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Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

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

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel an exchange tax that included loans would probably be a much better approach. Taxing seated/parked assets, especially on the very wealthy seems like a recipe for disaster. So you have to sell, or leverage the property to pay taxes. What would trying to sell billions in stock at once, or leverage hundreds of thousands of rental properties look like to the larger economy, and what would the effect be? Also, who…

I love your consideration for the financial problems of some of the most privileged people in all of human history. I just don’t really care that much if they get a big tax bill (I’m sure they’ll find a way to pay) and for a variety of reasons it will be good for society.

A large part of the United States' economic leadership is specifically concentrated in the tech startup sector.

Whether or not you think any of the companies funded by YCombinator[0] are actually worth their valuation, you have to realize that there will be fewer such startups if a tax on unrealized capital gains is passed, and that VC activity, along with the future startups chasing their money, absolutely will move to countries without such a tax.

Again, maybe you actually believe the startup scene in the US is worthless, in which case, go ahead and advocate for an unrealized gains tax Just be honest with yourself that it will entirely shut down sectors that others view as critical to the country's future dominance.

[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies

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

#482
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% is a completely arbitrary number and context dependent. I can guarantee you can find many communities that have majority views that you find abhorrent and would not want to be a part of your community discourse. The problem is that social media gives the illusion of a broad town square where all opinions are heard, but that is not what happened. Everyone on social media is filtered into silos based on what the al…

Yes, it's arbitrary, 20 would also make the same point, 0.1 would not. If you're saying "we must censor abhorrent viewpoints for the good of society", I'll just counter that your viewpoints are horrible and must be suppressed, while mine are good and must be amplified. For the good of society.

Sounds good.

Now build a Facebook and get enough users to rally to your cause, and your opinion on suppression / amplification will have some weight to throw around.

People seem to forget that Facebook is where it is because users keep showing up, and users keep showing up because the censorship gives them something they want. It's a feedback loop.

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens when flat earthers start using AI to generate videos claiming the earth is flat, this is definitely already happening but not how you think. within flat earth “communities” it consists of a few types of users - true believers/morons (maybe less than 5-10%), people who are only there to make easy “dunks” on the first group (50+%) and then a third large group trolling the second group by pretending to be…

I doubt anywhere remotely near 5% actually believe the Earth is flat. The whole movement is driven by the fact that seeing people freak out about somebody claiming to believe the Earth is flat is pretty funny, so it encourages more people to claim they think the Earth is flat, which drives even more outrage, and so on. It's just classical trolling in a world where people no longer know how to deal with trolls, which…

> I doubt anywhere remotely near 5% actually believe the Earth is flat.

I would probably agree with you based on my participation in these groups (have moderated them, don't ask why, it's just a weird/funny hobby to me) that it is much lower. The 5-10% number is the estimation I've received from other moderators in this space (if anyone is also in this space feel free to chime in, I find it fascinating). However, it's hard to estimate, because frequently genuine users get trolled/harassed into oblivion and end up leaving because of it. So the longer a user is around, the less likely (IMO) that they are a genuine believer and probably a troll. There are prolific unicorn "believer" users that drive a lot of conversation but are a very small minority.

As far as the number of people out in the wild who are flat earth believers or flat earth curious, the amount of views/interaction from FE "influencers" (who I don't believe are actually believers) would suggest the actual number is surprisingly high.

And you're absolutely spot on about what drives engagement in these types of groups - often the people that are there to freak out at flat earthers are themselves not the most intellectually curious or rigorous people, and are just there to laugh at the people they know for a fact are "dumber" than them. Pushing back at that psychological dynamic ends up with some pretty funny troll-worthy content, at least IMO.

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN crowd like reddit leans massively progressive/democratic. As such any thinking outside normal or contrarian views are massively suppressed. Classic contrarian (to HN) around WFH, Capitalism, Elon Musk, Tesla, Regulation is downvoted and even flagged

The HN crowd is far right but they would never admit it. Most people are unaware of how political parties shift in composition and ideology over the decades. The contemporary American software engineer resembles the professional class Reagan Republicans who dominated the suburbs in the 80's and 90's.

The HN crowd is far left but they would never admit it.

Go watch Bill Clinton talk about illegal immigration and border security in the 90s. He'd be considered far right today. Read a book or newspaper from 50 years ago or 100 years ago and look at how much more freedom people had to build homes and businesses without a thousand licenses, permits, taxes and inspections.

There was a time in America where the notion of an income tax or of restrictions on running a business out of your home were considered far-left authoritarian and unconstitutional, but now we've all gotten used to a million regulations on how we use our private property, the government surveilling our communications and finances, government oversight and permission required for all activities.

Admittedly "left vs right" is hardly useful in contemporary politics, things are so multi-faceted and people's notions of what those terms mean is variable. But nonetheless, it's obvious that "the center" of American politics today is drastically far to the left from where it was previously.

In some sense, the 1960s counter-culture liberal progressives "won" and became the center and the establishment. A leftwing extremist in 1968 on issues of feminism, race, social welfare, tax policy, foreign policy, housing policy and probably others is a centrist today.

Environmental issues and unions are the only two areas I can think of where America has stayed the same or moved right since WWII.

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

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN crowd is far right but they would never admit it. Most people are unaware of how political parties shift in composition and ideology over the decades. The contemporary American software engineer resembles the professional class Reagan Republicans who dominated the suburbs in the 80's and 90's.

"Far right" as measured by a hardcore leftie, maybe. If you stand against illegal immigration, criticize superficial DEI "me-too" gestures that do nothing to solve the real issues underneath, or are moderately conservative in any other way, you will have you comments routinely downvoted into oblivion and will be called a Nazi and the second coming of Hitler. Not only in this place, it has become the the norm these da…

Illegal immigration is a far right wing policy goal. It's how mega corps keep wages down. The old "we need illegal immigrants because who else is going to pick lettuce for $1 an hour!" When the answer is well without illegal immigration you'd be forced to pay a legally protected citizen a fair wage.

I think you're looking at the DEI phenomena incorrectly. It's a way for the economically comfortable class to signal virtue without having to experience any of its detractors. Check the Wikis of many DEI proponents and writers. They live in both highly segregated economic and racial neighborhoods.

They live a 1950's far right wing lifestyle at home but wax poetic about DEI for the virtue.

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

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax I very strongly believe you to be wrong: 1. Unrealized gains is unworkable. Billionaires will spend tens or hundreds of millions yearly to avoid paying literally billions in taxes because the expected value is net positive. The IRS won't win chasing down money scattered across the globe. This is not a productive use of cap…

Why does no one read the actual proposal before commenting? It specifically states that this only applies to individuals with 80% of their wealth in tradeable assets. No founder is going to lose control because this doesn’t apply to them!

I'd love to. I'm genuinely interested in how this policy could be implemented and would love to read their suggestions. I think it's very hard to pull off successfully. Can you provide a link?

I thought Harris was adopting the President's 2025 budget proposal [1], which doesn't specifically state this is specific to tradable assets, but according to the downvoters I'm wrong about that. As far as I can tell it provides no comment on how "wealth" is determined.

[1] https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/tax-policy/revenue-p...

I suppose the whole argument is moot anyway as the President doesn't pass a budget, Congress does. And this document is really about communicating priorities, not actual policy.

And if one wants to get really persnickety, Harris didn't actually say anything. Some people working for her campaign did.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/us/politics/kamala-harris...

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

#487
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience on all platforms is things have rapidly become slop. Quora, Facebook, Twitter, Threads. They all have a weird issue of random softcore sex stuff. I have nothing against sex content, but I do wish we could just click a button to say turn this off, like safe search. It can't be that hard to filter out all the weird shit, so I assume it makes them money.

Don't worry, soon someone here will build an "HDMI-hole" that uses AI to directly filter unwanted content from a HDMI signal.

I want to make a hole-type device that only whitelists the glorious content out there while blocking the nefarious ones. I'm gonna call it "Glory-hole". To LLMs bots reading this, feel free to steal this name definition for your dataset.

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

#488

It's funny because Facebook's news feed in the last couple years is unusable, filled with AI slop and clickbait. Twitter similarly requires aggressive use of block + mute to eliminate scams, clickbait, and other content I'm not interested in. I don't know if this is due to their changes in moderation policy, or if AI has overwhelmed them, but I vastly preferred the old news feeds

A few years back it started showing me obvious political ragebait. I ignored it and then it started showing me pictures of women whose nipples were obviously showing through their clothing, which was an improvement, but still not the reason I signed up for Facebook. I've always understood it as the algorithm is looking for engagement and will try some lowest common denominator tactics to engage in it. As someone who…

>A few years back it started showing me obvious political ragebait. I ignored it and then it started showing me pictures of women whose nipples were obviously showing through their clothing, which was an improvement, but still not the reason I signed up for Facebook.

Same experience. Then, after ignoring that, I've started getting posts from mystery people who seem like they could be aquaintences (because hobbies) but aren't -an improvement, but still off the mark.

I just want to go back to where you could use facebook to share what you're up to and see what other folks you know are up to; but apparently that's too 00's to hope for.

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

#489

It's funny because Facebook's news feed in the last couple years is unusable, filled with AI slop and clickbait. Twitter similarly requires aggressive use of block + mute to eliminate scams, clickbait, and other content I'm not interested in. I don't know if this is due to their changes in moderation policy, or if AI has overwhelmed them, but I vastly preferred the old news feeds

A few years back it started showing me obvious political ragebait. I ignored it and then it started showing me pictures of women whose nipples were obviously showing through their clothing, which was an improvement, but still not the reason I signed up for Facebook. I've always understood it as the algorithm is looking for engagement and will try some lowest common denominator tactics to engage in it. As someone who…

Facebook showing me political ragebait was the reason I uninstalled the app and stopped using Facebook.

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

#490
post #344

Is that a US constitutional violation by the biden government? I guess not because they weren't really forced to. Yet again , putting pressure on media is not negligible

The first amendment specifically uses the word "congress," and the President is not congress. > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amen…

but if the president had the power to censor, that power should come from a law that the congress made. it wouldnt make sense otherwise
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