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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.
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@JC said in US Politics:
@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.
Facebook were caught a few years back tweaking their feed agorithim to try and influence their user's moods (they measured it by subsequent posts by those users).
Being informed or uninformed isn't the point. Both Twitter and Facebook get caught actively trying to manipulate their users. That's something that should be investigated and criticised regularly.
In effect, we are letting a small group with Facebook and Twitter act as "the wise" you mention above. Ignoring personalities for a minute, there is a group in Twitter that is fact checking the President and basically stamp "lie" on tweets they don't like.
That's not something I'm comfortable with those compnaies being able to do based on their track record.
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I think this current situation is a reflection of those figures - the left sees Facebook as being a hidden Trump supporter (I don't think they are, I agree they just want green), so by getting out on these emails they might be sending a signal that they expect Biden to be elected and want to have some points in the bank when Warren starts looking around for tech firms to break up. It's a reasonable risk hedge anyway.
I think that breaking these firms up is needed too - @Kirwan essentially referred to this before, as FB has monopolized social media, so breaking them up (Facebook. Messenger, Insta, Whatsapp) would reduce their network effects and force some oxygen into social media as different platforms would then expand their offerings. The US government will have to reinterpret anti trust a bit to do it, but it has started already. It is likely to happen to google who it looks like may be forced to spin Chrome soon, and in the future, under Biden I cold see then being forced to spin Youtube. Amazon is the big one - at some point AWS will be spun.
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@gt12 said in US Politics:
I think this current situation is a reflection of those figures - the left sees Facebook as being a hidden Trump supporter (I don't think they are, I agree they just want green), so by getting out on these emails they might be sending a signal that they expect Biden to be elected and want to have some points in the bank when Warren starts looking around for tech firms to break up. It's a reasonable risk hedge anyway.
I think that breaking these firms up is needed too - @Kirwan essentially referred to this before, as FB has monopolized social media, so breaking them up (Facebook. Messenger, Insta, Whatsapp) would reduce their network effects and force some oxygen into social media as different platforms would then expand their offerings. The US government will have to reinterpret anti trust a bit to do it, but it has started already. It is likely to happen to google who it looks like may be forced to spin Chrome soon, and in the future, under Biden I cold see then being forced to spin Youtube. Amazon is the big one - at some point AWS will be spun.
Yep, you want competition within the space to avoid the sort of behaviour we are seeing now. Sort of like a Fox News, CNN pick your bias approach.
You want the door open for the next Google too, at the moment five compnaies have pulled up the ladder behind them (Apple, M$, Facebook, Google and Amazon).
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@Kirwan Yeah, the monopoly through acquisition is a problem. Much more so than the bias I think. The bias may change depending on the political weather, but if they have taken out all the alternative competitors, or worse still, brought them in house and subjected them to the same biases, it’s harder to argue that people should just move.
I still maintain though that they are not essential. People should log off.
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