To Keep Trump From Violating Its Rules...Facebook Rewrote the Rules (msn.com) 372
"Starting in 2015 Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook rewrote their rules in order to not sanction then-candidate Donald Trump," writes Rick Zeman (Slashdot reader #15,628) — citing a new investigation by the Washington Post. (Also available here.)
After Trump's infamous "the shooting starts" post, Facebook deputies contacted the White House "with an urgent plea to tweak the language of the post or simply delete it," the article reveals, after which Trump himself called Mark Zuckerberg. (The article later notes that historically Facebook makes a "newsworthiness exception" for some posts which it refuses to remove, "determined on a case-by-case basis, with the most controversial calls made by Zuckerberg.") And in the end, Facebook also decided not to delete that post — and says now that even Friday's newly-announced policy changes still would not have disqualified the post: The frenzied push-pull was just the latest incident in a five-year struggle by Facebook to accommodate the boundary-busting ways of Trump. The president has not changed his rhetoric since he was a candidate, but the company has continually altered its policies and its products in ways certain to outlast his presidency. Facebook has constrained its efforts against false and misleading news, adopted a policy explicitly allowing politicians to lie, and even altered its news feed algorithm to neutralize claims that it was biased against conservative publishers, according to more than a dozen former and current employees and previously unreported documents obtained by The Washington Post. One of the documents shows it began as far back as 2015...
The concessions to Trump have led to a transformation of the world's information battlefield. They paved the way for a growing list of digitally savvy politicians to repeatedly push out misinformation and incendiary political language to billions of people. It has complicated the public understanding of major events such as the pandemic and the protest movement, as well as contributed to polarization. And as Trump grew in power, the fear of his wrath pushed Facebook into more deferential behavior toward its growing number of right-leaning users, tilting the balance of news people see on the network, according to the current and former employees...
Facebook is also facing a slow-burning crisis of morale, with more than 5,000 employees denouncing the company's decision to leave Trump's post that said, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," up... The political speech carveout ended up setting the stage for how the company would handle not only Trump, but populist leaders around the world who have posted content that test these boundaries, such as Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Narendra Modi in India...
"The value of being in favor with people in power outweighs almost every other concern for Facebook," said David Thiel, a Facebook security engineer who resigned in March after his colleagues refused to remove a post he believed constituted "dehumanizing speech" by Brazil's president.
After Trump's infamous "the shooting starts" post, Facebook deputies contacted the White House "with an urgent plea to tweak the language of the post or simply delete it," the article reveals, after which Trump himself called Mark Zuckerberg. (The article later notes that historically Facebook makes a "newsworthiness exception" for some posts which it refuses to remove, "determined on a case-by-case basis, with the most controversial calls made by Zuckerberg.") And in the end, Facebook also decided not to delete that post — and says now that even Friday's newly-announced policy changes still would not have disqualified the post: The frenzied push-pull was just the latest incident in a five-year struggle by Facebook to accommodate the boundary-busting ways of Trump. The president has not changed his rhetoric since he was a candidate, but the company has continually altered its policies and its products in ways certain to outlast his presidency. Facebook has constrained its efforts against false and misleading news, adopted a policy explicitly allowing politicians to lie, and even altered its news feed algorithm to neutralize claims that it was biased against conservative publishers, according to more than a dozen former and current employees and previously unreported documents obtained by The Washington Post. One of the documents shows it began as far back as 2015...
The concessions to Trump have led to a transformation of the world's information battlefield. They paved the way for a growing list of digitally savvy politicians to repeatedly push out misinformation and incendiary political language to billions of people. It has complicated the public understanding of major events such as the pandemic and the protest movement, as well as contributed to polarization. And as Trump grew in power, the fear of his wrath pushed Facebook into more deferential behavior toward its growing number of right-leaning users, tilting the balance of news people see on the network, according to the current and former employees...
Facebook is also facing a slow-burning crisis of morale, with more than 5,000 employees denouncing the company's decision to leave Trump's post that said, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," up... The political speech carveout ended up setting the stage for how the company would handle not only Trump, but populist leaders around the world who have posted content that test these boundaries, such as Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Narendra Modi in India...
"The value of being in favor with people in power outweighs almost every other concern for Facebook," said David Thiel, a Facebook security engineer who resigned in March after his colleagues refused to remove a post he believed constituted "dehumanizing speech" by Brazil's president.
Juat pay the SJW fealty (Score:3, Insightful)
Take my advice: make a "donation" of $100 million to some SJW organization, and move on. That is what Google did. Why risk billions in income?
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The SJWs will cost google far more in revenue over the long term.
Allies under the far left only last so long.
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Seems like you all with TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) think that a media outlet is one person. Media outlets are made up of lots of people with different opinions. It is possible for Person A and even Person B to say silly stuff, while Person C says something that is correct. Is that confusing? Sure, we all agree that it is. This is why its very hard to take anything this president says seriously. He spouts off so much nonsense that most people are just tired of trying to figure out what is rea
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1) You don;t have the balls to post as a username
2) Your reply is what I would expect of a teenager who is unable to debate their opponent."TDS" - really ?
Pathetic
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This isn't something new. Citizen Kane, from ~1940, takes place in the 1890s (this part anyway) where yellow journalism was rampant.
Kane's wife says to him, at one point regarding a scandal, "Charles, people will think..."
"...what I tell them to think."
The biggest threat to America at the moment isn't the loud mouth Trump, largely stuffed by Congress and the courts. Rather it is the set of candidates threatening social media with section 230 changes, if not outright breakup as too big and influential, if
Re: Is this the same WaPo.. (Score:4)
You don't get to rewrite the meaning of TDS.
It means someone who is so utterly deranged about Trump that they cannot brook any criticism or admit anything other than perfection.
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"You don't get to rewrite the meaning of TDS."
Yes, we absolutely do. That's how language works. We can use the word in the way that makes the most sense if we want to. And if we do, the word (or in this case, initialism) takes on the new meaning. "TDS" was originally intended as a way for Trump's supporters to gaslight his detractors by implying that they are crazy for pointing out facts which paint him in a negative light, but it makes much more sense to use it to describe the severe disassociation experie
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But did you know that you're more likely to die a violent death in a rural area than in a city [bloomberg.com]?
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Car crashes because people have to drive farther (which is what your cited article is about) aren't "violent death".
Violence [google.com]: "behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something."
Not sure about in your beloved big city, but out in the rural areas, people aren't generally dying in car crashes because someone intends to hurt, damage, or kill them. They're called "accidents" for a reason.
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I see, deaths from car crashes are peaceful and natural.
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Which of those covers accidental car crash deaths? Not the circular one, presumably....
Face it, you know what the original poster was implying and "accidental death" isn't what the vast majority of people associate with "violent death".
So that makes you not only an asshole for your gratuitous insults to your older bettors, but also wrong on the facts.
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Trump does that on purpose. The only way the news media will look into anything involving Democrats is for Trump to make a false claim about it. Then the news media runs with the story to fact check him and the public finds out it's only 19+ out of 20 most dangerous cities are Democrat run.
He did it for Covid shutdowns. Remember him saying he'd shut places down himself? Then the public found out a day later that amazingly, contrary to the news media narrative from before, all those decisions are local d
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm afraid I'm going to have to tell the recruiter it doesn't seem like you want my kind around there.
The downside is that it will be infiltrated even further by the cultists.
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Facebook (Score:2)
A Modest Proposal (Score:4, Insightful)
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You may notice the narration changes with the time zone.
During sane periods the reasonable voices get upvoted, but overnight magically a bunch of conflict and rhetoric will come out.
Take that for what you will, but there are periods where the tide of the discussion goes one way and completely flips. It would be horribly easy to hijack slashdot narration, but sadly it is a waste of dollars to do so.
The problem is the minority that will be radicalized by this perception. The frothing at the mouth minority who
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He's talking specifically about you (Score:3)
and people like you. Hyper-partisan idiots whose posts are 99% socio-political bullshit that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. It's polluting the river so bad, it's gotten very hard to swim - and it's getting worse.
That you're so dismissive of his proposals is hardly surprising. You're one of the biggest offenders here. You and others like you would be happy to see this place turn into another r/Politics (or worse). Well, YOU CAN ALL GO TO HELL.
Meh, like I said, if you don't like it (Score:2)
I would love to stop worrying about politics. I miss those carefree days. But idiots keep doing increasingly stupid things and social media amplifies their ability to do damage. So I keep getting screwed over, and I keep shouting into the void hoping the stupid will stop and people will come to their senses.
Re:Meh, like I said, if you don't like it (Score:4, Insightful)
> "don't click the political articles."
Uh huh. Well, I clicked on an article titled "How Did the World Miss Covid-19's Silent Spread?", and guess what I found? This:
We've been cutting back on disaster preparation to make way for tax cuts for ages. We've also been going out of our way to downplay the efficacy of science (largely so we can ignore the whole Global Warming thing). Our media has consolidated into the hands of a wealthy few and investigative Journalism is basically dead as a result, so our media treats incredibly stupid ideas as plausible.
Finally we've really, really started to _hate_ experts. The idea that "common sense" can solve complex problems has permeated the entire world (with America as patient zero for that disease). So we've got 20% of the country listening to a has-been game show host instead of the most respected and experienced epidemiologist in the country and perhaps the world. On top of that 20% you've got another 40% who every time you point it out scream "That's Partisan!" instead of thinking rationally about the situation we're in.
Basically the machinery of Democracy and civilized society was, I wouldn't say neglected so much as actively torn down, for 40+ years.
Everything, with the possible THIN exception of the first sentence, is completely off-topic political bullshit in a non-political topic.
I also clicked on an article titled "Democrats Pitch $100 Billion Broadband Plan, Repeal of State Limits On Muni Networks", and look what I found:
BLM is a movement, not a specific organization. So there's lots of "Black Lives Matters" organizations you can give money to (and get positive press from).
One of them, that received quite a bit of corporate dosh, has a manifesto that spends it's time talking about trans rights and equal pay for women and somehow never gets around to mentioning all of those black folk killed by police...
So yeah, those "donations" are really more an attempt to undermine the BLM movement while simultaneously getting good press.
It's 2020. Take the most cynical and cartoonishly evil thing you can think of and double it and then double it again and you might get close to the reality of the situation. Then again the CIA was selling Crack to blacks in 1980 to fund death squads in South America (and we have the receipts) so I'm not sure I can blame that on it being 2020...
EVERYTHING there is completely off-topic HORSESHIT. Do I need to go on? Idiots around here ALWAYS post politics in non-political articles. Idiots just. like. you.
> "Plus there's not as much cool tech that can be easily understood casual by hobbyists anymore. A change was inevitable."
Right, there's no drones, 3D printing, VR, gaming, hardware, cell phones, Tesla, apps, linux, no-code, browsers, SpaceX etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. ever discussed here anymore. Jesus you are so full of shit. So fucking unaware.
"I would love to stop worrying about politics. I miss those carefree days. But idiots keep doing increasingly stupid things and social media amplifies their ability to do damage. So I keep getting screwed over, and I keep shouting into the void hoping the stupid will stop and people will come to their senses."
I have no idea how anyone can possibly be screwed over by social media, unless you're a teenage girl. In any event, NONE of that means you need to post your continuously off-topic noise here. If you want to tilt at political windmills, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. There are plenty of other places tailor made for idiots like you. Here, you are just NOISE.
More BS (Score:3)
[Look, if you can't figure out] that the article was political from that headline I can't help you. COVID has become hopelessly politicized. If you want to get away from that you're only option is to read the CDC posts. Any comment site or news aggregator service that posts about COVID is going to be chock full of politics.
For you and some others around here, EVERYTHING about is politics. There is literally no subject you won't try to put a political spin on. The reason COVID has become hopelessly politicized is because of people like YOU. And the political blame game you constantly play doesn't help anything. It's nothing but noise. You're just a different flavor of LynnwoodRooster and the like.
Your claim [paraphrased]: "Just don't click on the political articles, and you won't find any political posts". I've already
In what fantasy land (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowhere (Score:2)
This means folks like me will avoid doing business with them and we'll avoid doing business with brands that we associate with them. Nothing wrong with censorship when it's not coming from the gov't. Like the old xkcd comic it's just me and mine showing them the door.
Re: Nowhere (Score:3)
the issue is inciting violence.
That's idiotic. The president saying that looting leads to shooting is no more "inciting violence" than a cop yelling "drop the weapon or I will shoot you". Only abject morons like the ones running twitter would conclude that either of those things is inciting violence.
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False comparison... a person with a weapon can pose a direct and immediate danger to someone's person. A looter poses no such threat unless they too are also armed and threatening someone. Here's a hint, that's not how looting usually happens.
Re: Nowhere (Score:2)
Re: Nowhere (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Nowhere (Score:2)
Re: It's not the water at all (Score:2)
FB is a platform or a publisher (Score:4, Interesting)
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I couldn't agree more.
It is long overdue that all social media platforms are forced to pick a side:
a. Either willfully mess with the order of content, with the (in)visibility of content (boost or suppress due to some vague machine-learning algorithm) and *accept* the fact that you are considered a publisher. And thus are held accountable for *everything* visible through your medium (just like all other publishers).
b. Or be protected as a medium, but then there cannot be any hidden algorithms, or reordering
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Freedom of speech? (Score:4, Insightful)
I know facebook isn't constrained by the 1st, but as a concept I like to see it expressed more than just in our government. So good on facebook for choosing NOT to restrict speech.
And guess what? The "offensive" speech they're allowing isn't hurting anyone, not really. However, their stance on allowing it is hurting them.
Which tells you all you really need to know about the parties involved.
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, sure. Flooding the American public with lies hasn't caused any problems at all. Everything is hunky-dory.
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And if facebook "fell in line" and started filtering speech, it would magically get better?
Obviously not. The speech itself isn't the problem, it's the people ( as always ). Anyway, the speech they'd be filtering would very likely be on-sided given how deep their bias goes..and the side that wouldn't be filtered is far more violent and destructive.
More like (Score:2)
Politicians (Score:2)
Politicians lie, their statements are not unbiased news and should never be taken as such. They are the opinion of the politician, or of the party he represents.
Also the fact that a prominent politician has made a statement is a newsworthy event. What's newsworthy is that they have made a public statement, the content of the statement is largely irrelevant.
Censorship is a slippery slope, everyone should be free to express their opinions, just like anyone else is free to disagree with them. Instead of censor
Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish people would read the definition of treason before spouting off.
Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Informative)
I wish people would read the definition of treason before spouting off.
Indeed. Its definition is in the US Constitution. It is the onlycrime mentioned in the US Constitution (Article Three, Section 3):
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
It is widely recognized that treason cannot occur unless a formal state of war exists between the US and an enemy. The US Congress had not declared war against anyone since 1942.
I'm certainly no fan of Trump, but even I must point out that he cannot commit treason, because the US is not at war with anyone. I'll leave it to others to debate what other crimes he may be guilty of. But treason isn't one of them.
Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Informative)
[Treason] is the onlycrime mentioned in the US Constitution
Treason is specifically defined in the Constitution because accusations of treason had been flippantly made in the past.
Refuse to swear a loyalty oath to the king? Treason.
Swear loyalty to the king, but not promptly enough? Also treason: Massacre of Glencoe [wikipedia.org].
Treason [Re:Lock Him Up.] (Score:5, Informative)
This is English law treason, you dope.
And English law was what the U.S. had before we wrote the constitution. The English over-use of charges of treason is why treason is defined in the constitution.
Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:3, Informative)
My ocd moment not intended in any way to diminish your message:
Aren't we technically still at war with North Korea? IIRC, there was a ceasefire but no actual official end? Or was it not really a war because we labeled it a police action or some such bullshit? I need to go read up on this one.
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Only South Korea is formally at war with North Korea. The US and USSR never formally entered the war, and only participated by providing aid to their respective allies.
Both. South Korea didn't sign. 2018 Korean war end (Score:4, Informative)
After WWII Korea was split between US control in the south and Soviet Union control of the north. When the north attacked the south (with USSR encouragement), the US could and did defend south Korea without waiting around for Congress to debate a war declaration. Responding to an invasion in progress was considered to be within the power of the commander-in-chief.
Congress never saw a need to officially declare war and it was indeed called a "police action".
The Korean Armistice Agreement is considered more of a cease fire than a peace treaty because while by its terms it ended military action "until a final peaceful settlement is achieved", it did not normalize relations among the countries. More importantly, perhaps, South Korea didn't sign, so they were still technically at war.
On April 27, 2018, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in signed the Panmunjom Declaration, which formally ended the Korean war and established diplomatic relations between the two countries.
So -
The US was never officially at war in Korea adter rhe end of WWII
The war between North Korea and South Korea ended in 2018.
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Since then north korea has done some things that make seem that declaration is dead.
http://world.kbs.co.kr/special... [kbs.co.kr]
Again, both (Score:3)
The declaration does indeed contemplate a further accord, that's true. It also makes some important declarations. You can read the full text here:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/n... [japantimes.co.jp]
Here a couple of important snippets:
--
(1) South and North Korea agreed to completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air and sea, that are the source of military tension and conflict. In this vein, the two sides agreed to transform the demilitarized zone into a peace zone in a ge
Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that is the legal definition of treason. Legal speech has lots very specific definitions for common words as they are to be interpreted in legal documents— such as "shall," "may," and "will." They're honed through creation of legislation and interpreting that legislation in legal opinions/case law. While that's what the definition of those words is in a legal document, that's not how those terms are necessarily used in colloquial speech, even in legal contexts. For example, in a conversation, a police officer might say a victim was raped by an attacker when the actual charge might be sexual battery of a minor or something along those lines, because the charge of "rape" had a different legal scope. Saying that the perpetrator was not guilty of rape because the narrow legal definition of rape in that jurisdiction did not match the specific kind of rape described by the charge "sexual battery of a minor" would be a stupid, pedantic, useless argument.
The dictionary definition of treason gives a much better idea of how people use that word:
"the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government."
and
"the action of betraying someone or something."
These colloquial definitions obviously include more than what the constitution narrowly defines as "treason," which congress then incorporated into their legislation to make the actual law. Congress decided to make laws to cover most of the rest of what is commonly is defined as "treason" in other specific charges, such as sedition. To say it's impossible that Trump's actions could be treasonous, outside of discussing a specific charges in a legal proceeding or document, when those restrictions aren't applied to the laws that most people would colloquially consider "treason," is nothing more than pedantic bullshit.
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The US doesn't need to be at war to be guilty of treason.
Treason requires overt acts such as giving sensitive government security secrets to other countries, even if such countries are not enemies
https://definitions.uslegal.com/t/treason/#:~:text=Treason%20is%20made%20a%20high%20crime%2C%20punishable%20by,to%20their%20enemies%2C%20giving%20them%20aid%20and%20comfort.%22
And Trump has done just this on Twitter a few times now, giving sensitive government security secrets to EVERY other country. While it can be said about making a mistake, but at 3 times in 3 months? How many "oops" moments does it take to think this might not be an accident anym
Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:4, Informative)
The US doesn't need to be at war to be guilty of treason.
Treason requires overt acts such as giving sensitive government security secrets to other countries, even if such countries are not enemies
https://definitions.uslegal.com/t/treason/#:~:text=Treason%20is%20made%20a%20high%20crime%2C%20punishable%20by,to%20their%20enemies%2C%20giving%20them%20aid%20and%20comfort.%22
I looked at the link you provided. It doesn't make sense. The Constitution states explicitly that treason must occur by consorting with an "Enemy."
Giving sensitive government secrets to other countries (even non-enemies) may be a crime, but it is not necessarily treason. Consider the Rosenbergs, who were tried, convicted, and executed by electrocution, not for treason, but for conspiracy to commit espionage [wikipedia.org] with the Soviet Union, certainly an unfriendly power, but not a formally-declared enemy.
Trump may very well be guilty of something because of his loose lips. But it's not treason, as much as many of us would like to to label it as such.
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We are at war in Afghanistan. And it was declared by Congress.
The accusation involves Russians paying our enemies in Afghanistan to kill US officials.
Are you sure you actually even thought about the words before you pasted them?
Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish people would read the definition of treason before spouting off.
You mean Trump, right? 'Cause he throws that word around a LOT, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean what he thinks it means or, more precisely, what he wants it to mean.
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Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Zuckerberg, and by extension his company, have the same free-speech rights that you do. That means they can decide what speech is and is not acceptable on their platform.
The First Amendment protects you and me from the government. It does not protect you and me from each other. Or from Facebook.
Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Courts since ruled that public accommodations be they public or private are indeed bound by nondiscrimination statutes whose authority is derived from the federal Constitution.
For protected classes. People seem to forget that the nondiscriminatory statues in private business are for legally defined protected classes.
Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:2)
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Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:3, Insightful)
no more dixiecrats [Re: Lock Him Up.] (Score:3, Informative)
I've seen this a lot lately: conservatives pretending not to notice that the parties have changed since 1965. Yes, the Jim-Crow south once was the "solid south", meaning solid for Democrats (known at the time as "Dixiecrats"). That stopped after the passage of the civil rights act. The southern states are now Republican.
There are no more Dixiecrats.
Re:no more dixiecrats [Re: Lock Him Up.] (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe so, but the Democrats are as racist as they've ever been. You just refuse to recognize it for what it is.
Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Or....
They are looking at facts on the table and recognize the plight of minorities in areas that have been run by Democrats for multiple generations.
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And that's the problem with relying on an external platform... You have no rights, you have no expectation of privacy and no expectation of freedom of speech. You are beholden to whatever arbitrary rules the owner of the platform chooses to impose, and if you disagree with those rules they can remove you from the platform at will.
The sooner people understand that the better... Facebook is not an open platform allowing them to express their views, it is a closed platform where they can show their support for
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Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Zuckerberg, and by extension his company, have the same free-speech rights that you do. That means they can decide what speech is and is not acceptable on their platform.
The First Amendment protects you and me from the government. It does not protect you and me from each other. Or from Facebook.
Absolutely correct. However, the First Amendment is only a restraint upon the government. Private citizens (and corporations) not only get to speak their mind. They also get to criticize one another, including denouncing publicly and calling for boycotts and (non-government led) sanctions. This is what is happening how, that private citizens are exercising their free speech rights to penalize Facebook economically. To prevent this type of free speech would be a infringement on the First Amendment.
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https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com]
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It does not create a right to have one's emotional attachments formally recognized by any government, just to have them and call them what you want.
There is no right to not be insulted or offended. That would contradict any right to free expression. As would inventing a right that contradicts religious freedoms.
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Taking action to protect American soldiers and reduce the political clout of Russia would not "start a catastrophic war" that is both moronic and weak.
The accusation is that the bounty gets paid by Russia. It gets paid to militants in Afghanistan.
Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Informative)
Sweden didn't try to abate the spread at all, and reports a lower per capita death rate thus far.
That's not true at all. Sweden didn't impose any mandatory lockdowns, but they did encourage people to maintained distance, wear masks where appropriate, etc. And from what I've heard, the Swedish people have generally been pretty good about following such advice. So yeah, the fact that they didn't have massive riots and instead generally tried to maintain physical distance is rather relevant.
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Sweden didn't try to abate the spread at all, and reports a lower per capita death rate thus far.
That's not true. First of all, Sweden introduced some measures to contain the spread, but those measures did not go as far as in other countries. As result, as it stands now, Sweden has a HIGHER death rate per capita than the US and many other countries: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] All countries that did worse than Sweden have a higher population density, which makes much more difficult to contain the spread even with more strict measures.
Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Insightful)
USA would be even less except for some stupid policies implemented in the north-east and north-west about covid patients and old age homes.
Re:Lock Him Up. Zero evidence bounty story is true (Score:5, Informative)
What are the odds that a story is true if it came from an anonymous source from the NYT, would be really bad for the President, involves Russia, and only the anonymous source heard it?
Catherine Herridge@CBS_Herridge
A senior intel official tells @CBSNews the GRU/Taliban bounty allegations were not contained in the President's Daily Brief (PDB) which is the highly classified, daily summary of national security issues delivered to the President, key cabinet secretaries + advisers.
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Pretty high. Many of Trump's closest pals are in prison from backhanded deal with Russians, and Mueller dug up quite a lot of evidence that Trump himself, was beholden (and still is) to Russia.
You perfectly illustrate effective propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
Your statement is one gigantic lie. You said: "Many of Trump's closest pals are in prison from backhanded deal with Russians"
Let's analyze this:
Please define "many". Currently, as far as I can recall, NONE of the people Mueller went after are in jail.
Paul Manafort was NOT a "close pal" of Trump - the Trump team accepted the request of the establishment Republicans around the late senator Bob Dole to take on an establishment guy late in the primary season of 2016, and Paul was recommended. Before Trump hired him he did not know him. He worked for Trump for something like 2 months and only on the problem of the Ted Cruise campaign trying to "steal" delegates before the convention, and then he left the campaign. Meuller's team went after Manafort on entirely unrelated UKRAINE financial matters from a decade before Trump ever knew him as a way to squeeze him into confirming dirt from the now-proven-phony Steele Dossier. Manafort could not squeal on Trump over the Dossier because the dossier was PHONY and paid for by Hillary Clinton. This is all well documented now and if you deny it you only prove yourself a clown. Oh, and Manafort is no longer in jail for his decade old unrelated financial crime - he was moved to house arrest due to COVID-19
Roger Stone is indeed an old friend of Trumps. He is not currently in jail but soon will be after a tainted jury convicted him of lying about his contacts (actually his LACK of them) with Wikileaks NOT RUSSIA. There's no evidence of any underlying crime, and no real proof he lied - he just disagrees with another party and the government believes in that other party more. If you question my comment about a tainted jury, just go lookup all the anti-Stone and anti-Trump rants that the jury forewoman posted online before she (a democrat political candidate) lied her way onto the jury. The judge in the case is a Democrat with a long and interesting biased history as well. Stone will ultimately win his entire case on appeal but it will take years.
One of Trump's many lawyers, Cohen, went to jail for financial irregularities over his taxi cab medallion operations in NYC. They tried to squeeze him for confirmation of Hillary's phony "dossier" too and used the whole thing to grab Donald Trump's personal legal records yet they still had NOTHING on Trump even though they destroyed attorney-client-privilege in the process. Oh, and Cohen is no longer in jail.
George Papadopolous is a young man who briefly worked on the 2016 campaign and was apparently ground zero for a big part of the Obama administration's attempt to use the FBI and CIA to knock Trump out. They planted a story on him with one agent, then got him to repeat that story to another, then used it to justify some of the spying, then prosecuted him and jailed him for a few days for lying about it (he''s now out), all while having proof in their hands at the time that it was all fake. This has mostly been declassified now and is well-documented. George has never met Trump, had nothing to do with Russia, and is not in jail.
Meuller indicted a long list of faceless Russians on the assumption it would make Trump look really bad and that none would ever fight the charges or appear in court - sort of the ultimate McCarthy era evil ploy. It has completely fallen apart. Some of those accused did indeed hire a US law firm and they challenged it in court. The whole matter has been dropped, because the Meuller team had no way to back any of it up. In fact, in his testimony to Congress Meuller stated for the record that no American citizen had colluded with Russia.
So, again, please define your version of "many" and please list the actual Russia-related charges that each who is currently in jail was found guilty of.
good grief....
and people wonder how the otherwise smart German people could have fallen for Hitler...
all it takes is is for hyper-partisan journalists and educators to all be on the same political page and all
Re:Lock Him Up. Zero evidence bounty story is true (Score:4, Informative)
Zero evidence. Mueller found zero evidence that Trump was involved with Russian interference in any way.
Not true. Mueller found insufficient evidence to prove that Trump coordinated with the Russians on election interference. What he found was more than zero, but not enough to meet the unusually high bar he set (the FEC, which normally investigates such things, uses a lower standard which almost certainly would have been met).
Who else is in jail for their dealings with Russia? Zero.
This is true, but misleading, since it appears to imply that there was no substance to any prosecutions of Trump's pals over dealings with Russia. The facts are:
Michael Flynn would be in jail except for a bizarre decision by the DoJ to drop the charges after obtaining a guilty plea -- a decision that astonished the judge and caused several prosecutors to withdraw from the case and at least one to leave the DoJ entirely. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his dealings with Russia.
George Papadopolous was in jail, but has now been released. He got a very lenient sentence because of his cooperation. He plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his dealings with Russia.
Paul Manafort is in jail, for his dealings in the Ukraine, on behalf of a former Ukrainian president with very close ties to Russia in general and Valadimir Putin in particular. So while his dealings technically weren't with Russia, they were with a Russian proxy.
Roger Stone is not in jail, but only because his sentence has been delayed due to concerns about rampant COVID-19 in the federal penitentiary system. He was convicted of lying to Congress and investigators about his interactions with Russia, obstructing the investigation into the campaign's dealings with Russia.
Michael Cohen was in jail, in part because he lied to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, but has been released to serve the remainder of his term under house arrest, due to COVID-19.
Re: Lock Him Up. Zero evidence bounty story is tru (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody is disputing the reports of what Russia is accused of, not even Russia that I've heard, just the fact Trump was briefed on them or not.
The most amazing thing is why would the president not be briefed on that? It blows my mind, but I'm inclined to believe it based on what we know about his attitude towards intel briefings.
Anyone involved in producing that report _should_ assume that work would be brought to the president's attention. It checks so many boxes, why the hell not? There's no reason to doubt what the NYT was told by their source. Someone's boss probably told them the same lines we've been told by our bosses when we try to run something up the flagpole, yah sure, they looked at it and we're waiting for a response, uh huh.
It is also _totally_ believable that the team that actually delivers the PDB to the president thought it would be a waste of time with anything short of live video evidence of it because Trump just doesn't want to hear it.
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Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:2, Insightful)
Who made him leader of the free world? Was there some announcement? Did the people of the free world vote on that?
I for one am pretty sick n tired of my country being asked to spend our blood n treasure to fix everyone else's problems and then being criticized when we do it wrong or not in the country someone wants or not at all. Who needs that shit? The world needs to fix its own damned problems. Fair trade, real borders, clean elections. The rest will sort itself out.
The whole concept of "oh, the PO
Re: Lock Him Up. (Score:5, Informative)
Last I checked, nobody asked the US to stick its nose into everyone else's business. A good many wish they would leave.
Then you haven't been checking very carefully.
"ALLIES of Chancellor Angela Merkel have accused Donald Trump of ignoring NATO allies after the US President ordered his military commanders to pull 9,500 troops out of Germany. However, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has invited Mr Trump to reassign troops to his country instead."
https://www.express.co.uk/news... [express.co.uk]
"A Pentagon proposal to greatly reduce American forces in West Africa faced criticism from allies on Tuesday, with French officials arguing that removing United States intelligence assets in the region could stymie the fight against extremist groups."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
"Juan Guaido, the head of Venezuelaâ(TM)s national assembly has made a formal request to US military to help him in the power struggle between his camp and the government of Nicolas Maduro."
https://chicagomorningstar.com... [chicagomorningstar.com]
"Last week, Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin requested military assistance from the head of U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris Jr., to strengthen the Philippinesâ(TM) position in the South China Sea"
https://thediplomat.com/2015/0... [thediplomat.com]
Just a few easy examples out of the hundreds that are out there.
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Children are at extremely low risk from coronavirus, it mostly affects the old and infirm. Trump is at SIGNIFICANTLY higher risk as he's 74, he is also clinically obese and suffering from a coronary artery disease. It's more likely that a child would be an asymptomatic carrier and infect trump.
Also given his position and risk status, it's almost certain that trump is being routinely tested. If he's not infected, then there's no point him wearing a mask because he's not going to infect someone else with some
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Not exactly true. Children are simply at low risk of getting seriously ill from coronavirus, and may often never develop symptoms. They are, in fact, just as capable as adults at spreading the virus, both symtomatically and asymptomatically if they should get it, including to any older and more vulnerable individuals that are near them.
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ROFL.
You merkins have an infection rate of close to 8,000 / million. Meanwhile Australia has 300 / million. Testing rate in USA is 98,000 / million, in Australia 94,000.
You are delusional.
Re:Lock Him Up. (Score:4, Insightful)
Australia managed to contain the virus pretty well. So did Vietnam. Even Austria, which is basically located right next to Italy and got hit by the virus early, too, managed to stop the spread pretty well and is well over the hump.
The USA had EVERY advantage they could have had in this, from early warning with a few localized cases to get an idea what you're dealing with to a late onset where the real infection flood started relatively late to the ability to deal with it with the force of an economic powerhouse, and blew it.
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The President ordered a plan combining science with realistic goals as recommendations. Plenty of democrat party lead state ignored those recommendations because they came from Trump and that has lead to increases in deaths.
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As for things I would have liked, or would still like Trump to do.
1) Wear a mask! yes he is not at risk because of all the people around him are tracked but lead by example in this minor thing.Him wearing a mask walking up to the podium would send a message.
2) Listen and watch stuff before he posts it to twitter. That post this morning was pla
Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:5, Insightful)
Really! The entire summary claims the exact opposite. You are more interested in spouting whatever misinformation you approve of, than addressing the problem.
This isn't an issue of who is spouting more misinformation or which ideology has the greatest mind-share. It's rich corporations throwing-out the rule-book so other rich people can do whatever the fuck they want. At least with Fox News, one had to go looking for 'evil government' propaganda but Facebook and its profit-maximizing algorithm means the truth will be hidden to deliberately shove division and bigotry into everyone's eyeballs.
Re: Blah Blah Blah (Score:2, Informative)
Anyone who gets their "truth" from FB is a fucking idiot and shouldn't be voting anyway.
FB should be run like a telco service. They shouldn't delete anything except blatantly illegal shit like kiddie porn since they aren't equipped to selectively and consistently and fairly decide all the grey areas being posted all day. It's none of their fucking business. Their business is putting ads in front of the users to make their customers happy. Their customers being the advertisers.
Re: Blah Blah Blah (Score:3)
I agree with you, but the current reality is that thereâ(TM)s one standard of conduct for him, and another for the rest us...and thatâ(TM)s bullshit. Heâ(TM)s president, not king.
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Current reality, is he said, she said, bullshit. No one willing to put their name where the bullshit is. Sources say, what sources, if those sources ain't liars, they would put their names to the information.
It is clear they do not want an election based in economic reality, the abuse of the majority of workers by an elitist establishment. That's what they do not want to talk about because you idiot seppos have been purposefully denied the opportunity to vote for it.
You are voting for nothing but empty po
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And you want some faction in government to make it go away for not censoring the way you like?
What a guy!
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I don't know.
Yeah, obviously. Why do you think the POTUS, or any American should be censored? Stalinist.
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If you believe the tweets of Trump are inciting this violence then how do you feel about lyrics to rap songs and violent films? How can Trump cause violence through speech while rap music is considered art?