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Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

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Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#161

Post by tomhoward »

r00fus wrote: post #154
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?

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

That's not bullying.

That's an ego-driven 19-year-old geek, lamely boasting to friends.

A rather large proportion of people were once ego-driven 19-year-olds lamely boasting to friends. I sure was.

Certainly, every 19-year-old has an under-developed prefrontal cortex and thus makes decisions driven much more by emotion than rationality [1].

But only due to achieving vast success, do people like Zuckerburg have people continually using comments from their adolescence to smear their reputation when they're well into their 30s.

It occurs to me that it's the same kind-of ego-driven smugness that motivated 19-year-old Zuck to make that comment, that motivates his detractors to keep raising it 14 years later in order to make themselves feel morally superior to him.

Zuck may have grown up, become a father, embraced spirituality and turned much of his attention to philanthropy, yet his critics continue to be fixated on this one lame comment by a 19-year-old as the "gotcha" that reveals everything about his character.

As dang said a few days ago [2], there are many valid bases on which to critique Facebook and Zuckerberg, but this is not one of them.

[1] https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/02/18/at-what-age-is-the-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616988

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#162

Post by moorhosj »

jessaustin wrote: post #159
moorhosj wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==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!

Can you explain your false equivalency a little better, I'm not sure I follow?

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#163

Post by zamber »

jessaustin wrote: post #90
alwayseasy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ben Shapiro is disingenuous by isolating Facebook data only. It's the combination of illicit Facebook data + fake news + Russia's APT that is at the heart of the problem. The fact that Facebook was warned about this and didn't work to solve their share of the problem is why they are criticized.

Where did the fake news come from, if not from Facebook?

From Russia with love?

Disinformation of the public and spreading antagonizing rumor as fact was not invented yesterday. Assume all allegations and rumors are true, ride with it and see who looks more genuine.

Trump was destined for winning. His allure is not based on respect but grandiose dreams embedded in a nostalgic slogan. Without a politically-loaded surname he took the media by the balls and rode with it.

My best guess as an outsider is that he found people apt at selling stuff and sold to the public he was. Personal defamation ("grab them by the", buffoon, meme-made-president) is a minuscule issue in the eye of the public compared to a classified information leak scandal, "Don't forget Benghazi" and poor health rumors.

Hillary IMHO was counting on an idealistic, emancipated America when the people were rather leaning towards isolationism and making America greater than the competition.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#164

Post by jessaustin »

moorhosj wrote: post #162
jessaustin wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Can you explain your false equivalency a little better, I'm not sure I follow?

It's a simple question. When Trump complained that his campaign had been wiretapped, was he correct or was he incorrect?

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#165

Post by humanrebar »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #64
humanrebar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. Well, it was certainly an incident of corruption and/or incompetence. People do (and should) get fired for mishandling sensitive information. Maybe the HN community in general wants to give Clinton a pass on it, but investigating facts that illustrate the character and competence of presidential candidates is certainly newsworthy. There was…

I yearn for the Obama days when this and Beghasi were the biggest scandals that anyone could come up with. Now it’s collusion, financial opacity in business dealings, sex with playmates, etc... it really is too much.

Well, Obama's policies were plenty controversial if people wanted to fight about politics.

You're also leaving out Guantanamo, assassination of American citizens without a trial, and the Fast and the Furious scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal).

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#166

Post by jessaustin »

zamber wrote: post #163
jessaustin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did the fake news come from, if not from Facebook?

From Russia with love? Disinformation of the public and spreading antagonizing rumor as fact was not invented yesterday. Assume all allegations and rumors are true, ride with it and see who looks more genuine. Trump was destined for winning. His allure is not based on respect but grandiose dreams embedded in a nostalgic slogan. Without a politically-loaded surname he took the media by the balls and rode with it. My b…

You're mostly right, I think, but I never actually heard Clinton articulate a theory of why someone would vote for her. Everyone had their own personal reason to vote for (or against) her, which one supposes is emblematic of our long-tail data-driven time, but did she ever come out and say e.g. "this is my vision of an idealist, emancipated America"?

I agree with you that such a vision is kind of a hard sell when compared with "Build the Wall!", "Lock her Up", and "Jobs!". Only the last of those base slogans ever appealed to me (not enough to make me vote for the cretin!), so I'm not disappointed that it's the only one that has happened so far.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#167

Post by moorhosj »

jessaustin wrote: post #164
moorhosj wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your false equivalency a little better, I'm not sure I follow?

It's a simple question. When Trump complained that his campaign had been wiretapped, was he correct or was he incorrect?

We don't know if Trump himself was wiretapped, as he claimed. We do know that at least one of his campaign advisors had a FISA warrant approved by a federal judge.

I'm not sure what relation this has to the fact that Trump-Russia connections were being investigated prior to the election. That fact is contrary to the comment you made that it only started in order to explain why Hillary lost. Have you ceded that false premise yet or are we just moving on to the next deflection?

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#168

Post by jessaustin »

moorhosj wrote: post #167
jessaustin wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a simple question. When Trump complained that his campaign had been wiretapped, was he correct or was he incorrect?

We don't know if Trump himself was wiretapped, as he claimed. We do know that at least one of his campaign advisors had a FISA warrant approved by a federal judge. I'm not sure what relation this has to the fact that Trump-Russia connections were being investigated prior to the election. That fact is contrary to the comment you made that it only started in order to explain why Hillary lost. Have you ceded that false…

Never mind; you're better at this game than I am. b^)

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#169

Post by dalbasal »

Chardok wrote: post #38
dalbasal wrote: post #29

All the terms and templates we are using legally and in the media... they are painting a totally (imo) misleading picture. FB's "crime" is painted as data security. The "criminals" are trump, Bannon, Putin or whoever is alleged to have used this data to "manipulate public opinion." This misses the entire point. FB's business model is based on using large datasets of mundane (in isolation) information in order to "pro…

This article practically comes off as apologetic for Facebook and absolutely ignores the point of outrage for a lot of people. Great example of language designed to lead. "Facebook, of course, lets you target exactly those boring, old demographic qualities" - just boring old mundane everyday Facebook. No worries here "To be clear, what Cambridge Analytica did was somewhat worse" - Just a bit worse, but not too far fr…

Exactly what I meant.

This is made possible by the way the issue is framed, as a data security issue. Well, it isn't hard to imagine an identical scenario playing out where no data was "leaked," with everything being legal and normative data collection.

If FB had done with their own data whatever these 3rd parties are alleged to have done... would any laws have been broken?

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#170

Post by mmjaa »

ixtli wrote: post #22
WallWextra wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like how the 2008 election didn't count, because Obama is actually a Kenyan. People can't just lose an election anymore.

I like to talk about social issues and politics and stuff but the more I do it in public the more I run into what feels like "politics-as-basketball." It's really begun to feel like team sports as opposed to a critical analysis of conditions and power analysis.

Dialectic Materialism has been Weaponised.

People think that because they are capable of pitching an anti-synthesis against a synthesis, they are intelligent - whereas nothing could be further from the truth. If you can't get out of the pro-vs-con mindset you are stuck in a trap designed to ensure you don't think beyond the curve, outside the event horizon of 'generally approved thought-process' society.

People need to be given uncomfortable positions to evaluate. Just maybe, its important to not discount the conspiracies and realise that in fact truth is stranger than fiction ..

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