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Facebook's Fight Against Fake News Was Undercut by Fear of Conservative Backlash (gizmodo.com)
Facebook has been concerned about fake news stories that circulate on its social platform and how often such incidents occur. The company has had high-level internal debates over the matter since May, discussing different options to curb movements of hoax and false stories. Gizmodo reports Monday that Facebook executives conducted a wide-ranging review of products and policies earlier this year with "the goal of eliminating any appearance of political bias." The company even had a major update for the News Feed planned which could have supposedly filtered fake stories, but the update never saw the light of the day because it was afraid to use it. From the report:One source said high-ranking officials were briefed on a planned News Feed update that would have identified fake or hoax news stories, but disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people's feeds. According to the source, the update was shelved and never released to the public. It's unclear if the update had other deficiencies that caused it to be scrubbed. "They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news," said the source, who asked to remain anonymous citing fear of retribution from the company. The source added, "there was a lot of fear about upsetting conservatives after Trending Topics," and that "a lot of product decisions got caught up in that." In an emailed statement, Facebook did not answer Gizmodo's direct questions about whether the company built a News Feed update that was capable of identifying fake or hoax news stories, nor whether such an update would disproportionately impact right-wing or conservative-leaning sites. Instead, Facebook said it "did not build and withhold any News Feed changes based on their potential impact on any one political party."
If they hadn't been rigging the news feeds and injecting their own bias, they wouldn't have gotten into this mess.
Reporting that HRC had the election win all sewn up?
The auto-filtering criteria apparently caused far more right-leaning stories to be filtered than left-leaning stories, and it was scrapped for that reason.
So basically, it was bad code that they didn't know how to fix, and probably shouldn't have been in production regardless of the political aspect.
Reminds me of Steven Colbert's brilliant Correspondents' Dinner performance, which included gems like "Reality has a well-known liberal bias".
The article sounds like they were trying to avoid bias, not backlash.
The GOP has plenty of issues without anyone needing to make more for them.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias".
Not this past election.
or they were bad stories. The truly bad idea was in trying to implement a filter in the first place.
Nullius in verba
The most recent fake one that I've seen, with its supports absolutely adamant that it's real, is the "Clinton didn't really win the popular vote, Trump did!" thing. They defend it to the day they die, despite the fact that it's flatly contradicted by all official sources, can be traced back to the guy who made it up, and is based around factually incorrect statements about how votes are tabulated.
Not that the left is innocent in all of this. I still keep seeing that fake quote about Trump saying that Republican voters are idiots who will believe anything. How many times do you have to point out that it's fake for people to stop circulating it?
We need more fact checks, period. It bugs me to no end that news stations just broadcast politicians giving speeches and pundits making claims, wherein they may reiterate a dozen different things that have literally zero basis in reality... and just let it go uncorrected. That's journalistic malpractice, plain and simple. I know they want to jeep the pace of coverage up, but they're willfully letting their viewers get misinformed in order to do so.
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
The auto-filtering criteria apparently caused far more right-leaning stories to be filtered than left-leaning stories... So basically, it was bad code...
Was the decision made purely based on the fact that it was filtering more right-leaning stories? Did someone evaluate whether it was because there were more false right-leaning stories being posted?
Liberals think that reality doesn't affect them. Just ask the UCSD student who was run over while protesting Trump on I5. You can't fix stupid.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Fake news can and does from both political wings. I see no reason that Facebook cannot squelch bullshit wherever it comes from - impartially, transparently and fairly. And perhaps some (a lot) does target the right and it might spark a backlash to snuff it out. Man the fuck up and do it. The alternative of allowing it so the stupid propagates is FAR worse as we are now witnessing.
... the goal of eliminating any *appearance* of political bias.
I on the other hand, have no fear of conservative backlash,
so I am happy to recycle this dated but completely true news story:
http://www.theonion.com/graphi...
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The truly bad idea was in trying to implement a filter in the first place.
That is the message that will go unheeded for all time. Let the readers do their own filtering. They do anyway.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Outright banning them is too extreme in my opinion, in part because of the appearance of or risk of censorship.
Instead, tag the suspect stories, or all stories, with a link to lists of alternative sources, viewpoints, and fact-checking sites for the claims given.
By the way, some conservatives consider politifact.com and snopes.com to be left-leaning. Evidence of this is thin, or at least doesn't show significant bias in my inspections. (I see errors in ranking judgement more than bias.)
However, assuming it is left-leaning, where is the right's alternative?
Table-ized A.I.
It's George Bush's fault.
If I recall correctly most fake news were against Trump, not against Hillary.
I am more surprised that despite the many word twists, omissions of context and outright lies about Trump he still managed to win.
Do not mistake me for pro Trump please, I think he is an idiot who is not half as smart as he thinks he is (especially that wall idea is silly), but that does not justify making stuff up about him, such as the 3 (or more) allegations about rape, out of which none proved to be true.
Or the twisting of his word which made him look as if he was against all Mexicans instead of only the illegal ones.
All of that was repeated over and over on the MSM and of course on Facebook too. Thats on top of the blatant manipulations of the newsfeed by Facebook editors in favor of the democrats.
Eliminate fake news? Jesus, you'd have to block CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT, HuffPo, on and on... Would have been a bloodbath.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
...seriously?
They were afraid of a conservative backlash...BECAUSE THEY'D ALREADY BEEN MANIPULATING THE NEWS.
Jesus wept, people. How far down the rabbit hole of post-facto rationalization do you need to go? Even the NYT has admitted that they'd abandoned any pretense of objectivity in their coverage, to the point that LIBERALS were getting sick of it.
-Styopa
I would have thought that Facebook would avoid censoring viewpoints, however crazy. Once they start editing or restricting content, AFAIK they lose their legal immunity as a neutral platform. Once they take control of content, they become liable for that content. Some people get their news from tabloids. Some Facebook sites are the equivalent. So what?
On top of that: one person's "crazy" is another person's "entertainment" is another person's "truth". Remember the tinfoil conspiracy theories about the government spying on you? After Snowdon, they weren't so crazy anymore.
Finally, why are right-leaning sites disproportionately affected? Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the political leanings of Facebook employees...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Just downloaded my latest Android security patch and then it optimized my apps! After the last patch, i didn't believe they could be further optimized.... but there was Android making them even more optimum!
Only the future will tell if they can be further optimized after next month's patch. Wow!!!
The alt-right is posting more fake stories than the alt-left - 38% to 19%. Now, a lot of people will point to that as a "right is more gullible for fake news than the left!" point, but I see it as "even 19% is really bloody terrible".
A lot of the BS, mind you, isn't to say maliciously done; it's a consequence of the clickbait era that we live in. Many people - including even teens in Macedonia - have learned that if you make up something with dramatic language and a sensationalist headline, people click and share it, and they get ad revenue. Factual accuracy doesn't come into equation - if you can sensationalize a real story: great; if you have to make up a story from whole cloth: also great! A single widely shared article can earn them $3k in a day. So they create fake news sites like "WorldPoliticus.com", "USADailyPolitics.com", etc and fill them with clickbait. Early on many of them did it about equally with the left and right, but they found that they got more clicks and shares from the right.
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
If it's FAKE NEWS, it needs to be shitcanned.
At the least, make it VERY CLEAR that "THIS IS FAKE NEWS!!!!!! THERE IS NO TRUTH TO THIS WHATSOEVER!!!!"
I mean, come on. Freedom of speech is great but don't just sit by letting people believe out-and-out lies. That's just irresponsible.
Something only a liberal would think. Reality has a fascist bias. All your feely-good hugbox ideas don't mean a thing when the Islamist comes to saw off your head.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Which stories was the filter trying to block, and why, and how true/untrue were they? And which stories were getting rebroadcast more, which multiplies the score? We need statistics, and research conducted in parallel by responsible proponents of opposing viewpoints all around. Fake things purporting to be real things should be blocked from both sides. Of course, how can one do that without totally blocking all comedians and irony and sarcasm?
They were basically censoring what was actually trending. Some people wanted to censor the news instead of arguing.
Because, you know, people can't communicate with each other without Facebook and the Internet doesn't interpret censorship as damage and route around it.
And they wonder why we don't love censorious asshats who cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas.
that would have identified fake or hoax news stories, but disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites
Which means those right-wing "news" sites were putting out fake stories. What's the problem? An algorithm doesn't determine what party a comment is affiliated with, it only determines the veracity of the comment.
But remember, Zuckerberg laughed about FB having an impact on the election. Because that's totally crazy.
Then again, based on this posting, it appears Zuckerberg was lying about FB being introspective in regards to fake news and the election.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I bet according to the Clinton's, Facebook, and all of the other shills in the MSM that the email leaks, FBI gossip, and other negative news surrounding HRH Clinton would be considered "fake" because it went against what they wanted to see..
What about the fake news about Trump like the false rape accusations? Weren't going to bury those I bet!
They dug their own graves along with their credibility when they tried to control the most popular discussion items and bury the others
There's a difference between being wrong and intentionally publishing fake and misleading information. Plus the fact that Hillary won the popular vote (by +650K votes and still counting) just demonstrateshow hard it is to call an election when there are several swing-state votes in the electoral college.
" You can't fix stupid."
And that explains Trump
I'm very left leaning, but do understand the importance of an objective, unbiased press. What people aren't getting is that Facebook is the press for the 21st Century. I feel they do need to realize this and figure out some way to deal with it. Otherwise, this problem is going to get worse and cause a huge mess.
Back not so long ago, there were three news networks and a handful of "newspapers of record" that served as almost the sole authoritative source of information for most people. If something made it into the New York Times or Washington Post or Boston Globe, the story was at least believable and researched. it didn't get there just because some reporter bashed some keystrokes into his smartphone without thinking and hit Send. But, this is exactly what happens with Facebook and other Internet publishing media. Fringe groups (on both sides!) who would previously never get the time of day are suddenly given the world's biggest microphone and access to almost the entire population. Using sophisticated, polished publication techniques they can produce whatever content they want and call it unbiased news. Twitter is an even more interesting beast, in that you get access to unfiltered streams of consciousness. Not that it did any good, but look at how many times Donald Trump took to Twitter at 3 AM to personally insult a person or group of people...people loved it.
Why is this bad? I hate to say it because it sounds elitist, but people as a whole are dumb. There's just no getting around it...the average person is much more likely to be swayed by something they see on their Facebook news feed. And since Facebook is an echo chamber, and hones in on exactly what you're interested in, "your" messages keep getting reinforced. Humans are animals, and civil society gets way less civil when people are screaming at each other as loud as they can.
The thing I don't like about this social media revolution is that it brings out all the crazy fringe people on both sides who do things like incessantly post angry comments to news sites or spend hours a day listening to conservative talk radio people...and gives them open free license to yell whatever they want as loud as they want. Over time, moderate people are going to drift over to these extreme sides in an effort to be heard.
I'd love to see Facebook buy Snopes and then integrate that into their news feed. Then they can add a Bullshit Meter to each story. The thing is, the best alt-right news isn't 100% fake; the best ones are about 90% true. It's when they completely manipulate information to present a twisted argument of when it all goes wrong.
----- obSig
Maybe I just have a lot naive liberal friends. I see lots of fake stories from both sides I would say at least equal amounts left and right. I just scroll past and I have stopped following some on both sides. I never challenge anything on-line because you just get incoherent rants from the poster and they do not hear what you are saying. It is not fake because they believe the premise. The facts are just an annoyance.
People will believe without question anything that matches their ideology or preconceived notions and they will vehemently challenge anything against them. This is true across all ideologies and probably true for the people at Facebook who saw fake news as a conservative problem.
Facebook was legendary in it's bias against conservatives. Since when did fair and balance news have anything to do with Facebook. No one is afraid of conservative backlash and anyone saying otherwise is an obvious liar. I notice that Slashdot itself seems to suffer from this disease as of late. If I wanted to read about ranting news trolls, I'd go to the chans. Just saying guys...
Ummm: Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in March 2016, a month after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Garland was a moderate liberal praised by conservatives before Obama had the gall to nominate someone for a vacant Supreme Court seat.
Fact-based journalism is dying. Yellow journalism is thriving. If you are one of those do-gooders that just wants to report facts and figures to a dwindling audience, then - to quote the new owner/CEO of The Oregonian - F**k you.
Mod parent up.
Not only the the Ds manipulate their own primaries to make room for the Queen, they also engaged in a "pied piper" strategy to put Trump at the front of the pack in the R primary. Instead of playing the game fair, they thought they were smart enough to manipulate it, and caused a series of unintended consequences that bit their junk off.
My D friends who were so eager to get me to vote for Trump in the primaries (I didn't, fwiw), talking down his negatives, and emphasizing their horror at the idea of say, Ted Cruz, are crying their eyes out now.
Radical Islamic Terror in the US is very rare - even if we include the outlier of 9-11.
Meanwhile, an anti-Semite has been appointed to Chief Strategist and hate crimes are on the rise. As a Jew, do you really think I should be more afraid of Muslims than of someone who hates Jews whispering in the President's ear?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Hmmm, does anyone know if there's an extension that looks up every post on snopes and puts a badge on it?
That's what I need.
Since you aren't using yours, it won't be much of a loss.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Of course, it's a matter of pure coincidence that Facebook board member Peter Thiel has been named to Trump's transition team.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The irony of all may just be that the anti-Trump "half truth" system is ramping up as speculation runs rampant on what Donald Trump will do as President. Trump has said a lot of crazy things, so it works because then you can start adding other things to take it a step further and make it sound even more extreme. A classic example of what I saw recently was one that Trump was going to start making Muslims wear yellow stars in public (a la Hitler and the Jews). The sourcing is false on that, it's "merely" going to be registering them and maybe given them ID cards, but why not just give it that extra nudge to give a cleaner Hitler comparison?
I believe that excuse like I believe all hacks are from the russian goverment.
There was fake news from both sides
Once you give people freedom of religion, you give them permission to believe out and out lies. That's a feature, not a bug.
At the end of the day, what people believe isn't your responsibility, nor is it the responsibility of Facebook.
Bannon's not an anti-semite. And what's on the rise is leftist rioters beating people and setting fires in the streets. If Hillary had won and Trump supporters were doing this shit you'd be calling for drone strikes. Oh and most of those "hate crimes" are hoaxes. No Trump supporter is spray painting "make america white again" with a swastika on the side of buildings.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The question is, how much of the right-wing (or the left-wing) stuff is by actual right (or left) leaning people? I wouldn't put it past any of these party operatives to set up fake pages posting fake shit to discredit the other side.
650k votes is minuscule compared to the overal vote totals 121M+
Just because she got 2.5million more votes than Trump in California is not enough to use the popular vote as some sort of vindication.
"The goal of eliminating any appearance of political bias" is not the same as "eliminating political bias." In short, their goal is to improve their skills at generating propaganda, so they don't get caught as much.
If they link or share a headline that is already debunked by snopes, the poster should have the option of posting it, but the snopes page should also be auto-added as the first comment.
If the user wants to delete that warning comment, that is their business.
But that at least keeps genuinely concerned people from becoming soundboards for things that aren't truth.
The people in Macedonia don't give a fuck either way. They are in it for the $$$, not to smear the enemy party.
Liberals think that reality doesn't affect them...
They believe that because in their experience it is true. Private college students, government employees with guaranteed employment and large pensions, the wealthy, celebrities. These are all groups insulated from consequences of their own actions. They do not experience scarcity and financial hardship. They receive an inequitable degree of deference from law enforcement and when they do get into trouble they can often buy their way out with money, lawyers or political influence.
None of the people I've known who grew up working their butts off on farms as children grew up liberal. Some Democrat, yes, but none liberal. When the only way the cows get water when the pipes freeze in winter is to smash a hole in the ice on the pond and spend the day dragging 80-pound milk cans of water up a hill in snowstorm, you do not retreat to your safe space.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Early on many of them did it about equally with the left and right, but they found that they got more clicks and shares from the right.
If I had to speculate on this, it's because websites like the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, etc. already fill that market. They've already built their brand and there's a certain legitimacy to those sites even if it's known that they are heavily left-leaning. The political right really didn't have anything like that, at least not on the same level. The only one I can think of that gets posted on the the internet regularly is Breitbart, and maybe Drudge Report but the latter doesn't really create its own content. Otherwise the right's main sources for media are still Fox News and AM radio which may not be as easy to share on something like Facebook.
I don't think Facebook can really solve this problem as creating an algorithm that can detect fake news would require some top-notch AI. Otherwise, actual intelligent humans will just figure out how to get around the algorithm and you get a weird cat and mouse approach. The underlying problem is that people want news that confirms their existing beliefs and not something which contains factual information or even an objective assessment of factual information. That's not something Facebook can do anything about.
In their desire to become some all-encompassing one-stop-shop for people, they had to anticipate that they'd drag in political discourse and all of the ire that goes with arguing on the internet. They could have just stayed a nice website where people could post pictures of their family or a recent vacation, but it sprawled out from there. I haven't used it in years (I stopped shortly before the big Facebook game craze swept through the user base and everyone was playing some farm game through Facebook), but I imagine its a bit of an overgrown mess at this point.
The only real solution is for users to engage with each other and point out the fake news. I recall some years (early 2000's around time of the Iraq war) in the past a relative of mine had emailed everyone in the family what was effectively fake news. It was something to the extent about Muslim's taking over America and how in a decade they'd be in complete control. I just pointed out that according to census data, Islam was a tiny minority and that it was essentially impossible for this to happen based on immigration and birth rates. Maybe things have changed, but this person did admit that they were wrong and emailed everyone saying that their previous email probably wasn't true.
You can't stop fake news, but you can train people to spot it and ignore it, removing the profit incentive. However, I don't think that's an easy task either as apparently humans have evolved to possess those cognitive biases and have a tendency to fall into them.
You're seriously going to post Buzzfeed for that? The other question is who measures truth or falseness?
They may be right about some of the info, but other points are wrong. To say something isn't being censored because other places post it is silly.
Let's take a real news story as an example. I mean, we've already seen YouTube take down the video of a completely different (true) altercation wherein someone has a minor fender bender, then several black guys attack an old man in Chicago after yelling something about him being a Trump supporter. That guy was dragged at high speed down the highway from his own car, severely injured, and nearly killed. YouTube repeatedly took down the video and gave strikes against those who posted it, never mind it being newsworthy. It has, of course, been captured to many other outlets.
Snopes rates the story as "mixed" because there was a fender bender prior to the video. I'm not aware of anyone claiming otherwise, even the video interview shows the man saying he only got out of his car to exchange insurance information. He never yells at them or hits back, but they attack him and steal his car. He fails to deny that he's a Trump supporter on the video.
We're supposed to believe that a minor car accident is somehow more related to the attack than what they scream about before attacking him, though?
Citation needed. I've seen a lot of trump graffiti, most of it says Hillary for prison.
I'm so glad that profits had nothing to do with with the decision. (According to the people who make the profits.)
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
After decades of blacks, gays, and other liberals getting away with crimes, now it is the right-wing who is untouchable!
Well duh. Remember the FBI and Homeland security reports on domestic terrorism? Can't say the truth. It hurts people's feelings.
So somehow, they have a platform where the users produce the content, and they make the profit, but of course that leads to a number of issues, like, exactly, can we trust the content. Sooo , i have a solution for them, start producing the content, or have each and single post validated, yeah, right, fuck me right?
You have assumed that there is a direct correlation between false stories, and the proliferation of those stories. It's entirely possible that say, the left pushed more of a fewer number of false stories and would still have the same market penetration.
This doesn't negate what you're saying, but keep that in mind.
Plus the fact that Hillary won the popular vote (by +650K votes and still counting)
I really wish people would stop talking about this. I'm NOT a Trump supporter, but talking about the popular vote is emphasizing an irrelevant aspect of the data given how our system is set up.
Trump and Clinton did NOT campaign to win the popular vote. If they were doing so, they likely would have skipped rallies in many "swing states" and instead held them in places more likely to get out the maximum votes for their side. That could have led to a very different popular vote split.
It's kinda like playing a game of Monopoly and losing but saying, "But, but I had more properties! I should win! I had more properties!" Except Monopoly isn't about accumulating the most property, it's about accumulating more money and bankrupting the opponent. Those are the rules of the game. If you want to play by different rules, fine... but that's a different game. The US election is set up one way, and the candidates "played" to win by those rules (i.e., Electoral College).
By the way, I'm not defending the Electoral College either, and there are legitimate reasons to get rid of it. But the mismatch here isn't really a strong argument -- if you believe that campaigns and rallies and advertisements have ANY effect on voter turnout, then there's absolutely no guarantee that the numbers would have been the same if the candidates were trying to win the popular vote and made campaign choices based on that.
Exactly. Trump won the popular vote in 30 out of 50 States.
The people in Macedonia don't give a fuck either way. They are in it for the $$$, not to smear the enemy party.
And they've clearly decided that conservatives are more gullible.
I don't disagree with anything you wrote. I only made the point about the popular vote in the context of how difficult it is to call a close election when more people voted for the candidate who lost.
Still butthurt you little bitch? Pick a better candidate next time.
Pot, meet Kette..
It's too bad we can't cut the news feed of fake stories on the main stream media or delete stories that have blatant bias, eh?
This is social media, different groups see things in different ways. Most people think a poorly reasoned attack on a country is a war crime for instance.
Indeed what good is the popular vote for determining who the "real" winner is, when 40% of the country didn't vote? I'd buy the popular vote argument if voting was mandatory and we had 95% or more participation.
Still butthurt you little bitch? Pick a better candidate next time.
Pot, meet Kette..
Leans into mike...
Wrong
I disagree with the statement that Facebook is the press for the 21st. Century. If it's anything? It's a news aggregator.
The VAST majority of original content posted by Facebook users doesn't rise to the level of legitimate news, unless you're only interested in VERY local information - like Aunt Belma's Xmas tree getting put up for the holidays or your buddy Joe getting a new exhaust put on his car.
The reason people go to it as kind of a "news source" is thanks to all the users who like to share links to news article elsewhere they thought were worth reading. There's a lot of interest in news aggregators, as witnessed by Apple adding the "News" app to iOS and products out there like Flipboard. But what none of those can offer is a selection of news items curated by your own friends, relatives/family and co-workers. That's where Facebook comes in.
Big Pharma is landing a windfall of profits from all the anti-anxiety prescriptions that are written as a result of white midwesterners reading stories about how Paris is under siege by muslims.
Think about the shareholders!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Though I'm sure the majority of people on here (and gizmodo) will believe that stupid excuse anyway. When has FB ever given a crap about 'conservative backlash' or conservatives in general? Zuckerberg is another slimy liberal anti-capitalist billionaire (money he acquired via the capitalism he hates) that wants to blame conservatives for everything he doesn't agree with. Now that the US has seen through the liberal bullshit and voted that corruptocrat Clinton out of politics, Zuck's got his panties in a twist and is throwing a tantrum.
These liberal idiots just can't handle reality.
Pax Vobiscum
and reason and science doubly so.
I would just like to know how Facebook was defining "fake or hoax news stories" for the purposes of their filter.
How does zukerberg feel to have his entire career based on wasting people's time?
> The most recent fake one that I've seen, with its supports absolutely adamant that it's real, is the "Clinton didn't really win the popular vote, Trump did!" thing.
You DO realize that they were still counting votes last week? That most of Arizona wasn't counted until a couple days ago?
I don't know that he has won the popular yet, but CNN was projecting that before they fixed the "design flaw" in their code.
Just a thought. From what I recall, the liberal new feeds are just as insane as the conservative ones. Are they saying that they are afraid that if they acted completely biased and only removed the conservative feeds that there would be a backlash. Or were they actually truly interested in cleaning up the news feeds completely?
This all stems back to education, specifically critical thinking in education, and the lack of it most folks seem to have received.
If I get an e-mail stating "XYZ account of yours at LMNOP.net has been tampered with, click this link to reset your account password." Do I follow the link, or do I carefully step over to said site and login to my account to verify whether or not this e-mail is legit? We have too many people "clicking the link" of false news, taking it at face value, and living in denial as to why someone in Romania has all their money and access to their Facebook account.
>I've seen a lot of trump graffiti, most of it says Hillary for prison.
or is overtly racist.
Trump sewed the wind, and I fear we will reap the whirlwind.
Not only do they not care, they haven't for years now on Facebook. I grew up in rural area in a red state. The people I went to high school with and are friends with on Facebook are pretty strong Republican Party supporters. They truly don't care about the truth of any story they share any more. For those of you who don't know, one of the ways that right wing lies get spread on Facebook is that they got people convinced that Snopes is in fact dishonest and pushing a liberal agenda and you can't trust if for anything. I've seen people I know argue this when someone points them to Snopes to rebut some nonsense they are sharing. These people are in turn now convinced that you can't verify anything any more because anything that disagrees with what you agree with is a lie itself. They don't even question what they are sharing either, which is a real shame. I have to admit to really losing a lot of respect for some of my old school friends who I know are smart enough to think critically about what they are reading, but they don't care any more to do so.
Look, there's a lot of fake stuff out there, doctored photos, Russian lies, fake Greek/Macedonian bots, and even tagging Fake News with (probably untrue) would have been useful to FB users.
But, no, had to sell out due to Fear.
Which is what the alt-right want.
They want you to live in Fear.
They regard 1984 as a plan, not a warning.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If we follow the standard method of interpreting these kinds of things, "Disparate Outcome", then it doesn't matter what the facts f he matter are, it is inherently discriminatory.
Hey, not my rules...
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The problem is the news is written in a way for us to react to it. (Both Conservative leaning and liberal leaning).
Instead of news spitting out catchy headlines, I would like more time dedicated to in depth look at what is going on and the details behind it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And news of Clinton's transgressions and Wikilieaks revelations were quite obviously suppressed. It's not just FB either, Twitter did that too, and so did Reddit and Youtube. Google has banned "clinton health problems" from autocomplete, among other things. FB executives made no secret whatsoever out of where their loyalties lie. A little Google birdie told me Ruth Porat (CFO of Google) wept during weekly company meeting after Clinton defeat, and levels of SJW activity (and therefore Trump supporter suppression) have markedly increased inside Google after Trump won the election, despite being already crazy high in the months prior. Don't fucking be telling me that the big tech companies or mainstream media helped Trump in any way whatsoever. He won against all odds because people who are tired of all this bullshit used their right to a confidential vote.
Someone on the internet joked that if Trump walked on water, healed cripples and turned water into wine, the headlines would be: "Trump can't swim", "Trump takes jobs from doctors" and "Trump is a raging alcoholic". That's not far from the truth. I hope this is obvious to everybody. Give the man the benefit of the doubt. He has no other reason to run for presidency than to do good for this country. His version of "good", but "good" nevertheless. Don't believe the propaganda, he's not "literally Hitler". You'll all be fine (except for immegal aliens with criminal records, you guys can start heading to the border as we speak). The country will be fine. Just do your part to, quite literally, make America great again.
And editing 911 calls to make someone sound racist? That kind of fake new?
How about calling a 400-lb thug who just beat up a 5'2" convenience store clerk while robbing him a "teen"? Then perpetrating the LIE of "hands up don't shoot" when the THUG got shot in the face trying to bum rush the police officer? Is that fake news too?
How about all the LIES about Freddy Gray? Who BROKE HIS OWN DAMN NECK throwing himself against the walls of the paddy wagon? The jackass prosecutor tried to use evidence that the driver took "wide turns" and "rolled stops" to say the driver deliberately gave a "rough ride" to injure Freddy Gray - but funny how the OTHER person in the van wasn't hurt at all - and he testified he heard Gray slamming himself against the walls of the van...
But jackass "progressives" cried POLICE BRUTALITY!!! RAAAAAAAAAAAAACIIIIIIISSSTS!!!!!
THOSE are reasons Clinton lost.
How about childish campus crybullies shouting down speakers who DARE to state that handing out welfare checks and allowing unchecked illegal immigration might not be the best way to run a country? That's NOT racist, your smug arrogant jackass. Those are reasons why Clinton lost.
You want fake news?
Just go to the Rolling Stone, whose "Rape on Campus" just lost its first libel suit - to the tune of 7 million dollars. That's FAKE NEWS - and it was all designed to push the "progressive" narrative of how "oppressed" women are on campus.
Meanwhile, women make up 60% of all college students, and no one complains about how that's leaving poor black males behind.
OF COURSE "PROGRESSIVES" DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT POOR BLACK MALES BEING LEFT BEHIND - THOSE ARE RELIABLE FUTURE VOTERS! POOR, UNEDUCATED, SLAVES BEHOLDEN TO THE WELFARE STATE.
That's ANOTHER reason Clinton LOST (I LOVE typing that - Clinton LOST!!!!! BWWWWAAAAA HAAAA HAAAAA!!!!)
Hell, the media literally has a HISTORY of publishing fake news to hurt Republicans - LITERALLY and legally admitting to publishing "fake" news. (But is was "accurate". Yeah, right.)
So, all you progtards, I'm hoping it's payback time for all your smug "I'm better than you, YOU RAAAACIST HOMOPHOBE!!!" BULLSHIT. It's NOT racist to not want to expand welfare. It's NOT homophobic to not want some 45-year-old man to be allowed to call himself a "woman" and then watch my 12-year-old daughter in the bathroom. And if you think it is, YOU are the closed-minded jackass.
And that's ANOTHER reason Crooked Liar Hillary! lost.
May Attorney General Rudy Guiliani prove Crooked Liar Hillary! knew she set up an illegal server and deliberately used it for classified data. May he show how Crooked Liar Hillary!'s utter arrogant incompetence allowed China, Russia, Israel, Cuba, and a host of other foreign intelligence agencies direct access the emails of the US Secretary of State. May Guiliani PROVE Barack Obama knew of the server. May he PROVE that Bill Clinton illegally influenced Attorney General Lynch, and that Lynch pressured and Democrat Party bribed FBI Directory Comey - whose wife somehow got millions of dollars in campaign contributions for a lame Virginia Senate "campaign" right after the email story broke.
And may Guiliani then turn his sights on the IRS...
Mod me down you slimy progtards - in your hearts, you damn well know that's almost certainly all TRUE. All that about Crooked Liar Hillary!'s illegal email server, that Comey was bribed, that Russia and China were literally reading her emails - you KNOW IT'S TRUE AND YOU FEAR IT WILL COME OUT AN DESTROY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Well, that's what you deserve for selling your soul to the Clintons.
Did someone evaluate whether it was because there were more false right-leaning stories being posted?
Of course there are. The right has been much faster to adopt post truth politics. I used to live in eastern Tennessee and have plenty of alt-right relatives, and I am amazed at some of the nonsense they are willing to believe, and how immune they are to factual information. For instance, my idiot brother-in-law has emailed me petitions 3 times to stop atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hare from banning any mention of God on TV, despite the fact that I have told him each time that 1) Her name is spelled "O'Hair", 2) She has no authority over what is on TV, 3) She has been dead for more than 20 years. None of that matters to him, and now he thinks I am part of the God denying conspiracy.
It looks like maybe the Democrats have the issues. When you rig your primary to insure the candidate most hated by all conservative voters is guaranteed the nomination and then wonder why you lost that's called the issue of self delusion. No matter how bad Trump acted. No matter how rude and obnoxious. No matter what dirt was dug up on him. They still lost the election because they picked a bad, bad candidate and when an outsider challenged her they cheated and undercut him in any way they could. All so they could run the Queen. Well they ran her and Americans rejected her. The only people they have to blame are themselves. I'd be willing to bet there were hundred of other politicians they could have run with and won but they wanted the most corrupt one they could find that wasn't in jail at the moment.
I'm probably going to be modded into oblivion for pointing this out (wouldn't be the first time either) but Republican primaries process isn't exactly free of issues by any stretch of the imagination. The same goes for the Electoral College which allows the runner up who lost the election by 2 million bloody votes to become president. People keep telling me that the Electoral College is essential to US democracy and blah, blah, blah ... I call bullshit on all of it. The president should be elected by popular vote, period! Then there is the fucked up US electoral system riddled as it is with gerrymandering. I just heard a political analyst on TV recommend that the Dems. should put some effort back into state level politics. The implication of this person's advice seemed to be that if they did that, they could gerrymander the system back in their favour .... seriously?!?! By the looks of it practically every step of the US electoral process from the primaries onwards is in serious need of reform. It's easy for the Republicans to feel smug right about now, they control both houses of congress and they may or may not control the president (the jury is still out on that question). What they should be is worried because this victory they have scored is largely a victory achieved by gaming the system while demographics are slowly working against them. The fastest growing communities in the US are non-white while the Republican voter base is shrinking. If the Democrats spend the next few years rebuilding a grass roots organisation, realise that their most important base is not the Wall Street bankers and tech billionaires they spend most of their time sucking up to but working class white and non-white citizens. If the Democrats go back to their roots and draw some of those working class voters away from the likes of Trump with a Roosevelt style 'New Deal program' the Republicans will be in real trouble because endorsements form the KKK are not going to increase their appeal to that rapidly expanding group of non-white voters. In the end even expert gerrymandering will not be able to save the Republicans from their shrinking voter base. Only a move towards the political centre and away from KKK endorsements can do that. Say what you want, even if the Reps/Trump did not accept the KKK endorsement the mere fact that they got it is a very bad sign for the Reps. As for the Democrats there is an old Norse saying, "Don't mourn, gather men, arm yourselves and avenge" and that is my advice to them. Leave the Republicans to revel in their smugness and schadenfreude. Spend the next two years ousting the old Democrat establishment, bring in some new people, reform the primaries, take your party back to its core message and values and then kick the Reps. in the balls in 2018/2020 with a steel toe boot.
Like a cloth
No, especially this past election. This year reality was so rife with liberal bias that no news source was trustworthy other than Donald Trump himself, far-right news sites, and conspiracy blogs. Clearly reality cannot be trusted.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Tagging 'Hillary for Prison' constitutes a 'hate crime'?
Instead, maybe they should have a tiered rating system:
Outside of people's FB pages, we should be free to browse the pools of all stories in each category, even the deleted verified fake ones, so we can satisfy ourselves that there's no systematic bias going on by people with verification power.
The auto-filtering criteria apparently caused far more right-leaning stories to be filtered than left-leaning stories, and it was scrapped for that reason.
Or maybe there were more right-leaning fake stories than left-leaning fake stories. The ratio currently being touted is 2-to-1 right vs left. So of course if you're publishing more fake news stories you're going to be hit proportionally harder by a filter.
When the only way the cows get water when the pipes freeze in winter is to smash a hole in the ice on the pond and spend the day dragging 80-pound milk cans of water up a hill in snowstorm, you do not retreat to your safe space.
I made this point elsewhere. The article was referencing yet another college sending an email to everybody letting them know that there was a "safe space" available due to the election results, and the commenter was saying that had Hillary won they wouldn't be setting up safe spaces for conservative students. I agree, but at the same time conservative students don't need a safe space even if Hillary wins.
The left is really going to have to come to grips with the fact that there are a lot of people on their side who don't need a safe space - they need a psychiatrist.
Do you have ESP?
"if you believe that campaigns and rallies and advertisements have ANY effect on voter turnout, "
This is just neo-liberals (which I distinguish from old school liberals) clutching at straws - his tax plays, his female exploits and locker room talk, his opinion on climate change .. all of which is completely blown out of approach. Hillary lost because she's corrupt, pay-to-play slush fund peddling, bought and paid for by hedge funds, out of touch hench-woman. The fact that Trump could win all swing states and take a few Democrat ones sums up her hopeless position. Trump could have lost Florida to her and still won. That's how bad she stank. Nothing much would have had ANY effect on Hillary's position.
Yeah, I'm sure Donald is gonna promote antisemitism and encourage hatred against his own family.
None of the people I've known who grew up working their butts off on farms as children grew up liberal. Some Democrat, yes, but none liberal. When the only way the cows get water when the pipes freeze in winter is to smash a hole in the ice on the pond and spend the day dragging 80-pound milk cans of water up a hill in snowstorm, you do not retreat to your safe space.
All the people I've known who grew up in big cities grew up liberal. Cities aren't "safe spaces" (ask any small town conservative). You have to learn to get along with people who are not like you, and you realize that there is a big complicated world that doesn't revolve around you and your "deeply held beliefs".
BTW, I live in a city where it freezes in the winter. We insulate our pipes.
Because everyone knows that the citizens of some states are more important than others.
It's a platform for people to share, if Facebook started filtering what is shared, they are fighting their Unique Sales Position. The part I find annoying is the "Suggested Posts" and the "People also shared", Google penalises for plagiarism and lack of timeliness, shouldn't be too difficult for Facebook to do the same. A lot of the sites I get dragged into have the same content verbatim, I guess I'm what facebook would consider Alt-Right, and a good deal of what I see looks like the Progressive-Liberal stereotypes amplified, likewise a good deal of what my Progressive friends post looks like Alt-Right stereotype of the progressives.
I think have more ads on a page than content should be a penalty as well, especially if the ads cause popups and double penalties if the ads go to a "Mircosoft Driver Update" page or a dingit.tv ad.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
on Earth based on believing lies IS my business, because it's so f*cking dangerous.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Why are highly partisan comments from an Icelandic SJW who lives entirely within the "progressive" echo chamber all sitting at +5? This reeks of sockpuppet upvoting.
Yes, but do those states actually have a plurality of voters? If we restrict to "voters who aren't racist bags of shit," do they lose out even more?
Fuck you. Fuck your racist friends. Fuck Trump.
There is no such this as 'winning the popular vote' on the National level for electing the President -- that term actually has no meaning and just becuase a lot of people use it doesn't make that reallity -- that term should be flagged by FB as false news. Shame on the news media for propegating non-sensical statements. The process is a state-by-state election, so that is all that matters. There is no national popular vote for President & trying to put individual state results together to to claim a meaning is nonesense.
It would be like saying that Clevland won the world series based on ticket sales or because that Clevland won more innings. Just because someone or even a lot of people say so doesn't mean the statement makes sense.
This is exactly why the electors should overturn the vote and pick Clinton.
Because they're working in the system we have, not one based on the vote of the people. It's their job not to allow the ignorant electorate to cast our country off a cliff.
The stories not being posted is not the outcome. The effect on people is the outcome.
In this case, the outcome would be less misinformation getting to gullible wing nuts, which might cause them to inadvertently become better informed.
So really, it was affirmative action for wing nuts. Of course they opposed it! Not because the right wing hate machine thrives on the ignorance of its followers but because they are always consistent in their beliefs.
I would get rid of Electoral College all together. I would also required a candidate getting a true majority of votes. In this case since both fell below 50%, there would be a new election and only candidates that got at least 10% (this % up for debate) of the 1st vote would be eligible for the 2nd vote and no write-ins allowed.
Let's bring back some democracy to our election.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
So get a better job? I mean, "liberals are trash because they find jobs that aren't dreary hellish shit," isn't really an argument.
"You'd all die if I didn't do this." So stop fucking complaining. Are you getting a fair wage for your efforts? Isn't that all you're supposed to ask for as a conservative?
Or is it not fair if other people get more because they're smarter than you? Is it even more galling if they're female, or an immigrant, or a minority? Are you angry that gay people can live lives without feeling how much you hate them?
Grow up. Or die. I don't even care anymore.
Here's an excellent explanation why the system was set up to have an electoral college: https://geopoliticalfutures.co...
"The United States is a geopolitical invention. The 13 original colonies were very different from each other. As the nation expanded westward, even more exotic states became part of the union. Constantly alienating smaller states through indifference could undermine the national interest. The Senate and the electoral college both stop that from happening, or at least limit it. Any state can matter in any election.
You might charge that this is undemocratic. It is. It was intended to be. The founders did not create a direct democracy for a good reason. It would have prevented the United States from emerging as a stable union. They created a republican form of government based on representation and a federal system based on sovereign states. Because of that, a candidate who ignores or insults the “flyover” states is likely to be writing memoirs instead of governing."
I do remember a much larger backlash when Obama won 8 years ago. I had to instantly delete about 5 people from my Facebook friends list for racist, violent posts.
Granted those were words and not actions.. but I wonder how many of the rioters are truly there for politics or just there to cause trouble. Unfortunately it seems that regardless of the original meaning of mass gatherings, it only takes a few instigators to ruin it for all.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
What a joke. US farmers are some of the biggest welfare queens on the planet. No one is dragging 80 pound milk cans of water by hand.
and now he thinks I am part of the God denying conspiracy.
"I hadn't been, dumbass, but now I'm strongly considering it."
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
They didn't know that the prohibition against news propaganda expired within the past couple of years?
And didn't take advantage of it?
Fucking idiot politicians. Oh, sorry, I repeated myself with those adjectives.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Let the readers do their own filtering. They do anyway.
I believe you have hit the nail on the thumb: The overriding problem is that THEY DON'T. Or that their filtering criteria do not include "reality".
This might just be the dumbest thing I've ever read: The majority of social media users do no filtering at all, beyond the filtering that was done when they chose their circle of friends. Even the most transparently obvious fake stories are parroted ad infinitum in what is essentially an echo chamber for idiocy.
there's a certain legitimacy to those sites even if it's known that they are heavily left-leaning.
Left-leaning is not fake - and "leaning" either way is acceptable when it is open and honest. For example, I trust The Wall Street Journal to be consistent and thorough, knowing that they will be biased towards big business because that's their audience. The New Yorker, on the other hand, does well-researched reporting with a liberal focus, and is also consistent and thorough, because that is their audience. The problem is when something claims to be factual, or balanced, when it is not.
Thing is that a majority of Jews in the US are Left leaning, and even the Right leaning ones in the GOP primaries were anti-Trump. So it's easy to conclude that Jews == anti-Trump. While there are indeed some Trump supporters on YouTube pages who are anti-Jewish, the fact that Jared Kushner is highly influential and that Ivanka converted to Judaism to marry him should make it obvious that Trump, of all people, wouldn't lead an anti-Jewish administration
None of the people I've known who grew up working their butts off on farms as children grew up liberal. Some Democrat, yes, but none liberal. When the only way the cows get water when the pipes freeze in winter is to smash a hole in the ice on the pond and spend the day dragging 80-pound milk cans of water up a hill in snowstorm, you do not retreat to your safe space.
The same reason why everyone here in rural western Ohio identifies at Catholic and as Browns fans (NFL). These aren't choices the children made, they were beliefs passed down by their parents and most of the kids never move far enough from home to experience anything out of their comfort zone.
I grew up Catholic, a Browns fan, and Conservative. Religion for me was gone by middle school, probably helps that we were C&E (Christmas and Easter) Catholics except when visiting my grandmother. Never cared enough about the NFL to stick with the Browns. It was my political leaning that remained with me the longest.
But then I started traveling in my early 20s. First it was seeing more of the US, then it was to Brazil a couple times, then to Asia and finally a couple countries in Europe. What I realized is that while the US is a great place, there is so much we can do better. It just happens that the Democrats at least talk about accomplishing some of those things while Republicans wish the 1950s would return.
Since you used hard working farmers as your example, let's not forget that many receive substantial government subsidies.
The tl;dr version is that most people have beliefs imprinted at an early age and rarely adjust their thinking.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
The majority of social media users do no filtering at all
That would be a personal problem, not one for the site owners to deal with.
This might just be the dumbest thing I've ever read
That leads to the assumption you don't read much :-)
Peace!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
4) He just voted in an Atheist for POTUS.
Also the "Left are rioting, we didn't!" claim ignores the situation that violence seems to be everywhere right now. Plenty of "sore winner" Trump fans beating up people, plenty of pro-Trump or fascist vandalism, etc.
So the smug lectures from the right about how they didn't riot (guess what! I didn't either!) are woefully misplaced.
I've no idea what the motives of those "rioting" at anti-Clinton rallies are. But right now I know people are legitimately terrified of what Trump is bringing. With Trump supporters telling people in front of their children they're going to be deported, with Jewish journalists sent pictures of their children being gassed in ovens by a smiling Trump, and with Trump's own violent and hate filled rhetoric, they have good reason to be scared.
Let's not pretend this is an ordinary election.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Also, Breitbart is always running pro-Israel stories and documenting anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims in Europe with the rise of the refugee crisis. If he hates Jews he's got a funny way of showing it.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I really wish people would keep talking about this, because it emphasizes what's broken with our presidential election. The electoral system is useless. It does not serve the original function of independently choosing a president, nor does it serve to represent the popular vote.
Unless/until a Constitutional amendment passes, this is the best we can do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
I really wish people would keep talking about this, because it emphasizes what's broken with our presidential election. The electoral system is useless. It does not serve the original function of independently choosing a president, nor does it serve to represent the popular vote.
Actually, talking about it RIGHT NOW mainly just makes Dems sound like sore losers. If the results had gone the opposite way (Clinton wins EC, Trump wins popular vote), I'm sure we'd have heard the same rhetoric from the other side, and Dems would be extolling the virtues of our Founders in choosing a system that would overturn a popular vote against someone like Trump.
The problem is that none of this will change unless we start getting people on BOTH SIDES to agree to change the system. That's not really a discussion anybody can have now rationally. Maybe in a year or two. Maybe if Trump's presidency implodes to the point Republicans also wish the results had been overturned.
Right now, I think most of this talk is just further alienating the Trump supporters who already felt so alienated by liberals that they voted in desperation for someone like Trump.
Radical Islamic Terror in the US is very rare - even if we include the outlier of 9-11.
Meanwhile, an anti-Semite has been appointed to Chief Strategist and hate crimes are on the rise. As a Jew, do you really think I should be more afraid of Muslims than of someone who hates Jews whispering in the President's ear?
There have been some 100 Jihad attacks in the US since 9/11- it's not all that rare. Overall, there have been something like 30k Jihad attacks worldwide since 9/11.
Crowd-source fact checking. Like!, Share!, True!, and Untrue! buttons. Remember the "CITATION NEEDED" button? Put a truth rating right next to how many likes, and shares each story gets.
Put the onus on the user, then those believing such far fetched stories have nobody to blame but themselves. Anything less is not enough, and anything more is censorship with big (I'll tell you, I mean 'UGE) abuse potential.
As a bonus, this teaches the masses critical thinking, and how to debunk garbage (and discover truth) all by themselves!
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Just because she got 2.5million more votes than Trump in California is not enough to use the popular vote as some sort of vindication.
Yeah, who cares if more people voted for her? That's not how Democracy is supposed to work!
Funny how folks don't mind if a system is "rigged" if the rigging is done so that their sides wins.
The problem is that the electoral college makes some people's vote worth less than others based on where they live.
Now, if Democrats can move people around the country in the next 4 years, it might not be a problem, but I worry that the right wants to pass laws and have a culture in the red states that would discourage liberals from living there.
Popular vote...
Clinton had the "popular vote" only becouse California (L.A) and New York. All the liberal-socialists like to live in big cities.
Because everyone knows that the citizens of some states are more important than others.
And it's not the "small states" that win out either in the electoral college, like its advocates tell us.
Alaska didn't have much vote. Wyoming and Montana and Hawaii weren't the states that mattered.
It's the "battleground" states that are the deciders in the electoral college system. Pennsylvania. Florida. Ohio. Trump focused every ounce of attention in four key states that barely swung his way on election day.
I just think it would be a bit more democratic, and politicians would have to listen to a wider spectrum of voters, if it was just as important to campaign in California and Texas as it was in Ohio, Iowa, and Florida.
This is exactly why the electors should overturn the vote and pick Clinton.
Because they're working in the system we have, not one based on the vote of the people. It's their job not to allow the ignorant electorate to cast our country off a cliff.
This was one of the major points of the electoral college -- to be the check on a particular stupid move of the people. Since it was originally put into place, the expectations changed, that an electoral voter must always vote along the lines that the people he was voting for voted. Eventually the derogatory "faithless voter" label was added to the electoral voters that didn't follow constituent voting, but the electoral college doesn't make a lot of sense if that can't happen.
Still butthurt you little bitch? Pick a better candidate next time.
Pot, meet Kette..
Leans into mike...
Wrong
We all lost. Let's not pretend that we had a good candidate and a bad candidate to choose from in the last election. We had the TWO WORST candidates for President in my lifetime. What are the chances of that actually happening? If either one of them had been halfway passable, they should have been able to beat the pants (or pants-suit) off of the other, since each was so bad. What a fucking disaster of an election, but I made my peace with this horrible outcome six months ago. There was no winning here.
Private college students
Seems to me that it's usually the public college students that protest, and most public college students live a fairly meager existence.
Or you've simply chosen your anecdote to color all conservatives with the same brush. There are plenty of other anecdotes from liberals who think all sorts of ignorant things, such as autism caused by vaccinations and holistic medicine just to name a couple of major things.
Bannon's not an anti-semite. And what's on the rise is leftist rioters beating people and setting fires in the street
Hint: the rioters don't give a shit about whether Hillary lost either. They're professional anarchists who are attracted to large crowds and use cover of the crowds to enable their violence. They're the same folks who broke things in the G8 and Seattle WTO summits. The police and the protest organizers report that outsides come in armed with weapons and covered head to toe, but there's not a lot that can be done about them when there are so many people about.
Yeah, I'm sure Donald is gonna promote antisemitism and encourage hatred against his own family.
Who knows. The man seems to act on a whim and he has no moral compass.
That's one of the things that blows my mind. There are a lot of people in the U.S. who basically said, "I'm sick of all you billionaire New York atheists controlling my life! You're out of touch with the working man, and don't care about me!" and then proceeded to elect Trump. It's like an Onion article.
Who reads this "right wing news" like, "freedom daily" and "eagle rising" when we have better news in infowars, rense, breitbart and drudge report?
And this buzzfeed does a "survey" on these questionable "right-wing" "news" outlets? And then talks to us about the "fact" that "right-wing news is not accurate"? Why not make the "survey" on breitbart or infowars or drudge or rense?
"But ________ is worse!"
and
"Don't waste your vote"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In big cities, you accept criminal activity as "normal". Which explains how big city liberals can vote for Clinton.
Or, as I say ... Hillary is the only other candidate who could lose to Trump.
Yes, she was that bad, and liberals can't fathom why she lost.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In the 1950's, children didn't riot when they lost. IT might actually be a better time.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Or both: a bug that's indistinguishable from a feature or used as a feature.
And I think we should cut politicians some slack: the world is changing and they don't know how to deal with change. A lot of countries are stumped.
Perhaps they should be called out for not being honest about not knowing how to deal with the change. Here is an example what I think would be an honest response to Trump's alleged job solutions:
"I'll be honest, technology is changing the world so fast that we politicians and economists are not fully sure how to deal it yet. We don't have all the answers."
"But we do have a best guess to solutions, and this includes better education and retraining for new kinds of jobs. Mr. Trump is tying to turn back the clock by putting up walls and barriers to keep foreign competition out."
"He also wants to re-negotiate trade deals. If he succeeds, and that's a big IF, if may postpone the inevitable, but is not addressing the core problem."
"Detroit makes about the same amount cars it did a few decades. However, fewer workers are needed to make that same amount. Automation is the real culprit, NOT trade deals. China itself may face the same problem soon as robots and automation grow better over time and are competitive with low wages."
"Our plan is to help people move into new fields not affected by these forces. And for those who have difficulty making the transition, providing a safety net so that they and their families have food, shelter, and healthcare."
"Our vision is forward-looking, not backward looking. We cannot put the technology genie back in the bottle, but must adjust with it. Donald Trump does not have God-like powers to reverse time."
"Thank You, and God Bless America!" (cue clapping)
Table-ized A.I.
Vindication? Clinton has a pretty significant popular vote lead, likely ending up at more than 2 million. In pretty much any other electoral system in the world, that would have been sufficient to grant the win to Hilary.
But no, we have the electoral college. And the reason it exists is explicitly because of slavery: the southern slave-owners wanted to ensure that their disallowing their slaves to vote wouldn't prevent them from winning the presidency. This was the foundation of the 3/5ths compromise, and the electoral college was the mechanism that was created so that the 3/5ths compromise could operate for both presidential elections as well as House elections.
Donald Trump is a flagrantly racist candidate who won because of racist institutions set up by racists in our distant past.
"But ________ is worse!"
and
"Don't waste your vote"
Fuck, there wasn't a more ideal year for the ascension of a third-party candidate.
Unfortunately both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were entirely incompetent.
I just chose a write-in candidate.
Clinton had the popular vote because more people voted for her.
One does not simply vett the news for truth.
...when some decides you believe in a lie? Maybe you believe that the arctic will be ice free by 2015. Maybe you believe that the Cubs lost the 2016 world series.
What would you have us do to you if you believe in a lie? Imprison you? Torture you? Kill you?
What exactly are you proposing to do to people who you think believe in lies?
Thanks for admitting the criminal coverup.
If nothing else, Hillary is an unindicted criminal.
Just like Nixon. What goes around comes around.
"there is so much we can do better. It just happens that the Democrats at least talk about accomplishing some of those things..."
What horseshit. The Democrats are talking about preserving Obamacare, raising taxes, trigger warnings and safe spaces; Harming people by forcing their childish, left-wing agenda on the entire country. That's not "so much we can do better", that's them being a bunch of arrogant assholes who deserve to have lost, before they destroyed the country.
Do I right click on an alt-right link or left click on it?
Battle ground states change over time.
Trump did get a majority of votes in a majority of states. The president represents the States as a union. He does not represent the people of those states.
"Love the fact that small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!" - @realDonaldTrump
For a man that "acts on a whim" or that "has no moral compass" this sure seems like an odd to tweet. Or maybe you could be wrong and the medias portrayal of the Fifth Reich rising were grossly overstated and hyperbolic?
I think it's safe to say that human beings are not very intelligent.
Fake news is part of free speech. Don't touch freedom of speech. Facebook seems more and more like a system of thought control. It's a private company, so they can filter and block whatever they want so the favorite political party of Facebook's owners can be promoted by Facebook. Freedom of speech is no longer an issue to control the thoughts of the people when the majority of the news is read on Facebook.
And Trump didn't win because there was fake news. Trump won because many people liked his message. It doesn't matter if you don't like that message, or whether you think it is homophobic, racists or sexist. If the people want such a president, then it's their choice. Fortunately these accusations were exaggerated. The tactic used by the democratic party made many people even become sympathetic to Trumps ideas simply because of those constant stream of exaggerated out of context accusations. If you focus only on demonizing your opponent but have too little focus on your own message, the tactic will not work. The MSM will prefer to talk about the porn actress that felt raped when Trump kissed her without asking instead your political plans.
The tactic of the Democratic party back-lashed. Organizing a concert of Beyonce is not enough to win black votes. It is even an insult. As if black people are 'dumb' enough to buy their votes with a 'free Beyonce' concert. But the biggest mistake was choosing the unpopular Clinton as candidate. This was clearly not listening to the people last 8 years. Occupy Wall street for example. Many people have become afraid of the powerful banks. You don't answer that fear with a president that is tied with the banks.
The fear of losing jobs to low wage countries is real. You don't answer that fear with a president who wants even more globalization. Maybe a fully globalized one world government is the best system when it is fully implement. I don't know. But it goes way too fast. People haven't recovered yet from the many jobs that have disappeared. People haven't profit yet from the on average richer society, because when you take away the top 20% the remaining 80% have become a lot poorer and most important with very little trust in the future.
A stupid red baseball cap and the promise "make America great again" both refers to the common man and the time before globalization destroyed many jobs. "Stronger together" just hints to more jobs to foreigners, either by H-1B or by moving jobs oversees. The wrong message for people who feel left behind.
The backlash of Trumps victory scares me a lot. Not because Trump is president, but because too many people with power (TV, social media, politicians, news papers) are discussing how they can prevent someone like Trump becoming president in the future. The rude, political incorrect, pussy grabbing Trump becoming a president is a win for democracy, even when he might be a bad choice for president. The democracy is build to handle bad presidents. His reign is limited to only 4 years. But he is a businessman. He wants the best for himself. Why would he want to become a bad president? Maybe he surprises the world and kick starts the economy again? Just give him a chance, it's only four years.
But if popular media like news papers, tv-stations and social media will start to work together to prevent any opposing voice in order to restore the two-party system, they can easily skip the two-party system and immediately introduce a one-party system. They can get rid of the expensive president elections and just let the party decide what the people want.
Hillary supports think she should walk into the Supreme Court and sue the US. Good luck try explaining to liberals sovereign immunity https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Those are definitely not only left wing ideas! Michele Bachmann is not even close to progressive.
What? Have you never heard of the violence faced by the Little Rock Nine?
Or the other acts of violence in the 1950s? Did you think it was like Happy Days or MASH? Heck, Southern TV stations censored TV shows so they didn't have to show blacks.
Riots happened in the 1950s. And murders like Emmett Till's. And arson.
Maybe you should crack open a book on the subject. The FBI has lots of reports too.
It blows my mind how you still don't understand that it doesn't matter how much of an elite he is. He was the one that engaged middle america and talked about saving their jobs and he was running against someone who didn't give a shit and is quite happy shipping jobs out of the country.
If you're drowning and your choice is between two people, one of them flipping you the bird or the other throwing you a rope, you are going to grab that rope even if it's the devil holding it.
Look no further than the 9/11 truthers
To lose at Monopoly (tm) means you don't have any property or money left. The only way to lose is to lose everything.
That thing in his hand that you think is a rope? It's something much less pleasant...
Trump said the Mexicans were sending rapists, he didn't say Mexican gangs. He implied many if not most Mexicans coming to this country were rapists. You are the one lying with your statement that he said Mexican gangs.
" When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best....They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
As for Benghazi, the Republicans held numerous hearings on it to smear Clinton, and could never pin anything on her. She bears some guilt, but so do Republicans, because they cut funding for embassies. Embassy attacks happened during Bush's term and Reagan's term. Shit happens and leaders screw up, but only the Republicans built a smear campaign about something that's happened to many presidents and Secretaries of State.
Did you complain about Bush lying us into the War in Iraq? I doubt it.
If you think Trump is any less crooked the Hillary, you're a fool.
FWIW I didn't vote for either one of them. I think the Democrats in general are corrupt, but the Republicans are even more corrupt overall, it that were possible. Yes, Hilary is corrupt, but no more corrupt than Trump, Bush, Cruz, Paul Ryan, Gingrich, Cheney, Giuliano etc. If you can't see this you are a fool.
Has a Republican ever given a shit for the hundreds of thousands innocent people killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the numerous wars in U.S. has been involved in? I"ve never seen one. Most Democrats don't care either, but at least a few do. There isn't a single Republican that does though.
Ultimately, Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Obama, and most in Congress who approve U.S. wars, as well as the Pentagon and the CIA are murderers. And Trump will soon join that group.That's why I refuse the vote for any of them. I don't want the blood of innocent people on my hands.
It isn't irrelevant. It is an important notion. President Trump has to govern everyone.
Universal health care, taxing for social programs, reducing military spending.. is that so wrong?
Sure we have a long way to go to make all of those efficient and legitimate but it would be much easier if we didn't have one half of the political spectrum simply existing to undo what the other side does.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
I assure you there's no problem.
This. A thousand fucking times.
I don't think Facebook can really solve this problem as creating an algorithm that can detect fake news would require some top-notch AI.
If an AI is developed that can actually do this, I say we just let it be in charge. I, for one, etc etc.
"...disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people's feeds."
Sounds like it's working just fine to me.
"Love the fact that small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!" - @realDonaldTrump
For a man that "acts on a whim" or that "has no moral compass" this sure seems like an odd to tweet. Or maybe you could be wrong and the medias portrayal of the Fifth Reich rising were grossly overstated and hyperbolic?
I forget, was that a day after he tweeted the exact opposite sentiments? Oh, right, it was.
Buzzfeed; the ultimate arbiter of which political side of the aisle is more biased.
If you read Federalist Paper 68, you'll find that Publius said the Electoral College was very much to make sure that someone like Trump would not be elected.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's one of the things that blows my mind. There are a lot of people in the U.S. who basically said, "I'm sick of all you billionaire New York atheists controlling my life! You're out of touch with the working man, and don't care about me!" and then proceeded to elect Trump. It's like an Onion article.
Sort of funny that they managed to keep one corrupt, elitist New York Democrat out of office by voting in another corrupt, elitist New York Democrat.
Good point. I preferred the seemingly not corrupt and not elitist candidate from New York, but somehow he didn't make it that far.
That may have been a reason that some put forward, but it doesn't have much to do with the arguments among politicians that were happening at the time. See here for a more in-depth analysis. Without slavery, I sincerely doubt the electoral college would have won out over a simple direct election.
Conservatives, Constitutionalists, Truthers, and anyone who cares about freedom owns Facebook. We Own Facebook, much to the chagrin of its founder.
Members of the Kook Fringe Left regularly Troll FACEBOOK, because they crave our attention. That is just part of their psychosis. And, we handle them with honest communication.
This is the way it is.
You came down here? You just can't say "Brazil" and "do better" (than the USA) in the same line of thought.
One thing that you gringos don't understand is that it’s not the government’s job to accomplish "things". Our Brazilian and Venezuelan governments always try to do “things” down here. Pray that it stays out of your way so that YOU can accomplish your goals in life.
Let’s read less MARX and more MISSES.
Thanks - bookmarked that page for use in later arguments.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
During the primaries, I pointed out that people were upset with slimy politicians quo enough that both parties were being overrun by non-party members in their primaries. Of course, the Republicans got rid of the politician part and the Democrats got rid of the slimy part.
Battle ground states change over time.
But the problem remains the same -- you get to focus your attention on a small section of the country and ignore the rest.