Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources.
If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
Define a credible source? We know for a fact all the major news outlets edit photos, often don’t use their own reporters, write sensational articles (actively stretching facts).
No, I don’t think we can say what is a “sketchy” source. Unless we start wanting Facebook to moderate truth (or just accept the current propaganda machines as truth).
These statements remind me of school. I used to be told not to use Wikipedia and do all my searches in Altavista or Ask Jeeves. I was told this for years, even after Google came out. I think it’s short sighted to try and suppress. Instead we should teach or add a warning (at best) saying “unverified”.
We can't, perhaps, for a definition that captures all sketchy sources, but we can come up with a reasonable definition that encapsulates some of them.
> I think it’s short sighted to try and suppress.
Why? Suppressing the mass, unencumbered spread of vexatious lies as "news" would seem to be beneficial to all.
And not to lessen the complaint about excessive use of force by police, but very often the context preceding a confrontation is deliberately omitted to reframe an interaction with a suspect. This reframing has damaging consequences in many affected areas of concern.
The use of undisclosed recycled footage to accompany news coverage is older than television. Its not a new phenomenon.
(What's recent is the degree to which media critics have the ability to detect, identify the source of, and, through alternatives to the media that are doing it in the first place, publicize findings about such misleading use of imagery. You are experiencing it being harder to get away with, and mistaking that for it being a new thing that it is happening.)
Yes we can.
If someone lies to me, they are a sketchy source. If someone gets caught spreading misinformation—lies repeatedly, they are a sketchy source. Or are we going to start trying to suggest we don't know what lying is now too?
That debate is nothing new and in the mean time as we wait and see how these forces play out the correct answer for any person is to stop wanting and waiting for the powers that be to save us from ourselves. It has always been the case that media serves to manipulate even if unintentionally. That includes both the "platforms" and their various participants.
So we should consider our situation and duty to be like that or any intelligence analyst. Take in all the information, no matter the reputation of the source, with hefty skepticism knowing that there are various and sundry games afoot and a clear picture of reality is unlikely. Opt instead to weigh varying degrees of confidence against each other rather than seeking to sit pat on our well formed conclusions from "reliable sources". Becuase the only thing you can rely upon is that if smething is being waved in-front of your face there is a motive and it's not for your benefit.
“All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.”
― Upton Sinclair
And with that I would urge people to disengage from this kind of battlefield, turn and look in the opposite direction of all these debates because there lie mountains of uncontested and ignored realities that are never spoken of and this is fully intentional.
I think the possibility of election "chaos" is starting to look real; you've already had this year "armed protestors occupy State building", "crowdfunded anti-protestor gunman", huge ongoing demonstrations, voter rights lawsuits, and chaos in the mail system on which mail-in ballots depend. This is going to make the whole Bush vs Gore hanging chad debacle look like a gentlemanly dispute from a vanished age.
Those at the top of Facebook won't mind a clean victory for either side. They don't even mind a one-off clearing of the streets with live ammunition. What they will mind is ongoing violent struggle for the legitimacy of the state.
(absolutely not a given, but definitely a risk. Much like the President catching the virus that's dangerous to unfit people over 65.)
All this during an extremely severe economic crash leaving millions of people unemployed, with each side blaming the other for the downturn. There have already been violent protests for months. When Trump's "poll watchers" end up in conflicts, I think that's when we'll see things escalate quickly.
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and everyone else seems to be doing their best to control the narrative in an attempt to prevent this escalation, but it really seems like it's too late. There seems to be institutional momentum behind these forces at this point.
Can I get a link? I must have missed this one and google isn't helping me, it sounds fascinating though
Something where you couldn't have more than a set number of connections, things didn't spread more than two nodes in the graph, and resharing wasn't an option. I think it would be ideal to fill in the mainstream need for facebook ( keeping in touch with people)
I miss the old Facebook circa 2007 -- no likes and no shares made it a better experience for me.
The ultimate goal of such systems is to gain hours and hours of your attention daily. What works better than outrage?
Not even cute kittens.
healthy is what it would look like. because then it would operate on a human scale, be decentralised, robust, instead of being hyper-connected like sort of giant overstimulated brain.
Obviously it violates just about every financial incentive social media companies have, as well as people's increasing need for attention, so it will never happen.
Lack of content, lack of engagement, lack of reason to keep returning. Healthier for the world, but, potentially a very hard problem to solve from the platform provider side to keep it going long term.
There will be models that get it right, but would require quite large shifts in user behaviour.
It'd definitely be nice though.
I'm not a fan of identity politics, I generally try to ignore race, and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But at this point it's awfully hard to not conclude that Trump is a race baiting bigot. My final straw was the FUD about Kamala Harris's birth certificate. Apparently "birth certificate" really is just a simplistic dog whistle for pointing out that someone is Black.
I'm a libertarian and think that both parties screw the People similarly, but after four years of this destructive ignorant bullshit enough is enough. It's time to take our country back.
American society also has many dimensions , some being representative of the structure and institutions of the society, and then also all the people within the country who are affected by governance, and each individual person is also multidimensional (inside of which is lots of complexity, that drives political decisions within the overall system).
The makeup of a politicians dimensions affects the manner in which they ~govern, with respect to the societal dimensions, and in turn acting upon those dimensions.
Within this system we have "democracy", then within there we have "politics", which consists of this weird multidimensional, ~"interactive dance" that consists of "facts", "logic", rhetoric (perspective/narrative building (and advertising/distribution), framing, hyperbole, motivated reasoning, post-hoc rationalization, propaganda, destroying people with facts, "the news", "debates", memes(!), trolling, shitposting, etc), axioms, principles, "visions", and various other silliness. But all for a good cause, with the best of intentions in mind (to the degree that each individual is capable of that).
When it comes to election time, citizens are given one vote, a binary choice of two candidates. To make this choice, each individual voter crushes down all the complex dimensionality of their personal model of the world (which they mistake for shared reality) and out comes their decision who to vote for.
The purpose of all the absurdity and chicanery in the interactive dance above, is to influence the manner in which each individual crushes their dimensions. More specifically, the purpose of the dance is to influence the makeup/configuration/contents of each person's model - or, alter their perception of reality.
I would say that what the arguments we individuals engage in on social media "is", is simply a part of this dance. In this case, I reckon that you are responding to your model of the world, and interacting with others within the system, hoping to influence their model (an illustration of the viral nature of ideas). More specifically, you are (in all good faith, I presume), ~"deploying a persuasive meme/perspective", something roughly along the lines of:
"Donald Trump's model contains a dimension labelled 'Literally Racist', and it's value is '100%'. Furthermore, *because(!)* anyone who 'is' 'racist' 'should' 'be shunned by society, absolutely, full stop', *then therefore(!)* you must(!) vote for Joe Biden."
I'm 100% in agreement on this. I've previously made the argument that one bit of input is small, thus the overall function of voting is actually to make winning voters think they wanted all their candidate's policies. I formed during the Obama years, after arguing against blue tribe friends arguing for corporo-statist health care. To be clear, this is the first time I will be voting for a major party candidate for President.
> "Donald Trump's model contains a dimension labelled 'Literally Racist', and it's value is '100%'. Furthermore, because(!)* anyone who 'is' 'racist' 'should' 'be shunned by society, absolutely, full stop', then therefore(!) you must(!) vote for Joe Biden."*
This does not represent my perspective at all.
First, I've been slow to come around to labeling Trump a simple racist. As I said, my last straw was Harris's "birth certificate". Back in May, I was still arguing with a friend who was claiming Trump's malevolence on Covid came from his desire to see brown people die. Focusing on race begets racism. I've been trying to find non-racial explanations the whole time.
Second no, I don't think racists should be outright shunned by society. People that do must not love their grandmothers. Racism is like farting. Everyone is going to develop some of it, but we should try to keep it to ourselves and spare each other the unpleasantness. It's problematic when people bring it up and make it part of their identity, either as oppressor or oppressed.
And lastly no, my decision to support Biden does not come from modus ponens on policies. Rather, I've been trying to find any reason why it would make sense to support Trump, to give his supporters the benefit of the doubt. For context, I was the one explaining to blue friends back in 2016 that Trump would likely win, because he was speaking to a lot of concerns that they casually wrote off.
While he's still talking about red tribe concerns, he has done little to actually address them. If he had improved the economic situation in the middle of the country, I'd get it. If he were devoutly religious, I'd get it. If he had reformed some aspect of the healthcare system towards a functioning market, I'd get it. If his trade policies could actually preserve American jobs, I'd get it. If he had actually built that wall, I'd get it. I wouldn't necessarily agree, but I would understand.
What has he actually done instead? He's continued to reject expert advice regarding Covid, leading to 210,000 American deaths. Rather than trying to calm the situation after George Floyd (even if it just resulted in some token reforms), he drove the division. He's setup tariffs that could only have worked twenty years ago, and has chosen to compete with China by adopting China's app censorship totalitarianism. He has withdrawn from foreign diplomacy to let China and Russia conquer unhindered.
The only charitable narrative I can come up with is that his supporters are still buying into his narrative as an opposition candidate, despite his past four years of office and his lack of results on goals they claim to care about. As they continue to be directly harmed by his actual actions, that becomes less plausible.
More generally, the specific implementation of "democracy" in America was probably done with the best of intentions, but the rise of various forms of communication have now enabled and created the need/desire for more sophisticated forms. I would propose some reasonable form of more direct democracy, or at least comprehensive direct polling (non-binding) on individual issues - this way we'd at least have a half decent model about what people's beliefs are. Unfortunately, this may be unpalatable to certain parties who enjoy the ability to project what they want people to think other people's beliefs are.
That people have not been provided this improved (over one vote every 4 years, and then some other low-resolution voting here and there at other levels, all of which rarely results in changing much, or pleasing a large portion of the public) seems to have resulted in a situation where people have decided to take influence into their own hands, with the tools they have available: meme wars.
> This does not represent my perspective at all.
I may have estimated you erroneously.
>> Do you automatically presume any conservative group is white supremacists by default?
> Given the way Trump has captured the following of the conservative community, despite being a radical populist and having few policy accomplishments besides inflaming racial tensions, yes. It's reasonable starting assumption about any group that continues to express support for Trump.
Upon reconsideration, my interpretation has not changed. Can you possibly explain where you think I may have gone wrong in interpreting the above exchange? My sense of what you are saying is that because I have awareness of racist tendencies in Trump's model, then therefore I should reject him (as opposed to considering his racism as just one dimension among millions of others).
> And lastly no, my decision to support Biden does not come from modus ponens on policies. Rather, I've been trying to find any reason why it would make sense to support Trump, to give his supporters the benefit of the doubt.
I interpret this to mean that you are unable to see how someone could possibly evaluate the multidimensional nature of Donald Trump and (all things considered) decide to vote for him, without ~being similarly racist, or at least to some noteworthy degree? This is literally how I interpret your words, did you mean something completely different and I missed it?
> He's continued to reject expert advice regarding Covid, leading to 210,000 American deaths.
I don't like the manner in which he's done this, but I am very displeased with the way this pandemic has been marketed (for many reasons), so I am "ok" with his buffoon-like performance.
> He's setup tariffs that could only have worked twenty years ago, and has chosen to compete with China by adopting China's app censorship totalitarianism.
Here we disagree, significantly.
> He's withdrawn from foreign diplomacy to let China and Russia conquer unhindered.
Also here.
Other than these points, and then also our final decision on who to vote for, I believe you and I are largely in agreement on everything else you've written.
No, but you did get what I'm saying with this next quote:
> I interpret this to mean that you are unable to see how someone could possibly evaluate the multidimensional nature of Donald Trump and (all things considered) decide to vote for him, without ~being similarly racist, or at least to some noteworthy degree?
Every individual decision is moderated by noise, lag, etc, but fundamentally yes this conclusion seems to be getting more and more valid. I've been trying to see the other dimensions but have been coming up increasingly short. For example when he's asked about his Covid response - he always comes back to talking about banning travel from China. It seems the only way he knows how to make policy is to claim some group is responsible for the problem, and exclude them. The concept of attacking the details of problem itself is beyond him.
So the deeper problem isn't merely that Trump has racist tendencies, but rather than it's the only lens through which he sees the world. In his mind, every problem is due to bad people disrupting things for good people. Stop the bad people and things will be good. But the world is much more complex than that.
I guess if you still believe his China policies, then it's possible to support his approach without being racist yourself. The problem is those policies also reek of the simple minded thinking of racism - tariffs to keep out bad Chinese goods, don't care about Hong Kong because it's Chinese, blaming Chinese apps specifically rather than data collection in general - and they will all be long term strategic failures that miss the big picture.
> I don't like the manner in which he's done this, but I am very displeased with the way this pandemic has been marketed (for many reasons), so I am "ok" with his buffoon-like performance.
If it were just the way he communicated I would get over it. But the real problem is the rejection of experts. He basically kneecapped the entire federal response, for which we've been paying a large amount of taxes, in favor of letting Covid spread unchecked. He's the leader and his job is to lead everyone - the "both sides" argument doesn't hold water. The standard politician thing would have been to defer to the experts and make sure he himself couldn't be blamed for errors. This culture is itself suboptimal, but would have produced much better results than what we got.
If he had listened to any experts, Trump could have easily gotten the wartime president boost rather than presiding over a needless disaster. The lack of PPE specifically would have dovetailed nicely into his call for domestic manufacturing, but instead crickets. If he were anything besides an empty suit, he would have figured this out by now.
Donald Trump's full capabilities are unknown to you. At best, you can form a model of them based on observations, but this also has a dependency on the comprehensiveness and accuracy (unintentional bias due to interpretation) of your observations.
> So the fundamental isn't merely that Trump has racist tendencies, but rather than it's the only lens through which he sees the world.
With all due respect, this seems hyperbolic, to be generous.
> In his mind, every problem is due to bad people disrupting things for good people.
This is speculation.
> But the world is much more complex than that.
This seems ironic.
> I do get if you're still hanging your hat on his China policies
This is a figure of speech that typically implies certain things.
> then it's possible to agree with his approach without being personally racist.
One can also be not racist and disagree with his China policies.
> Although those policies also reek of the simple minded thinking of racism - tariffs to keep out bad Chinese goods, don't care about Hong Kong because it's Chinese, blaming Chinese apps specifically rather than data collection in general
This is your personal interpretation.
> and they will all be long term strategic failures that miss the forest for the trees
This is a prediction of the future.
> He basically kneecapped the entire federal response, which we've been paying a large amount of taxes for, in favor of letting Covid spread unchecked.
This is suggestive that you posses highly accurate knowledge of the incredibly complex causation behind America's sub-optimal performance, and that there weren't many mistakes all over the place, as well as lacking acknowledgement of vast uncertainty involved, in general.
> He's the leader and his job is to lead everyone - the "both sides" argument doesn't hold water.
I've made no such argument.
> The standard politician thing would have simply been to defer to the experts and make sure he himself couldn't be blamed.
Perhaps. One might argue that he had an irrational/inappropriate response to fault being near-completely laid at his feet, and responded to that rashly. True causation of human behavior is incredibly complex.
> This culture is itself suboptimal, but would have produced much better results than what we got. Doing so would have also greatly benefited Trump, in that he would have gotten the wartime president boost rather than presiding over a needless disaster.
Agreed. Sometimes life sucks.
> If he were anything besides an empty suit, he would have wised up by now.
Perhaps, but this again speculates about the comprehensive nature of Donald Trump, as well as what optimum behavior is under the current circumstances.
I see where you're coming from - generally, your points are reasonable. Something for you to consider though, is the complexity involved in how people react to not just what is said, but how it is said. I very much do not like how you, or the media, or politicians describe reality. This would be an example of where I agree with one of your points: "This culture is itself suboptimal." I believe the style of politics and journalism we practice in the West is dishonest & misleading, irresponsible, and dangerous (but the danger in play is not properly realized, because Westerners seem to not like to think terribly deeply about things.....they like to "KISS").
I wonder if my general impression of the entire system, is similar to your impression of Donald Trump: ~a complete joke, no respect whatsoever. I can easily appreciate how people disrespect Trump, but I cannot appreciate when those same people respect the general state of politics in the US.
That's my general impression of the entire system too, but I still think Trump represents a radical departure from even that. The status quo serving entrenched bureaucracy ("deep state") had at least been performing basic non-partisan functions such as pandemic response. Disrupting that with no replacement waiting is a short path to a completely failed state.
If I were the type of libertarian that thought moving to the middle of nowhere represented the pinnacle of freedom, the thought might appeal to be. But IMO the true measure of freedom is how it scales with society, and collapses have a terrible track record for freedom.
This is one potential outcome, and in a banana republic I may even agree that it is the most likely outcome. But the USA is a lot more robust than it appears, and I feel highly certain that the (largely manufactured) polarization that we observe is actually quite shallow. My concern is that if we throw Trump out and elect yet another insider, we will immediately resume the former status quo...lip service towards the genuine problems in the world, and plenty of catering to powerful corporations and the military industrial complex (I have the feeling way are waaaaaaaaay overdue for an "existential threat" from some tinpot middle eastern dictator). And then before too long: War with China.
It's not a good choice, and it is risky, but I continue to believe that the chaos Trump sows acts as sand in the gears of the powerful, and exposes the media and other politicians for the propagandists they are. Most people seem to be still fully under their spell (many to immediately fall into another trap: conspiracy theory, which is fixable, being mostly a symptom), but many have woken up.
What's missing is, the people that have woken up don't know what to believe, or believe in. The West has no vision for the future, other than the same old bullshit story politicians of both sides of the aisle have been selling people for decades (as our military lays waste to 3rd world countries over completely manufactured pretenses, while the media runs cover for them). We need a new story, and it has to be at least fairly true, and plausible, and acknowledge the real barriers to achievement, rather than making up a whole bunch of fantasy land fake problems.
That's my take on it anyways.
> I continue to believe that the chaos Trump sows acts as sand in the gears of the powerful
Arbitrary chaos tends to benefit the powerful, as they're able to take advantage of it. For example I had been hoping that the pandemic-induced economic slowdown would have unwound the debt treadmill by a bit. Instead the powerful just had the government print money to prop up asset prices. Meanwhile Main St continues to suffer.
> My concern is that if we throw Trump out and elect yet another insider, we will immediately resume the former status quo...lip service towards the genuine problems in the world, and plenty of catering to powerful corporations and the military industrial complex
From what I can tell, Trump has not stopped the sabre rattling and foreign military interventions. How are things better by not even paying lip service? Don't mistake upsetting specific individuals with upsetting the overall system.
> exposes the media and other politicians for the propagandists they are
He may call them for what they are, but his own reality distortion field prevents him from gaining any high ground. I had been working to keep an open mind on this, putting aside the media's complaints about Trump, and trying to see what he was actually doing (eg I appreciated when he scrapped the individual mandate). Covid itself was my breaking point, as it was an objective threat that he just rejected dealing with. I (still) agree the media is a giant propaganda operation, but in 2020, I listen to them over Trump.
> What's missing is, the people that have woken up don't know what to believe, or believe in. The West has no vision for the future, other than the same old bullshit story politicians of both sides of the aisle have been selling people for decades (as our military lays waste to 3rd world countries over completely manufactured pretenses, while the media runs cover for them). We need a new story, and it has to be at least fairly true, and plausible, and acknowledge the real barriers to achievement, rather than making up a whole bunch of fantasy land fake problems.
I agree with this in general. But IMO Trump looks like yet another conspiracy red herring rather than a productive path forward.
It depends where they're positioned. If they're on solid footing, agreed. But if they're 100 feet up on a highwire with no safety net, not so secure.
> From what I can tell, Trump has not stopped the sabre rattling and foreign military interventions.
It's a subjective call, but the only sabre rattling I've heard much from is Trump. It's when the media starts acting in unison (like when Trump suggested pulling troops from the middle east), that's when my ears perk up.
> How are things better by not even paying lip service?
I believe Trump in all he does demonstrates how illusory our political system is, and how closely it is joined at the hip with the media. He's managed to get plenty of serious people to say very silly things, intentional or not, and I think a lot of people are starting to catch on that there is a curtain on the stage, and that there are in fact things going on behind that curtain. This is a stark contrast to Obama, who was an absolutely brilliant performer, like the David Blaine of politicians.
> He may call them for what they are, but his own reality distortion field prevents him from gaining any high ground....
Here I completely agree. Very often I cannot help wondering if he truly is as incompetent as people say, because sometimes it sure seems like it (covid, particularly opposing masks!!!??, the debates...all sorts of examples). At the very least, he is highly inconsistent. I imagine he is hyped up on amphetamines most of the time as well, which likely takes its toll some days, so perhaps that helps explain his truly incompetent days.
> But IMO Trump looks like yet another conspiracy red herring rather than a productive path forward.
Sometimes for a new forest to grow, you have to burn the old one down. Mother nature operates in mysterious ways.
But even if Trump can successfully derail the system, he is in no way a man with a vision for a new one that serves everyone's interests - "Make America Great Again" minus the bad stuff would be a huge improvement over now, but it is still fundamentally flawed, and I don't see a lot of people lined up with better stories.
Edit: People on this forum need to stop being so cultish. Downvoting this doesn’t change the reality that it directly kills your narrative.
The handful of examples in the video that are post-Charlottesville are a nice start, but they've clearly ended up being lip service. He says "I condemn white supremacy" and then goes back to race-baiting at his rally just days ago. [0]
Also, it doesn't kill the narrative. It's entirely consistent with the narrative that Trump lies when it's convenient.
[0] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1311481175689568256?s=20
I'm asking about conservative groups who have denounced it. I have some faith that conservatism is not aligned with Trumpery.
Edit: I love downvotes without a rebuttal because I know Ive won.
Kennedy and Johnson were Democrats. The House and Senate were both Democratically controlled.
Saying that Republicans passed civil rights because there were 18 Southern Bloc Democrats who fought it in the Senate is just lying about the facts.
You can't have it both ways!
No, the people who still supported the KKK and the ideology behind Jim Crow laws switched major parties, if they were associated with a major party, from the Democrats to the Republicans between the late mid-1960s and the mid-1990s, because of disaffection with the Democrats (initially particularly President Johnson) backing civil rights, but also because the Republicans started actively campaigning to their racist interests to leverage their disaffection with the Democrats.
In some cases, the people switching parties were literally the same people who had bolted temporarily from the Democratic Party in the 1940s over Truman's integration policies, but who had come back because they had no other major party to go to, and their own separate party had failed. (Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrat Presidential candidate in 1948, is a notable, highly-visible example.)
And as this process continued it was self-reinforcing, because the more White supremacists left the Democratic Party for the Republicans, the stronger the Democratic support for the interests White supremacists opposed could be.
That's quite plausible. I'd expect that most American Southern Blacks (outside the South the parties were quite different and the issue is more complicated) that identified with a major party between the founding of the Republican Party and the Republican Southern Strategy of the late 1960s and beyond, which King was murdered too soon to be influenced by, were Republicans.
The parties of today, despite sharing the same names, aren't ideologically the same parties as when King was alive (or, a fortiori, any earlier time), though.
Civil Rights Acts, many of them, starting in the 19th century; sure, and all that was great. But after that the Republican Party decided to seize on the rift created in the Democratic Party when LBJ also backed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which was essential to it being passed into law, because Republicans didn't have a veto-proof majority backing it) to subsequently, starting particularly in the 1968 Presidential election and continuing thereafter, to target the white racists (particularly concentrated in the South) that were disenchanted with the Democratic Party on that issue, in order to make sure that that split wasn't temporary as it was when the Dixiecrats revolted over Truman's integration of the military. And to do that, they started pandering, and have ever since, to the racism of the disaffected group they were courting.
1. Ask for proof 2. Get proof 3. Call it "lip service"
This means that no matter what Trump says, you will say its disingenuous. Do you see how that can be problematic?
I do have reasons to believe Trump is disingenuous. (And if you don't see those, that's your own confirmation bias at play.) But if Trump consistently refused to say racist things and proactively worked to address racial injustice, I'd absolutely believe those statements!
Instead, you've got a huge number of examples of Trump being racist and a handful of examples of him saying the words when a reporter presses him. But where's Trump's Philadelphia speech? What did he have to say about John Lewis's legacy? Where is his leadership on addressing the pain and poverty of Black families?
I have seen a ton of examples where people think trump is being racist, then I see them, and he's clearly not. I am 100% open to changing my mind, racism is terrible. Please provide specific and clear examples. Calling everything racism really weakens the argument.
You also provide another example of your clouded judgement: "and a handful of examples of him saying the words when a reporter presses him." This type of thinking shows that you just want to confirm your pre-existing idea that he is a racist. When he then says he is not, you say "oh he really is, he was just saying that because he had to". That means there is no possible thing he can do to change your mind.
As I said above, if someone can provide specific examples, and not just of behaviors they don't like but of how they are actually racist, I am more than happy to denounce him. Also, in case you missed it, under Trump (pre-Covid), black unemployment was at an all time low.
So yeah, I call it lip service.
1. He could honor people doing racial justice work - Does not doing this make someone a racist? Silly. Also, here is a direct quote from February 2020 (see how I use actual evidence) "We’re here with some of the black leaders of our country and — people that are highly respected and people that have done a fantastic job and, for the most part, have been working on this whole situation with me right from the beginning." Does that sound like something a racist would say?
2. He could stop stoking fear of immigrants - This is not a specific example.
3. He could insist on full investigations of police violence toward black people - This isn't the responsibility of the president. If he got involved in police business people would say he is overreaching. This is again a subjective thing you "feel" he could do. The agencies that are supposed to be involved are.
I try to stick with concrete facts to base my opinions on. This has been a great example where you really want to think he's racist because of what you see in the media but have so far provided 0 objective evidence for your claim.
I am laughing at your dismissal as "not a specific example". I linked to a very recent one upthread, and many many more are easily available and uncontroverted. He talked up a Muslim ban and campaigned on building a wall. You are being willfully blind on this one.
It absolutely is the responsibility of the president. He leads and sets the tone. He has influence over, for example, Daniel Cameron, and used it to encourage a lack of police accountability. He can control grant programs and discretionary spending in the area of policing. The DoJ can investigate police departments as part of their public integrity work, and has done historically little of that under this administration. And instead of calling Black Lives Matter a "symbol of hate" for reacting to a problem that his own Attorney General acknowledges (that there is systemic bias against black people in policing) he could press Congress and state leaders to address the issue.
Very topical example of why these "benevolent censorship" schemes are are worse than the problem they are trying to fix.
And the top performing content on Facebook is dominated by right wing media figures: https://mobile.twitter.com/FacebooksTop10
That doesn't tell you how much they weight it compared to the others.
> And the top performing content on Facebook is dominated by right wing media figures
This is misleading for the same reason as Fox News being the most popular cable news network. There is only one right-leaning cable news network, whereas CNN and MSNBC split the left-leaning viewership even though together they're larger than Fox.
The same thing happens with links. Fox covers a story with their take, it gets N shares, CNN and MSNBC each cover the same story with their take and each get M/2 shares, and then Fox is at the top of the chart even if M > N.
You have to remember, a huge proportion of engagement on the Facebook Blue app are boomers and folks outside of large cities.
Otherwise we’d have the ministry of truth which would be arresting people for inappropriate thoughts being expressed.
There are some simple rules you can apply evenly with little or no political bias.
#1 Is it true? - Is a politician making a claim about the election which is false. "I won the election"... Likewise, are they making a claim which is verifiably false about current events? "Police have arrested Antifa activists in Oregon for starting the Holiday Farm Fire."
#2 Is it inciting violence — Is a politician making a statement that might incite violence. This applies equally to both sides. "Burn down all police stations" or "Show up in force and armed" are both calls which will lead to violent outcomes.
Even Free speech protections in the constitution doesn't protect the right to yell fire in a theater.
There are no absolutes. If you're willing to accept some false-positives, nearly everything can be categorized as a "lie".
This is how and why Stephen Colbert coined the term "truthiness".
Many of those sources are seeded with promoted links, though. It's true that a lot of conspiracy nonsense is genuinely organic, but a LOT of it is not.
Anything from the "other side" (where "other" is relative to the initial reach of whoever posted it) is just gonna flop.
We are now in year 5, the second election cycle, and you think the solution is as easy as adding a flagging system?
The questions were just “is it hateful?” And “is it illegal” with no option for “demonstrably false and offering dangerous advice”.
What will actually happen is that 10 people who do not share your political or societal views will flag that news item irrespective of its true or false status, and we're back to step one. That's why FB tried that "internal commissions of truth"-thingie (or whatever it's called), but obviously that cannot scale and, also obviously, they also have their own biases.
Maybe after a certain threshold have been reached and the complaints vetted by a human, you could start removing the news or even blocking the news site from being shared on Facebook. Most likely the system would be gamed to attempt to block major sites like CNN, but would work well for smaller, dubious sites that have no real other purpose than creating provoking news.
But _the precious engagement_!
Viral nonsense is, unfortunately, effectively Facebook's business model, so they're unlikely to do much about it.
> If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
And then you see the complaints (including on HN) about how Facebook is biased.
I do note that they have recently banned all QAnon groups and posts, so that's a start.
They can block lies and disinformation unilaterally, it shouldn't just apply to one political party or the other.
"Don't let XXX News lie to you, I Just won the election!"
This kind of nonsense shouldn't be tolerated either way.
Personally... I think the whole model of "Viral" content is just absolutely broken. The kind of content it encourages is by nature inflammatory and often damaging.
But it's the crux of the problem.
If you're a relatively low-information voter, how else are you supposed to know who won besides the politicians themselves or the media?
Mainstream media outlets like the NYTimes or the Washington Post have become too one-sided (I think that if Trump were to say a common-sense thing like "the Earth is round" they'd certainly find something to argue about, like "it's not actually round, round! it's an ellipsoid! Trump is lying!"), at this point applying your (in other contexts) perfectly reasonable suggestion will only alienate half of the electorate.
(I believe they mostly end up being horizontal rather than vertical)
As a right-leaning individual this makes me uncomfortable because I know that staff aren't going to separate their politics from decision making surrounding vetting/choosing who gets to do the vetting. Here's a concrete example: Facebook staff, being left-leaning, do not view the "fine people hoax" as misinformation - their echo chamber wouldn't even bring it to their attention as something that could be misinformation, even though it is.
The only solution would be for a politically balanced workforce to be making these decisions, ideally a satellite office in a purple state/city with quotas for political leaning, set up only for the purposes of vetting. If we lived in a less polarized society, this wouldn't be an issue.
Would you feel comfortable if oil and gas workers who lean 80-90 percent Republican are "vetting" the information you're seeing (or are choosing who gets to do the vetting)?
As Naval says, you have a good system if you can hand the keys over to your opposition and things don't go wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-fine...
Further, it was a large protest over a statue with thousands of people over a whole day, do you think there isn't one single non white supremact there protesting to keep it up? There's no evidence that Trump was referring to the tiki torch rally when he said fine people. He made the speech after the large protest and the terrorist attack, where by the law of large numbers there is inevitably going to be non-white supremacists attending to show support merely for the statue/history.
If people honestly supported history they would have asked the historians. The AHA put out a clear statement that taking down statues is not destroying history.
Those are the people that Trump was presumably referring to, given that he explicitly said he was not talking about white supremacists (whom he condemned totally in the exact same speech).
Unlike you, I do believe that every counterprotestor was associated with antifa. It was an antifascist counterprotest. That is antifa.
Support for the Lee statue has never been seriously about history because the supporters of keeping it up never asked historians. I'm serious. UVA is an excellent history program. They could have asked the history faculty to decide. It wouldn't have gone in their favor.
> Support for the Lee statue has never been seriously about history
This is irrelevant to the question of whether there were non-white supremacists in attendance. What matters as to people's motives is whether people think that it's about history, which many ordinary people do.
If ignorance leads you to provide ammunition for people who support racial genocide and you don’t leave once you notice the nazi flags flying at a march you attend... I really don’t know what to say.
It's not my conclusion that there are no fine people on either side, I was simply outlining the absurdity of thinking that there were only fine people on one side, given the visible existence of political extremist groups on both sides that many protesters (on both sides) overlooked when they attended the protests in order to voice their political opinion about what should happen with the statue.
It's the same with the Proud Boys comment at the debate. He tells them to stand by and stand down, then the next day says he doesn't know who they are. We all know he's lying - and most of all the Proud Boys, who see the wink and the nod behind the denial, which is just to get the lugenpresse off his back.
The next day Trump said something like "I don't know who they are, but I condemn them", you can't get more clear than that but of course this doesn't get coverage in the media.
Nevermind the numerous times prior where he has explicitly condemned white supremacy and even designated the KKK as a terrorist organization. It's all ignored in the left wing echo chamber.
What makes it worse is there are a lot of very smart, articulate and well-meaning people that are coming to the defense of such an incoherent point of view. They will verbally and with "facts" stomp down on anything but the most perfect of criticisms, essentially making criticism of any left-wing action next to impossible.
The idea that the POTUS just called racists who ran over and killed a woman "fine people" is beyond reason.
A person with some objectivity can understand that Trump wasn't talking about white supremacists with his "fine people" statement. He was referring to there being "fine people on both sides" of the political spectrum, protesters and counter-protesters, at the protest. His point was that not all of those protesting the statue removal were white supremacists, some were "fine people". Of course, that's the story the left went with anyway, because Trump fumbled another one.
> Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."
> Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same."
> Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?"
> Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson."
> Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?
> "So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
First, it’s crystal clear from the transcripts that he’s saying “I’m not talking about the neo-nazis and white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally.” Painting that as one of the “(a) or (b)” options is shamelessly deceitful.
So what does he mean? The city was renaming a park named after Robert E. Lee. Trump is making a totally reasonable point: not everyone protesting taking down a statute of Robert E. Lee is a white supremacist or a neo-nazi. And he’s point is actually prescient. The reporter says he loves Thomas Jefferson. Well, my high school is named after Thomas Jefferson, and just a few years later they’re trying to change the name of the school.
Is Trump wrong that there were people there who were just protesting the name change? Was literally everyone in that crowd a white supremacist or neo-nazi? Maybe but that would be odd. I grew up in Virginia. Lots of well meaning but maybe insensitive people lionize Robert E. Lee. Maybe they all stayed home that day. But it would be fair to guess they didn’t.
Regardless, whether or not those Robert E. Lee buffs were actually present has nothing to do with how to interpret Trump’s statement, because it’s unambiguous. Maybe his speculation was incorrect. So what? That doesn’t mean it’s fair to portray it as an “if not supportive of white nationalists” statement because it’s unambiguously not that.
If the headline was: “Trump incorrectly assumes that good people attended rally, but in reality everyone was a white supremacist” that would have been a good headline. Good commentary about how outdated it is to lionize Robert E. Lee. But instead the media went for an interpretation that was clearly not what Trump meant.
1. Anti white supremacist and Anti Nazi, but VERY dumb or very unobservant.
2. Anti white supremacist and Anti Nazi, but believe that saving a statue is worth marching in a rally on the same side as a large number of self professed Nazis.
3. A white supremist and/or Nazi.
This wasn't a case of a few white supremacist sneaking into an otherwise unrelated event. A large percentage of the crowd was chanting overtly racist slogans and flying overtly racist flags (even ignoring the confederate battle flags). No one there was confused about what was happening. None of the people marching on the Unite the Right side were "very fine people."
Also, to say that protesting in support of a Robert E Lee statue is not showing support for Lee is prima facie absurd.
I do hope supporters will stop claiming they are defending history when they immediately turn around and declare that the thousands of professional historians around the country are all fools.
And that doesn’t even mean Trump’s assertion is even incorrect. Maybe the protesters had the same misconceptions about history as many people who grew up in a fairly liberal place in the 1990s. That actually supports Trump’s point that people who oppose taking down the statutes aren’t necessarily raving white supremacists.
Thinking nothing of the historical objects around us is not terrible. Most people are ignorant of most things, lord knows I am. A problem arises when people insist that defending confederate statues is protecting history, when if you went and asked the people who actually do history for a living they'd fairly universally disagree.
As for Unite the Right, I'd agree with you that there are people who want the statues to stay up and aren't white supremacists. However, it would not be possible to spend a few hours marching at Unite the Right and not notice the literal Nazi flags, the speakers giving speeches about whiteness, and the marchers shouting "gas the k--es, race war now". At that point, I'd expect an ignorant defender of confederate statues to think "wow, I've made a big mistake" and leave.
For example, I have read a lot about healthcare-for-all not being free. The clue is in the name: "free" healthcare. I can't believe that misinformation, probably spread by insurance companies, has been allowed to spread. Facebook should put a stop to this.
Later when people send them via email, we'll need Google, Microsoft, and Apple make sure our email is vetted by their censors.
Then we'll need snail mail censors, and speech censors.
It's like people on HN can't even step back and really think about what they're saying.
If people are thinking the worst of you, you are failing to achieve your stated purpose, namely to highlight that other people hold these opinions.
If you are OK with people believing that you hold these opinions, then you are simply a troll.