Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey secretly funded pro-Trump meme website | Hacker News Reader

Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey secretly funded pro-Trump meme website

eurogamer.net

51 pointsting_bu_dung51 comments

Most of these articles have been killed by user flags, but the most popular submission is still open for discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561763.

I disagree with 90% of what comes out of Trump's mouth, but this stuff is getting ridiculous. So what, Palmer's a smart successful guy that happens to agree with the 40%+ of the population that supports Trump, get over it.

I think the larger issue is that this is seen as tearing down constructive discourse on the issues. Sponsored trolling... I'm unsure of what you seem to think is ok with what he did?

Trolling does not mean what you think it means. Trump memes are 99% not trolling.

I am directly addressing these particular memes... Which are trolling... Shitposting... The name says it all.

The content which is produced isn't that different from the kind you get from The Daily Show or South Park.

I strongly disagree - mockery is a valid form of political speech.

so we should ban the daily show too and most off the talk shows late night?

> Palmer's a smart successful guy He really is. He's also really young (24). Reading about his life[1] for the first time right now and it's inspiring to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Luckey

* born in 1992 in Long Beach, CA (really average city with pockets of extreme poverty)

* community college courses when he was 14

* originally majored in Journalism

> From ages 11 to 16, he experimented with a variety of high-voltage electronics projects including coil guns, Tesla coils, and lasers

> To fund these projects, he earned at least US$36,000 by fixing and reselling damaged iPhones,[1] and was also a sailing coach and did boat repair.

* Net Worth: US$700 million (2015)

I think he's entitled to his opinion.

What is it about the above statements that makes you think Luckey deserves some entitlement that others do not?

Never would have guessed he was worth that much. I wouldn't have thought he'd manage to maintain that much ownership of Oculus prior to being bought out.

This industry excommunicated Brendan Eich for his private, personal political funding activity.

We, as a community and industry, long ago crossed the Rubicon where the wrong opinion can exile you as a pariah and a monster.

In a civilized society people respect people with different opinions. And I can respect someone with a reasoned defense of their political beliefs.

But shit-posting memes? No. That's what I object to.

I agree it's not a good way to go about expressing your opinions, but let's not kid ourselves: this was a "Trump supporter" reveal, not a shit-posting reveal. Plenty of big names are out there funding and participating in shit-posting.

I'm not asking you or anyone else to kid yourself.

I'm personally pissed at Palmer Luckey for paying for shit-posting memes.

The fact that he's a supporter of Mr. Trump is his business. The fact that he's bankrolling people to troll reddit makes it MY BUSINESS, and I'm incredibly pissed off about it.

Don't spend time on reddit if you are so easily upset.

Fighting for signal to beat noise is a worthwhile way to spend your time.

And people who throw money to wreck a site that I enjoy are assholes.

And really, honestly, your argument is that only people who can dispassionately watch a site be exploited should use the site?

I disagree actually- it was a triple reveal, yes 'Trump supporter' was one, but secret finder and shitposting were arguably larger

So are you okay with the daily show?

I turn to that channel and watch that show.

Why on Earth wouldn't I be okay with The Daily Show?

Good for Palmer.

I was sad to see all of the negativity in the various comment threads on this story around the Internet.

The McCarthyist-style witch hunt against Trump supporters is far scarier than anything Trump has ever said.

This isn't people being turned off Oculus because of a voting preference of a founder. This is him funding smear campaigns for a fascist. Now that money is considered speech under citizens united, boycotts, etc. must be as well until we can get it overturned.

Palmer wants to directly fund Trump with your Rift expenditures:

> Our adversaries have enormous power, and the best way I can continue to fight the good fight is to keep doing well in business and funding good causes with the proceeeds.

https://archive.is/4OuYq#selection-3341.176-3341.346

This isn't some citizen sharing his opinion proportionately to his vote or his social status, this is him using money to amplify his voice and control discourse.

Hillary has PACs, etc. that do the same. We should work to get money out of politics, but in the meantime it seems fine to vote with your wallet in cases where your money is being used as speech and you disagree with the speech.

"This is him funding smear campaigns for a fascist."

This sort of "Trump is literally Hitler" rhetoric is anything but constructive. I'm sad to see that so many in the tech community are willing to operate at this level.

Republicans are not Nazis. Good people support Trump. They are your neighbors and colleagues.

You're behaving like the fear-mongering oppressors you claim to despise.

Good people supported Hitler too. He had about the same level of support that Trump does.

Hanna Arendt documented "the banality of evil" quite well. That nice neighbor who always smiles and says hello, but votes to ship Muslims to a concentration camp? They're evil.

No one has called for Muslims to be shipped to concentration camps.

Frankly, the most intolerant voices I've been hearing this election cycle come from the left -- calling for conservatives to be purged and blacklisted at every turn.

Progressives seem to have whipped themselves up into a moral panic.

Sad times.

Trump has praised Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese, as well as restrictions on movement, property ownership, and possesion of radios as an appropriate model for how to deal with Muslims.

You're spinning what he said. I'm not voting this election, but I'm 100% against outrage culture.

'When asked whether he would have supported Japanese internment camps, Trump told Time that he could not say for certain.

"I would have had to be there at the time to tell you, to give you a proper answer," he told the magazine. "I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer."'[1]

1). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12...

He's praised Eisenhower's Operation Wetback. Many, many times.

I think real fascists would be embarrassed by him, because he isn't good at politics.

He isn't?

He wiped Bush, Cruz, and even the superstar politician Rubio off the map, spending a fraction of what they did in doing it as well.

Say what you will about his views, many of which I personally find refreshing, but saying he isn't a good politician flies completely in the face of the facts of this election cycle.

Yes fine, but even a mediocre politician knows how to avoid being called racist, sexist, and especially fascist.

When you want people who hate politics, politicians and political correctness in any form to vote for you, then getting called a racist and a sexist just separates you from the status-quo pack and makes you seem more appealing.

That Trump could avoid the bad press if he wanted, but doesn't, suggests that he welcomes it. And, to his credit, it seems to be working for him. He's been able to harness a sense of mass disenfranchisement and anti-establishment rage that the Republican Party has been unable to tap into, despite their best efforts.

I guess it's far scarier unless you are a Mexican, a Muslim, or believe that climate change is a pressing global issue

Or just a decent human being.

Most people you disagree with politically are decent human beings.

A thousand times this. Is Trump right? No. Has the response to him been absolutely unacceptable? Yes.

Take Trump out of the picture. Has the response been appropriate, given that a lot of the Trump-adjacent rhetoric (see: the stuff Luckey's been funding) is racist propaganda that literally (and proudly) coopts ideas, language, and imagery from Neo-Nazi groups?

(And before anyone responds, please recognize that calling it "Neo-Nazi" isn't some liberal smear. They're 100% open about this.)

Up until Trump started hinting about assassinating Hilary, I probably would have agreed with you. But he seriously crossed the line their from offensive to dangerous.

That's such bs. It's a typical Republican talking point: "If you're against people owning guns, you give up your guns first and see what happens". It's not an original or particularly good argument, but you're really straining credulity by suggesting this has anything to do with assassination of his rival.

It was a rhetorical question defending the idea that all Americans, including Hillary, should be able to arm themselves in self-defense. Watch the full source material. "Watch them do X and let's see what happens" is a common form of framing a rhetorical question in New York when complaining about a bad idea. Sure, his mentioning of a specific individual in the context of gun control hypotheticals (instead of using a hypothetical individual) is an insensitive gaffe, but that's really all you can reasonably conclude about the statement.

There are activists who routinely call for mass disarmament of citizens (entirely seriously and not as a form of rhetorical exploration), and it is unreasonable to conclude that the activists are "hinting" at or condone any kind of authoritarianism or genocide that may coincidentally result after such a policy is implemented. Don't muddle the discourse further with similarly unreasonable conclusions.

Except you're ignoring his earlier pronouncement that if she starts picking judges there is 'nothing we can do, except maybe you 2nd amendment guys' (paraphrasing because I'm on mobile)

No one refers to refers to regular gun owners, let alone murderous individuals, as "2nd amendment people". In the context of judges and laws it's clearly a reference to lawyers and lobbyists. The NRA and ACLU have an impressive history defeating legal challenges to the 2nd amendment, such as the no-fly list gun ban debate that happened in the weeks prior to that comment of his. Jumping to assuming that the forces he intended to describe are assassins who pre-empt the presidential appointments is occam's razor territory.

I really expected a measured and intellectual response to trump, almost as a learning experience for people that are tempted to follow him, like hey here is some non-judgmental education for you, check out what we can learn from this, etc.

Can you give an example of what you mean by "the response" and how it is "absolutely unacceptable"?

I'm extraordinarily opposed to Trump as a candidate for prez, but this does not sit right:

"Facebook, Oculus and Luckey are yet to respond to the developments, which call into question partnerships between the virtual reality company and other video game firms. Microsoft, for example, has partnered with Oculus to bundle an Xbox One controller with every Oculus Rift. Project Scorpio is rumoured to be compatible with Oculus Rift, too."

I think it's perfectly fair for people to know about his associations so they can choose not to support them. I have sympathy for the people working on Oculus/Facebook right now who probably draw diverse experiences and to see their boss openly share anti-immigrant views must be disheartening.

It's shitposts all the way down.

So we're supposed to be outraged that he supported Trump?

HN is, by my estimation, 95% horrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency, so yes.

I guess I better fall in line then: I disagree with Trump, so down with Palmer.

This feels like it is missing context. I honestly don't understood how this is important.

Also, Milo vs Twitter ins't exactly what they wrote there. There is much more to it.

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