Facebook Removes Temporary Algorithm Change That Had Blocked Misinformation (thewrap.com) 143
Facebook's employees and executives "are battling over how to reduce misinformation and hate speech without hurting the company's bottom line," reports the New York Times, after employees had spotted false and misleading election-related misinformation going viral on the site.
The solution? Make temporary changes to the controversial algorithm "which helps determine what more than two billion people see every day" by highlighting "big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said."
The Wrap reports: Zuckerberg's decision came after Facebook employees, seeing President Trump claim the election was rigged against him, "proposed an emergency change" to make "authoritative news" more prominent. It's unclear how long the changes were in place for, but they appear to have ended. Facebook vice president Guy Rosen told the Times "there has never been a plan to make these permanent...."
Since making the changes a few weeks ago, some Facebook employees have pushed for the "nicer" News Feed to become permanent, the report added.
The New York Times argues the incident "illustrates a central tension that some inside Facebook are feeling acutely these days: that the company's aspirations of improving the world are often at odds with its desire for dominance....
"Even as Election Day and its aftermath have passed with few incidents, some disillusioned employees have quit, saying they could no longer stomach working for a company whose products they considered harmful."
The solution? Make temporary changes to the controversial algorithm "which helps determine what more than two billion people see every day" by highlighting "big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said."
The Wrap reports: Zuckerberg's decision came after Facebook employees, seeing President Trump claim the election was rigged against him, "proposed an emergency change" to make "authoritative news" more prominent. It's unclear how long the changes were in place for, but they appear to have ended. Facebook vice president Guy Rosen told the Times "there has never been a plan to make these permanent...."
Since making the changes a few weeks ago, some Facebook employees have pushed for the "nicer" News Feed to become permanent, the report added.
The New York Times argues the incident "illustrates a central tension that some inside Facebook are feeling acutely these days: that the company's aspirations of improving the world are often at odds with its desire for dominance....
"Even as Election Day and its aftermath have passed with few incidents, some disillusioned employees have quit, saying they could no longer stomach working for a company whose products they considered harmful."
The "nicer" News Feed (Score:2)
Niceness is a metric now? How does it compare with fairness?
Niceness is something I'd expect a child to worry about.
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why
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Niceness is a metric now? How does it compare with fairness?
Niceness is something I'd expect a child to worry about.
How about we use truth as a metric. Fairness is something I'd expect a child to be concerned about.
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How about we use truth as a metric
But we can't block disinformation. Without all the conspiracy theories, white-supremacist and neo-n*zi ideology, and antisemitism on Facebook we'd lose half our audience. Think of our bottom line, our share price would plummet.
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How about we use truth as a metric.
Who is the arbiter of truth? Juries, the last time I checked.
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Who is the arbiter of truth?
Should not the people be allowed to decide what is true?
Juries, the last time I checked.
There's the "jury of public opinion".
Every news agency has to make choices on what is newsworthy and far too often this is based not on who is impacted or how unusual an event might be. What comes into play is how this might shift public opinion on political candidates or government policies.
I don't know how or if Facebook filtered news on Tara Reade's accusations of sexual assault from Joe Biden. What recent polling has shown was that many Democrat
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There's the "jury of public opinion".
So, Facebook is an echo chamber. Their readers determine which opinions (Because that's what it is: A bunch of blogs.) are worthy of attention.
Every news agency has to make choices on what is newsworthy
But Facebook isn't a news agency or publisher. At least that's their claim most of the time. On one hand, they rely upon their user base to determine what is worthy of reading or not. Except when they don't want to take responsibility. The they have 'algorithms'. Which are nothing more than subcontracting their editorial responsibilities* to a computer. Or more likel
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I saw lots of stories about Tara Reade's accusations, but since they weren't credible and there was no new evidence to back them up the story died off as they do
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Just because you knew about it doesn't change that many people that voted for Biden didn't know until after they voted, and had they known before then they would not have voted for him. The election was a farce because the Jurassic media covered for him.
There's also the matter that the story died off for lack of evidence because the Jurassic media didn't bother to look. They didn't want to find evidence because that might mean he might not win the election.
If Joe Biden ends up winning the election, which
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I don't think it would make as big a difference as you expect given he was running against someone with credible rape accusations and openly admitted to sexually assaulting women.
Joe Biden also did end up winning the election - I guess the news sources you visit must have missed that story.
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Children articulate unfairness but adults feel and respond to it too. They merely express their views through other means.
The truth is that fairness matters.
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Niceness is a metric now? How does it compare with fairness?
Niceness is something I'd expect a child to worry about.
In my humble opinion, it's only fair to suppress high-visibility posts spewing demonstrably false statements. The result is coincidentally... nice.
Put another way, I'd like to have a nice bowl of soup, untainted by turds.
Of course, that's why I'm not on Facebook. That's also why I'm not someone I know who changed his browser and search engine specifically to "help find actual information about cures for COVID, like HCQ, which The Media don't want you to know about." If the high-profile accounts hadn'
I trust FB /s (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone posts a comment on FB that states that Joe Biden is not yet legally the President-Elect. FB hires Politifact to check the veracity of the post. Politifact says that the comment is not factual. FB censors the post. Commenter sues Politifact and easily wins. Politifact has to retract, in its entirety. FB now has to retract its censorship.
Yeah, I couldn't care less what FB says it's doing regarding 'misinformation'.
Not legal until Electoral College votes (Score:2, Informative)
The transfer of power preparations, the Transition, begins when there is an "apparent winner". Which is in this case when the verified state votes hit 270, this occurred only a few days ago.
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Wait so can we now take you out because you lied? It has been widely reported that there is no formal definition of "apparent winner" for the GSA. They don't have to wait for the "verified state votes" whatever that even is. All stages of the voting process are open enough that it was clear weeks ago that Biden is the winner. There were simply not enough votes being contended in a legitimate way for it to come out any different. There are still procedures to follow and we do want the final totals, but
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All stages of the voting process are open enough that it was clear weeks ago that Biden is the winner. There were simply not enough votes being contended in a legitimate way for it to come out any different.
There are clear statistical anomalies that cast sufficient doubt over the election that no legitimate declaration of a winner is remotely possible at present.
There aren't allegations of ballots being miscounted, of ballots being thrown away, of ballots being fraudulently printed and created, of voting machines applying balance, of counts being suspiciously halted, of ballots being taken from Chinese postal envelopes, of signatures being ignored, of dates being falsified, of dead people voting, of poll watch
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Allegations != proof.
Your post is also full of allegations, without offering any proof. There are widespread allegations that Trump is planning to fight people who eat babies too...
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If only I'd typed something like this:
There is evidence of widespread systematic fraud. The only real question is whether it can be proven sufficiently in court.
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It has been widely reported that there is no formal definition of "apparent winner" for the GSA. They don't have to wait for the "verified state votes" whatever that even is.
The States verifying the votes and certifying the electors is what in the Constitution would describe as "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress".
Appointed electors for a candidate exceeding the number required to win an election is a pretty solid "apparent winner" condition. One that the GSA believes is a working definition since that
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Someone posts a comment on FB that states that Joe Biden is not yet legally the President-Elect. FB hires Politifact to check the veracity of the post. Politifact says that the comment is not factual. FB censors the post. Commenter sues Politifact and easily wins. Politifact has to retract, in its entirety. FB now has to retract its censorship.
Not sure on what grounds the "commenter" could sue Politifact for its opinion about commenter's opinion and win, but keeping having fun in fantasy land.
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https://twitter.com/RealCandac... [twitter.com]
Candace Owens just sued PolitiFact and won a reversal.
"Weeks ago, @Facebook censored a post of mine which truthfully stated that
@JoeBiden is NOT the President-elect. So I got lawyers involved. Conclusion?
@PolitiFact uncensored the post & admitted that they LIED by rating my post false.
The fact-checkers are lying for Democrats."
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"got lawyers involved" does not mean sued. It could mean the most innocuous of things, which probably means it is.
Saying things like "Joe Biden is not the President Elect" and thinking you're scoring some kind of intellectual point reminds me of people who say "But the U.S. is a Republic!" in response to someone referring to it as a democracy, as if it displays nothing more than the respondent saying "water is wet" then dropping the mic and doing a victory lap.
Unfortunately, in this case, uttering a "can't
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The fact-checkers are lying for Democrats."
Hmm... seems like she filed an appeal with PolitiFact, they re-evaluated and determined they had made a mistake not "lied". Her misleading characterization puts her whole narrative into question. In addition, if she actually "got lawyers involved", she and they are idiots; there's no legal case here, civil or criminal. PolitiFact is a private organization issuing researched opinions about things that no one is required to listen to or abide by, including Facebook. That Facebook uses PolitiFact as their res
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1. They were trying to spin a lie that is not a fact as a fact and therefore painting her a pedaling false information, when in fact she was factually correct - they were caught out - deal with it.
2. Lawyers dont ONLY do criminal law, you know (I'm sure you know, but hey, gotta try and spin the bs, right?) - you can certainly sue someone who issues an 'opinion' that causes you be be labeled as giving false information if you end up punished (as she was). Its called defamation of character.
Re: I trust FB /s (Score:2)
Um, that's not a "mistake". Anyone who passed grade school civics knows about the Electoral College. Professionals working for a a site that specializes in political news? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
so then they admit it... (Score:2)
battling over how to reduce misinformation and hate speech without hurting the company's bottom line,
They admit that misinformation and hate-speech really are profitable.
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battling over how to reduce misinformation and hate speech without hurting the company's bottom line,
They admit that misinformation and hate-speech really are profitable.
I don't think that's the right conclusion. If it was, they wouldn't be going to these lengths to discourage it. The fact is hate speech and misinformation scares advertisers away. That's why they're doing this.
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They're playing lip service, that keeps advertisers on the site and sticking sensationalist crap in the news feed keeps the useful idiots on the site.
What never ceases to amaze me is how many slash-dotters insist that Facebook should continue to feed them trash news, they would prefer to be lied to than to bar the endless conspiracy theories and mis-information. Anything that stops the lies is now nothing less than censorship.
If you want accurate news then turn the Facebook news feed off.
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If you want accurate news then turn the Facebook news feed off.
Better yet, delete your FakeBook account. I did.
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I'm fully aware that that western governments have been lying for decades in order to start wars but I don't see how encouraging Facebook not to spread lies and misinformation changes that.
I hope Biden will not be a war-monger but given he already has conflicts of interest with his son being heavily into fossil fuels I certainly have my doubts.
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So if several newspapers fabricate a lie about some kid in a protest, saying that he is a racist, then you don't want that pointed out? After complaining about said media lying? Odd that.
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Or they are admitting that their viewpoint doesn't align well with the views of a large part of their user base and advertisers. "Misinformation" and "hate speech" are subjective metrics and their definitions don't necessarily align with those of the general public. Or, more significantly, the views of that part of the public with significant social and economic influence that Facebook cannot afford to alienate.
So much for the idea that the right wing is just a bunch of poor, dumb hillbillies.
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"hate speech" could just be a harsh truth that points out a subculture is doing something harmful to itself. "Misinformation" could just be news that isn't tampered with by agenda driven hacks.
Confidence continues to decline (Score:2, Insightful)
The credibility, at least to me, of big tech on the West Coast is really gone. The employees who band together in protest don't believe in free speech. They believe in speech that agrees with their beliefs and agenda. We've seen this before when academia--which is supposed to promote the exchange of ideas--became full of safe spaces in which no one hears anything that might offend their tender psyches.
Liberals and progressives seem to be loudest and most easily offended.
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Liberals and progressives seem to be loudest and most easily offended.
That depends entirely on the subject under discussion. If you want to offend a conservative you instead need to start talking about things like: police brutality, war crimes committed by serving service personnel, why burning the flag is a legitimate form of political protest, how abortion (liberalisation laws) led to a reduction in violent crime rates, or a number of other topics that push their particular buttons. Ah, I almost forgot firearms legislation...
There are enough people with intransigent views o
I'm not sure what the solution is - but (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking these big tech companies - whose entire (and rather tenuous) profit model is built on selling access to eyeballs - to self-police sure isn't it, since their willingness to do so will only go as far as their next quarterly profit statement.
Better education (Score:2)
For a start, The government should run a series of non partisan anti-fake news advertisements aimed teaching some basic measure of critical thinking. Think anti-smoking ads but for critical thinking. Schools should also st
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"You can teach critical thinking, it just requires work and money." Necessary but not sufficient. People must want to engage in critical thinking.
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You can teach critical thinking, it just requires work and money.
It wouldn't help.
The problem is that the algorithms are designed to prey on our psychology to show content that each individual is susceptible to. For example, you're a left-wing nutjob and based on other posts have clearly fallen prey to the left-wing nuts online who believe that every problem can be solved by wealth redistribution. Facebook is going to show you posts by Bernie bros about how evil Trump is and how Biden is going to continue America down that path.
The basic problem is this: the algorithm tr
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You can teach critical thinking
Critical thinking isn't the answer. People believe what they want to believe and then self justify that in their thoughts.
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People can "believe" all they want that 2 plus 2 equals 5 but when their houses burn down, bridges fall into rivers, and there's nothing to eat then perhaps they will figure out that facts don't care about your feelings.
There's some things that people can believe that will have no real effect on their lives. As an example people thought for a long time that Earth was the center of the universe. That belief doesn't interfere with the life of a subsistence farmer.
I believe the problem here is people confuse
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People can "believe" all they want that 2 plus 2 equals 5 but when their houses burn down, bridges fall into rivers, and there's nothing to eat then perhaps they will figure out that facts don't care about your feelings.
Indeed and then they will self justify that their beliefs are none the less valid and externalise the problems they had. We have seen that en mass in the past 4 years. People getting shat on going out of their way to justify that it is for the greater good and they support it. Point is there is a problem, but when people capable of critical thinking refuse to apply critical thinking then teaching critical thinking is not the answer.
It would be easy to justify if only dumb people voted for Trump for example,
weakens the case (Score:2)
To my mind it weakens the case to fact check posts with this algorithm if it is sometimes beneficial to do so and at other times not.
Surely if it is good it is good all the time and and vice-versa
Cold Civil War (Score:2)
Fakebook isn't blocking "misinformation"; they are blocking access to REAL information, because they've chosen a side in this currently-cold Civil War, and it's the WRONG side. Their side is propaganda, and repressing any information contrary to the side of the leftists. Twatter is the same; communists trying to rebuild the Soviet Union, only this time in America.
I don't think it will work. I _HOPE_ it won't work, but if the cold Civil War does heat up, well, I'm on the side with the guns.
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Agreed. It's strange how basic principles can be interpreted to mean totally opposite things.
All those Facebook posts demanding white supremacists unite, must be agreeable to leftists: Good to know.
It's fascinating how right-wing fanatics call the mouthpiece enabling their selfishness, "leftist" or "liberal".
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I think they're on the side that closest matches reality rather than the side that thinks pizza places have child sex rings in the basement and 6million people voted illegally.
Don't block. Come up with a better argument. (Score:2, Insightful)
Conservative media is "winning" because it offers what people want. Popular entertainment has men that are strong, competitive, and cunning, where the women are beautiful, intelligent, and protective. In movies, video games, and TV there's people out to make money, shoot bad guys with guns, building homes, and raising families. That's because deep within humanity this is what we know makes society successful.
I rarely watch TV any more and when I do I'm reminded why I stopped watching. Nearly every progr
Re:Don't block. Come up with a better argument. (Score:4, Insightful)
The 737Max was a plane designed to save money at the expense of lives though. If they had adequately cared about passengers lives they wouldn't have designed an airplane that constantly stalls just to save on the cost of doing a more full redesign. If they cared, they would have told the pilots about said stall problem, if they cared they would have adequately tested the software function designed to mitigate the stalling problem. Assuming the FAA and other regulatory bodies are functioning, their poor decisions will have cost them significantly more than just doing the work correctly to begin with, but I haven't seen the numbers to tell if that's the case.
Facebook's program was definitely wrong though, essentially outsourcing "fact checking" to fake news veterans like long time CNN employees and hijacking links away from legitimate sources to the "fact check" sources.
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If they cared, they would have told the pilots about said stall problem
I watched the program and they said something like, "Nobody told them about the problem except having it documented in the iPad training." They were in fact told about the problem. They trained the pilots on how to react to a bad MCAS.
if they cared they would have adequately tested the software function designed to mitigate the stalling problem.
I'm no pilot but I am an engineer that did quality control on avionics before, and I've read as much as I could on the 737 MAX MCAS. The problem was an edge case that would not show as a problem unless certain specific failures happened in specific portions of the flight.
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I believe a lot of this needs to land in the lap of the FAA.
I think it can be equally shared between Boeing and the FAA. Boeing was hell-bent on maintaining the fiction that the MAX flew just like every other 737 and not requiring a separate type certification for it (despite the fact that it's functionally a different airplane), and the FAA went right along with it, knowing that wasn't the case.
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Much of what you said is simply not true. Conservative Media is not winning for example. Despite Trump's lies, the NYT is popular, profitable and GROWING. This year they finally reached 6 million print subscribers, plus another 600k people paying for digital subscriptions.
LGBT are 10% of the population, not 1%. Most of them are too scared to come out so they pretend. Others are 'out' but do not look like the stereotypes shown on TV - which are chosen because they are extreme. No body wants to hear ab
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Finally you do not feed anyone the 'news' they WANT to consume, you feed them the truth.
Okay then, where's the truth in today's news media? How many "news" organizations covered up Tara Reade's sexual assault accusations against Joe Biden? Where was the reporting on Joe Biden's family taking trips around the world to pick up briefcases full of cash? Where's the reporting on Joe Biden's age? I remember that being a big deal with John McCain running for POTUS and Joe Biden is far older now than McCain was then. People made a big deal about Trump being the oldest president to take office, cl
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How many "news" organizations covered up Tara Reade's sexual assault accusations against Joe Biden?
One Google search, 10 seconds consumed [nytimes.com] - sorry, it's a paywall. This isn't the only place that comments on it, but it turns out her character as a chronic liar are tainting her story. If you read a fuller account [wikipedia.org] of the story, you'll see that lawyers that were representing her have left the case. We don't know why due to that being privileged information, but there's a couple obvious theories.
Where was the reporting on Joe Biden's family taking trips around the world to pick up briefcases full of cash?
There's been a lot of talk about that and it was running non-stop in the media during the week of the second Pre
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I'll try to keep responses to each point you made short.
Pointing to news reports about Tara Reade doesn't change the polls that show large numbers of Democrat voters were ignorant of the accusations and had they known before they voted then they would not have voted for Biden. The Jurassic media did what they could to hide the accusations and downplay them when there's far more evidence of this and similar behavior from an adult Joe Biden than the far more widely covered and ultimately shown to be baseless
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>LGBT are 10% of the population, not 1%
Actually wrong, researched figures put if below 4% in the US, and much lower in most other countries (with a few execeptions being higher)
So, more than 1%, less than 10%, but 1% is closer (just). MUCH less than 4% are 'out'.
The out and in your fact LGBT+ population is significantly less than 1%..
BTW, do you enjoy stereotyping people? you seem to be quite good at it.
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This is driving people looking for some honest news elsewhere, and the same for people looking for entertainment that doesn't preach some Lefty nonsense.
No. Old white men are looking for entertainment elsewhere because they want to hear that their problems are caused by somebody else. Somebody who doesn't look like them.
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Right, is that why California Proposition 16 wanted to repeal the state constitutional protection against discrimination based on race and sex? So old white men could hire more old white men?
No. That's not why the proposition was put on the ballot. It's because Democrats thought it might be to their benefit to be able to discriminate against old white men. The proposition was rejected by voters. There's a lot of reasons to reject it. One reason, it meant that if there was someone that wanted to hire o
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You don't know how many gay people there are. But seeing as you love stuffing numbers in your ass, and pulling them out one by one like anal beads, you're probably one of them.
Who the hell thinks FB has a clue what is true? (Score:2)
Sure, they might censor nutjobs too, but other than that, it's still more like letting the wolf guard the sheep. Just a different kind of crazy. The more psychopathic sneaky evil one.
At least with ye usual anti-establishment conspiracy theorists and pro-establishment conspiracy theorists, I can easily tell that they are crazy due to predictable behavioral patterns. (Seeing conspiracies everywhere and seeing conspiracy theorists everywhere, respectively.)
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Most of the big ones seem to be pretty easy to figure out.
- Is COVID-19 real? Yes.
- How many people has it killed? Around 250k in the US right now, not 6,000 like some people say.
- Is it just motorcycle accidents being counted as COVID? No
- Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election? No.
What's the point? (Score:2)
I thought social media's whole purpose was to give a voice to the voiceless, allow everyone to share their opinions that they didn't have a platform to do so before, find their online communities with like-minded people where they couldn't find in the real world. Why is it quickly converging into yet another link aggregator for traditional media with a heavily moderated comment section?
Once the censors start working (Score:2)
Everything they don't like becomes "misinformation" and therefore unsuitable for the unwashed masses to see. I look forward to the time when the tech media is stripped of their legal immunity and are treated like any other editor and publisher of news.
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I would rather tech media live up to their promise of being a means to communicate without interference from editorial commentary.
It's been this promise of noninterference that has allowed them to operate for so long. They've been granted some leeway on filtering content to prevent harassment, pornography, and other generally objectionable material from being spread. They turned this into an invitation to insert their political commentary into people's communications.
It may be considered objectionable to
A thought.. (Score:3)
I foresee regulations coming that will remove the incentive to cause harm by prioritizing "engagement" at all costs so you can sell advertisements.
Political censorship (Score:2)
As Greenwald points out [substack.com], the sources picked as official are highly partisan.
Revolving door politics [techtransp...roject.org] and regulatory capture [wired.com] blur the lines between government and industry. 'Blocking misinformation' here is a euphemism for censoring the voices of political opponents. When Big Media and Big Tech collude with the politicians in one party to censor voices of the people, we have government censorship by proxy.
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They mean outlets that don't just make shit up, like Breitbart, OANN, and Newsmax. Fox is somewhat inbetween, they may shit up in their editorials, and their talking head shows are just as fantasy as talking heads elsewhere, but the news tends to say what is and isn't happening even if there is bias. So, if Fox or CNN says someone was assassinated in Iran, it's a good bet that it happened; if OANN says the president can part the waters and walk to France, it might not be true.
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The problem with "big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR" is that they've never met a war that they didn't like and routinely publish falsehoods at the behest of war profiteers.
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But not Fox, who rah-rah-ed at the Iraq war?
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Likely because Trump was the ultimate peacenik- make money, not war.
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After 19 years of constant warfare, it's time for America to abandon our allies, because the job is unwinnable. If we had militarized borders, we would not need allies.
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I see your set of outlets making up shit all the time. I have no hope that if Fox or CNN reports on somebody assassinated in Iran, that it actually happened the way they say it happened.
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You're trolling right? Or off your meds?
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Evidence of innocence would require...
Our legal system works on proof of guild.
No one *knows* that it is false. In fact, evidence suggests...
The Steele Dossier was found to be bogus [pdf] [justice.gov] and was compiled from hearsay and gossip as part of opposition research paid by Clinton campaign. This was the basis of Russiagate investigation. So no, the evidence suggests that Muller investigation on itself would be a fruit of poisonous tree.
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Evidence of innocence would require...
Our legal system works on proof of guild.
Not relevant. President Trump has not been tried in the legal system. Therefore, by that standard, he has not been exonerated, either. There is no standard, whether in a court of law or in the court of public opinion, in which a report finding that the President prevented the investigator from gaining access to the documents that would be needed to determine guilt or innocence qualifies as exoneration. Were he not the sitting president, he would have been charged with — and almost certainly found
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Evidence of innocence would require...
Our legal system works on proof of guild.
Not relevant. President Trump has not been tried in the legal system.
I think it is very obvious that President Trump has been tried by the media pundits and talking heads, but really who cares what they have to say?
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The Clinton Campaign did not apply for the FISA warrant, the FBI did, and the FBI knew at the time of the original application that Carter Page was a American intelligence source, having worked for both CIA and FBI, and in good standing. In march of 2016 Carter Page helped wrap up an espionage case against Russian nationals.
I already conceded that a judge might find the information obtained under FISA warrants to be FOTPT in the grandparent post. The onus is on you to prove that the FBI would not be investigating those allegations without the information obtained in the FISA warrants (which is clearly not true, because the FISA warrants were part of an investigation that was already in progress) or that it would be impossible to prove wrongdoing without the results of spying on Page (which is also clearly not true if he was a
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I already conceded that a judge might find the information obtained under FISA warrants to be FOTPT in the grandparent post. The onus is on you to prove that the FBI would not be investigating those allegations without the information obtained in the FISA warrants .
I think you are shifting the burden of proof. There is a court case based on what I think strong evidence that FISA warrant was bogus. If proven in court, that would make anything Muller find a fruit of poisonous tree.
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I already conceded that a judge might find the information obtained under FISA warrants to be FOTPT in the grandparent post. The onus is on you to prove that the FBI would not be investigating those allegations without the information obtained in the FISA warrants .
I think you are shifting the burden of proof. There is a court case based on what I think strong evidence that FISA warrant was bogus. If proven in court, that would make anything Muller find a fruit of poisonous tree.
No, it actually wouldn't. FOTPT applies to evidence, not investigations as a whole. The evidence obtained from the FISA wiretaps was not the reason for the Mueller investigation; the Mueller investigation was the tail end of a much larger investigation, only one small part of which involved the FISA wiretaps. Thus, the Mueller investigation as a whole is not tainted. The only thing that is tainted is the evidence obtained from those FISA wiretaps themselves, plus any evidence that was obtained solely be
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Ok, so you don't think FISA abuse invalidates the rationale for the investigation.
No. The investigation was well underway when the FISA abuse occurred.
What do you think the rationale for Mueller investigation into Trump campaign if not accusations of Trump colluding with Russia?
The accusations were made before the FISA abuse occurred. It was in response to the accusations.
Which of the accusations and based on what evidence were credible? Please draw me a picture of what is actually was there in a way of evidence that wasn't known at the time to be problematic?
That's entirely irrelevant. The FBI believed that it had enough evidence that was credible enough to start the investigation, and it did, in fact, start that investigation before the FISA warrants were requested, much less issued. That's all that matters when it comes to whether continuing the investigation under Mueller was legitimate. The
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What do you think the rationale for Mueller investigation into Trump campaign if not accusations of Trump colluding with Russia?
The accusations were made before the FISA abuse occurred. It was in response to the accusations.
Can you please be more specific?
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The entire Steele Dossier.
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The entire Steele Dossier.
Maybe I am confusing conversations, but I think we already discussed that Steele Dossier was not credible and both CIA and FBI knew it [nationalreview.com] at the time. Here is a summary of what Steele Dossier is [hoover.org].
This leaves with no rationale to start Muller investigation.
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The entire Steele Dossier.
Maybe I am confusing conversations, but I think we already discussed that Steele Dossier was not credible and both CIA and FBI knew it [nationalreview.com] at the time. Here is a summary of what Steele Dossier is [hoover.org].
Posting articles from ultra-conservative newspapers and think-tanks that support your position doesn't make that statement any more accurate or believable than it was when you first said it, particularly when it contradicts what was said in the actual government document that you linked earlier in the thread.
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I can't help you if you chose to be partisan and ignore presented information. Someone being a conservative does not mean they are automatically wrong. Linked articles provide plenty of references, like this one. [senate.gov]
Have you read that? The whole thing was a disagreement about what to include in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). Nobody said that it was garbage or that they didn't believe it. What they said was that they did not believe that they could adequately vet the material before they had to submit their assessment. They did not, as you claim, know or believe it to be false. Rather, they lacked adequate information to make that determination one way or the other.
It further says:
The Committee found no evidence that analysts working on the ICA were aware of the political provenance of the Steele material.
That's pretty much t
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FBI wanted FISA, but had no cause. Conveniently, Steele dossier turned up and they chose to trust it despite CIA warning them it is not verified. So what they did is legal-ish, but only because they had an excuse. "Not adequately vetted" is coded language for known bullshit.
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There is a bit of circular logic going on. FISA warrant is related to Muller investigation and is part of the same process. It all relies on made up Steele dossier.
You're the only one who is using circular logic here. The Steele dossier was not "made up". It doesn't matter how many times you keep telling that lie. It won't suddenly become true. Turning around and attempting to use that incorrect statement to "prove" something is begging the question.
FBI wanted FISA, but had no cause. Conveniently, Steele dossier turned up and they chose to trust it despite CIA warning them it is not verified. So what they did is legal-ish, but only because they had an excuse. "Not adequately vetted" is coded language for known bullshit.
And that right there is clear proof that you're being partisan. You're reinterpreting the CIA's statement to mean whatever you want it to mean instead of what it actually says, which is that they did not have time to
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My answers: Public sources research - accurate and verified. Non-public sources - less than 30% accurate, 0% of sources verified. Basically, I view Steele dossier as a Google research project with a section of mostly false unverified rumors.
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Flynn was convicted in a court of law of lying to the FBI about contact with a Russian official.
This is not what happened. Flynn pleaded guilty to a charge based on advice from a lawyer with undisclosed conflict of interest in that case. There is evidence of numerous evidence disclosure violations, where prosecutors buried evidence that would have exonerated him. Including FBI notes that question the intent to entrap him. Prosecution also applied undue pressure by threatening to prosecute his family members. In my opinion prosecutorial misconduct is clear and obvious.
Re: I Don't Use FB (Score:2)
And they will influence you. Like elect a president or cause good products to go extinct due to only a minority (like you) buying them, or ruin the planet.
So it's a good idea to care.
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There will be a reaction to FaceBook favoring Left leaning news sites over so called "hyper-partisan" sites. It will mean people leaving Facebook.
I wish there was a way to decentralize this to prevent so few people from having such an outsized effect on what people came to know about the world. I expect it will come in time. The "network effect" is real and from this comes a natural monopoly in things like social media platforms.
There is a high bar to cleat to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitt
Re: Easy fix, block fascists (Score:2)
Why? That would completely neuter the fascists known as Democrats.
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Facists are people who try and punish and block people because they do not meet the virtues of the facists - In Germany i the 30s/40s it was mostly race.
These days it is mostly political - and guess who is trying to do the blocking and punishing - and therefore who are the Facists?
Hint: Its not the Republicans (or a fair number of the Democrats..)