporations should be allowed to express their views on a candidate. If there is someone running for office and making a BS claim about steel workers, I would want steelworkers unions to have the right to advertise and inform me that it is BS. Also if you get into issue based stuff, it becomes…

The winning candidate won by something like negative three million votes. What other country would consider that a democratic outcome?

Any other country where the election isn't based on the nationwide popular vote.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, I think that for a certain subset of the electorate, voting Trump was highly rational from a game theoretic perspective, and the worse Trump is, the better he serves this purpose. So I don’t need to hand Wave the emotional reasons.

I'd like you to elaborate more on the game theory aspect. My personal opinion along those lines is that people looked to Trump as a bull in a china shop. The "system" was so corrupt that the only solution was to send someone in who would wreck it from the inside. It would be disingenuous to be upset now that he's broken some plates. While I don't think this is the majority of Trump voters it anecdotally appears to be…

Imagine you live in a room with an investment banker. Every day, $100 appears in the room and the investment banker decides how much you get to keep. Every year, you get to decide whether or not to push a button that sprays rancid feces on both of you.

On Day 1, the banker lets you keep $30. He keeps this $30 for another 10 years. Then, he starts cutting your share by 2 pennies per week ($1 per year). It’s annoying but not too bad, but you don’t want to be covered in feces so you don’t push the button.

A decade later, you’ve only got $20. A decade after that, $10. Five years later, only $5 out of every $100.

At some point, it becomes strategic to push the button. Sure, your life sucks and having your tattered clothes covered in feces doesn’t help. But the banker in the bespoke suit is harmed more, and might rethink his allocation tomorrow.

And when you do push that button, the stinkier the feces, the better.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The winning candidate spent significantly less money in this instance. Also I tend to agree with Citizens United. Unions and Corporations should be allowed to express their views on a candidate. If there is someone running for office and making a BS claim about steel workers, I would want steelworkers unions to have the right to advertise and inform me that it is BS. Also if you get into issue based stuff, it becomes…

The winning candidate won by something like negative three million votes. What other country would consider that a democratic outcome?

Because it was not a popular vote. And people voting were aware it was not a popular vote.

You cannot divine now how many would-be Trump voters in blue states stayed home versus would-be Clinton voters in red states.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#216

It's quite ironic that this is the man who sold WhatsApp and its enormous userbase to facebook, creating a total lock in to the facebook ecosystem for many who do not even use facebook. He would have known what kind of a company facebook is, so I don't understand the contradiction between selling Whatsapp to them and now caring about these issues. Anyway, I am still glad he's getting behind the #deletefacebook moveme…

Jan's commitment to privacy motivated WhatsApp. Jan and Acton always have believed in it strongly. That said, if your company has 50 people, and FB offers nearly $20B. How exactly do you tell those people that you refused an acquisition that huge, because you personally feel that FB is bad. Could you deprive an engineer who has worked his ass off for 4 years >$100M? Anyway, I was contracting for WhatsApp, when the ac…

Lot's of engineers work their asses off for far less than $100M.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you just not paying attention to the Mueller investigation? There's like five guilty pleas by now. Is that just a nothing burger? Seriously, what do you think that's all about? If you want a timeline of events you can go here[0] or here[1], but something tells me you won't accept these... [0]: https://www.politico.com/trump-russia-ties-scandal-guide/tim... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018…

Your timeline is a list of accusations. You’ve provided no evidence to support your claim of Russian’s interfering with the election. More importanly: why should I care about Russians interfering with elections when we let corporations do that to a far greater extent?

How, exactly, are you defining evidence?

I assume you don't mean in the P(A|B) > P(A) sense?

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#218
post #86

Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump. I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to exp…

There are tens of millions who would vote for trump no matter what, and I literally mean no matter what. No candidate has ever got less than ~40% of the popular vote in recent times. So that fact, that "tens of millions voted for Trump after all", tells us squat.

And besides that, the allegations being made are extremely serious, an utter threat to democracy, and they are to be taken so independently of any other factors.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#219
post #86

Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump. I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to exp…

> tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump. People voted for Trump, but that is hardly an indication of love. Consider that this prior election was between two of the most despised (and possibly incompetent) candidates in US presidential history. If you don't want to repeat this fiasco stop supporting a divisive two party system. Yes, it was the internal mechanics of each party that picked candid…

> stop supporting a divisive two party system.

I wish we could move to a constitutional republic with a dose of direct democracy a bit like Switzerland.

Otherwise even with more parties we would see parties forming coalitions and continuing to sideline a significant minority of the population. See the anti-immigration parties being ignored in Western Europe for a good example.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#220
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One note: fair and square by your interpretation of "fair", maybe. But the country as a whole uses its laws to interpret fair, and the important allegations are that the Trump campaign broke those laws by directly communicating with this agency.

"In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends." [0] The only real difference between what was done here and then was how it was represented to the users. [0]: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...

The other major difference (and reason for the uproar) the data was potentially given as a campaign contribution which would have violated Federal election laws. That's the issue. That wasn't the case with the Obama campaigns app.
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