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Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#281

Post by amarant »

ardit33 wrote: post #271
Melatonic wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbolic for sure but I do not think it is naive at all. Facebook has proven many times over they are basically the Mafia of Silicon Valley and nothing they say should be trusted or taken at face value. That being said there are many other threats to western society and while many or most of those will exploit Facebook as much as they can for influence they will continue to exist should Facebook fall.

The Engineering wage raises during 2010-2014 are a huge part due to Facebook back then entering a biding war for talent, which google had to counter which raised comps for everyone. Also, after 2015 you had more companies hitting the fray (Uber, Airbnb, etc). If it wasn't for Facebook, the compensation industry wise would look something like MSFT's comp (pretty low in general). So, for one thing, Meta / Facebook has…

You seem to be conflating Western society with engineering wages in SV. They are not the same, and what's good for one can very much be bad for the other!

I guess you were getting at the Mafia analogue in GP. Perhaps that was an unfortunate analogue, but GP's points were valid, not native.

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#282

Post by dazh »

engineeringwoke wrote: post #165
yunohn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, every HNer religiously reads and memorizes PG’s mediocre essays. There’s no way you could hold the opinion that PR and influence pervade our society, without having read “Submarine”.

> Obviously, every HNer religiously reads and memorizes PG’s mediocre essays. Idk, I like PG. I've read the really long-form pieces like "What I've Done", etc., but from what I gather by following his Twitter, he's less and less defined by creative or unique ideas and has turned towards more standard neo-con, gen X silicon valley. More than anything, there is a noticeable lack of emotional intelligence that doesn't h…

Whose essays do you like? I'm always looking for good writing to read.

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#283

Post by bee_rider »

ardit33 wrote: post #271
Melatonic wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbolic for sure but I do not think it is naive at all. Facebook has proven many times over they are basically the Mafia of Silicon Valley and nothing they say should be trusted or taken at face value. That being said there are many other threats to western society and while many or most of those will exploit Facebook as much as they can for influence they will continue to exist should Facebook fall.

The Engineering wage raises during 2010-2014 are a huge part due to Facebook back then entering a biding war for talent, which google had to counter which raised comps for everyone. Also, after 2015 you had more companies hitting the fray (Uber, Airbnb, etc). If it wasn't for Facebook, the compensation industry wise would look something like MSFT's comp (pretty low in general). So, for one thing, Meta / Facebook has…

I think the reason people hate on Facebook here is that they do things like spread misinformation and lies about elected officials and current events, damaging democracy. It is annoying that Apple and Google underpaid already-well-paid people, but not a huge issue for society in general.

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#284

Post by Melatonic »

ardit33 wrote: post #271
Melatonic wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbolic for sure but I do not think it is naive at all. Facebook has proven many times over they are basically the Mafia of Silicon Valley and nothing they say should be trusted or taken at face value. That being said there are many other threats to western society and while many or most of those will exploit Facebook as much as they can for influence they will continue to exist should Facebook fall.

The Engineering wage raises during 2010-2014 are a huge part due to Facebook back then entering a biding war for talent, which google had to counter which raised comps for everyone. Also, after 2015 you had more companies hitting the fray (Uber, Airbnb, etc). If it wasn't for Facebook, the compensation industry wise would look something like MSFT's comp (pretty low in general). So, for one thing, Meta / Facebook has…

I was not commenting on that - more on Facebook's business practices in general.

As for Silicon Valley collusion re: wages in my opinion the agreement that George Lucas / Steve Jobs / Ed Catmull / Others made in the late 90s / early 2000s to screw over tech workers and specifically VFX workers (they were afraid of a VFX union) was worse and flys under the radar way more than it should. VFX workers to this day continue to get screwed by this totally illegal collusion (and there was a large settlement of "unknown amount" at one point).

edit: After looking into the above lawsuit we may actually be talking about the same thing - although it did dramatically screw the VFX industry more than tech. And I refuse to credit Facebook with helping with that - it was the exposure of that collusion that ended it.

That does not mean Google gets a pass and I don't think my original comment implies that at all

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#285

Post by pessimizer »

KarlKemp wrote: post #260
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't pretend to know all of the details but this comes off as kind of conspiracy-theory. Why is Zuckerberg the boogieman? He just wants to run his company well and get as many eyeballs on paid advertisements as possible... right? Why is there some notion that he wants to push either a liberal or conservative agenda internationally? It's near impossible to moderate a billion people posting crap on a social media pl…

Facebook has consistently disappointed anyone working on any of these issues, from Islamic State recruitment to Myanmar's ethnic violence. Because young people in tech are generally thought to be smart and happy, i. e. Democrats, these failing have been interpreted as growing pains and various lapses in skill or judgement. The idea has, however, been catching on that Zuckerberg may just be a Greenwald-Democrat, i. e.…

> smart and happy, i. e. Democrats

> these failing have been interpreted as growing pains and various lapses in skill or judgement.

"[...]have been interpreted[...]" are wikipedia "weasel words" here; this is really what centrist party Democrats feel. They interpret the acts of "smart and happy" middle-class people through the lens of "people trying to do good badly" rather than "people doing what they want to do, consistently with what they've always done."

These are the only people that need to rationalize their associations with Facebook, and this is how they do it. Republicans and libertarian-types don't actually think these are issues that Facebook should be concerned about, and lefties don't need to to rehabilitate Facebook.

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#286

Post by pessimizer »

kmlx wrote: post #238
Spivak wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you apply this logic to all companies not in the US? Do you worry that the American Honda Motor Company is a sleeper cell for Japanese state interests?

oh my. are we equating Japan with China?

Is it bizarre to compare countries with other countries generally, or only when one is on the official enemies list?

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#287

Post by pessimizer »

naravara wrote: post #272
spoonjim wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. The single greatest threat to Western society is Western society itself. Declining fertility, mass immigration at the border but brutally hard immigration for high skill workers, civil wars over pointless culture war issues, and the destruction of the social norms that once held us together. But go blame Facebook if you want.

Facebook is a major contributor to the pointless cultural war obsession and the erosion of pro-social norms though.

So are the telephone and families getting together for the holidays.

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#288

Post by bostonsre »

vixen99 wrote: post #258
bostonsre wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He just wants to run his company well and get as many eyeballs on paid advertisements as possible... right? Yes, I would definitely agree that this is the case and I think that is a large part of the problem. The Machiavellian ends justifying the means equates to him not caring about the negative impacts that he has on society while trying to attract the most eyeballs possible.

Aren't those negative impacts on society a matter for government? Basically any company will 'try it on' until it's stopped. And 'stopping' is what governments are about, I used to think. It doesn't seem to happen and it's not surprising that some have written darkly about the marriage of huge corporations with government and its dire consequences.

Yes, I think the government should be responsible for preventing bad actors, but I also don't think Facebook operating without morality is good or acceptable. Government is slow, facebook is using this to their advantage and moving fast and breaking things (society) and I don't think they should be let off the hook because our government hasn't caught up with the blatantly bad stuff that they are up to. If outrage and bad PR can curb some of their negative tendencies, I am all for exposing their actions.

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#289

Post by pessimizer »

nmilo wrote: post #137

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…

The US doesn't have real political parties with memberships, so a more realistic view of them is that they are central coordinators of, and lobbyists on the behalf of, huge networks of consultants.

Having a political career means shifting between consulting companies strongly associated with political parties, direct party employment, campaign employment, government employment when your party is in power, "think tanks," "journalism," and employment as a lobbyist for government contractors or industries with a legislative agenda.

Journalists drop the keyfabe when they're speaking casually, sometimes accidentally. They do go out of their way to do so when the subject is associated with a party their employer doesn't approve of.

Including the truth about party association doesn't make a story more or less truthful. The problem is when they leave it out, or create an association out of whole cloth to fit a narrative.

Re: Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok

#290

Post by pessimizer »

throwawaygh wrote: post #256
polyomino wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not denying that they claim to be republican, but their actions do serve both parties. As such, I don't think their claim to be republican is particularly meaningful.

He worked for D's in 2008 and the firm was founded in 2015 with primarily R political cleintelle. What's contradictory about a strategist who worked for Ds in 2008 and was working for Rs by 2016? Hell, there's a whole term describing the large set of people who made that shift in that exact time period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama%E2%80%93Trump_voters

Clinton-people and Obama-people did not and do not like each other.

This might be a better link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Unity_My_Ass

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