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Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

politico.com

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

#741

Post by heavyset_go »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #500
diob wrote: 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.

I am not seeing this in Threads.

Threads is in the growth phase and not in the milking userbase for all its worth phase. It will get there.

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

#743

Post by vuln »

calgarymicro wrote: post #738
tonymet wrote: post #734

"Why this, why now, why you?" Why did Zucc stamp his name on this now, after putting $450m into Biden's campaign in 2020, and willingly censor in favor of the 2020 Biden campaign (covid + Hunter biden). You've got to wonder why he seems to be signaling to the Trump campaign that he is taking sides. My guess is either hoping for kickbacks or to thwart retribution for 2020.

> after putting $450m into Biden's campaign in 2020 This is false; he donated to state and local election offices, not Biden's campaign.[0] [0] https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-mark-zuckerberg-ele...

The evidence shows that a disproportionate amount of funding went to urban areas in key swing states, which generally lean Democrat. Never saw a single ballot drop box out near a corn field. The money helped fund those sorts of initiatives.

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

#744

Post by ianhawes »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #631
Gud wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Facebook would turn into a soft core porn site was pretty unexpected, at least for me.

Instagram is {in}famous for its bikini babes, a not insignificant fraction of which advertise their "availability" in various cities. How this has never come up in the various congressional hearings about protecting children mystifies me, reddit, twitter and instagram all have a culture of onboarding young women into sex work.

What exactly is there to protect children against? Instagram forbids nudity and regularly cracks down on it by banning accounts. I don't recall seeing any advertisements for prostitution on Instagram either. And of course, young women have been recruited into sex work long before social media or the internet.

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

#745

Post by calgarymicro »

vuln wrote: post #743
calgarymicro wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after putting $450m into Biden's campaign in 2020 This is false; he donated to state and local election offices, not Biden's campaign.[0] [0] https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-mark-zuckerberg-ele...

The evidence shows that a disproportionate amount of funding went to urban areas in key swing states, which generally lean Democrat. Never saw a single ballot drop box out near a corn field. The money helped fund those sorts of initiatives.

Does it? The article I linked says

> But election officials have said there is no indication of favoritism in how the money was distributed, according to previous AP reports. The board of the Center for Tech and Civic Life also includes Pam Anderson, a Republican and former elected clerk of a suburban Denver-area county. Republican election officials have also vouched for the program’s impartiality, including Brian Mead, a Republican election director in Licking County, Ohio.

But even if it was true that urban election offices received disproportionately more funding (obviously they received more in general since more people live there), that's still not the same as "putting $450m into Biden's campaign", which is what was claimed.

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

#746

Post by moshegramovsky »

bodiekane wrote: post #484
hnpolicestate wrote: post #348

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.

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…

The US has a lot more people than it did 100 years ago. A lot of rules and regulations are a direct result of that.

Things change as we scale, for better or worse.

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

#747

Post by martin82 »

object-a wrote: post #184

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

I'm using Nostr now. There is no algorithmic feed, so I have the experience again that I used to have on Twitter 15 years ago. It's awesome.

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

#748

Post by streblo »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #402
this_user wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody with assets over 100m has a "pile of gold", as you put it. Those assets are always productively invested in some form or another. But you would prefer that those investments be pulled, because the government are clearly much better at employing those assets productively?

Its not a question of who is better at managing money but more who needs benefit in our society. The government supports welfare programs. Someone throwing 100m in the market does not unless they are taxed to do so.

The government also supports bombing the living fuck out of people on the other side of the world. Similarly, someone throwing 100m in the market does not unless they are taxed to do so.

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

#749

Post by aCoreyJ »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #697
hintymad wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember that so many people cheered when legitimate doctors and scientists were banned from Twitter or Facebook, just for questioning either the lockdown or the effectiveness or risks of the vaccines. The doctors may not be correct, but shouldn't we allow people to question science? Our government can do what it does because the people embolden them.

I will never, ever forgive or forget the absolute amount of censorship and tolerance for punishing “wrongthink” during the lockdown years. Ever. It completely shattered my faith in the government and “Science”. God forbid anybody show any intellectual curiosity if it went against the doomer dogma. And the worst part is the people with the “wrong think” were right. Covid didn’t have a “4% kill rate”. It almost certain…

I don't think saying any of that resulted in being banned because I saw it constantly.

Also you are still wrong about most of that. The vaccine is certainly safe and effective, masks definitely help, lockdowns definitely helped the overrun hospitals. Yes there were adverse effects in some of these policies unfortunately.

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

#750

Post by kshri24 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #109

I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios. Worth thinking about what people are willing to do to not pay billions of d…

> I think this is a great idea

It is a completely ridiculous idea. You can't value "unrealized gains" without using a third-party agency to come up with a number (typically through 409a valuation). And even if the third-party agency comes up with such a number, there is no way to have liquid cash available to pay the tax. To give you an example, say you are a Founder with a Startup that received investments from investors, through various rounds of funding, and the Startup is now valued at $1 Billion. Assume also that you sit on 5 million shares, with 51% equity post all the dilution. You will have to pay tax on $510 million. This $510 million is "unrealized gain". It is an "estimate" of what you would receive if the company was hypothetically acquired for that amount by a bigger company on that particular day of valuation. Assuming 25% tax that would be $127.5 million. Where will you come up with that money? There is no secondary market where you can use your shares to raise that money. You will probably have to take a loan from banks (if they have that sort of liquid cash available for ALL unicorn startup founders/centamillionaires/actual billionaires) and that too with exorbitant interest. Why would anyone want to go through all that hassle? The other option is for you to sell some of the shares to raise money to pay tax. But that is self-defeating because you are devaluing your net worth by the same amount.

It is the most ridiculous idea ever.

EDIT:

> are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios

How is that tax avoidance? You do realize that when they pay the exorbitant interest on the loan, they are paying tax on the interest right? That is typically higher than if they just sold the shares and paid capital gains tax directly. Because here they are paying interest + tax.

High net worth individuals take out loans by risking their shares. Those shares are marked as lein. In other words, those shares get locked with the lender (bank in this case) and in case of the Founder not being able to repay due to bankruptcy, the lender can liquidate the assets (shares) and not be required to get the best value for it in the market.

This is not tax avoidance by any means. This is Capitalism 101: putting YOUR capital to use the way you see fit and taking personal risk along the way.

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