181–190 of 324 posts
My 9 year old watches TikTok, and I've got mixed feelings. My kid is really into videos of other kids telling jokes, making slime, doing puzzles, etc. Frankly I think that's better than the vapid dreck on Disney--and infinitely better than social media, which would just stoke the tweener social drama. (We allow TikTok but not any form of social media.) Obviously there is less age-appropriate content on there too. But…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 'yellow peril' aspect of it was certainly disgusting.
All of Chinese economic activity is subservient to the state, including companies like ByteDance. The information they gather goes back to the state. This is not “yellow peril”, this is “Sino peril” if you must call it something scary sounding. It has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with national security and ideology.
Ideology is just the trash can we are all eating from.
At what point does: - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't - selling your company to Facebook/Meta or product on it hurts your brand and perceived to be immoral Is Facebook/Meta the Tobacco company of our generation? The harmful effects of smoking were covered up for almost a century, much as the impact of mass remote dopamine manipulation is not as prolific.
> - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting you against others who don't Why would it hurt you? They're at the forefront of technical challenges of scaling an immensely popular product and developing internal tooling. These aren't necessarily applicable everywhere, but they're incredibly valuable. If anything, I think the fact that they're working at a place where a very vocal minority of their…
What is a "Republican strategy firm?" A consulting firm with the Republican party as one of their clients? What's the point of making "Republican" so prominent in the article? Is it just to use the negative connotation most WP readers have about the Republican party to malign Facebook a little more? It seems like we're just spectating an op-ed war, and discussing this article as if there's any meaning to it other tha…
> as if there's any meaning to it other than to malign Facebook. I don't think this is malignment, per se: Facebook makes a big show of being a progressive company (internally) with a nominally neutral political outlook. Hiring a Republican strategy firm undermines that image: it demonstrates that, push come to shove, Facebook's commitment to these things is primarily a facade intended to deflect criticism.
Ask any progressive, they will say there's nothing politically neutral about preventing unionization: https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/facebook-workplace-union...
I also don't think people are falling for rainbow capitalism internally or not. I think people generally understand that it is just a show and the only color on the rainbow they care about is green.
Serious question, for those with more experience than me “in the game” running big successful companies: are dirty tactics like this (and worse) par for the course and generally expected, and it’s sort of understood that the outsiders/general public are shielded from it? Or is it actually shocking? It often seems like there’s two “worlds” operating at the same time. In one, there’s outrage and indignation at this sor…
> are dirty tactics like this (and worse) par for the course The details make all the difference. Apple goes on stage and posts misleading graphs about their competition multiple times per year. The latest event showed the M1 Ultra matching an RTX 3090 in performance, yet that’s nowhere close to true in anyone’s testing and the graph was deliberately misleading in dishonest ways (3090 curve was truncated before it re…
I think it’s pretty clear the difference isn’t Apple vs Facebook (e.g. CSAM blowback) but boasting about yourself versus hiring someone to attack a competitor.
An analogous comparison would be if Facebook said their algorithms benefited mental health more than competitors, or if Apple paid to have an op-ed in a newspaper talking about how Intel’s GPU’s might explode or something. The difference is that Apple’s slide was Apple’s slide and any bias was clear. Facebook went through backdoors and PR firms to sway local journalists and congressmen in an actually dark game of chess.
> I’d need to see more evidence that Facebook was deliberately lying to really be concerned about this
That’s the whole point. Facebook wasn’t lying, Targeted Victory was. Take your pick of the evidence:
Firm director’s email:
> get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app
> Campaign operatives were also encouraged to use TikTok’s prominence as a way to deflect from Meta’s own privacy and antitrust concerns.
> rumors of the “devious licks” challenge initially spread on Facebook, not TikTok.
> Targeted Victory worked to spread rumors of the “Slap a Teacher TikTok challenge” in local news… In reality, no such challenge existed on TikTok. Again, the rumor started on Facebook
> In addition to planting local news stories, the firm has helped place op-eds targeting TikTok around the country, especially in key congressional districts.
If that feels like a wall of text, it’s because it is, chock full of specific evidence Targeted Victory was manipulating congressmen and newspapers to report in a way benefitting them, all because they know that the TikTok algorithm is leagues superior and more user curated than their own outrage-bate dumpster fire.
The authors aren’t relying on “anti-Facebook anger” anymore than it’s Facebook’s bed and now they need to lie in it after years of turning the web into a partisan surveillance state. This was a targeted campaign of disinformation ranging far further than one slide on a keynote.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article : "Launched as a Republican digital consulting firm by Zac Moffatt, a digital director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, Targeted Victory ... The firm is one of the biggest recipients of Republican campaign spending, earning more than $237 million in 2020, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Its biggest payments came from national GOP congressional committees and America First Acti…
So, yes, it is nothing more than a consulting firm with the Republican party as one of their clients. The other questions still stand: > What's the point of making "Republican" so prominent in the article? Is it just to use the negative connotation most WP readers have about the Republican party to malign Facebook a little more?
> The firm is one of the biggest recipients of Republican campaign spending, earning more than $237 million in 2020, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Its biggest payments came from national GOP congressional committees and America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC.
What is a "Republican strategy firm?" A consulting firm with the Republican party as one of their clients? What's the point of making "Republican" so prominent in the article? Is it just to use the negative connotation most WP readers have about the Republican party to malign Facebook a little more? It seems like we're just spectating an op-ed war, and discussing this article as if there's any meaning to it other tha…
Letters to the editor and soliciting reporters is considered "bare-knuckle"!?!
>In October, Targeted Victory worked to spread rumors of the “Slap a Teacher TikTok challenge” in local news, touting a local news report on the alleged challenge in Hawaii. In reality, no such challenge existed on TikTok. Again, the rumor started on Facebook, according to a series of Facebook posts first documented by Insider.
I guess this was not communicated to the entire WaPo newsroom...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/06/tiktok-slap...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/10/08/tiktok-t...
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