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Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

politico.com

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Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#321

Post by this_user »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #246
chrisco255 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrealized gains taxes is an extractive and totalitarian tax. Someone is always risking 100% loss until they realize those gains. It's an affront to entrepreneurial risk-taking and it's capricious. It would be just as ridiculous to allow someone to write-off unrealized losses.

Well when you have over 100m in assets in your pile of gold in the dragon lair, its time to be extractive.

Nobody with assets over 100m has a "pile of gold", as you put it. Those assets are always productively invested in some form or another. But you would prefer that those investments be pulled, because the government are clearly much better at employing those assets productively?

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#322

Post by ensignavenger »

spacemanspiff01 wrote: post #243
_heimdall wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, though that is the hope. This wouldn't directly close the loophole, its meant to be attempt to block it without actually closing it. A huge question I have here is how unrealized gains on nonfinancial assets would be handles. How would the government determine the fair market value of a multimillion dollar mansion, for example? More broadly, how would we justify only taxing unrealized gains on indivi…

With regards to the mansion, doesn't the (state) government already do that with property taxes?

Property tax assessments are rarely fair market value. They are at best a very gross approximation.

But yes, a tax on "unrealized gains" basically amounts to a property tax, not anything related to an income tax.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#323

Post by datavirtue »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #218
cempaka wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

He must have a fantastic PR team. Across the political spectrum, I'm seeing a ton of support for him. Decades of harvesting and selling personal data (including shadow profiles of non-users), "I don't know why people trust me", Cambridge Analytica, the metaverse/attempt at owning the future of the internet- all swept under the rug in exchange for open Llama weights and a couple statements about censorship. Musk could…

Zuck has donated piles of money to key organizations. The left will not report anything critical of anything Meta. Bread is buttered.

Like when Walmart shows up in a town and starts donating before applying for permits.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#324

Post by rv3909i »

sealeck wrote: post #305
rv3909i wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know you have over 100m in assets? One never really knows the worth of something until it's sold. (i.e. try selling a used car. there's what you think it's worth and what you get...) And once the asset is sold, that's a taxable event.

> How do you know you have over 100m in assets? If your bank determines that assets you post for collateral are worth 100mn or more, that's a pretty good indication.

So if I don't apply for a loan, I don't get assessed, which means I don't pay taxes? Anyway, the system is not that simple and bank assessment would be trivial to game. People do it now even without taxes on the line...

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#325

Post by drawkward »

jpadkins wrote: post #201
kmeisthax wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech billionaires kissing up to the far right isn't going to decrease censorship. Maybe make it more palatable to you.

a coalition that contains RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk are now far right?

[flagged]

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#326

Post by fitsumbelay »

In 2020, the charity he and his wife run donated hundreds of millions of dollars to local US election offices to help cover extra costs related to the pandemic. Conservatives claim, without evidence of course, that those funds skewed election results toward Democratic Party candidates especially in battleground states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. All of Zuckerbergs earned media -- the "inside look" at his mixed martial arts training, riding futuristic surfboards carrying with a giant 'merican flag, pretending to fight with Musk -- a larger and more seasoned uber clown for the ages -- and virtue-signalling on behalf of fRea SpEAcH pRINSSaPuLLz -- is just part of the act

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#327

Post by philipkglass »

feoren wrote: post #294
AlbertCory wrote: post #248

If you want to see what's been "moderated" away from you on Hacker News: Click your username at the upper right: Turn on "showdead": showdead: yes. (defaults to "no") There are a number of dead posts in this thread. I'd post some here (some of which don't appear to violate any HN guidelines, I'll note), but probably those same moderators would kill this one, too.

[Dead] means they've been downvoted to oblivion. Moderators had nothing to do with it -- those were other users on HN. I always browse with "showdead" on and the vast majority of [Dead] posts are awful. They don't need to violate HN Guidelines, they were killed by the community. [Flagged] means it was killed by a moderator. Those are more rare. I don't agree with everything that is flagged but I think HN has a great…

Comments cannot be hidden by downvoting. Comments are marked [flagged] [dead] only after other users have clicked on the timestamp and selected "flag." I think that these things get conflated because comments that tend to attract heavy downvotes also attract flagging. The [flagged] [dead] comments are mostly (entirely?) killed by the actions of ordinary users, not moderators.

Comments that are marked [dead] without the [flagged] indicator are because the user that posted the comment has been banned. For green (new) accounts this can be due to automatic filters that threw up false positives for new accounts. For old accounts this shows that the account has been banned by moderators. Users who have been banned can email hn@ycombinator.com pledging to follow the rules in the future and they'll be granted another chance. Even if a user remains banned, you can unhide a good [dead] comment by clicking on its timestamp and clicking "vouch."

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#328

Post by margalabargala »

AlbertCory wrote: post #288
sangnoir wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN allows everyone with sufficient karma to vouch for dead comments (or flag comments), I suspect most of the comment-level moderation you see is crowdsourced to fellow commenters; a still-dead comment means most of those who see choose to keep it dead. HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); any unmoderated forum devolves into a cesspit; and it only takes a surprisingly few bad apples to…

That's the gospel, for sure. However, look at the dead comments here and, for each, tell us why it would turn HN into a "cesspit."

> However, look at the dead comments here and, for each, tell us why it would turn HN into a "cesspit."

This is an impossible task and you know it. Asking your opponents to enumerate every dead comment on a thread with hundreds of comments is not approaching the issue in good faith.

Looking at a selection of dead comments on this thread, I see flame-baiting on israel/palestine, flame-baiting on trans and racial issues, assorted comments whose content might have been acceptable if it wasn't 40% profanity by wordcount, a bunch of unnecessary personal attacks, and assorted people redefining words and then asserting that only their new definition is the correct one.

I see basically nothing that would improve HN if it were not dead. I see a lot that would make HN actively worse if it were not dead.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#329

Post by Forgeties79 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #288
sangnoir wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN allows everyone with sufficient karma to vouch for dead comments (or flag comments), I suspect most of the comment-level moderation you see is crowdsourced to fellow commenters; a still-dead comment means most of those who see choose to keep it dead. HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); any unmoderated forum devolves into a cesspit; and it only takes a surprisingly few bad apples to…

That's the gospel, for sure. However, look at the dead comments here and, for each, tell us why it would turn HN into a "cesspit."

I'm sure we can pick and choose good/bad examples from every thread, but I for one definitely feel the bar for civility/respect here is way higher than virtually anywhere else, so I'm choosing to believe this current system contributes to that and that the pros outweigh the cons.

After reddit's nonsense last summer I appreciate HN more than ever. If it means the moderation is a bit "too strict" then so be it. That was also the case on some of reddit's (and other sites') best communities. /r/AskHistorians immediately comes to mind.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#330

Post by jhp123 »

onepointsixC wrote: post #229
jhp123 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all seems very easy to deal with. Pay employees cash not equity. Founders can negotiate with investors to take enough cash compensation at each round to cover their tax bill. Investors can use financial instruments to hedge their risk.

That’s an awful idea. Startups need cash that cash, now. Wasting it on tax bills for evaluations that don’t become reality would just make everything worse and reduce runways.

if they need more cash they can sell more stock.

Taxing entrepreneurs will lead to worse outcomes for entrepreneurs. That is obvious. Every tax has a cost. But we need to fund the government and it is not fair for workers to pay for everything while much wealthier investors and entrepreneurs do not.

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