Zuckerberg admits Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is giving ammunition to conspiracy theorists with a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in which he claims the Biden administration pressured his company on multiple occasions to censor posts related to COVID-19. The letter penned by Zuckerberg, published on X and Facebook by the House Judiciary …
On this side of the pond we have this thing called the "First Amendment", which protects our freedom of speech, even, and especially speech the government doesn't approve of.
The government was WAY out of line "pressuring" social media companies to shut down or restrict speech the government didn't like... and it was pressure like the mobster saying to a shop keeper "nice business you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it". Except instead of something like a Molotov cocktail through the window it would be a horde of IRS and Dept. of "Justice" agents.
IANAL, or even a USA-ian, but I'm fairly sure that commentards here have stated that the Supreme Court has previously ruled that although the text says only "Congress" it should be construed to apply to pretty much anyone acting on behalf of the government, including State-level institutions and officials.
Having said that, the same legal system has established that your right to free speech does not extend to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre (or theater, I suppose, in this context) so it would be an interesting legal toss-up to see whether Meta could be pressurised into taking down posts that were likely to spread life-threatening disinformation.
Actually it is legal to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Hate speech is also legal. The exception to the 4A is speech that incites immediate violence. So "I wish Fred would die painfully" to a bunch of friends is fine, but saying to a crowd "I want y'all to go and beat Fred over there to death" is not.
https://www.whalenlawoffice.com/blog/legal-mythbusting-series-yelling-fire-in-a-crowded-theater/
As I understand it, please pardon this non-USian if I'm wrong, the 1st Amendment only says that the Government cannot restrict someone from saying anything they choose. It doesn't say the person can't be punished as a result of the thing they said. If it did, it would be legal for someone to come up to you and make threats of violence.
the first amendment is limited to govt. action, that includes the federal, state, local, and any agents working for them. it also prohibits indirect as well as direct threats. that's what at stake here. some members of the govt. know that they can't legally force a company to remove speech they don't like, so they will do so indirectly. from the "it would be a shame if these many govt. agents hounded your company for years and cost you tens of millions of dollars to comply with their obviously nonsense requests unless you take down those posts, to a case in New York state, where the govt. threatened banks and financial institutions with ruinous actions unless they stopped doing business with the NRA.
both are highly illegal under the first amendment.
the first amendment protects lots of speech, speech that would give folks on the other side of the pond fits and nightmares. this includes what some might call hate speech, racist speech, anti-religious speech etc.
SCOTUS has ruled in a couple of instances that the first amendment applies to govt. (federal, state, and local) and applies both directly and indirectly. ex: you can't make a law banning nor favoring certain speech, you can't pressure individuals with an actual or implied threat for their use or refusal to use ( like "pronouns" ) certain speech.
also, the old "can't shout fire in a crowed theater" trope is just that, a trope and one that's been debunked years and years ago. unfortunately many people like to trot it out in an attempt to claim that the first amendment doesn't protect everything so 'their' proposed restriction of the first amendment is just fine.
there are a couple of very narrow things that the first amendment doesn't protect, such as CSAM and threats of imminent violence, but they are very few and very narrow.
there are lots of sites debunking tropes like this and listing the actual limitation on the first amendment.
here's one: https://www.thefire.org/news/reminder-about-shouting-fire-crowded-theater
good luck.
It is called COVID 19 because it started in 2019 even though it did not become a popular illness until 2020. Don-Old was president until January 2021. Facebook was busy taking down COVID misinformation in 2020. If that was in the wake of government pressure then the pressure came from Don-Old. Apparently the past changes to suit Zuckerberg's profits. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
@AJ MacLeod
"The article specifically states that the government pressure was in 2021 and from the Biden administration - how much clearer would you like it?"
With that little fact in mind Flocke Kroes post currently has 33 upvotes for that mis/mal/wrong information against 8 down. Also interesting is someone leaving you a down vote without any explanation.
The article quotes Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg has free speech and can post lies on social media pretty much with impunity. According to Zuckerberg Facebook reduced the spread of COVID misinformation in the wake of government pressure. Facebook reduced the spread of COVID misinformation in 2020. Either Zuckerberg is a liar or the government pressure came from the Trump administration. We already have a court ruling throwing out Zuckerberg's complaint because Facebook chose to restrict COVID misinformation long before the Biden administration had any opportunity to apply pressure. Please look more carefully at who is speaking and if what they say corresponds to the historical timeline. The time to really put effort into this is when the speaker starts by saying things you already believe in an attempt to become a trusted source. After that they can tack lies onto the end and be believed.
Just cos Trump was in power doesn't mean the instruction came from him. What we have learned from the Twitter files is that there are groups within the US govt who were working in their own interest and from other evidence we know that some were actively working against Trump. The call to supress the laptop story came from people in the Biden campaign. There is a well documented revolving door between govt and big tech/pharma/agri/mil and you always want to help out someone who you might be working with down the road.
What we saw with the media, pretty much from Trump's announcement he was running was a very coordinated effort to undermine him. This then morphed into an extreme gaslighting effort to hide Joe Biden's obvious cognitive issues in the run up to 2020 and pretty much up until 2 months ago. And just recently the whole 'joy' thing. Very similar articles and reports from all the media, almost as if they are being told what to say.
This "understanding" of the First Amendment is pretty daft.
Sure, had the government tried to do the things you allege (e.g. threaten IRS action), there would be issues, but literally no-one except the tin-foil conspiracy nutters allege that that happened. The First Amendment has always had "consequences for speech", which is what we're talking about here: the government is asking Zuckerberg to take action i.e. provide consequences for speech. No-one is getting prosecuted for speaking, no-one is getting IRS audits, no-one is losing any money (except perhaps Zuck, but that's a big "perhaps" because if a social media site were to be known to be truthful and honest it would attract better, therefore higher paying, advertisers).
What a surprise that someone who sneers about having free speech doesn't even understand the concept of free speech, or even, hell, the first amendment he's wanking over.
Instead of showing off about how you think it's your right to endanger someones life by lying to them about health matters, maybe you should focus on the real issues of freedom, and why America actually ranks quite low.
https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=desc&order=Total%20Score%20and%20Status
P.S. Try shouting "I have a bomb" at JFK airport, and see how far your "free speech" gets you.
I know it has. That was my point.
However, I notice an earlier exchange:
eco wrote: "The 1st Amendment does not, and never has, allowed for information that harms people."
You replied: "sorry you are mistaken. it always has, it still does, and it always will. do try to keep up."
I suggest asking your doctor (if you can afford one) about upping your meds (if you can afford them)
Oh, here's another story about a guy in America being arrested for what the earlier guy (and you in an earlier incarnation) called "free speech". https://youtu.be/0IS-LFAE6bc
By the way, it's somewhat ironic that you've got Brits defending the constitution for not being as bat-shit crazy as some of you guys think.
no it was prudent to pressure fuckwits into doing the right thing.
rather than allow fuckwits to keep spreading bollocks that endangered everyone, not just the fucking insane right wing loonatics telling you to self medicate with horse wormer followed with a bleach chaser.
fucking crazy Americans
depending on who's making the speech, what speech "exactly" they are making and what the supposed 'death or harm' is, in most cases it's perfectly legal.
a company selling bleach as a cure all with instruction to ingest liberally, would probably be limited. commercial speech gets limited protection and the harm is immediate and obvious.
an organization stating that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common cold, it's not commercial, the speech is subject to interpretation, there is no immediate nor concrete harms, it's protected by the first amendment.
an individual states that there are only two biological sexes and that people can't change their sex, it's non-commercial, factual, any harms are to someone's feelings. definitely protected by the first amendment.
so "...directly or indirectly causing harm or death..." isn't the clear cut win you seem to think that it is.
"jilocasin" wrote:
there are only two biological sexes
This has NEVER been true, you need to find a better example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
And in fact any virologist will tell you that Covid IS much more dangerous than the common cold as well. The fact that some people get it and have no longstanding negative impacts doesn't disprove that, any more than the fact that your brother didn't die after getting a heart attack "proves" that heart attacks are not dangerous and often fatal.
That's 0 for 2 then.
Tho I'm not actually disagreeing that there ARE some things that reasonable people can disagree upon. For example: "Green is a better color than blue".
Now let's talk about "corporations as people" when it comes to their so-called "free speech rights"...
If you are going to try to make an argument from authority, you should probably choose one that's not been taken over by ideologies and activists.
There are exactly two sexes in mammals, of which humans are. There are females, large gamete producers and males, small gamete producers. In healthy humans females have no Y chromosomes (overwhelmingly XX) and males do (overwhelmingly XY). The fact that there are genetic disorders effecting a tiny minority of individuals, those possessing a DSD a disorder of sexual development, doesn't change that fact. Almost all DSD conditions are also themselves sexed, meaning a person with a DSD still has one of two sexes. Sufferers of Klinefelter syndrome are still male, those of Turner syndrome are still female.
If you believe that healthy humans come in any sex other than female or male, please list them out for the class. While you are at it please provide examples in healthy gorillas, zebra, lions, field mice, and blue whales, remember we are all mammals and any sex a human supposedly comes in every other mammal on the planet does as well.
Your second debunking is again a failed appeal to authority, while a majority of virologists would agree that COVID-19 is more dangerous than a cold, there are some that disagree. Which is a big part of the parent article. Virologists tried posting their opinion that COVID-19 wasn't that dangerous and had their posts removed at government insistence. If you need to silence your opposition in order to 'win' your argument, then you don't have much of an argument. A lay person who experienced COVID-19 with nothing more than the sniffles has the right to say so, and their statement is protected by the first amendment. If you reread my post, I didn't claim that COVID-19 was no more dangerous than a cold, but that the opinion that is was is protected.
So sorry, that's two out of two for me.
Thanks for playing.
@jilocasin
I think a lot of intersex people would not be particularly happy about how those like yourself categorize them as a "disorder" - especially since a significant proportion of humanity is born that way.
In fact this "disorder" is apparently so upsetting to so many parents of such children in western cultures that it's been common practice for many years now to choose to surgically mangle their sometimes "ambiguous" genitalia to meet their idea of "normality" before the poor children are in a position to understand what is actually going on. Many of such children grow up to be rather disturbed by that parental decision that they had no control over at the time. And this little "secret" doesn't get discussed in public much because of the perceived stigma associated with it.
Whereas many other cultures around the world have taken an accomodating approach for thousands of years to these relatively common "disorders" by creating a place in society for them. (The term for this gender category in Native American cultures varies by tribe but in recent years an umbrella term that embraces all of them has been created, because it is so common: "Two spirit")
Our binary-gender-obsessed societies that embraced Abrahammic concepts of gender seem to be the main issue here.
And I think that's a problem.
Free speech - YES. Free reach - NO. Nobody is holding you from hosting cheaply a web-site and post whatever you want. But alas, suddenly nobody wants to read you. Sorry about that. How Truth Social is doing? Every social network can decide what is allowed or not. Somehow non-credible web-sites quickly lose readers. Wonder why?
Would you like to sue GMail for filtering spam? It is similar. What about sharing porn on Facebook? "But but, it is different". No! It is not. Free speech or not by your logic.
It is possible to paralyze a network or the whole society by overwhelming them with noise. Some influencers are busy doing just that - generating advertisement revenue by publishing nonsense every few hours. Typically those are rumors, doubts, conspiracy theories. Not analysis with references to credible sources, mind you. No wonder, the smart China explicitly bans them.
It is worse than that. Many Western politicians are paralyzed from acting due to fake, or foreign-manipulated "public opinion".
"Advocacy of force or criminal activity does not receive First Amendment protections if (1) the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and (2) is likely to incite or produce such action."
Yup.
Doesn’t help that numerous things being label as conspiracies or misinformation. Are actually being proven to be correct. Regardless of the truth the government has no right to ever censor any form of speech. If it’s labeled as harmful to individuals or groups. Then those individuals and groups should remove themselves from areas where they’re being harmed.
To censor one group but not others is tyrannical.
The government has no right to police people discussing issues, this includes Covid.
If you think otherwise, you would love to live in North Korea or Nazi Germany.
It is appalling how many people want the government to impose restrictions on our lives while banning any criticism. It is not surprising that totalitarian regimes are so easy to establish.
... at least I would rather not write the vernaculars I'm currently thinking of. Timing is great, isn't it?
Fact is thatthat we're were many posts about CoViD that were just... misinformation, like the US president spread when he proposed to inject bleach (seriously....). Removing this kind of garbage is necessary. Sorry. No, your right to free speech ends where it harms others. If (a)social networks don't get stuff done they really need some encouragement.
Yeah, I do expect downvotes, but hey, free speech...
This isn't about how crazy the posts were, but who decides whether they can stay up or not. From what I know this is not the jurisdiction of the US government so, for better or worse, this should be down to the courts (and possibly the FCC), with Facebook and Co. being held liable (currently the DMCA gives them some degree of exemption) for the content, as is the case in other countries.
I'll note in passing that in Germany, the phrase "pandemic of anti-vaxxers" (and this is not some obscure group of Data General fans), which was popularised by the Federal Health Minister from 2021 onwards, was disputed by the experts at the time as factually inaccurate, and may also end up before the courts.
I'm all in favour of vaccination but stand by most of the criticism of many of the policies enacted around the world by various governments, who frequently resembled headless chickens. There were plenty of idiots on both sides who were keen to ignore established, and therefore tried and tested) epidemic protocols, and the evidence about the source and spread of this or other viruses. We still have the opportunity to learn lessons but I suspect that, within 5 years, most of those lessons will be down in that basement filing cabinet behind the door with the "Beware of the leopard" sign!
The wider issue here is that minority views get coverage that is disproportionate to their content.
That is the one of the side effects of Social Media. The outcome is that completely inappropriately or wrong information becomes fact as total chimps decide that a vocal nobody with 100,00 shares or likes is more relevant than an official statement.
Social media has become a total curse on society, there is no responsibility from many who post, consume and the corporations that run them refusing to realise that moderation is essential in a civilised society.
The views of one very rich personality as a figurehead have more sway than any authority that is trying to get unacceptable material removed.
If you want sick violence, beheadings, drugs or guns then go onto the dark web, It should not be available on something that is deemed a civilised resource.
"Charlie Clark" wrote:
...policies enacted around the world by various governments, who frequently resembled headless chickens. There were plenty of idiots on both sides who were keen to ignore established, and therefore tried and tested) epidemic protocols, and the evidence about the source and spread of this or other viruses."
In fact, it took quite a long while before the actual experts figured out all the details of this new disease, and much of the "conventional wisdom" was wrong.
For example, it took the better part of a year or more to convincingly conclude that all the hysteria about sanitizing surfaces everywhere was a waste of time, and that probably 95% of transmission was occurring via aerial droplets instead. Here in the USA all suppllies of surface santizing products evaporated for 1-2 years on store shelves because of all the initial panic about that. But the scientists had to do extensive tests - all while the virus was continuously mutating - to figure this out. It was not possible to know at first.
Another major problem here were the politics where tons of unfortunately influential science-deniers (including corporate interests that wanted their workers to work in unsafe conditions and bitterly partisan politicians which wanted to create false controversies any time they thought they could single out their political adversaries for "restricting our freedumb") were applying heavy pressure against government-suggested practices like mask-wearing and social isolation of infected people. (Policies which were later convincingly proven to cut down on the spread of the virus and save lives)
Ah yes, the infamous Fauci 'dwoplets'. It was quite a while before they admitted that aerosols could carry it. It is as if the scientific community had a blonde moment and forgot that the common cold and flu are both aerosol spreadable. It was 2 years before the WHO admitted to aerosol transmission and no-one was willing to contradict the WHO. It wasn't just politicians and corporate types being science deniers.
Here in the UK we had some utterly batshit crazy 'science' whereby if you were sat down it was safe to remove your mask yet if you stood up you had to put it on. The covid somehow floated over you while you were sat down. Also somehow covid would be stopped by a t-shirt mask.....
I saw a person in the supermarket pull down their mask, lick their finger and rub their toddlers face. Another person was wearing those cheap 'surgical' style gloves, was stood waiting to pay and was picking at their teeth with their gloved finger.
Cowardly Person wrote:
It was quite a while before they admitted that aerosols could carry it.
No one had to "admit" anything because they were not hiding anything.
The great thing about science is that it is inherently anti-dogmatic.
In the ideological dogma cesspool, people are forced to "admit" things all the time because they never bothered to check the veracity of the things they choose to believe in. And then get caught with their pants down. A lot.
Scientists do not have this problem because they do not claim that something is a certain way until they see proof of this. Usually multiple times, under carefully controlled, repeatable experimental conditions. (Technically, enough times to be statistically significant)
Pretty cool, huh?
Are you sure?
https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q985
"Many insisted the spread of the new virus was through the air, yet the World Health Organization refused to use the terms “airborne” or “aerosol”1 in the context of covid-19 until 2021"
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-fight-about-viruses-in-the-air-is-finally-over-now-its-time-for-healthy/
"The great thing about science is that it is inherently anti-dogmatic."
Sorry but LOL! Scientists, especially those funded by governments or big pharma/corp are hugely dogmatic. We just have to look at the work of Ancel Keys who concluded that saturated fat was the cause of many health problems and not huge amounts of hidden sugar. It just happened he was funded by the sugar lobby.
Doctors were threatened with having their medical licenses revoked if they didn't fall in line with the correct narrative on covid.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7125703/
In 2004 they list every well known respiratory virus as airborne. You even admit the dogma in your previous post "hysteria about sanitizing surfaces everywhere was a waste of time". Its as if everyone went stupid and decided to start from scratch rather than rely on decades of previous work.
Cowardly Person wrote:
[Phil Koenig] "The great thing about science is that it is inherently anti-dogmatic." [/Phil Koenig]Sorry but LOL! Scientists, especially those funded by governments or big pharma/corp are hugely dogmatic.
What I wrote is what I meant.
Science IS inherently anti-dogmatic. Bear in mind that I did not claim that science is "dogma proof". See below.
Now if we turn to religious, mystical or traditional beliefs (including the modern form called "magical thinking"), there is literally no need whatsoever to verify the veracity of ANY claim. In fact, MANY of these belief-systems literally preach that when a person feels skeptical of the ideology's claims, THAT'S A PROOF THAT THE CLAIMS ARE TRUE". LOL.
Whereas science provides the tools - if the practice is properly followed - to resist ideological manipulation of the results and present them in a way which can easily be independently verified - in order to facilitate an earned confidence and trust in those results. Again: "if the process is properly followed".
But cynical and dishonest people have a way of expending great efforts to corrupt all sorts of things that provide the tools to be corruption and dogma resistant, by twisting the process, lying about how they came to their conclusion and using that to trick gullible people.
Unfortunately many people do not know how to determine if the scientific process was properly followed, verified and documented. Or, their various forms of societal conditioning or just plain old mental laziness leads them to gravitate towards the potentially more emotionally satisfying magical-thinking alternatives instead.
The "faith" ideologies literally brainwash people to be "critical thinking resistant", and proper science does the actual opposite.
Not sure which studies you were looking at, but in Europe the spread via aerosols was determined in spring 2020. By which time it was also established that children, somewhat unusually, were not acting as vectors, but policies worldwide insisted on taking and keeping children out of school for well over a year and . Comorbidity factors (age, gender, obesity, heart and kidney conditions) were also established fairly quickly and could, and should have been used to improve protection for the most vulnerable.
Studies regarding mask-wearing were not conclusive: I could point to the Cochrane report, but this is known to be controversial. Basically, in future pandemics, we've got 8 - 12 weeks when general restricitive policies can be helpful, after that it's about protecting the vulnerable, triage and vaccination.
The way little kids were treated during the pandemic was horrible. Especially in the USA. This was another one of the dogmatic things that went on.
Forcing kids to wear masks, keeping them away from friends and interaction with other people, the whole 'you will kill grandma' scaremongering. A large number of children are developmentally stunted due to this and some even have irrational fears about human to human interaction.
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-53097289
And in the UK the way we protected the most vulnerable was to empty hospitals by sending known covid cases to nursing homes and we all know the outcome of that. And sadly this was not restricted to the UK as a number of US states did the same.
Yes, despite evidence that lockdowns were the most destructive and least effective of the policies employed, they stuck around because they pandered to the sense of fear that many people. quite understandably, had; fear is not good counsellor. I'd throw in the mirage of the track and trace follies. Fortunately, however, one of the lasting innovations (along with some of the fantastic findings from the RECOVERY study) was checking the sewers for viral last. We're seeing this being put to good use in Gaza where it will hopefully help prevent a polio epidemic.
And, of course, some of these policies helped deflect attention from glaring shortcomings in primary care which correlated unsurprisingly with higher mortality rates. I've no problem with people developing a culture of "we won't come this weekend because I/other/the children have a cold/flu…" or of people taking vaccination more seriously, but I would expect a return to the mean over the next few years.
Of course you should expect downvotes, because people like you are a huge part of the problem. I hate and despise Trump and there are quite a few people like me who are not on the left, but even your "fact" about him suggesting that people inject bleach is completely fake. Even the extreme left-leaning Snopes won't back this one up. I'm using Snopes as an example because they were the first search result I got looking for the exact quotes (which weren't in there, but I'm not going to keep digging). Here's what Snopes said happened:
"During an April 2020 media briefing, Trump did ask members of the government's coronavirus task force to look into whether disinfectants could be injected inside people to treat COVID-19. But when a reporter asked in a follow-up question whether cleaning products like bleach and isopropyl alcohol would be injected into a person, the then-president said those products would be used for sterilizing an area, not for injections."
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-bleach-covid-19/
That's it. No, it's probably not the best plan to use bleach to sterilize an area for an injection, but if there was an emergency and nothing else was available (this was at a time when everyone was running out of everything) it doesn't rate as evil or malicious or outright stupid. It was an off-the-cuff response to a reporter who suggested injecting bleach (of course, Snopes won't go so far as to name the reporter - they aren't *that* interested in truth).
So now that I'm done defending that pile of festering orange crap, let's move on to the reason it's still among us: people like you.
You screech about "misinformation" while shamelessly repeating a stupid and very easily debunked outright lie, literally in the same sentence. You do it because you get off on gaslighting people who you despise. Sure, it's fun to watch awful people squirm. But while you're winding them up, you're doing two other things. First, you're helping to annihilate the credibility of your side to people who are undecided. So everything your side claims from The Science™ (which is getting fewer and fewer things right because it has an enormous corruption problem) down to the Earth is round (even Alex Jones can't stand the Flat Earthers) and birds are real comes into doubt with people who can't figure these things out for themselves, which is most of the human race. They use the huristic of "well, I understand this lie so everything else that person says is probably a lie." That's not even a dumb heuristic. It works pretty well most of the time. Secondly, people who do agree with your side in some areas become more unwilling to make common cause with you in those areas because you're outing yourselves as no smarter than the Trump supporters. You make yourselves look like just a different flavor of angry and stupid. It's deeply frustrating for people like me because both side absolutely suck. It would be nice to have a side that doesn't absolutely suck, but there is no such thing right now. Just remember this: you are not better than a Trump supporter. Maybe worse.
The Snopes link does NOT say that it was "completely fake". "Mostly False" also means "Partly True".
The Florida Orange Man said, quote:
>>>>Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.
And then:
>>>>It wouldn't be through injection. We're talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work. But it certainly has a big effect if it's on a stationary object.
So yes, "inject bleach" is objectively false. "Maybe we can clean their lungs with disinfectant" is what I hear there. Mind you, I look at it as him being a very ignorant individual wondering out loud about something, and not that he was intending to be malicious about it. Either way, it is entirely fair game to give him shit about it. People have ended their political careers for doing a LOT less (Howard Dean, anyone?).
>>>>It's deeply frustrating for people like me because both side absolutely suck. It would be nice to have a side that doesn't absolutely suck, but there is no such thing right now. Just remember this: you are not better than a Trump supporter. Maybe worse.
I sympathize with you. However, it is quite clear to me that while one of the parties is pretty "meh" (if I'm being generous), the other one is a raging dumpster fire that is objectively looking to subvert our democracy at the behest of an asshole narcissist convicted felon con man. They are NOT the same.
I am voting the same way I did in 2016 and 2020: the candidate that is best situated to defeat the Florida Orange Man. He belongs in the Big House, not in the White House.
My $0.02, YMMV
Please go study "innuendo" and "plausible deniability". It was the same sort of speech that the Orange Man always uses, weasely double-talk that from the strictest reading wasn't anything bad. But to anyone with actual sense is painfully obvious what was going on. It's Budget Mafiosi stuff, like all the rest of his act.
Pathetic response, MAGA cult member.
Once you've stopped foaming at the mouth, watch the video of him speaking, and try to listen without your MAGA hat on, and try to explain what he supposedly did mean without this time sounding like chemical Ali, Kellyanne Conway, or brain-dead Kayleigh McEnany.
Do yourself a favor, and seek reprograming.
"Lars" wrote:
Also note that when he finds out again he is an idiot he tries to claim it was only sarcasm.
I first encountered this rhetorical tactic employed by one of my classmates when I was about 8 or 9 years old, when they made some really obnoxious remark, and myself or someone else called them out for it. "Ohh, it was just a JOKE, HURR DURR...!"
And that's about the level of maturity that one expects from those who employ such childish attempts to escape culpability for making a blatantly self-promoting, false remark.
But the sad thing is that this "genius tactic" seems to be on a steep rise in the USA the last 10 years or so, apparently supercharged by Mr. Orange Tinyhands bringing these manchild types out of the woodwork and telling them they're all actual geniuses.
"giving ammunition to conspiracy theorists"
Well I can see what angle this article is coming from. It's a shame.
Just off the top of my head, a few "conspiracy theories" which have turned out to be true :-
The Hunter Biden laptop*
Possibly the Wuhan lab leak. WAS definitely a conspiracy theory, until it turned out to be likely true.
The vaccines stop the spread.
The Covid vaccines are safe (although the AZ one got quietly withdrawn because of blood clots)
Masks work to stop you catching / spreading respiratory viruses.
Lockdowns work
* And that's the one that Zuck admitted he'd been warned about by the FBI.
That's not to mention all the nasty well documented shit that the CIA got up to in South America and other countries, as well as MK Ultra and other drug experiments with soldiers.
At this stage I'm still 80% sure that man DID land on the moon, but if it proves otherwise I don't think my world view will be shaken much.
And the earth is not round. Or flat. More like spherical.
Still feeling cynical and skeptical.
Look at the downvotes... and the total lack of facts to refute your points. It seems from many centuries of evidence that the majority of people are fine with being lied to by the relevant authorities of the day, happy to avoid any kind of critical thinking of their own - and then crowd round and batter down anyone who dares to posit something that conflicts with the official "truth".
Look at the downvotes... and the total lack of facts to refute your points.
Probably because everyone is utterly tired of posting refutations, which everyone but conspiracy theorists understand, which conspiracy theorists won't ever accept.
Most people have got better things to do than engage with conspiracy theorists and brainwashed tribalists.
You might want to actually read about the alleged laptop here, starting with "The owner of a Delaware computer shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, said that the laptop had been left by a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden. Mac Isaac also stated that he is legally blind and could not be sure whether the man was actually Hunter Biden" and then:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy#Forensic_analysis
As for Zuck, consider these two postulates:
1) Is he a long standing principled individual who seeks the truth?
2) Is he toadying to the MAGA lot to avoid any more scrutiny on his privacy-raping business model?
I leave the application of Occam's razor to the reader.
It is the provenance of the laptop that is so suspicious:
According to the New York Post story, a person—who Mac Isaac could not identify because he is legally blind—left the computer at the repair shop to repair water damage, but once this was completed, the shop had no contact information for its owner, and nobody ever paid for it or came to pick it up. Criticism focused on Mac Isaac over inconsistencies in his accounts of how the laptop came into his possession and how he passed it on to Giuliani and the FBI. When interviewed by CBS News, Mac Isaac offered contradictory statements about his motivations.
So somebody hands in a laptop related to the democrats to a republican repair shop, that by a pure miracle can't identify who it was, and then it goes directly to Biden's arch-rival's attorney instead of just to the FBI. And you think it passes the smell test?
@Paul Crawford
"So somebody hands in a laptop related to the democrats to a republican repair shop, that by a pure miracle can't identify who it was, and then it goes directly to Biden's arch-rival's attorney instead of just to the FBI. And you think it passes the smell test?"
It went directly to the FBI who buried it. Evidence of serious crime vanishing into the void while the FBI were staging evidence against Trump. Then he handed it over to the republican lawyers to avoid being buried too.
"And you think it passes the smell test?"
The burying of the evidence and, once released, the states effort to discredit it does not pass the smell test at all. It also significantly demonstrated the difference in investigating Trump vs Biden
That's the point though, isn't it? You can't prove that any of those things are actually true or conspiracy theories. They are just opinions. I also can't prove that they are false, but given all the evidence I've seen I'm fairly convinced that, for instance, long term the lockdowns did not work to stop the spread. Except perhaps in China where they had a pretty strict Zero Covid policy for a long time, and eventually had to drop it because it was causing way more damage than it was helping.
But let's not get into arguing about that. It's been done ad nauseum. We can disagree, and that's fine. It's not the point at all. The point is that those opinions would have been taken down or severely demoted by Facebook in 2020/21 because the US government was putting extreme pressure on Facebook to do so. Facebook didn't HAVE to comply, in the same way that the local baker didn't HAVE to comply when the Mafia came round and said "That's a nice shop you've got there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it"
There are laws in place to prevent you from spreading actual damaging misinformation, as Alex Jones found out to his cost. But that doesn't mean the government should be allowed to shut down discussion of things that they find inconvenient or embarrassing.
One day you'll have strong opinions about something which your government is doing. Who knows, perhaps this will be sooner than you think, after November? And perhaps when the boot is on the other foot you'll start to value free speech a bit more.
Every case brought against Alex Jones has been a private case for defamation. There hasn't actually been a single case brought against him by the state.
As politicians now have pretty much zero actual policies their only vector is attack their opponent yet very rarely do we see any of this fact checked. Some of the campaign videos are near enough made up where they've very selectively edited video and attributed comments to completely unrelated events.
OK fair enough, I didn't know that.
I guess the problem is who exactly gets to decide what's truth and what's misinformation? When Alex Jones said Sandy Hook never happened, etc. that was clearly deliberate misinfornation. When someone like myself (and many many others) says "These lockdowns, are they actually worth all the collateral damage they are going to cause?" that's not misinformation, that's genuine curiosity with a heavy dose of believing that those who are supposed to know better are actually running around like headless chickens trying to work out what will look better on opinion polls and focus groups, rather than what will actually do the most to help.
And that's not a left/right political thing because although the Conservatives were calling for lockdowns, Labour were asking why they weren't harder and faster.
His claim had been that it was potentially a false flag or otherwise staged event to push the gun control narrative. Pretty much the same claims that have been circulated about the Trump near miss shooting. Many on the political left are claiming it was staged, faked, crisis actors etc.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/jul/14/social-media/donald-trump-staged-the-shooting-at-his-rally-in-b/
"I'm not trying to play politics or foment controversy"
-- Sincerely, an oligarch who's worried by prospect of progressive administration, and who'd much rather perversely ally with the bumbling autocrat in the race, and who's also a social media mogul who's bottom line depends on controversy (whether true or false--but false controversies are more numerous and exciting to the misinformed, thusly more profitable).
I take as much issue with the statement "progressive administration" as I do with half the crap the Trump spouts; it really is difficult to consider any US legislation from the last four years as progressive, in the general meaning of the term: tariffs and corporate handouts, certainly aren't. US elections are often dominated by false dichotomies which whip up fervour that ultimately benefits the real legislators: the lobbyists.
Chris Cuomo put it pretty well in a report from the DNC last week when he pointed out that the talk on stage was just performative as the people paying $500k+ for a VIP booth in the arena are not going to support a candidate that might cost them money. Even Jon Stuart pointed out that they had Bernie taking about making billionaires pay their fair share followed by an actual billionaire.
"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is giving ammunition to conspiracy theorists"
Because the so called conspiracy theorists were right? As with the Twitter files revelations?
The truth is now ammunition to conspiracy theorists. Surely its no longer conspiracy theory when shown correct? To dispel a conspiracy requires the facts, which give the clearer picture of right and wrong.
This article is very politically motivated. The comments and the voting is the stereotypical response to political articles. If not left leaning you’ll get down voted. Regardless if as a person you’re moderate, right winged or believed to be neutral.
This isn’t Reddit, but it’s becoming a similar cesspool. I want tech related news, not politically drives left or right.
Why does Meta silence voices in support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook ? This has been going on for years and is still happening.
List of Facebook political donations here for last US election cycle:
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/facebook-inc/C00502906/candidate-recipients/2020
Looks like they were non-partisan, if by that phrase you mean "donated to so many politicians of both parties, that the chance of any regulation of Facebook passing through Congress is zero".
Yes I'm sure the Biden administration did lean on Zuckerberg etc. to remove dangerous misinformation.
I'm torn -- on the one hand the 1st ammendment fully applies, and if it came to it I think the Biden administration couldn't have required them to do anything.
On the other hand, so many people thinlk if they read something more than once on Facebook that means it's factual. The anti vax and anti mask nonsesne definitely lead to a lot of deaths.
It'd be great if there was some easy way for people to tell when something is backed up by facts and science; when something is unsubstantiated (no strong basis to say it's true but not necessarily false); and when something is a big load of nonsense someone made up and just gets repeated echo chamber style.
@Henry Wertz 1
"Yes I'm sure the Biden administration did lean on Zuckerberg etc. to remove dangerous misinformation."
Step aside from Covid for a second and look at the laptop. That was very dangerous. A mentally impaired runner for president has this terrible scandal showing evidence of illegal behaviour of his son and potentially linking some of that behaviour to the big guy. Instead of stopping misinformation the state actively peddled misinformation.
Back to Covid, it is about as sure as can be that the virus came from the lab without the Chinese openly admitting it (so its pretty much certainty). I guess this could maybe be dangerous. The US President telling the truth and being clear that the virus came from the lab in China when the WHO were more interesting in not sounding racist than chasing down the virus. Maybe the danger was that the US was funding the lab that was playing with the viruses.
Elsewhere on here people are debating the specifics of masks, vaccine and so on. I am surprised not to have seen people mention the social distancing rules being so important, unless you were protesting/rioting
" WHO were more interesting in not sounding racist than chasing down the virus"
More accurately the WHO are/were pretty much controlled by China. If you set the wayback machine to early 2020 and the WHO comes out with a treatment protocol that involves early intervention with ventilators and the west blindly follows it but the reality is its damaging lungs and pretty much killing people. It was all very strange as normally doctors are given a pretty free hand when it comes to treating illnesses, especially something new, yet in this case doctors HAD to follow the WHO instructions...
We also had the US Dems doing their level best to undermine Trump in early 2020 with the likes of Nancy Pelosi encouraging people to visit chinatown, Mardi Gras still going ahead and the head of public health in NY saying that covid poses little danger so keep using the subway and go to parades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuXruIr6QSM
@AC
"was peddling the false conspiracy theory it was a Chinese Bio-weapon"
What false conspiracy theory? The lab was performing gain of function experiments and modifications to Coronavirus. And so-
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bioweapon
"Don't go changing the narrative now, MAGAnon."
You do realise that you are the coward? And even if you untick that box I am still not posting anon. So you are wrong on 2 counts in one short comment, congrats.
@AC
I am not sure which part you take issue with?-
From the left leaning vanityfair-
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-risky-virus-research-in-wuhan
I am not sure which part you take issue with-
> The US funded the lab in wuhan
> The lab was messing with coronavirus and making it more infectious
> The virus most likely came from the lab
I am guessing you want the Chinese to say it absolutely came from the lab and a DeLorean to stop the coverup from happening in the first place.
@AC
"Proof please."
Interesting. So the funding the lab is fact. The lab messing with corona viruses is fact. The coverup isnt even disputed.
The facts seem to be that the covid pandemic started where there were labs doing the very research to make covid style viruses and once the pandemic started the Chinese and NIH acted quickly to cover up and silence information about covid and the lab. Causing serious back tracking and obfuscation under questioning from those in the know.
So where did it come from?
Is there any way we can get back the site that at least pretended to "Bite the Hand". Currently it's mostly being stroked by the hand as it sits on the lap of the democratic party.
I'm pretty sure there's no coming back from that. Rather than get it back, I'd like to know somewhere I can get tech news that's politically neutral and is not afraid to "Bite the hand". Does such a site exist?
I want a site that's equally scathing towards Dems/Rupublicans and Conservative/Labour. Because usually they deserve it. Not sure advertisers would like it though. Does anyone want to set one up?
I would have thought covid and vaccination would be rather passé by now.
Personally I am quite in favour of free Ivermectin and intravenous bleach for all those stupid enough to want to use them.
Looking at the photograph of Z heading this article it seems he might be morphing into a Harry Potteresque house elf like Dobby.
Perhaps someone should give him a sock*. ;)
* British idiom will easily suggest what he ought to do with it.
They are still dishing it out to 6 month old babies and up in the USA, so hardly passé. And this is now a mostly US site. I'm not sure how many are taking up the offer? but it does seem like a huge disparity compared to the UK where we only offer it to people aged 65+. It's an interesting natural experiment though, right?
People believing everything that is posted on social media.
Frankly that is the lesson we should all take away from this debacle. Facebook, and similar services, are simply not a reliable source of truth for any topic. They are advertising platforms that manipulate content to maximize user screen time. Nothing boosts screen time better than controversial information, regardless of whether it is true or not.
Remember that lesson as the clown circus election cycle gets in to high gear.
What I have not read anywhere was of any type of threat against Meta if they did not comply. Informing, advocating, and pressuring are very different things. Was Meta threatened in many way, directly or indirectly? Or were the Federal agencies doing their duty to advocate for voluntary action that could and did save lives, as is their mission? Does Zuck want to turn Meta into X, where misinformation is not just tolerated by encouraged??
Zuck and co were told by the FBI to watch out for Russian disinformation just before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, and as a direct result of that warning they decided to temporarily suppress the story. If that hadn't happened we could be living in an alternative time line.
They only get to play that trick once, and Facebook won't trust the three letter agencies any more going forward. They will push back and ask for credible evidence, instead of a "friendly hint". Zuck has said as much, and I don't blame him. Fool me once, shame on you.
When all the social media sites got direct messages saying "How come Alex Berenson is still on your platform?" that's pretty clear coercion isn't it? I guess we'll see when it goes to the Supreme Court. He didn't say anything illegal, or even wrong. Just inconvenient.
Given the fact that both Britain and the USA did so very poorly regarding Covid I think we can claim that part of that must be due to idiots in charge in both countries, Boris and Trump.
Or should we look more at the people or say a two party system with a one party government.
I don't think I lost anything washing my hands, reluctantly using a mask and keeping some distance to people if possible. And having my vaccines of course.
And as for restaurants I did not use my mask when sitting as I was drinking and perhaps eating but standing up I put it on as I was probably leaving. Not much of a problem.
@Lars
"Given the fact that both Britain and the USA did so very poorly regarding Covid I think we can claim that part of that must be due to idiots in charge in both countries, Boris and Trump."
I dont think that quite works for the US. The states performed differently and implemented different policies. I do agree about the UK reaction to covid. However when it comes to procuring vaccine Trump and the UK gov did an absolutely stunning job.
The initial poor response in the US was entirely down to resistance from the democrats and the desire to harm Trump's reelection.
In the US it is deliberately hard for the president to rule over the individual states. If its not written in federal law then it falls to the states.
What we saw in early 2020 was the likes of Nancy Pelosi telling people a travel ban on China was racist and the head of the NY public health department saying that there is little to fear and don't avoid the subway or other crowded places.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuXruIr6QSM
In NY and other states there were orders to move elderly covid patients to nursing homes. This was not an order from Trump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_COVID-19_nursing_home_scandal
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2619005/five-governors-besides-cuomo-who-sent-covid-19-positive-patients-into-nursing-homes/
And coupled with a very unhealthy population, even more so than the UK.
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