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Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

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Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#461

Post by harry8 »

solinent wrote: post #351

Paid shills tend to have a strange effect where they polarize people in the other direction than intended since their arguments are not always well founded and honest, and they will always suffer from some form of groupthink. It's a slingshot effect--at first people fall for the farce, but soon they realize they have been mislead. It could even spoil the election and get some to vote in the opposite direction. I thin…

There's a lot of engagement on some issue or other, such as this one of how easy it is to spot paid shills and then while making a pretty reasonable point about it stating something very contentious as fact. Just like we see from Bernie and his total commitment to call communism by another name.

And that last bit is 1% of the interest and is tangentially related so it doesn't totally jar. Look out for it. You get the same ones repeated again and again like that. It may be totally organic too because Assange is a narcisist rapist who is lying about being afraid of being extradited to the USA so lots of people have said so. Keep repeating and it becomes fact undermines anyone with a different point of view. Full disclosure I am not an Assange supporter nor a Bloomberg or Bernie supporter.

Paid shills are actually really hard to spot. I strongly suspect most of what jars as paid shills aren't paid.

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#462

Post by wyre »

harry8 wrote: post #459
influx wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it is the oldest existing nation with a constitutional government in which the people elect their own government and representatives. It's always been a work in progress and always will be.

Is it? Really? Hasn't the U.K. been a constitutional monarchy since 1688 or so? I totally accept it if we're only counting from the start of true universal adult suffrage, including women and taking no account of melanin content of skin - whoever is first on that deserves it be known widely for their national pride. Was that the USA?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage

UK has had universal suffrage since 1928. It looks like Finland was the first in 1904.

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#463

Post by harry8 »

wyre wrote: post #462
harry8 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Really? Hasn't the U.K. been a constitutional monarchy since 1688 or so? I totally accept it if we're only counting from the start of true universal adult suffrage, including women and taking no account of melanin content of skin - whoever is first on that deserves it be known widely for their national pride. Was that the USA?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage UK has had universal suffrage since 1928. It looks like Finland was the first in 1904.

Hey thanks. Go the Finns! Rah!

Edit: New Zealand 1893. Go the Kiwis! Ka Mate!

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#464

Post by Bendingo »

vojta_letal wrote: post #384
ColanR wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is healthy, is that an American spent his money how he liked, the American media is free enough to have reported on it, American citizens are now well-informed enough to know that some of the folks they talk to online are paid, and the American election will be based on the interactions of a free people. He's not purchasing anything - as long as Americans care enough to be informed, he's blowing hot air that no…

> is that an American spent his money how he liked Caps on campaign spending are there for reasons. A campaign should contribute to meaningful public discourse. Nothing more. > the American media is free enough to have reported on it Private media can be biased. Either explicitly (lying to peoples faces), or implicitly (self-censorship on stuff related to the owner). Surprisingly, in several countries - such as Brita…

> Britain [...] state-owned media are the one sticking to higher values

I wouldn't be too sure about that.

Amusingly, in the search results below, BBC themselves report on their own secret links to the state security establishment.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=bbc+used+mi5+to+vet+staff

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#465

Post by deburo »

arrosenberg wrote: post #375
dagw wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way, other than both being old, white, rich and from New York. Trump wanted to tack hard away from the center and to tear down the Republican establishment and rebuild it with a more populist vision. Bloomberg is running to stop the Democrats from tacking away from the center and to 'protect' the party from those threatening to tear it down and rebuild it with a more populist image. Trump ran as an outsider p…

Different flavors of dictator. Confederate Fascism where the leader rules based on tribal loyalty vs. an Octavian-style emperor who rules by controlling everyone who matters behind the scenes. Neither candidate believes in compromise or their own fallibility. In either case, we would be choosing to forfeit the ability to decide for ourselves going forward.

>Neither candidate believes in compromise or their own fallibility

There are no candidate that signals fallibility and or possibility of compromise. Why should they, anyway?

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#466

Post by favorited »

kennywinker wrote: post #295
squegles wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

J. K. Rowling comes to mind.

Wikipedia had her at £600 million in 2016, so probably not a billionaire, but that's quibbling. I honestly don't think she did anything wrong, but I also think she got that rich because she wrote her books in a world built on exploitive systems. How much less would she have if every book shop employee, amazon employee, or factory worker in china making harry potter ephemera was paid fairly for their labour? More impo…

She was a billionaire. She isn't anymore due to a combination of $160 million and high taxes.

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#467

Post by ngngngng »

jlarocco wrote: post #222
ngngngng wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I didn't like any of the alternatives either. There's only two teams and I don't like them. What do I do?

It's too bad more people don't realize the answer is to vote third party. Voting for somebody you don't want to win is the definition of "throwing your vote away."

I have only ever voted third party. But they continue to not get any traction and I feel more and more that my time would be better spent almost literally anywhere besides trying to be involved in politics.

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#468

Post by austhrow743 »

jdkee wrote: post #216

Why is it healthy for American democracy to have an oligarch purchase the U.S. Presidency like a shiny, new yacht?

People are still voting to choose him. He is making his case for why he should be president, people are deciding they like his more than others, so they vote for him.

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#469

Post by malandrew »

arrosenberg wrote: post #430
eej71 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is popular to tar the electoral college with the slavery brush. But I think that's deeply unfair to the overall value that it offers. Slavery is merely one kind of divisive issue that can be used by a candidate to leverage seeds of distrust, disdain and disagreement to gain leverage over the other side. Even without slavery, there were other issues that divided North and South. Anglophile vs. Francophile. Agrarian…

I don't think any of what you said supports keeping the EC. The slavery brush is just the most obvious reason to get rid of it. The electoral college has never increased unity in the country. Issues of federalism and culture are still unresolved, and the EC has only served to exacerbate those tensions by awarding the office to the popular loser multiple times in the last 20 years. > Something like an electoral colleg…

> I can't think of a single time it has served to increase unity or harmony

There basically would be no country without it.

If we got rid of it today, every state that relies on equal representation would be in their right mind to secede rather than be legislatively bullied by the more populated coastal states.

Re: Bloomberg bankrolls a social-media army

#470

Post by malandrew »

arrosenberg wrote: post #363
eej71 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we agree that the popular vote is irrelevant to the presidential election? And if so - why impute my words with that interpretation?

It's only irrelevant for deciding who wins the office. You are making the argument that Trump won because his arguments were more popular among the electorate, which is provably false using the popular vote total. Hillary Clinton's message resonated with over 3,000,000 more voters, however unfortunate their distribution was.

Insofar as the presidential election is concerned, the electorate is the 538 people in the electoral college. Trump was more popular among the electorate not HRC.
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