Ask President Barack Obama anything on Reddit (seriously) | Hacker News Reader

Ask President Barack Obama anything on Reddit (seriously)

venturebeat.com

70 pointsazat_co28 comments

Link to actual AMA: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obam...

Reddit's ops team is going to have a fun day today. (Link's down as I post this.)

There's already a thread above this one on the main page, and it actually links to the AMA: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4450803

As stated in the reddit thread... He's currently out and about in Virginia - So this is a staffer pretending to be him.

Sad.

As stated in the top of the thread:

"UPDATE: Hey everybody - this is barack. Just finished a great rally in Charlottesville"

So he's doing it while on the road.

This pic shows he's obviously in some kind of temp office/building: http://i.imgur.com/oz0a7.jpg

I just realized that they covered that Macbook's Apple symbol with a Reddit alien.

Chances of this being a staffers computer...rising. But then again, AllThingsD has an email from Alexis (admin) that says that this has apparently been floated for years and they were notified before hand. http://allthingsd.com/20120829/how-reddit-got-obama-there-ar...

Is it possible that someone from Reddit was on site and set up the "office" and everything, provided the Macbook with the Reddit alien, to make sure the POTUS would have a smooth Reddit experience? I doubt this was a spontaneous thing.

If it was a staffer, he must be very good at impersonation, the style of the answers was VERY close to Obama's unscripted Q&A sessions.

Also, the mouse is on the left side of the laptop -- and according to the almighty Wikipedia[1], Obama is left-handed -- so +1 for authenticity.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness_of_Presidents_of_the...

It's weird that there has to be a pointless conspiracy theory about everything.

All questions have to be about Rampart.

I've never seen so many positive up-votes before. What do you think of this as a move? Do you think it makes him accesible or will it be seen as pandering?

I think it's an awesome, inspired idea - a direct public forum of discussion with your leader. I can't get to the page to see how he's handling it, though.

That would be great, wouldn't it? In practice, it turned out to be more like having a conversation with a bot: when someone asked a question that he could answer with a super-generic, achingly inoffensive rephrasing of one of his campaign messages, he did. And that's all he did.

I would be disappointed, but I wasn't expecting anything more.

It depends on the answers he gives to questions. From what I've read, they are fairly generic, which is ok, but I think we expect more on the internet. Its a good step in the right direction though, I think.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Americans on reddit were already going to vote for him, and that it will have virtually no impact on anyone who doesn't use reddit.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Americans ... were already going to vote for him. Is the other guy remotely viable? Really?

Edit: a guy from Europe's viewpoint.

Intrade is the place to go for information like that:

http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=74347...

Well, no. The smart money[1] is on Obama being re-elected, but likely not by the same margin as he saw in 2008...when he won 52.9% of the popular vote. However, it's too soon to tell what the effects of a couple developments will be:

1. A systematic effort in 'swing' states (the states that are not predictably behind one candidate or another) to disenfranchise as many poor and minority voters (traditionally reliably voting blocs for Democratic candidates, such as Obama) as possible by implementing stringent new voter ID laws just months before the election (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-vote...). The nominal purpose of this is to prevent voter fraud, but between 2002 and 2006 there were only 86 convictions related to voter fraud out of 200 million votes cast (http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_o...). Another (self-described conservative) source indicates the number as being 400 in the last ten years (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/sore-losers/).

2. A relentlessly negative and admittedly not-reality-based campaign from the Romney campaign to re-litigate welfare reform, which hasn't been a real issue in sixteen years, since Clinton gutted the system (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/peter-edelman-mit...)

Also, please note that a poll conducted last year indicated that 25% of Americans believed that Obama was born outside the United States and, therefore, ineligible to be President[2]:

    While 25 percent of all Americans in this new poll say
    Mr. Obama was born outside the U.S., 57 percent correctly
    said he was born in the United States. Another 18 percent
    said they did not know where he was born.

To say that the United States has a massively uninformed electorate would be an understatement[3]. And the problem is getting worse now that the US Supreme Court allowed corporations and high net worth individuals to anonymously contribute unlimited amounts of money to so-called 'SuperPACs'. SuperPACs are supposedly not allowed to coordinate directly with the candidate(s) they support, but that doesn't matter for two reasons:

1. Their ads are overwhelmingly negative[4], and it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to run attack ads against the opponent.

2. The 'firewall' between candidates and the SuperPACs is so narrowly defined that it might as well be non-existent[5].

[1] 538, TPM, Sam Wang at Princeton, etc. etc. I can provide citations if necessary.

[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20056061-503544.html

[3] http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/nov/09/brains-and-ballo... -- my favorite quote: And here’s where it’s interesting, and a little scary. “The dirty little secret of American politics is that the least-informed people are decisive in elections,” McDonald said. This is because the most well-informed voters, the highest on the socio-economic and educational attainment ladder, tend to be partisans and not up for grabs. They know how they’re going to vote.

[4] http://kantarmediana.com/cmag/press/study-negative-campaign-...

[5] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79854.html

Is Obama viable after a failed 4 years?

Your comment is maybe from a European with your own viewpoint.

Outsiders often have a valuable viewpoint on other groups, because they are not emotionally invested.

Bush was always ridiculed and seen as stupid in German media. The US should be proud that Obama is seen as intelligent and that his word carries weight. (And Romney had a bad start with his remarks in the UK about the Olympics.)

I also remember the doomsday mood 2008 about the economy. It bordered somewhat on the brink of a depression. I think the administration handled that very well! And as practically every other industrialized country has universal health care the struggle in the US about that is baffling. On the other side the Republicans were obstructing so much important stuff! I remember the shenanigans about the debt ceiling. I wish they would be punished with an election loss for their irresponsibility to the world and the American nation.

>> Outsiders often have a valuable viewpoint on other groups, because they are not emotionally invested.\

I wasn't discounting outsider's opinions, I've traveled the world several times, America is great because we are all outsiders. I was addressing the nature of his comment which sounded to me like he was intending to represent all Europeans, rather than a European expressing his view.

Bush should have acted sooner to restrict the door Clinton opened which allowed many people to get loans who had not the finances nor shown the responsibility to own a home.

If common sense regulation should be required of big banks and "wall street"; then we should require it of ourselves as individuals.

A 78% stock market rally, US unemployment dropping from 11% to 8.2% and record corporate profits are a failure? Or is there something else you don't like about Obama?

It's possible to rationalize anything.

He isn't a leader, he's a facilitator. The job of President of the United States of America requires a leader. Is there something else I don't like? Nope. He's a likable, smart, very charismatic guy with little business experience.

Is there something else that you're suggesting you think or want to think that I don't like about him?

I don't think we want to have this conversation here.

When the vast majority of Americans ever vote for one of the two candidates, the system is uncalibrated. Both parties try to set it up so they can cut closest to 50.000001% as possible, so the two candidates end up being fundamentally similar. If you're familiar with the game theory exercise of competing ice cream stands on a beach you'll see why.

I can't even load the page, so... "was bubble sort the wrong way to go?" ...I hate myself a little.

I hope Reddit follows up with a blog post on how they handled the load and how it affected the amount of new sign-ups

Well, they are not handling it that well. The site is down right now.

They didn't. I spent an hour and a half just refreshing the page and only ever saw "Reddit is under heavy load..."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com