Peter Thiel Claims Zuckerberg Agreed To Push 'State-Sanctioned Conservatism' Under Trump Deal (thedailybeast.com) 133
ytene writes: Danika Fears over at The Daily Beast carries some pretty explosive reporting, describing how Peter Thiel -- of Palantir infamy -- claims in a new biography by Max Chafkin that Mark Zuckerberg agreed to push "State-Sanctioned Conservatism" in return for the Trump administration steering clear of any "heavy-handed regulations." This could well be one of those situations where it doesn't matter if the core claim is true or false -- because either way this is going to get ugly. The claims were made in the book "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power." Zuckerberg denied the existence of a deal, saying that was "pretty ridiculous."
Delicious (Score:3)
Too good to be not true. It has the ring of truthiness.
Re:Delicious (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would say that often happens the other way too, there have been many cases of people who claim to be liberal threatening violence or doxing people, or other things that should get them banned, but they don't. It is selective amnesia, forgetting when it happens the other way.
If that Tech Dirt article is speaking about the latest thing (before this one) about Facebook, there were many people on both sides that were protected, not just the conservatives.
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My advice to AC is to seek professional help immediately
I'm pretty sure it's too late for that.
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Not sure why you think anyone wants him to stop. He has provided zillions of opportunities but not one 'rightist' has EVER come along and said: "Umm no we don't do the violence thing." He's got quite the streak going!
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Why reply to it? It just legitimizes a moron to reply and try to claim anything.
Right wing or left wing, everyone should condemn violence of any kind.
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Leaves and always pick verbal fights they can't win.
Heh. Because that's totally the reason you'd be enraged enough to want to beat people with a tire iron.
Maybe, kind of (Score:2)
On the one hand it's absolutely something (Score:4, Insightful)
But I seriously question whether this is true for the simple reason that there wouldn't be any need for Zuckerberg to agree to anything like this. Then again if Trump asked you might have just said yes and kept doing what he was already doing. That would more or less be indistinguishable. I mean, even before Trump the top posts were almost entirely from right wing political pundits. Given the popularity of celebrities I find it seriously hard to believe that was an accident.
Re: On the one hand it's absolutely something (Score:1, Insightful)
Facebook has a right wing bias?
Facebook is headquartered in the Bay Area and staffed by young techies in the Bay Area. Would you care to enlighten us as to how they'd dig up the people (coders, scientists, lawyers, PR people) to run their system in that talent pool who happen to all be rabid righties and somehow hide it from the world?
If they were run out of Idaho or Florida or Tennessee it would be plausible. But SF? Come on.
As for lefties not falling for emotional rage bait? Of course not. The riots last
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Facebook has a right wing bias?
Facebook is headquartered in the Bay Area and staffed by young techies in the Bay Area. Would you care to enlighten us as to how they'd dig up the people (coders, scientists, lawyers, PR people) to run their system in that talent pool who happen to all be rabid righties and somehow hide it from the world?
If they were run out of Idaho or Florida or Tennessee it would be plausible. But SF? Come on.
As for lefties not falling for emotional rage bait? Of course not. The riots last summer were totally false flags. No one tried to tear down statues or torch cop cars or ignite a Marxist revolution. And it totally didn't spread over Facebook. Just move along folks.
The employees skew left, but the conspiracy theories skew right.
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I mean, the boy went to Harvard. He's as mercenary as their crimson banner.
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So Trump is Prez again after it was discovered that there was election fraud?
Didn't even notice.
Re: On the one hand it's absolutely something (Score:5, Funny)
What's the distance between right wing "conspiracy theories" and the actual truth?
About 6 light months.
FTFY. Not sure if you're talking about space lasers being used to set fires in forests, or Italian satellites flipping votes, or Republican secretaries of state conspiring to push their states Democratic.
Re: On the one hand it's absolutely something (Score:5, Funny)
Still waiting on Pedo Trump to expose that pedophile ring... that he's friends with half a dozen members that we know of.
Still waiting for Hillary [aka "the world's greatest assassin ever to live"] to be arrested.
Still pissed off the plandemic death vaccine didn't give me 5G service.
Yes (Score:3)
That was on the 1st page google results for "facebook right wing bias". To be fair I think it was the 5th or 6th link down. You should expand your media diet. That's why I link to fark.com/politics in my sig.
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Facebook also has an anti-right wing bias...how is that possible?
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
It's a Karl Rove tactic (Score:4, Informative)
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It doesn't matter how the guys in the trenches lean, management of pretty much every highly profitable corporation is conservative (at least our modern definition of "conservative", which doesn't actually conserve anything but is political-speak for "greedy manipulative self-centered power-hungry assholes). Do you think anyone in the E-suites at Farcebook got their position because they worked to make the company a better social citizen? No, they got there by bringing in money, and the fastest and most ef
Re: On the one hand it's absolutely something (Score:2)
I've been told by all sorts of people that it's the cultural/social left that's got the money now. The political donations of Wall Street and Silicon Valley flow to the Democrats by a wide margin and the counties that vote left also earn big on a per capita basis.
Democrats are the party of the rich now, cupcake. Whether you define Democrats as rightwing extremists or not says less about the supposed rightwing hold on the C suite and more about how much of a communist you personally are.
Re:On the one hand it's absolutely something (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no idea whether it happened. But Peter Theil is less ethical, and probably smarter and more conservative than either of the people he is talking about. He must have his own angle in telling this.
Theil is not conservative (Score:5, Informative)
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A conservative wants to keep things the same because they think things are working well
A liberal wants to change things to improve things they think aren't working/aren't working as well as they could
At their very root, these are the two perspectives, which is often why the younger are liberal and the older are conservative (generally, not always of course).
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At their very root, these are the two perspectives, which is often why the younger are liberal and the older are conservative (generally, not always of course).
Also why rich people tend to be conservative and want to hold on to the social structure that keeps them there.
It's amazing how so many nerds have fallen for the newspeak meaning of conservative that is about "freedom".
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No, both parties are authoritarian, libertarian is the counterpoint to authoritarian.
https://images.app.goo.gl/BKvg... [app.goo.gl]
You are confusing liberal with libertarian.
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Theil... I don't really know that he is. I'm pretty sure he'd ally himself with Stalin or Hitler without batting an eye. If the dude had real political power, I'd honestly be afraid of him.
Libertarian (Score:1)
"Libertarian" is a better description. Most conservatives are into enforcing or encouraging evangelical doctrine through law. Zuck doesn't give a fudge about their "bedroom issues" doctrine, he just wants the freedom to make money and expand. If his customers are LGBTQ or screw goats, he doesn't care. (I'm not making a connection between those.)
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I would say he is left libertarian as well, since libertarian is orthogonal to right or left, and is more anti-authoritarian, which unfortunately both parties practice,
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And on the other hand Facebook has a pretty well documented right wing bias. Partially because the sort of thing that drives Doom scrolling doesn't work as well with left wingers because we tend to debunk it before I can go viral, and partially because Zuckerberg is himself well known to be pretty right wing.
Reality has a left-wing bias, and clickbait has a right-wing bias?
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I would say people who are left wing "think" reality has a left wing bias. Really, nature abhors change, so I would say reality is pretty damn conservative. :)
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Most? You are a funny man. I have seen many on the left depart from reality, so should I say it is most on their side then? Did you take a poll?
How do you explain Trump Facebook ban? (Score:1, Informative)
Trump would ask for. And on the other hand Facebook has a pretty well documented right wing bias.
So right wing in fact, that Trump is banned from Facebook... which invalidates any notion of them leaning right wing in any way whatsoever.
Re:How do you explain Trump Facebook ban? (Score:5, Insightful)
So right wing in fact, that Trump is banned from Facebook... which invalidates any notion of them leaning right wing in any way whatsoever.
People pee in pools, but as soon as one poops there's too much of a problem to ignore.
Re: How do you explain Trump Facebook ban? (Score:2)
So right wing in fact, that Trump is banned from Facebook... which invalidates any notion of them leaning right wing in any way whatsoever.
This is like saying racism in our country is invalidated because Obama. Uh... birtherism?
What the other dude said... Facebook was fine with everyone pissing in the pool, Trump took a dump in it, or do you not remember why he was banned, on January 7th?
Recommendation algorithms can create echo chambers of idiocy. Facebook's are doing exactly what newspaper headlines and talk show hosts have always done, say shocking things because it drives engagement. Toss in user generated content and fully automate the
Context (Score:3)
the context is one where after Trump's election the democratic/liberal/social media giants went all in on politicization of social media, and anti-censorship positions overlapped with rightwing positions. In that context it was not extraordinary that Trump tried to find allies in Facebook.
The political pressure on Facebook is too high for the alliance to be meaningful i think. They have a business to run so every powerplayer who wants to censor or promote something gets their control panel.
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I think left wingers are pretty able to doom scroll in their own way.
I see the usual urban progressives do their own version over police reform and housing. It starts out with calls for police reform, and it boils over as defund the police. Housing starts out as ways to increase housing volume and ends up with calls for rent control and socializing housing.
My own city has two of these referendums on the ballot this fall. A supposedly neutral change in police staffing which is really a disingenuous path t
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Trump would ask for. And on the other hand Facebook has a pretty well documented right wing bias. Partially because the sort of thing that drives Doom scrolling doesn't work as well with left wingers because we tend to debunk it before I can go viral, and partially because Zuckerberg is himself well known to be pretty right wing.
Pretty much every word of what you just wrote is insane. I mean literally detached from reality.
Seems true to me (Score:5, Insightful)
But wait... (Score:2)
No, you're a liar and a thief
No, you're a liar and a thief
No, you're a liar and a thief
Well, if we are both liars and thieves, who is left?
Who is left?
Who can we trust?
Peter Thiel, ladies and gentlemen (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the foremost runners for the Lex Luthor prize, who thinks freedom and democracy are incompatible, is apparently concerned about unfair use of freedom in a democracy.
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who thinks freedom and democracy are incompatible,
That's been a popular opinion in the last two years. Everyone is trying to censor someone else.
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Quite an odd fellow. He is gay but supports the party that would outlaw his lifestyle if given the chance.
what a pair (Score:4, Funny)
Are there two scummier people than Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel? They look like something you'd see in a medical text on genital warts.
Re:what a pair (Score:5, Insightful)
Genital warts? You're far too kind to them.
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Genital warts? You're far too kind to them.
In college, I knew some nursing students on OB-GYN rotation. They showed me one of their textbooks, and I agree. Fart too kind...
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(do not Google that if you do not know what it means -- it is not something you can unsee)
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I know what that is, and you're getting warmer!
Seems dubious (Score:2, Informative)
We can't see the original source (not released yet) but here's alternate reporting on the contents [theatlantic.com]:
Seeking nonetheless to build a case for Thiel’s political salience, Chafkin takes a fateful turn. He tortures the evidence to make it scream louder. His first gambit is to amplify Thiel’s role at Facebook, whose failure to police fake news aided Trump’s 2016 victory. Citing unnamed critics of Facebook’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, the author floats the theory that Thiel was behind the compa
wtf (Score:4, Insightful)
uh... what? It kinda matters a lot.
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Credible, given the evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that Facebook has been instrumental in amplifying "conservative" voices to create the illusion that they are vastly larger than the small minority "conservatives" actually comprise, this is an entirely credible claim. It is entirely consistent with Facebook's behavior.
Add to the equation the fact that Zuckerberg is money grubbing scum with absolutely no scruples, just like Trump, and it becomes totally credible that the two would collaborate to rule the world.
Facebook needs to be outlawed. It a business founded entirely on fraud.
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Add to the equation the fact that Zuckerberg is money grubbing scum with absolutely no scruples, just like Trump,
Unlike Trump, Zuckerberg actually has money, and doesn't rely on perpetual grift to survive.
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You are correct, sir, but FB can be classified as perpetual grift, no?
Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg (Score:2)
If you imagine these two being the people in a Saw movie where they are trapped in one of his games and only one of them may escape, what used to be a horror movie turns into a comedy.
Glad I left Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
I was feeling my sadness, pessimism, and frustration boil into anger, and I realized that I had been spending too much time on Facebook reading the ignorant ramblings of stupid people.
It has only been about a month since I last went on Facebook, but I already feel more calm. I know that the stupid people are still out there doing and saying stupid things, but I have come to the realization that there is nothing I can do about it.
Stupid people gonna stupid, but that doesn't mean that I have to be a witness to it.
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I was feeling my sadness, pessimism, and frustration boil into anger, and I realized that I had been spending too much time on Facebook reading the ignorant ramblings of stupid people.
Is that Facebook's fault, or your fault for following stupid people?
My Facebook consists of my close family, and a couple of tightly moderated groups about history and architecture. It's fine. Baby pictures and cool houses. I tell Facebook that's what I want to see and that's what I get.
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Is that Facebook's fault, or your fault for following stupid people?
I accept that most of it was my own fault. However, some of the "ignorant ramblings" were being forwarded to me by my own family.
I was also a member of a couple of groups who were not as tightly moderated as they could have been.
I'm looking at it in much the same way that a recovering alcoholic looks at booze; I'm not saying that you can't, but I am saying that I can't use Facebook.
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I'm looking at it in much the same way that a recovering alcoholic looks at booze; I'm not saying that you can't, but I am saying that I can't use Facebook.
Fair enough. I see a lot of people complain about the content on Facebook. Facebook gives you what you ask it for. If you are getting garbage it's because that's what you are reacting to. I can see how someone would be hooked on what Facebook is feeding you - it's really good at that. Facebook keeps recommending other similar groups to me, but they are unmoderated, so no thank you.
Maybe I'm somewhat desensitized as my first exposure to the internet was newsgroups, where you get absolutely everything anyone
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My cousin used to mass email anti-liberal conspiracy garbage to everyone in her contact list. I got in the habit of debunking each one with links to authoritative sources. After a while she apparently took me out of her contacts.
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My cousin used to mass email anti-liberal conspiracy garbage to everyone in her contact list. I got in the habit of debunking each one with links to authoritative sources. After a while she apparently took me out of her contacts.
There is also the unfollow. Crazy leftist or right relative? Just unfollow.
It's a great idea to do a yearly purge. Do you know this person? Were you friends when you were young? If not - Purge!
Linked in I'm very selective. I get invitations all the time. I have to have a good reason to add someone.
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You quit facebook? How do you keep track of who and what is supposed to be causing you to feel outraged every day? I want to delete social media from my life but I am afraid I won't be well informed about all the latest outrageous acts of famous people.
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I was feeling my sadness, pessimism, and frustration boil into anger, and I realized that I had been spending too much time on Facebook reading the ignorant ramblings of stupid people.
I've actually had the opposite problem. I found that most of my friends are intelligent and thoughtful people. I had to expand my circle until I found a nut job. I keep that person on my friend list for reference purposes. Otherwise I would live in a bubble of intelligent conversation, or none at all. [twitter.com]
And so (Score:2)
As opposed to censoring "harrassment" from political opponents, in exchange for not having section 230 deleted, costing hundreds of billions in stock valuation.
Anyone learning yet? This is why politicians go into power. It is not an unfortunate aberration or side effect.
Hooray for equality! (Score:1)
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You mean "threatened to leave in droves but never actually acted on their threats", right? Look at the activity on Parler or Gab and compare it to the daily spew of any of the scores of pro-Rump groups on Farcebook and the latter still dwarfs the former. Then if you compare users you'll find that almost everyone on Parler or Gab are also equally active on Farcebook.
Approaching event horizon. (Score:2)
Schizo-slick (Score:1)
Facebook has been using the ban hammer on any post that even looks Right while allowing so many Lefts they are going in circles. br
Kinda sus (Score:1)
Re:Considering the Source (Score:5, Funny)
"I ain't listening and am somehow superior for it, lalalalalalalallalalalalaalla."
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For the sake of accuracy: Less than half are laughing at me. ;)
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In the US, it is about 34% GOP and 33% DNC, with the rest either independent or 3rd party. So it could be more than half.
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Naa, it mostly takes out urbanites, so it would go the other direction.
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I guess you are entitled to living in your own fantasy world.
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He being the AC that can't seem to look at the CDC site that shows my point.
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So in other words, you can't click on the links and look at the data. You prefer to limit to a time period that shows you right, despite it not being true. So you don't care about the facts, and instead make up character assassinations about me after I already stated, I looked at the CDC site, not a news organization?
Re: Considering the Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Considering the Source (Score:5, Interesting)
I will, of course, not hold my breath waiting for any member of the Trump crime family to be jailed, ever, and I don't recommend anyone else try it either. Neither party wants to open the door on rich, powerful, mostly-white criminals being prosecuted.
*this is one of his well-known behaviors, and typical of malignant narcissists: If you don't agree with what he wants he will harass you without end until you do. See his September 17th "some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters"-level missive to Raffensberg.
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I will, of course, not hold my breath waiting for any member of the Trump crime family to be jailed,
I have given up waiting on Hillary to be charged for her numerous (2000+) felony leaking of classified material, but at least there is actual proof of that since they have the emails she gave them that were marked classified. With most allegations against Trump, there is no proof of any illegal activity, and only the allegations. As the left liked to yell after the last election, "show the evidence".
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Impeached for non-crimes the first time, and with zero evidence of the crime accused the second time, which is why he is twice acquitted.
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You're a bit slow aren't you? I already said, you have to provide evidence of a crime to get a conviction, and after the precedent of the Bill Clinton impeachment, even that isn't enough for the Dems, so why should it be for the Pubs?
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If they refuse to prosecute Shrub for the same frelling **war crimes** that the Nuremberg Commission executed people for then expecting them to go after a small time fraudster and money launderer would be a bit much. Of course it didn't help when Pelosi, when presented with clear evidence of fraudulent documentation that killed thousands of US soldiers declared, "Impeachment is off the table!" Then the next administration not only protected them and prohibited investigation of criminal acts by the previou
Re: Considering the Source (Score:4, Interesting)
Normally good advice. However Trump operates very much like a mob boss and (1) does not put anything in writing (2) speaks in the indirect "will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest" mode when he wants something done without any traceback (probably a less he learned early when Trump Management wrote down racially discriminatory procedures in their apartment leasing procedures and those writings came to light in the Justice Dept lawsuit). So we have to depend on the accounts of potentially very unreliable human narrators to know what happened.
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And Trump has a rather strained relationship with the truth, so if he is the one who told this to Thiel, who the hell knows if it was just something Trump's adderal addled mind made up, embellished, or it actually happened.
Re:Considering the Source (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Considering the Source (Score:5, Interesting)
"If someone says it's raining, and another person says it's dry, it's not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true." -Sally Claire
The facts are: conservatives have been "playing the refs" by alleging bias, in order to AVOID having equitable enforcement of the rules against their white-supremacism, misogyny, and other bigotry, for years.
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To me as a left leaning European FB was rather curious example of social media that was not leaning US left. (e.g. Twitter banning articles about Biden's son, for no good reason, but partisanship).
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If one person says it is raining in the city next door, and the other says it is raining over here, you can look outside and verify only one of the two.
There are many liberal people who had the same treatment, so it is you and tech dirt making the claim that it is only on one side, while ignoring all the evidence on the other. I don't claim they didn't do it to conservatives, you are claiming it didn't happen to liberals, and somehow that makes it a slanted issue.
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But, the point being made is that somehow right wing people are not being banned, while left wing people are, when there is plain evidence of it happening on both sides. Just because you have confirmation bias issues doesn't make it true.
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Have to admit, Hunter Biden had nothing to do with the government while Rump's spawn were all making policy. One of these things is not like the other.