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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

If someone is publicly saying questionable things about your organization, then trying to find out what their motivations might be by doing research is just common sense (especially if the company in question is publicly traded). So I'm with you there, I don't get the outrage here at all. It comes off as cheap and manufactured from what I'm seeing.

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Furthermore, the New York Times and friends are competitors with Facebook, Google et al in the market for online advertising, so their interest in taking down Facebook comes across as self-serving.

For myself, I'd like to see a 95% contraction in the online advertising market $ value, so I'm uBlock Origin all the way.

Edit: for clarity, I'm not here to shill for Facebook - they're toxic! I'd be quite happy if Facebook shrunk to $0.

It's not like he's alone in criticizing Facebook, and with good reason.

Which outrage are you referring to? I didn't see any in the article. It seemed pretty even keeled.

I'm referring more to the outrage around the article, not necessarily the article itself.

Refer to it by link or quote. You shouldn't refer to something in sum when you didn't address a single actual piece of it.

I think the outrage is implicit in the the publication of the article. Why is this in the New York Times? He criticized the company, she asked is he had a financial interest behind the criticism. Okay? Why is this a story?

At least partly because up until this point Facebook has denied she did any such thing. If it's not a big deal they would have disclosed it before now.

> Why is this a story?

Because George Soros is a lightning rod for the alt-right and NWO conspiracy theorists.

She did previously deny knowing about the PR company doing the oppo research on Soros... generally when there's a denial at a high level and then contradictory evidence comes out, it's newsworthy. It's not airtight evidence that she lied, just more of a glaring red flag that a closer look might be warranted.

Who cares if she lied?

Shareholders. They often prefer having confidence that the statements of executives can be relied on.

Glenn Greenwald would say the NYT has had several big lies and omissions, should a news org be held to a high bar perhaps?

That’s another topic, and they are. We’re talking about an executive of a public company and the NYT isn’t the only one pointing out the problems, which are real.

Everyone should read his comments[0] about Facebook and Google, before you criticize the guy.

> what their motivations might be by doing research is just common sense

The rhetoric that you guys use, especially when you talk about someone who's probably as genuinely committed to a civil, liberal world as George Soros: you sound like a South Park character. You can watch a clip that uses conspiratorial rhetoric (and makes fun of it) here: [1].

And I think the amazing thing is, it's not that South Park turned into this right-leaning children's TV show. It's that Republicans, libertarians and just cocky, downvoting male engineers alike have all started to turn into South Park.

"What you gotta understand [Hacker News], everyone has an agenda."

[0] https://www.georgesoros.com/2018/01/25/remarks-delivered-at-...

[1] https://southpark.cc.com/clips/mqwfxt/its-right-there

> it's not that South Park turned into this right-leaning children's TV show.

I have no idea what you're referring to with the South Park reference and George Soros, I don't really follow the show.

But South Park has actually long been considered right-leaning by some people, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican

As far as I can tell the main people who hold this view are right-leaning, e.g. https://www.city-journal.org/html/we%E2%80%99re-not-losing-c...

I usually see the creators referred to as libertarians. E.g. Matt Stone saying "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals."

Wow- Soros is pretty good!

Exactly. If someone said something questionable about you, you might do a google search. Doesn’t make you a stalker.

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