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Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#151

Post by jessaustin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #148
jessaustin wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terms that don't appear in everyone's favorite bill: "voter-verified", "open-source" (not sure why Gabbard has that hyphen), "preservation". On the other hand, it does begin with "It is the sense of Congress that, in light of the lessons learned from Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election..." so it ought to play well with the military-intelligence-enforcement-industrial-media complex. If Gabbard someh…

> Terms that don't appear in everyone's favorite bill: "voter-verified", "open-source" (not sure why Gabbard has that hyphen), "preservation". HR 5011, rather than trying to cobble together a bandaid over hackable electronic voting systems, has its central mitigation the voting system problem (it addresses more election infrastructure than just ballot-casting) incentives and grants to get rid of electronic voting alt…

Gabbard's bill is also about paper ballots, only it says "shall require" rather than "here are some grants if you want them". Also, the popular bill says nothing about voter verification or ballot preservation, so it brings us back to Florida 2000 all over again. Love those hangin' chads!

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#152

Post by jessaustin »

germinalphrase wrote: post #136
adventured wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've gotten older and have seen enough side switches, I've found it increasingly astounding to watch how predictably the partisans memory wipe themselves about XYZ terrible thing that their side did. Now that the bad side - the side they're not on - is in power, they must protest that same XYZ thing. It's said that Trump is terrible with journalists (he is). And there's Obama's quiet, terrifying war on journalists…

This is not a defense of the behavior - but it's been strongly asserted that Obama's crackdown on whistleblowers and journalists has more to do with improved abilities to track document access and sharing than it does the explicit desire to confront whistleblowers and journalists. All presidents have wanted to minimize whistleblowing and critical journalism, we just have better tools to understand just who, exactly,…

Yeah that sounds like everything else we've heard from NSA: "We can, so we will."

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#153

Post by jessaustin »

macintux wrote: post #125
equalunique wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this sound like Ukraine

Ukraine is neither small nor NATO, but...yeah.

Estonia are cool, but they know they need to stay on good terms with their neighbors. John McCain doesn't run things anymore.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#154

Post by r00fus »

hanspeter wrote: post #116
scardine wrote: post #2

Oh, poor Mark! Such a patsy is the perfect scapegoat. /s The company he founded reflects his work ethics. Personally I don't care that much when the bully starts being bullied. You reap what you sow.

This sentiment confuses me. Why do people dislike Zuckerberg by default? How does it happen that anyone sees him as a bully?

Exemplar:

http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#155

Post by jessaustin »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #110
jessaustin wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. The first scandal was easy for voters to see: closing Gitmo was kind of Obama's thing, from the very beginning of the primaries. The second scandal required a fair amount of investigation, but that investigation was fairly legible to voters. The third requires voters to believe what they're told by unnamed sources: thus far no one will go on the record with any proof of anything. The fourth should be easy…

> The first scandal was easy for voters to see: closing Gitmo was kind of Obama's thing, from the very beginning of the primaries. Campaign promises are usually seen as best effort. Are we still waiting for Mexico to pay for that wall? > The second scandal required a fair amount of investigation, but that investigation was fairly legible to voters. Yes, it is very straight forward and the FBI went over it multiple ti…

I don't really disagree with any of that, with the exception of the wishful thinking about the next two elections. It just seems that this whole thing was conjured up to explain an event that didn't need explaining. It isn't surprising that one unpopular candidate beat some other unpopular candidate, when the winner was on TV all the time. The surprising thing was that he didn't win by more, but that may be because people pay less attention to TV news than they used to.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#156

Post by jessaustin »

PunchTornado wrote: post #144
dwild wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you forget the fake news during the election? I'm from Quebec and I remember being ashamed to learn that some people near I lived made a living pushing fake news website just with the help of Google Ads on these pages. They made a profit with fake news. Do you see now how much cheaper it is to push a fake narrative that people want to believe? The share button is the cheapest ad campaign you can ever hope for. Yo…

The deal here is the "want to believe". People who believed those faked news were voting for Trump anyway. It takes a lot to switch from Democrat to Conservative, not just some news that you read on the net. Political opinions are not that fluid and don't change easy.

The theory is that it's about turnout. You want to demoralize opponents' supporters and energize your own.

I agree with you, though. If Vlad can swing our elections by posting shit on social media, then he absolutely should. All those gun-hating Europeans we hear from constantly should, as well: I'll have to turn in my rifle by this time next year. Any other person, anywhere should voice her own opinions about our elections. That is fundamental to our system of government. When we made a list of important rights, that one came First. The news media liked that, back when they had different concerns than they have now.

The preceding notwithstanding, Facebook is horrible.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#157

Post by moorhosj »

jessaustin wrote: post #155
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first scandal was easy for voters to see: closing Gitmo was kind of Obama's thing, from the very beginning of the primaries. Campaign promises are usually seen as best effort. Are we still waiting for Mexico to pay for that wall? > The second scandal required a fair amount of investigation, but that investigation was fairly legible to voters. Yes, it is very straight forward and the FBI went over it multiple ti…

I don't really disagree with any of that, with the exception of the wishful thinking about the next two elections. It just seems that this whole thing was conjured up to explain an event that didn't need explaining. It isn't surprising that one unpopular candidate beat some other unpopular candidate, when the winner was on TV all the time. The surprising thing was that he didn't win by more, but that may be because p…

==It just seems that this whole thing was conjured up to explain an event that didn't need explaining.==

It might seem like this if you ignore lots of facts. Comey started the investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016. Hillary point-blank called Trump a Russian puppet during a debate in October 2016. Both of these events happened before the election, your assertion doesn't match the history.

Edit: It was also big news when the RNC platformed changed to a more pro-Russia stance. Again, before the election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trum...

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#158

Post by davvolun »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #138
davvolun wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting corollary... Hanlon's razor applies to sentencing, but not to guilt.

"It depends", some offenses require malice, some can driven by negligence and ignorance alone. I'm not sure what category the Hatch Act is in.

I suppose I should say, "Hanlon's Razor often applies to sentencing, only occasionally to guilt"

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#159

Post by jessaustin »

moorhosj wrote: post #157
jessaustin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really disagree with any of that, with the exception of the wishful thinking about the next two elections. It just seems that this whole thing was conjured up to explain an event that didn't need explaining. It isn't surprising that one unpopular candidate beat some other unpopular candidate, when the winner was on TV all the time. The surprising thing was that he didn't win by more, but that may be because p…

==It just seems that this whole thing was conjured up to explain an event that didn't need explaining.== It might seem like this if you ignore lots of facts. Comey started the investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016. Hillary point-blank called Trump a Russian puppet during a debate in October 2016. Both of these events happened before the election, your assertion doesn't match the history. Edit: It was als…

Wasn't the first FISA request in June '16? Much earlier than most wiretapping of presidential candidates by administrations of the other wing of the status quo party!

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#160

Post by hanspeter »

908087 wrote: post #150
hanspeter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sentiment confuses me. Why do people dislike Zuckerberg by default? How does it happen that anyone sees him as a bully?

What does "dislike by default" mean? Are you implying that people don't actually have reasons to dislike him based on the actions of himself and his company through the years? It's not like people just decided "I don't know who Mark Zuckerberg is yet, but I despise him".

It seems that anything praiseworthy Zuckerberg does never generates praise. On the other hand any opportunity to criticize him is always exercised.
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