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@Crucial said in US Politics:
They are actively trying to clamp down on the spread of disinformation
No they aren't. They are clamping down on mostly conservative / pro Trump or anti Biden viewpoints they don't agree with or like and using 'clamp down on the spread of disinformation' as a reason for doing this.
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@Crucial said in US Politics:
I'm not trying to claim that they are completely independent, but also think that they aren't quite the one-eyed monster many make them out to be. After all they provide Trump himself with his biggest lie and inference tool It's only when he directly pushes known disinformation that they 'block' it.
Are you the best person to fairly adjudicate on this matter though
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@Crucial said in US Politics:
The Republicans themselves admit no wrongdoing.
Not exactly (and this is from the BBC)
Beneath the headlines, however, the report does detail the breadth of Hunter Biden's connections to questionable foreign interests and business leaders in Ukraine and China - creating "criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns". It suggests Joe Biden's son was profiting from his family name - a potential conflict of interest that is unsavoury but not unusual in Washington's corridors of power. **The report acknowledges there are still unknown details,** but time is running out for Republicans to turn this topic into something voters will care about. If Joe Biden wins in November, however, his political opponents are likely to continue to dig, in hopes of building on the information in the report to come up with more tangible evidence of misconduct that could damage his presidency.
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@canefan said in US Politics:
@Winger said in US Politics:
@Crucial said in US Politics:
I'm not trying to claim that they are completely independent, but also think that they aren't quite the one-eyed monster many make them out to be. After all they provide Trump himself with his biggest lie and inference tool It's only when he directly pushes known disinformation that they 'block' it.
Are you the best person to fairly adjudicate on this matter though
It is funny you should call Crucial's judgement into question
Based on his own post regarding Trump. I doubt if am the best person to pass judgement as well. But who is now. Most are either pro or anti Trump and see everything through these (often invisible to them) beliefs.
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@Winger said in US Politics:
@canefan said in US Politics:
@Winger said in US Politics:
@Crucial said in US Politics:
I'm not trying to claim that they are completely independent, but also think that they aren't quite the one-eyed monster many make them out to be. After all they provide Trump himself with his biggest lie and inference tool It's only when he directly pushes known disinformation that they 'block' it.
Are you the best person to fairly adjudicate on this matter though
It is funny you should call Crucial's judgement into question
Based on his own post regarding Trump. I doubt if am the best person to pass judgement as well. But who is now. Most are either pro or anti Trump and see everything through these (often invisible to them) beliefs.
This is true. Many who post on here are firmly in one camp or another. Which is the same on most political threads. But this thread, like the situation in the US, is more polarised
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@Winger said in US Politics:
@canefan said in US Politics:
@Winger said in US Politics:
@Crucial said in US Politics:
I'm not trying to claim that they are completely independent, but also think that they aren't quite the one-eyed monster many make them out to be. After all they provide Trump himself with his biggest lie and inference tool It's only when he directly pushes known disinformation that they 'block' it.
Are you the best person to fairly adjudicate on this matter though
It is funny you should call Crucial's judgement into question
Based on his own post regarding Trump. I doubt if am the best person to pass judgement as well. But who is now. Most are either pro or anti Trump and see everything through these (often invisible to them) beliefs.
Read the post again. I'm not sure that you didn't stop reading at certain words you bolded.
Trump uses twitter as a main communication tool, doesn't he? He also tells lies (endless independent fact checkers back this up). Do Twitter stop his ability to use the platform for that reason? No.
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@Crucial said in US Politics:
The bit I find the funniest is the misinformation implying that Jo got the prosecutor fired to protect Hunter where the reason that everyone wanted the guy fired was that he was the corrupt one and was being too lenient in his investigations
The reason that you happen to accept as the truth. My view is this action by Joe stinks (really bad). And whats worse (as I believe a good number of politicians are corrupt as all hell) the fool bragged about it on video.
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@Winger said in US Politics:
@Crucial said in US Politics:
The bit I find the funniest is the misinformation implying that Jo got the prosecutor fired to protect Hunter where the reason that everyone wanted the guy fired was that he was the corrupt one and was being too lenient in his investigations
The reason that you happen to accept as the truth. My view is this action by Joe stinks (really bad). And whats worse (as I believe say up to 50% of politicians are corrupt as all hell) the fool bragged about it on video.
Read the facts
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@Winger said in US Politics:
@Crucial said in US Politics:
The bit I find the funniest is the misinformation implying that Jo got the prosecutor fired to protect Hunter where the reason that everyone wanted the guy fired was that he was the corrupt one and was being too lenient in his investigations
The reason that you happen to accept as the truth. My view is this action by Joe stinks (really bad). And whats worse (as I believe a good number of politicians are corrupt as all hell) the fool bragged about it on video.
You seem intent to trial Biden by twitter. I am sure the authorities have more in depth methods of investigation, and they seem to think its all clear. But keep digging if you must
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@canefan said in US Politics:
@Winger said in US Politics:
@Crucial said in US Politics:
The bit I find the funniest is the misinformation implying that Jo got the prosecutor fired to protect Hunter where the reason that everyone wanted the guy fired was that he was the corrupt one and was being too lenient in his investigations
The reason that you happen to accept as the truth. My view is this action by Joe stinks (really bad). And whats worse (as I believe a good number of politicians are corrupt as all hell) the fool bragged about it on video.
You seem intent to trial Biden by twitter. I am sure the authorities have more in depth methods of investigation, and they seem to think its all clear. But keep digging if you must
Who has said its all clear?
And the recently released emails point to (thats all so far) Joe getting a cut. It's an area that needs further investigation. And if the mainstream media wasn't so controlled and useless it would have happened by now.
Beneath the headlines, however, the report does detail the breadth of Hunter Biden's connections to questionable foreign interests and business leaders in Ukraine and China - creating "criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns". It suggests Joe Biden's son was profiting from his family name - a potential conflict of interest that is unsavoury but not unusual in Washington's corridors of power.
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@Winger said in US Politics:
@canefan said in US Politics:
@Winger said in US Politics:
@Crucial said in US Politics:
The bit I find the funniest is the misinformation implying that Jo got the prosecutor fired to protect Hunter where the reason that everyone wanted the guy fired was that he was the corrupt one and was being too lenient in his investigations
The reason that you happen to accept as the truth. My view is this action by Joe stinks (really bad). And whats worse (as I believe a good number of politicians are corrupt as all hell) the fool bragged about it on video.
You seem intent to trial Biden by twitter. I am sure the authorities have more in depth methods of investigation, and they seem to think its all clear. But keep digging if you must
Who has said its all clear?
And the recently released emails point to (thats all so far) Joe getting a cut. It's an area that needs further investigation. And if the mainstream media wasn't so controlled and useless it would have happened by now.
Beneath the headlines, however, the report does detail the breadth of Hunter Biden's connections to questionable foreign interests and business leaders in Ukraine and China - creating "criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns". It suggests Joe Biden's son was profiting from his family name - a potential conflict of interest that is unsavoury but not unusual in Washington's corridors of power.
Did you read the link I posted from 'The Atlantic'?
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I'm over this Twitter/Facebook censorship debate. Why is anybody surprised that they act in their own self interest? Why does anybody think they have a duty to be fair or even-handed? Was anybody really expecting them to behave like anything except the corporate chancers they are?
I have never had a Twitter or Facebook account, because it was clear that their business model was to source and sell my data and my interaction history, and the best way to get those was to manipulate me as a user. So I find it ironic that people complain that they are being manipulative.
Seriously, if you don't like the way they behave, stop being their product! They aren't political organisations, they're businesses that act politically because their models tell them it's more likely that they will get your saleable data if they do.
You don't have to be part of their ecosystem. There are other ways to get news. There are other ways to conduct a discourse. Use them, and if enough of you do they will change their practice.
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@JC said in US Politics:
I'm over this Twitter/Facebook censorship debate. Why is anybody surprised that they act in their own self interest? Why does anybody think they have a duty to be fair or even-handed? Was anybody really expecting them to behave like anything except the corporate chancers they are?
I have never had a Twitter or Facebook account, because it was clear that their business model was to source and sell my data and my interaction history, and the best way to get those was to manipulate me as a user. So I find it ironic that people complain that they are being manipulative.
Seriously, if you don't like the way they behave, stop being their product! They aren't political organisations, they're businesses that act politically because their models tell them it's more likely that they will get your saleable data if they do.
You don't have to be part of their ecosystem. There are other ways to get news. There are other ways to conduct a discourse. Use them, and if enough of you do they will change their practice.
That's ignoring the network effect and the reach of these platforms (and the consolidation of multiple platforms).
For hundreds of millions of people these plaforms are the internet. It's like going back to the early days of electricity and saything these oil lanterns work fine, just don't use it.
They wield enourmous influence and deserve all the criticism they get.
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@Kirwan said in US Politics:
They wield enourmous influence and deserve all the criticism they get.
which fierce criticism is right though?
The criticism from the Right that Facebook is trying to influence everyone to the left, and censoring everything that paints the Left in a bad light?
Or the criticism from the Left that Facebook has become a Right Wing echo chamber (in response to calls it is biased to the left)?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/26/facebook-conservatives-2020-421146
There are articles like this one all over, from a bunch of different outlets. From this article
"In the final stretch of the 2020 campaign, the Facebook posts with the most engagement in the United States most days — measured by likes, comments, shares and reactions — are from conservative voices outside the mainstream media: Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, David Harris, Jr., Franklin Graham and “Blue Lives Matter,” according to the Facebook-owned tool Crowdtangle. Trump’s personal page also regularly makes the top of the list, in effect allowing him to become a publisher in his own right and navigate around the traditional media.
Left-wing posts make the daily top-25 much less frequently. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and the Facebook savvy Occupy Democrats are among the pages that occasionally hit such levels of engagement".
As far as i can tell, Facebook gives zero fucks what colour hat you are wearing, the only colour they see is green. They don't give a fuck if you share some shady shit because you agree, or because it pisses you off. They only care that you clicked the button.
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@mariner4life I saw few minutes of an article on Sunday TV show. It was about cyber bullying and featured some woman who fronts an NRL news show and Anthony Sebold. They had an interview with a guy who used to work high up for FB who said they purposely don't censor content because stuff that enrages users makes them use the platform more than not. As you say they are profit driven not politically driven
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@Kirwan I get that. But don't those hundreds of millions of people have any agency in this? I know that in practice many of them are unlikely to seek out anything beyond their narrow worldview, but it's not our role to protect them from themselves and frankly I wouldn't presume to be that patronising. Their ignorance may be a pain in the arse for me to negotiate my life around, but it is their prerogative to be ignorant.
Ask yourself though whether it's better that they are poorly informed or completely uninformed, because my bet is that left to their own devices if you added in complexity and nuance to their feeds a great many of the poorly informed would opt out completely. They are choosing a degree of ignorance. This isn't new BTW, even as far back as Plato it was recognised that voters act irrationally (which is why he suggested the fundamentally undemocratic idea of noocracy, rule by "the wise") but we let every adult vote nevertheless, without any requirement that they inform themselves fully, engage in good faith or even be able to think clearly.
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@mariner4life said in US Politics:
@Kirwan said in US Politics:
They wield enourmous influence and deserve all the criticism they get.
which fierce criticism is right though?
The criticism from the Right that Facebook is trying to influence everyone to the left, and censoring everything that paints the Left in a bad light?
Or the criticism from the Left that Facebook has become a Right Wing echo chamber (in response to calls it is biased to the left)?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/26/facebook-conservatives-2020-421146
There are articles like this one all over, from a bunch of different outlets. From this article
"In the final stretch of the 2020 campaign, the Facebook posts with the most engagement in the United States most days — measured by likes, comments, shares and reactions — are from conservative voices outside the mainstream media: Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, David Harris, Jr., Franklin Graham and “Blue Lives Matter,” according to the Facebook-owned tool Crowdtangle. Trump’s personal page also regularly makes the top of the list, in effect allowing him to become a publisher in his own right and navigate around the traditional media.
Left-wing posts make the daily top-25 much less frequently. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and the Facebook savvy Occupy Democrats are among the pages that occasionally hit such levels of engagement".
As far as i can tell, Facebook gives zero fucks what colour hat you are wearing, the only colour they see is green. They don't give a fuck if you share some shady shit because you agree, or because it pisses you off. They only care that you clicked the button.
Facebook's influence is how they can target content to very specific audiences, and that influence can be bought by advertising. We've seen that sort of targeting before, but never on this scale.
This was used very cannily by Trump's team in the last election. They also let overseas entities buy controversail ads that seem to be designed to encourage division in the US, so for Facebook you have a point, but their influence is still important and we need to work out the best way for them to operate. They have a policy of trying bullshit them aplogising, and doing it again when people forget.
Twitter is where you see the left/right censorship. They suppress news they don't like, and as Crucial points out they are completely within their rights to do that. The problem is when new companies try to address that balance and air views on the right (to counter Twitter's left bias) they get deplatformed from other services, such as the payment method companies.
There very much is colusion frommany of these left leaning tech companies.
I don't want to see too much regulation, because that just increases the burden for compnaies that want to enter these spaces (only the big companies will be able to afford the compliance) but something has to be done, as it's definitely skewing the conversation - with all the impacts on democracy that entails. Not to mention fostering resentment and anger on the "other side".
When you don't have a voice (or feel like you don't) then the alternatives tend to be violent.
USA is a shit show.
US Politics