Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Says He Fears 'Erosion of Truth' But Defends Allowing Politicians To Lie in Ads (washingtonpost.com) 157
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview he worries "about an erosion of truth" online but defended the policy that allows politicians to peddle ads containing misrepresentations and lies on his social network, a stance that has sparked an outcry during the 2020 presidential campaign. From a report: "People worry, and I worry deeply, too, about an erosion of truth," Zuckerberg told The Washington Post ahead of a speech Thursday at Georgetown University. "At the same time, I don't think people want to live in a world where you can only say things that tech companies decide are 100 percent true. And I think that those tensions are something we have to live with." Zuckerberg's approach to political speech has come under fire in recent weeks. Democrats have taken particular issue with Facebook's decision to allow an ad from President Trump's 2020 campaign that included falsehoods about former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Sen. Elizabeth Warren responded to Facebook's decision by running her own campaign ad, satirically stating that Zuckerberg supports Trump for re-election.
Zuckerberg framed the issue as part of a broader debate over free expression, warning about the dangers of social networks, including Facebook, "potentially cracking down too much." He called on the U.S. to set an example for tailored regulation in contrast to other countries, including China, that censor political speech online. And Zuckerberg stressed Facebook must stand strong against governments that seek to "pull back" on free speech in the face of heightened social and political tensions. Zuckerberg's appearance in Washington marks his most forceful attempt to articulate his vision for how governments and tech giants should approach the Web's most intractable problems. The scale of Facebook and its affiliated apps, Instagram and WhatsApp, which make up a virtual community of billions of users, poses challenges for Zuckerberg and regulators around the world as they struggle to contain hate speech, falsehoods, violent imagery and terrorist propaganda on social media.
Zuckerberg framed the issue as part of a broader debate over free expression, warning about the dangers of social networks, including Facebook, "potentially cracking down too much." He called on the U.S. to set an example for tailored regulation in contrast to other countries, including China, that censor political speech online. And Zuckerberg stressed Facebook must stand strong against governments that seek to "pull back" on free speech in the face of heightened social and political tensions. Zuckerberg's appearance in Washington marks his most forceful attempt to articulate his vision for how governments and tech giants should approach the Web's most intractable problems. The scale of Facebook and its affiliated apps, Instagram and WhatsApp, which make up a virtual community of billions of users, poses challenges for Zuckerberg and regulators around the world as they struggle to contain hate speech, falsehoods, violent imagery and terrorist propaganda on social media.
Erosion of Truth (Score:5, Funny)
Itâ(TM)s his fault (Score:2)
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Because newspapers nor usenet nor the Web _never_ had lies. /s /facepalm
Blaming the medium isn't the problem. Lack of integrity, being apathetic, hand waving complicated topics into "sound bites", unbiased reporting, shill pieces, etc. is.
Re:Itâ(TM)s his fault (Score:5, Insightful)
While people believing everything they see is a problem, that doesn't mean you should ignore the active spread of blatant misinformation. If you're browsing before bed and see, say five random ads, do you stay up an hour to research them all? Of course not, you have shit to do in the morning and you aren't looking for ads, they just happen to be there. Fuck those ads, you'll just ignore them.
But...seeing the same information over and over, even if it's false, makes our brains lean towards trusting that information. Sure, you can override that by doing a little research, but researching every news story or ad you see is going to take hours out of every day. People always say "Do your own research!" like it's some panacea for the masses, when a fair number of said masses wouldn't know what they were looking at if you gave them all of the available information because they aren't specialist on whatever the subject is. And since they're ads it's not like people will come back to them later and see corrections. Once an ad has been viewed, its purpose is fulfilled.
But you know what's going to do even less good than doing absolutely nothing? Publicly announcing that you will not interfere in political advertising on your platform, even if it is proven to be demonstrably false.
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No, I stay up an hour trying to figure out how uBlock Origin broke. I shouldn't even see one ad, let alone five. That sounds terrible! Quit trying to scare us with your unrealistic horror-movie-plot scenarios.
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does this tool block slashvertisements and product placement too? If so how to I go about installing said tool?
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Mark Zuckerberg is saying what ever the fuck it's Public Relations = B$ (lies for profit) tells it to say, so as not to further cripple facebook, it is still dying in slow motion though.
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Newpapers print retractions when they get it wrong. Trump repeats proven falsehoods long after they've been proven wrong. I suppose we could bemoan the fact that people continue to believe his lies long after they've been disproven, but that's no excuse for doing nothing.
Publish the lies if you think that's better than attempting to suppress them. But for Crissake, flag them as false and provide pointers to the truth. Print 3 separate flags from a random selection of fact-checkers. Anything's better th
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>Newpapers print retractions when they get it wrong
How many retractions does it take to discredit a news source? If an outlet make retractions within 8 hours of publication at 5am, how does that reverse the damage that's done if the viewership numbers are near 0? This has happened.
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It's better than nothing - which is the case right now with social media.
Re:It's his fault (Score:2)
Newspapers make mistakes in headlines on page 1, and print retractions in fine print on page 10. Pretty much the same thing as not retracting at all.
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Are you sure these aren't alternative facts?
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If the person who wrote the /. headline and the summary before the quote starts got their way, this article would have been banned for containing misrepresentations and lies.
Saying Zuckerberg "Defends allowing politicians to lie" is more of a lie than anything in Trump's Facebook campaign ads. His statements at least factually true, even if someone might disagree with the implications.
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Really if these companies want to get over on the "we're not a publisher just a platform" line, they should add hooks whereby independent agencies can rate and curate the content. As many agencies as want to. Then allow users of the platform to decide which agencies they trust... and give them a way to view what each agency is doing so they have ample information by which to decide.
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For every truth on the internet, there is an opposite and equal truth. Fair & balanced reporting. Presenting both sides of the debate. They're not untruths, they're negative reality inversions.
Can't wait for the reports that claim Zuckerberg is a conscientious philanthropist working tirelessly the make the world a better place. Double-plus-good!
Re: Erosion of Truth (Score:2)
Ministry of Truth (Score:2)
Have some Ministry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Perhaps, but what's interesting about his standard is that he's saying "because we can't trust corporations to say for sure that an ad contains no falsehoods, we must allow all ads, even if they very clearly contain falsehoods." It's a neat dodge. I wonder how many people will fall for his grift.
ideology my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
If political ads can explicitly lie (i.e. blatant propaganda) he wants to be the one to profit the most from wealthy malevolent forces. A platform that accepts payment from anyone, and collects all data to profit from or further repackage and resell makes the most money.
Zuckerberg's position is always, always, always, always aligned with "what makes me the most money", with high-minded BS propaganda and fake aw-shucks 'oopsie-in-a-hoodie' apologies on the descent to Mussolinistan.
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I think it works remarkably well. For all the complaints, the facts of economic growth are on my side. The ability
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Zuck is a piece of crap (Score:4, Insightful)
but he's also being selectively crucified by the globalist cabal he's a part of.
Part of it is in retaliation for being a dick-head. Not to the the Facebook users, but to the other International deep-state asswipes he's in bed with. Expect Facebook to get broken up and brokered out by the government to people who appear to be better at leveraging it as a power base. Expect to also be the point where people FINALLY get it through their heads they shouldn't be on fucking Facebook and they move on to the next sack of crap. They'll ignore the good ones since those have been painted as bad by the same people who manipulated everything else, so they're going to move on to the next half-baked one, probably owned by China, or getting sold to it right after it takes off. (it won't be MySpace)
Re:Zuck is a piece of crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Conspiracies proven true:
NSA exist
Area 51 exist (I've been personally called a crazy for that one)
The Bilderberg group now not only exist they publishes an agenda
MK-Ultra is officially confirmed though talking about it is still avoided
Operating Mockingbird is now solidified thanks to the NDAA
CIA drug running is no longer denied, just not discussed
The military is now releasing videos of UFOs [popularmechanics.com] and not denying them.
Those are the ones that are accepted and really not disputable. There's more that are proven but the average person will still argue they're not because they aren't generally accepted enough. Most people chose to ignore that the above are true or gloss over the fact they used to be conspiracy theories so they can continue to not question other things.
My tinfoil skull cap feels great, and so does the loose but electrically insulated from the skull-level tin-foil cowboy hat.
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Re:Zuck is a piece of crap (Score:4, Informative)
NSA used to be called No Such Agency _if_ anybody ever mentioned it, and it was NEVER mentioned before the mid-70's
Area-51 was often referred to as Dream Land unofficially and Groom Lake AFB officially. It was operated as a bomb test site for many years before being dedicated to flight testing. These included top secret US aircraft, some of which we are now familiar with, but that also employed UFO cover stories
The CIA has investigated several 'fringe' techniques, attempting to make a person insane with psychedelics, waterboarding, electrical torture etc, have been among the tests. Remote viewing from 'the farm' were similar, but less discussed tests.
UFOs are and were Unknown Flying Objects, Aliens was just the result of letting people's beliefs run wild since ti provided a cover story for test aurcraft
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I've just accepted the fact I'm always tracked - regardless of settings. My phone is always transcribing and uploading everything I say, even if it's "off".
Heck, I'm even involved, I have my hands in deploying bluetooth trackers.
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Not an argument.
I’d argue that he’s a piece of shit.
I'm confused (Score:2)
Are we supposed to believe him when he says something like that?
Falsehoods? (Score:3, Insightful)
Democrats have taken particular issue with Facebook's decision to allow an ad from President Trump's 2020 campaign that included falsehoods about former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Those weren't falsehoods they were accusations. Of course the Democrats will absolutely claim LIES and defend "their guy" just as all politicians of all sides do. That's the nature of politicization of speech. There is no 100% factual truth in political speech because it's always ideological, subjective and open to interpretation. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and all that. That's why free speech is IMPORTANT.
Facebook and the other social media et al are under constant attack by political forces who want to silence dissent and counter speech and articles like this are perfect examples as to the propaganda that's spewing around in order to silence opposing opinions and political discourse worldwide.
Lying about lying (Score:3, Informative)
There was nothing in the Trump ad that was untrue.
The claims were:
1) Hunter Biden was on the board of directories of a Ukrainian energy company that was being investigated for corruption.
2) While he was in charge of diplomacy with Ukraine, Joe Biden threatened the Ukrainians with withholding $1 billion in loan guarantees unless they fired the prosecutor.
3) Trump wants to investigate this because it looks like corruption, and the Democrats want to impeach him over it.
Where is the falsehood?
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board of directories
Damn it.
Re:Lying about lying (Score:4)
I know, LDAP is outright criminal.
This should be proclaimed far more often.
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The investigation into the energy company had effectively ended a full year before Biden asked the Ukrainian to fire the investigator,
The investigation was still open.
someone who btw was considered by most developed governments to be corrupt and wanted the same.
According to the testimony of George Kent, the Senior State Department Ukraine expert, the IMF and other "developed governments" were following the Obama admin's lead on that one, so what they think is meaningless. The IMF and pals were not the ones asking Obama and Biden to fire the prosecutor.
It's also irrelevant whether or not the prosecutor was corrupt. Was he fired for being corrupt or because Hunter wanted him to stop investigating the company that was paying him large
Re:Lying about lying (Score:4, Informative)
The investigation into the energy company had effectively ended a full year before Biden asked the Ukrainian to fire the investigator,
The investigation was still open.
Where are you getting your information from?:
https://news.yahoo.com/timelin... [yahoo.com]
Also the Ukrainian prosecutor had not been co-operative with a UK investigation into the head of Burisma...leading to UK authorities having to return $23M of seized money:
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Again everyone knew the prosecutor was corrupt. Here is another article from 2015:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.or... [atlanticcouncil.org]
So your conspiracy BS is just that...BS.
Either use neutral sources or accept that... (Score:2)
other people will use sources YOU believe are biased. The Guardian, for example, is widely accepted as a partisan left-wing publication - citing it as though it is unbiased is on par with somebody you oppose citing National Review (the US magazine founded by William F Buckley). Study the Yahoo article you linked - it's actually a Bloomberg (left of center) article.
You *could* link to actual documents like this one [scribd.com] or this one [scribd.com] (translated as this one [scribd.com]) instead of some biased reporter's personal blabbering. An
Re: Lying about lying (Score:2)
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
The owner of Burisma (also a government official) was being investigated for corruption and embezzling, had $23 million frozen by investigators in London which got released because the Ukraine prosecutor's office did NOT help investigate Burisma and its owner.
You better bring some strong evidence that the fired prosecutor was not SHIELDING Burisma and Zlochevsky, because everything points to that being the case.
Hunter was placed on the board to help clean up their act (or ap
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Did you read the article you linked? I doubt it.
Some choice quotes about the Bidens in your article:
"The credibility of the United States was not helped by the news that since May 2014, Bidenâ(TM)s son Hunter had been on the board of directors of Burisma, Zlochevskyâ(TM)s company."
âoeYou have to wonder how big the salary has to be to put US soft power at risk like this. Pretty big, weâ(TM)d imagine.â
"Hunter Biden is an undistinguished corporate lawyer, with no previous Ukraine exper
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Except...
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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I can do that too! [thehill.com]
I can't stand Biden (Score:2)
This is Trump's central accusation of corruption on _Biden's_ part. Nobody cares if Hunter is corrupt. It's Biden they want.
That said, if you ask me they should care. Politico has a nice, long story called "Biden, Inc" about how his family has cashed in on Joe's political office.
That also sa
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>The moral of the story is vote #Bernie2020,
A walking heart-attack? No offense to Bernie but he should honestly just retire and enjoy the last of his days and fortune.
In 2016, Bernie had energy and he did seem like a fresh look (ignoring his age). 2016 was his time and he did better than what a lot of people expected.
But I don't think he can keep up and if he miraculously did win we would have voted more for his VP choice than him. He should name a successor to the revolution and let them be the champion
Meh, it's just heart stents (Score:2)
And go watch his debate performance. He's fine.
Heart Attack at 78. Full stop. (Score:2)
>He's fine.
It was a heart attack that his campaign downplayed. He is not the same. He looks tired and has much less energy. He is slowing down his campaign. I don't think it's a good idea to put someone in the highest office that is slowing down especially after heart attack at age 78 (nearly 80 if elected).
It'd be better to actually vote for someone than vote for their vp choice. He needs to throw in the towel and name someone else to carry on. Sorry, but I don't think anyone should put the cou
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If you listen to NPR, they use the word 'debunked' in relation to this narrative at least twice a story.
They reframe, and insist that "nothing Biden or his son did was illegal". I don't Trump ever said he did (although I guess if withholding $250mill - which has lately become $400 mill somehow - in exchange restarting an investigation is an impeach-worthy offense, then withholding $1bn to stop an investigation would be too?)?
Then they usually try to use term 'discredited narrative' once or twice as well.
Th
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Your #3 is the falsehood. Trump wants to investigate Biden because Biden is his political opponent, and he doesn't want to pay for opposition research out of his campaign finance funds. That's why he also said that China should investigate both Biden and Warren.
Now, you might think that perhaps Biden has infiltrated the International Monetary Fund, and the EU, and the US, and Transparency International, and a few others just so they'd ask for the firing of Viktor Shokin so it wouldn't look suspicious when h
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https://news.yahoo.com/timelin... [yahoo.com]
Was I sleeping? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It has been going on forever. The problem is the people with this type of world-view and they have probably been around as long as humans exist.
That's all politicians ever do (Score:2)
That's all politicians ever do: lie. They lie in ads, they lie in public speeches, they lie to the press and to their constituents. If they didn't lie there's zero chance they'd get elected in the first place. Banning lying in political ads on FB would lead to banning all political ads completely. An unwise move given $300M or so in ad revenue this would cut for the next year.
Only one solution to this: (Score:4, Interesting)
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I love this idea... although it might cause people to start shouting "Fake News!" every time Facebook announces that it's someone's birthday :)
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Sensible people didn't tell Facebook their true birthday in the first place, so it really is fake news when it announces it.
In other news... (Score:2)
Free speech (and other values) should be protected (Score:3)
The US federal legal code (Constitution and statute law) limit the government's ability to control and observe citizen behavior (freedom of speech, freedom from unreasonable search/seizure, Privacy Act and other restrictions on retaining citizen data in government systems). An end-run around these restraints of government power is for government to require that 3rd parties act in ways that either directly or indirectly provide the effective benefit to government as if the restraints were not in place. E.g., government requiring censorship, government requiring businesses to retain data for future government search, government pressuring businesses (such as through banking oversight) to not do business with businesses that the government can't legally shut down.
I think we should think long and hard about government-ordained end runs around the restraints placed on the government. Values like "free speech" are important, as evidenced by the fact that when the folks that put the US Constitution together first made some patches to make absolutely, crystal clear that the federal government constituted by that document was not permitted to degrade those values, those were the things that they focused on.
Why does that surprise anybody? (Score:2)
We know zuck is a liar and has absolutely no feeling of obligation towards his customers/victims.
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Yes, all those corpses of the 'victims' (lol) of Facebook. Khmer Rouge ain't got nothing on Zuck, amirite?
This place has more over the top melodrama than an 8th grade girl's playground on Febraru 13th.
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So you believe to be a victim you need to be killed? Talk about drama...
Nothing new (Score:2)
All politicians of all parties lie all the time, they always have and they always will.
You misread what he said (Score:3, Insightful)
Look I am no fan of Zuckerberg or FaceBook..
But the summary totally "lies" if you will, about what he said.
Summary says: "Defends Allowing Politicians To Lie in Ads"
Z said : "I don't think people want to live in a world where you can only say things that tech companies decide are 100 percent true."
He's not saying he wants to allow lies, he's saying tech companies are not a good overseer of what is true and what is not. Which is accurate, we should not leave it up to them to be a gateway.
Anyone should be able to say anything, then others are free to point out what is wrong. The idea we should ban all speech that any one group finds offensive or "a lie" is just insane and true tyranny.
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He's saying he wants to spend as little money on oversight as possible while taking money from as many advertisers as possible.
Paid content containing information that can be proven false should be taken down after the "proven false" part. If Facebook doesn't want to police political ads at all, that's fine...don't host political ads.
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You people all have severe Facebook Derangement Syndrome. Do you think TV ads were 100% truthful? It's not Facebooks jobs to vet political ads. Should they refuse to run that fraud Warren's ads because she lies about how her bullshit social programs will be paid for?
I don't get the Facebook vitriol, frankly. It's a place I occasionally go browse to see what people are up to, and sometimes have conversations with family on in private messenger. I spend about 5 minutes a month on it, and 0 minutes outside of
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"You people all have severe Facebook Derangement Syndrome."
Meaningless drivel...
"Do you think TV ads were 100% truthful?"
Shifting goalpost. No, but I think they stopped running them if they contained easily proven lies. Sometimes they even had follow up ads apologizing for being so full of shit.
"It's not Facebooks jobs to vet political ads."
It is if they're going to take money to host them. We aren't talking free user comments, this is about taking money to publish content.
"Should they refuse to run that
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Talks about meaningless drivel.. on a site dedicated to meaningless fucking drivel. You really got me there. I will try to stick on topic for the important, objective, and rational discussions that take place here. I'm sure were I to care enough to peruse your browsing history you would "stick to the facts" and are nearly robotic in your recitation of highly objective, logical arguments.
Leaving aside the dreary tedium of meaningless drivel that is your callout of my meaningless drivel, pointing out that oth
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"If it's anything more subtle than that, then it's not their job."
They are paid publishers for said material. Paid. To publish the material. It is literally their job to manage it. I've said repeatedly that Facebook should not be required to vet ads as they come in, but they certainly are responsible for leaving them up or taking them down after being presented with reasons to do so. They do this for the other ads that they host. Political ads are only being exempted because Facebook thinks (rightly s
Hate to agree with Zuckerberg but he is right (Score:2, Flamebait)
It's easy to say "only true stuff" but then someone has make a determination of what is and is not true. If that someone is anyone other than the individual you implement a gatekeeper who has the power to shape what is true, even acting in good faith that gatekeeper would taint democracy with their own bias. Sort of like how catholic monks/priests transliterated countless copies of historical and religious books. They did this not to mislead people but because they had absolute faith in their church as the
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You don't approve what is true. You take down what is proven false.
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Nobody can prove what Trump said false. It's bullshit for sure, but it's vague accusations and misinterpretations of facts. If anything, Warren's ads are more likely to be provably false with basic math on taxation and how she will pay for shit she claims she will drive.
Should FB take down "Russia, Russia, Russia!" ads since that was proved bullshit?
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"You take down what is proven false."
According to whom?
Not news (Score:3)
Zuckerberg will never admit he's wrong, or say anything to threaten his power and wealth. It's not clear to me why people try to debate the truth of what he says. From his point of view, truth is irrelevant. He's simply trying to spin the conversation in a direction that's favorable to him.
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Facebook endorsing mendacity (Score:2)
Translation: (Score:2)
Allowing politicians to lie and users to spread the BS and fight over it is actually more profitable for us than trying to clean things up a bit, so we won't do shit.
Post-truth era (Score:2, Insightful)
It's 2019. Truth no longer matters. Half a century of concerted attacks on the very idea of truth, or expertise, or accountability have created an environment where people have now just given up. From the farthest fringes of conspiracy culture to the White House, there is a constant and ongoing effort to make people give up on knowing.
As a certain sweaty, fat, degenerate said not so long ago:
ALL politicians lie (Score:2)
Standards? (Score:2)
So we're talking about the platform? (Score:2)
Why not the liar? Seems pretty simple to me. Let them lie until they have no trust. I'm no fan of social media, but why shoot the messenger?
He Fears 'Erosion of Truth' (Score:2)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Says He Fears 'Erosion of Truth' But Defends Allowing Politicians To Lie in Ads
Maybe he was lying.
No precedent? (Score:2)
Re:Fake News (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone found either video or audio of Biden bragging about getting the anti-corruption prosecutor fired by withholding aid. Even if it didn't happen (which we know it did), Biden has bragged about it. (I've only read a transcript, I haven't seen the original.)
The degree to which this has backfired is impressive. A majority of Americans do not agree with removing the President from office over this, and Biden has taken a pretty substantial hit in his polls. (He's still easily the front-runner as he's still the only Democratic candidate who has any shot of beating Trump.)
I don't really believe Trump is playing "4 dimensional chess" as much as the Democrats are just amazingly bad at politics. The whole anti-Facebook thing is pretty much proof of it. People may not like Facebook, but they certainly don't want Democrats telling them what they're allowed to read online.
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"majority of Americans do not agree with removing the President from office over this"
That recent Fox News poll would disagree
Re:Fake News (Score:4, Informative)
Someone needs to learn how to read polls, because no poll has shown a majority of Americans think that President Trump should be removed from office.
First off, polls conducted after that poll show less than a majority support the impeachment hearing at all. Secondly, what you're referring to is a poll showing a very slim (something like 50.2%) of respondents support starting an impeachment inquiry, which is not the same thing as removing the President from office. When asked if they think President Trump should be removed from office over the Ukraine "scandal," the majority of Americans say "no."
Yes, it's confusing, but it's important. The majority of Americans think this should be handled with the 2020 election and not through Congressional grand-standing.
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Yes, there has been at least one poll supporting both impeachment and removal of Trump, here's one from Gallup [gallup.com] with 52% for impeachment and removal. Impeachment inquiry polls have also trended even more favorably than for removal in the past week or two, so you may want to reevaluate that assertion that the majority supports waiting until the 2020 election.
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Someone needs to learn how to read polls, because no poll has shown a majority of Americans think that President Trump should be removed from office.
Tell that to Gallup [gallup.com].
You were saying?
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no poll has shown a majority of Americans think that President Trump should be removed from office.
[...] what you're referring to is a poll showing a very slim (something like 50.2%) of respondents support starting an impeachment inquiry, which is not the same thing as removing the President from office.
Actually, a majority of registered voters being in favor of removing him is exactly what the poll in question [foxnews.com] showed.
Among registered voters:
51% - Impeached and removed
4% - Impeached but not removed
40% - Not impeached
Subsequent polls may have shown differently, but you’re clearly misremembering the facts of this particular poll.
Re:Fake News (Score:4, Informative)
When you scroll down you see the political identification.
46-48% are democrat. (solid + lean)
39-42% are republican. (solid + lean)
For anyone else's reference, those numbers aren't just a quick scroll down the page. They're at a different link [foxnews.com] on page 15 of 34.
You mean to tell me that a poll that skewes democrat favors the democratic position? I am shocked. Shocked I tell you.
You're jumping to a baseless assumption that isn't supported by your numbers. You've incorrectly assumed that a poll with more Democrat than Republican respondents automatically means the poll over-represents Democrats. It doesn't. In fact, given some recent numbers [washingtonexaminer.com], it's entirely likely that the poll underrepresents voting Democrats.
Regarding the sampling process, here's what the original link I provided says:
this Fox News Poll includes interviews with 1,003 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide who spoke with live interviewers on both landlines and cellphones. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.
Which is to say, the poll's error bars already account for sampling issues. While the poll may have more Democrat-leaning respondents, that doesn't mean the poll over-represents Democrats. It means America currently has more Democrats than Republicans, which is a fairly well-established statistic. Mind you, none of this means the Dems will win the next round of elections, especially so since Independent voters historically lean Republican when the rubber meets the road, but the fact that a poll shows more X than Y does not automatically mean the poll is invalid. It may just mean that the world has more X than Y.
(Disclaimer: I'm a registered Republican who can't stand it when people try to lie with statistics.)
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Oh FFS. Give me a fucking break. There is no dispute that Biden did that. It was US policy at the time, and there were multiple parties pushing for that prosecutor to be dismissed.
"Look guys, there's video!!". Yeah, that video means nothing the facts are established. The claim from the right is he did it to protect his son. There is no evidence of that and plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Re:Fake News (Score:4, Insightful)
?!! What the hell are you carrying on about? Is the question whether Hunter Biden got his position due to his father or whether Biden did something improper? Not sure how you think muddying the waters means anything to anyone?
It's especially rich to talk about Nepotism considering the Trump brood's involvement in the Trump presidency. It actually boggles the mind than anyone would even dare mention the word nepotism about any of Trump's foes, it's absurd.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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He was an "anti-corruption" prosecutor because that was his explicit stated goal, and corruption was what he was investigating in that case.
>Using diplomacy to dig dirt on your political opponents is not.
So the president isn't allowed to investigate corruption if it's about his political rivals? So if I run for president, I should be immune from corruption investigations?
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Facebook can't just kick paying customers off their advertising platform it's how they make money.
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