Hacker News Reader

Comment by zackees | Hacker News Reader

The DNC and their election proxies had the same access to the open graph v1.0 data that cambridge analytica had.

In 2012 the media even bragged about how Obama was using big data with facebook to deepen their reach with voters during an election cycle.

But cambridge analytica helped the wrong political candidate get democratically elected (Trump) and so the result is this selective prosecution.

My guess is that this act of suing is performative theatre, but will be used as leverage to usher in social media regulation.

View on HN

The CA thing is even more hilarious when you find out they were bullshitters with no real technology. Just another PR/Strategy firm pretending to use "AI" etc to drive your requirements.

Is there evidence that the DNC specifically targeted certain demographics and actively used misinformation in order to lessen their participation in democracy? Otherwise, I’d claim this is a tangential whataboutism.

You are making inferences with what was done with the data.

We all know that both sides used data nefariously to try to win the most powerful post in the world.

One side won and got praised, one side won and got shit on.

It's total bias.

Now let's do the 2020 DNC voter role takeover, harassment of voters, curing ballots, and general fraudulent "get out the vote" campaign that illegally targeted only heavy democratic areas.

Lol. You see? It's all a joke.

> the most powerful post in the world.

Technically, US Federal Prosecutors are more powerful than the US President. While the President appoints them, and while there is long-standing internal policy not to, a prosecutor legally can call a Grand Jury and indict the President. The power there really is the ability to seat the Grand Jury at will, which any US Attorney can direct to indict even a ham sandwich.[1]

[1] NY State Chief Judge Sol Wachtler, 1985

No. They aren't. Federal prosecutors don't talk to world leaders, don't make public policy, don't tell their party of hundreds of members of Congress what to do, don't apportion funding, don't go to war, negotiate peace treaties, task the CIA with unsavoury task, etc, etc, etc.

All a prosecutor can do is take out one man. And even that isn't really allowed. It has to be properly predicated, and the person has to be guilty. Supposedly.

A president has few constraints on power, mostly senate/Congress, some courts.

Whereas a prosecutor must err on the side of caution and be able to win a conviction, a President can err on the side of whatever he wants, and if something is deemed illegal by the courts, oh well, rewrite the law.

>Is there evidence that the DNC specifically targeted certain demographics and actively used misinformation in order to lessen their participation in democracy?

Is there evidence that the RNC specifically targeted certain demographics and actively used misinformation in order to lessen their participation in democracy?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com