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Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

businessinsider.com

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Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#41

Post by darawk »

Miner49er wrote: post #21
rayiner wrote: post #15

I feel like this is grasping at straws. Facebook’s head of news co-founded a site in 2015 that promotes school choice, something supported by a majority of people and a super majority of people of color: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/school-choice-strong-... . The articles posted on this site were critical of Warren because of Warren’s opposition to school choice, but has also criticized the other Democratic…

This article posted to HN yesterday is better IMO: https://popular.info/p/facebooks-top-news-executive-has It points out Brown is friends with Betsy DeVos. It points out that Eric Owens, a far-right regular writer for the Daily Caller, has written 11 articles for The 74. I agree that the part about Warren is grasping at straws a bit. I think it's more interesting that Brown is right leaning, yet she's in charge of FB…

I'm not sure what the message is here, though. Should the person running FB news have no political affiliations at all? Because if that's the standard, then it seems what you'll get is just people hiding their political affiliations, which doesn't seem particularly good for anyone.

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#42

Post by rayiner »

fcarraldo wrote: post #26
rayiner wrote: post #15

I feel like this is grasping at straws. Facebook’s head of news co-founded a site in 2015 that promotes school choice, something supported by a majority of people and a super majority of people of color: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/school-choice-strong-... . The articles posted on this site were critical of Warren because of Warren’s opposition to school choice, but has also criticized the other Democratic…

The National Review has a right wing bias, and has been called the “bible of American conservatism”. Since “school choice” is a conservative policy, it’s unsurprising that the NR ran an article that purports that it’s a popular policy. If we look at the source for the polls the article is based on, they cite polls from a lobbyist group specifically built to push policy on “school choice”. This doesn’t seem like a rep…

This survey, conducted by among other people a professor at the Harvard School of Education, found similar results: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/19/08/ednext-poll-democrats...

School choice isn’t a “conservative” policy. Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc., have extensive school choice. The US is actually an outlier in the OECD for prohibiting private schools from getting any public funding: http://www.oecd.org/education/School-choice-and-school-vouch...

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#43

Post by rpmisms »

murph-almighty wrote: post #17
gadders wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think the whole debacle about claiming to be native american has hurt her credibility somewhat?

I'll bite even though I'm a bit uninformed here: I think it's plausible to be told something about your heritage and not question it, especially if it's something spanning multiple generations where the paperwork validating the claim is either nonexistent or otherwise hard to reach. At varying points I've been told by relatives that I'm part Scottish, and told by others that I'm not, and I don't really have a straigh…

I'm a little bit Native American, according to my family. I have never claimed that my parents weren't allowed to get married because of their tribes, nor have I put Native American down as my race on a college application.

Warren found a politically convenient fractional truth and exploited it.

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#44

Post by politil_throw93 »

jimhefferon wrote: post #39
gadders wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think the whole debacle about claiming to be native american has hurt her credibility somewhat?

The contention that she has leveraged claims to be Native American to advance is, at the least, wildly overblown. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elizabeth-warren-wealthy-n...

But why did she claim it at all? Even if her family's story was correct, having one Native American ancestor at some point ages ago, does not make you simply 'Native American', does it?

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#45

Post by fzeroracer »

darawk wrote: post #41
Miner49er wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article posted to HN yesterday is better IMO: https://popular.info/p/facebooks-top-news-executive-has It points out Brown is friends with Betsy DeVos. It points out that Eric Owens, a far-right regular writer for the Daily Caller, has written 11 articles for The 74. I agree that the part about Warren is grasping at straws a bit. I think it's more interesting that Brown is right leaning, yet she's in charge of FB…

I'm not sure what the message is here, though. Should the person running FB news have no political affiliations at all? Because if that's the standard, then it seems what you'll get is just people hiding their political affiliations, which doesn't seem particularly good for anyone.

No, the point is that Facebook has been trying to position itself as an arbiter of political neutrality while consistently taking actions that obviously indicates the bias it has.

You can't claim you have no position while simultaneously taking actions that benefit one side or another. If they're going to go that route, they might as well just come out and say what their bias is rather than gaslighting people into thinking that they're neutral.

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#46

Post by dang »

drharby wrote: post #19
drharby wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that candidate A retains quality X is as good as the tests administored to measure and quantify the presence of said quantity. In politics, there exists a game with real stakes to LOOK a certain way regardless of the truth. Therefore, I find that any opinion on political matters made as if it were a matter of fact has a high probability of being either naive or a component of a political campaign to influence…

Mods - can we do something about the obvious political astroturfing? Every comment critical of GP here is dimming due to vapid down votes and it is discouraging and disappointing to see.

I'm afraid both this comment and its parent break the site guidelines that ask you not to make insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, etc., in HN comments. Internet users are much too quick to do that, and it poisons discussion.

There's no evidence that the GP comment was in bad faith, and most of the downvoted comments I've seen here broke the site guidelines, so we needn't look for more menacing reasons.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#47

Post by dang »

chrisco255 wrote: post #9
SN76477 wrote: post #5

Politics is full of bad actors, I do not think Warren is one of those people. You can disagree with her, sure, but she just wants to create fairness for all in my opinion. Facebook is the opposite of this, with their closed systems, back door dealings and often shady business practices it makes perfect sense that they are opposed to her.

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're all the same, which makes them boring, and tend to get angrier as they go.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#48

Post by macspoofing »

r00fus wrote: post #34
DataWorker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re being downvoted because Devos, like most education free market pushers, isn’t looking to profit on school choice. People really think free markets are better. Similar to UBI, people like the idea of freedom.

> People really think free markets are better. Sure - despite being proven that charter schools (ie, free choice) have worse or equivalent scores to public schools [1]. There is not agreement here, there is controversy and the facts are not on the so-called "free markets" side. [1] http://www.nea.org/home/33177.htm

Honestly, no surprise (though 'equivalent' is more correct - nea.org isn't a dispassionate objective observer). The dirty secret in education is the quality of instruction, the condition of the building and the textbooks, whether or not iPads are readily available, all of that take a backseat to the circumstances in the child's private life. Stable home and engaged parents that take a personal interest in the child's education will mean those children will do well. We try to put too much on schools and teachers to make up gaps in parenting. A student that drops out or graduates functionally illiterate is a failure of the parents, not the school systems.

Having said that, don't dismiss the idea of choice. Parents, for all kinds of reasons, may not want to be funneled to the specific school or schools they are limited to geographically, and may want to have a different kind of instruction (i.e. they want CHOICE). Opponents of 'school choice' always miss this point.

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#49

Post by SN76477 »

gadders wrote: post #11
SN76477 wrote: post #5

Politics is full of bad actors, I do not think Warren is one of those people. You can disagree with her, sure, but she just wants to create fairness for all in my opinion. Facebook is the opposite of this, with their closed systems, back door dealings and often shady business practices it makes perfect sense that they are opposed to her.

You don't think the whole debacle about claiming to be native american has hurt her credibility somewhat?

I do not think she was some how misleading anyone. She was just wrong.

The world is sloppy, its not perfect, people are not perfect. In the end I dont care about that.

Re: Facebook head of news cofounded site critical of Elizabeth Warren

#50

Post by SN76477 »

politil_throw93 wrote: post #44
jimhefferon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contention that she has leveraged claims to be Native American to advance is, at the least, wildly overblown. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elizabeth-warren-wealthy-n...

But why did she claim it at all? Even if her family's story was correct, having one Native American ancestor at some point ages ago, does not make you simply 'Native American', does it?

As someone else said

"I think it's plausible to be told something about your heritage and not question it"

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