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Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook (nymag.com)
Max Read makes his case via New York Magazine for how Facebook was the reason for Donald Trump's surprise victory on November 8th. Though, to be fair, "Facebook" is called out specifically due to its large online presence, but in reality all the "large and influential boards and social-media platforms where Americans now congregate to discuss politics" are to blame. The main reason why has to do with Facebook's "inability (or refusal) to address the problem of hoax or fake news" that is spread rampantly and effortlessly across the platform: Fake news is not a problem unique to Facebook, but Facebook's enormous audience, and the mechanisms of distribution on which the site relies -- i.e., the emotionally charged activity of sharing, and the show-me-more-like-this feedback loop of the news feed algorithm -- makes it the only site to support a genuinely lucrative market in which shady publishers arbitrage traffic by enticing people off of Facebook and onto ad-festooned websites, using stories that are alternately made up, incorrect, exaggerated beyond all relationship to truth, or all three. Many got hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of shares, likes, and comments; enough people clicked through to the posts to generate significant profits for their creators. The valiant efforts of Snopes and other debunking organizations were insufficient; Facebook's labyrinthine sharing and privacy settings mean that fact-checks get lost in the shuffle. Often, no one would even need to click on and read the story for the headline itself to become a widely distributed talking point, repeated elsewhere online, or, sometimes, in real life. When roughly 170 million people in North America use Facebook every day and nearly forty-four percent of all adults in the U.S. say they get news from Facebook, the spread of "fake news" is all the more detrimental. The problem is that Facebook seems "insecure about its power, unsure of its purpose, and unclear about what its responsibilities really are." Earlier this year, Facebook acted on what was right and wrong by censoring the iconic "napalm girl" photograph, later issuing a statement saying "These are difficult decisions and we don't always get it right." Of course, lies and exaggerations have always been central to real political campaigns; Facebook has simply made them easier to spread, and discovered that it suffers no particular market punishment for doing so -- humans seem to have a strong bias toward news that confirms their beliefs, and environments where those beliefs are unlikely to be challenged.
that's why. it couldn't be the candidate or the policies that lost.
...that Trump won because the media could not control the narrative despite their best efforts.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Hillary is almost the perfect foil to her husband in politics. If Bill divorced her and ran as a Republican he'd probably have crushed her 70/30 that is how unpopular she is.
Look at her stats. She is damn near in McCain/Palin territory. She is the Nickelback of Democratic candidates.
Please stop living in a bubble and you will realize why it could have never been anyone else. How many established Republicans ran against him? Dozens, he slaughtered them for the same reason he destroyed Hillary. If you are looking around for a reason why he beat your establishment crook, don't look at Facebook, try the mirror.
So let me get this straight, the problem is that there wasn't enough control over the news by the Democratic party?
Never mind how Wikileaks shows us that CNN leaked all the debate questions to Donna Brazille to help them cheat. Never mind how the Washington Post held a clandestine fundraiser with the DNC with services in kind that they kept off the books, much to the lawyers' dismay. And we have Correct the Record's "nerd virgins" (their words, not mine) shilling for dough on every social medium possible, etc., etc., etc.
I wonder when they'll realize that their own propaganda machine is half the problem?
They don't know why they lost and that's why they lost.
Anyone have a list?
Just go from there. Whatever you do, though, you cannot mention the Pied Piper strategy. Because, well, see #1.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I at least as many anti-Trump memes as anti-Hilary memes.
That's kind of the point. Unfiltered access to the modern equivalent of the yellow press means that people were free to follow their prejudice (in the Latin sense of the word) down the rabbit hole of their choosing.
More people voted for Hillary than voted for Trump, but no matter the outcome, the margin was vanishingly small. Basically, people just chose their narrative and cleaved to it, nourishing and sustaining it with the self-reinforcing feed that Facebook provides.
Trump is not going to 'drain the swamp', and Hillary was never anything but the enemy of ISIS. But in the final analysis, nobody fucking cares. And why should they? We just watched two straw dolls dance for 15 months, each accompanied by a back story knocked together by the political equivalent of an oxycontin-addicted non-Union Hollywood hack who's just been told the franchise needs a new Avenger.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
The only conspiracies I've read about were those hatched by the DNC, which we learned about in their own DKIM validated emails. I note that everyone who posts things like this never bothers to give examples, citations or links.
Free thinking is about examining the sources yourself and coming to your own conclusion, including sources you're predisposed to disagree with. If you cannot even interact with ideas you disagree with, you simply blind yourself and you're in for a rude awakening when your filter bubble suddenly bursts.
I think the election results disprove that only 20% supported him. I think the truth is a lot of people voted for him that did not want to admit they would. Not because he wasn't their choice, but because the left was so quick to label anyone that supported him as a deplorable, racist, sexist, bigoted misogynist. People that are not any of those things don't like being labeled that. What we're seeing is the attempted suppression of opposition by the left failed and likely actually fueled votes that may not have happened otherwise.
Donald Trump won for the following reasons.
1. The Mainstream media (MSM) kept telling everyone HRC was going to win, so everyone in rural America and flyover country made 100% sure their vote counted, and wow, did it!
2. The MSM would repeat anything and everything Donald tweeted or posted to Facebook for ratings and the hopes of discrediting him as a clown. This only gave him free press and brought things that were previously politically correct to the forefront for discussion.
3. Trump won, not because everyone wanted Trump, but because the people are collectively sick of the Federal Government constantly intruding in everything from small business to healthcare to trans-gendered high school locker-rooms. The people are sick of being called racist, biggoted, hatemongers or worse anytime they exercise their right to free speech and speak out against the never ending Federal Government Mandates. Trump won because he talked about all the unpopular things like illegal immigration, unfair trade deals, and the collapse of the middle class. Trump and Pence visited rural America and flyover country. They spent time there campaigning, yelling, screaming, brawling, and listening. Trump spent the last hours of election eve in Grand Rapids, Michigan a city with little political power and one that barely matters due to it's geographic proximity to rural northern michigan.
That is why Trump won. It is not because of Facebook.
Just like the UK, it was a full out revolt. This is how a democracy is supposed to work when they feel they aren't being heard. "The People" of the United States were heard this election.
It's all going to be ok. Trump will not destroy America. There is no need to move to Canada. The president is not king and only has a limited amount of power. The pendulum will swing back the other way for awhile and it will either work and benefit the USA or it won't.
In any case, it is time to stop fighting, yelling, screaming and come together to run the country again for the benefit of all. It will all be ok.
This election will be the defining moment for these online millennials as they learn to deal and grow the fuck up.
I'm still wondering when slashdot will do that. Literally every summary posted somehow can't deal with the reality that its (obviously) favored side just fucking lost. In this case it blames facebook, of all fucking things.
Why the fuck do that way. It's an issue at every election. Every. Single. One.
They need to do away with voting machines, period.
Here in Washington (not DC, the other one, no we are not part of Canada...) we do paper ballots. Most are mailed out and we drop them in any of 100's of boxes. There are permanent ones at libraries and the courthouse and hundreds of temporary ones during a general election.
We have a very strict accounting system overlooked by a bi-partisan pollsters at every step.
The mailed ballot has an outer envelope that identifies the voter, and an inner yellow security envelope than can have nothing written on it and the ballot enclosed and sealed.
After it is received they are electronically separated into districts and initially checked against registration rolls. They are then hand checked against voter rolls as the yellow envelopes are separated.
The separated vote then is removed and counted and all votes stored for a period (I'm unsure of how long.).
No problems large enough to make national news. A full paper trail. No internet, no machines to fuck up or be fucked with.
You can fill a vote out online and print it out. But the vote is only accepted at polling places or in-person drops as they don't have a second security envelope like the mailed ones.
Since it never touches the internet, you need physical access to do any fraud. That vastly complicates things compared to a few lines of code.
Sometimes the old fashioned way truly is best.
I don't know how costs compare, but with all the possibility of lawsuits, bad press, recounts and maintenance, I'm guessing it's not an astronomical difference. And I can be fairly confident that the counts are legitimate, as it would take some high-level fraud to cover up a paper trail with so many checks in place.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable