Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 732 posts

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#531

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

bengold14 wrote: post #119
emmo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time wrote an article openly gloating about it: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

Like.. did you read the article? Gloating about how all of America's labor and corporate leaders came together to save democracy? Such a conspiracy that citizens from opposing camps were so concerned about Trumps unfounded election lies that they opposed them uniformly.

Not sure if you are sarcastic or not, but unifying labor and business interests has been the (successful) strategy of the Democratic Party for 30 years. Bill Clinton was the trailblazer of the strategy, and maligned for it from the more anti-business left.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#532

Post by DubiousPusher »

throwaway4good wrote: post #305
benreesman wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it's worth keeping in mind that no matter what you think of their morals (that's a whole other debate for a whole other comment thread), people who have helmed sometime trillion-dollar companies for decades aren't in general stupid , and it would be fantastically stupid to make serious enemies of any candidate in any high-impact political race: if you load the boat on that and guess wrong you're going to…

Yes. Agreed and I also think fb overplayed their hand and got too friendly with republicans. However when Zuckerberg goes on Joe Rogan assume things are carefully planned and rehearsed; and a statement/story like this is intended and the politics of it is well understood. So I guess they are doubling down.

Zuckerberg is admitting that they throttled the Hunter Biden story. How is that "good" for Republicans? And to be clear, my personal perspective highly aligns with your own and that of, benreesman. I think all these decisions are highly calculated and that partisanship and personal convictiom rank very low in CEO calculus.

My firm belief which I've expressed elsewhere on HN is that if you want "good" bahavior out of corporations you must use the political system, preferably your functioning democracy, to compel it out of them.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#533

Post by kurupt213 »

I don’t understand why Facebook is getting the negative attention instead of the FBI.

This is a classic example of an entity in a position of power abusing said power. How is this different from sexual extortion for a promotion.

I don’t care how rich your company is, the FBI comes knocking, the obvious response is to acquiesce to avoid issues with the federal government

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#534

Post by DubiousPusher »

throwaway4good wrote: post #255
throwaway4good wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t Zuckerberg implicitly support trump at one point? (What he is doing here certainly supports trump.) In the hope trump would ban TikTok. I thought that was why the Biden admin put Facebook in the doghouse.

I was referring to stories like this (there are others as well): https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo... Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’ ” one campaign director said.

I don't think this signals any implicit Republican alignment. While firms like these often end up working more on one side of the aisle than the other they're usually not all that obsessed with their own ideology. They end up working on the side they do, usually because they start out of a campaign operation and then their connections mostly stem from that work.

Facebook pprobably used them because the firm has operations in the soecific media markets Facebook wanted to target. They probably leaned towards a political ad company because they wanted something that combined ads and opposition research (dirt digging) which political advertisers are especially known for.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#536

Post by naasking »

dinom wrote: post #495
naasking wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privately owned public squares exist.

Rest assured that next time I'm arrested for trespassing I won't be calling you for legal advice.

Good because I'm not a lawyer, but what I said is still true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#537

Post by fnfjcu7 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #343
andy_ppp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What he’s saying is extremely muddled, I think he’s just ham fisted-ly trying to say “the truth got out there eventually” rather than “our process was as good as a criminal trial and whatever the FBI says constitutes absolute truth until it’s disproven”. I’m really not sure what Facebook should do in this situation, it’s really tricky for them.

What truth got out? This still seems like an enormous effort to prove that Hunter Biden is a dirtbag, which was already proven for years. Like didn't he sleep with his brother's widow and stuff like that? Obviously they want to use the sins of the son to tarnish the father, but if there was actual proof of some sort of wrong-doing, it'd still be the number one story on Fox News every day. So really you just get to co…

When the father starts boasting at conferences on video about using Whitehouse aid money to extort Ukraine into removing the prosecutor going after his son I think maybe the sons business dealings found on said laptop referencing including money for the father multiple times might be worth taking into account?

All this was on Fox. A lot. Maybe you weren't watching?

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#538

Post by cloutchaser »

damontal wrote: post #413

Why did he go on Rogan? What was the motivation?

After the mar-a-lago raid the fbi has written itself off almost completely for republican voters.

Zuck is positioning himself as victim of government and the fbi, and trying to win points with the right. He needs to do this because November will bring a red wave and the next president will almost certainly be red.

Appearing like a democrat ally at this point is suicide for Facebook in 2 years. He needs to repair relations.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#539

Post by darepublic »

papito wrote: post #359
darepublic wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then when say the government is lying about something and the curators keep curating out the pertinent details, suddenly you need to go to such a tough place to find the truth

I would like to hear one example. One . Which "truth" did you find out on 8chan that the government lied about?

Not about 8chan I mean a place where there is no censorship. It is not a guarantee of truth but sometimes a prerequisite

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#540

Post by throwaway4good »

someguydave wrote: post #401
throwaway4good wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Agreed and I also think fb overplayed their hand and got too friendly with republicans. However when Zuckerberg goes on Joe Rogan assume things are carefully planned and rehearsed; and a statement/story like this is intended and the politics of it is well understood. So I guess they are doubling down.

What is your evidence of Facebook’s pro-republican bias?

I link to an example below.

Actually I don’t think they are pro republican. It is just pure (dirty) business - in this case how to get their main competitor banned.

Just as I don’t think Zuckerberg was a communist or anything of the sort when he went to China and asked Xi Jinping to be godfather for his children.

Post reply on HN