Facebook Suspends Donald Trump's Data Operations Team For Misusing People's Personal Information (theverge.com) 195
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Facebook said late Friday that it had suspended Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), along with its political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, for violating its policies around data collection and retention. The companies, which ran data operations for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign, are widely credited with helping Trump more effectively target voters on Facebook than his rival, Hillary Clinton. While the exact nature of their role remains somewhat mysterious, Facebook's disclosure suggests that the company improperly obtained user data that could have given it an unfair advantage in reaching voters. Facebook said it cannot determine whether or how the data in question could have been used in conjunction with election ad campaigns.
In a blog post, Facebook deputy general counsel Paul Grewal laid out how SCL came into possession of the user data. In 2015, Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge, created an app named "thisisyourdigitallife" that promised to predict aspects of users' personalities. About 270,000 people downloaded it and logged in through Facebook, giving Kogan access to information about their city of residence, Facebook content they had liked, and information about their friends. Kogan passed the data to SCL and a man named Christopher Wylie from a data harvesting firm known as Eunoia Technologies, in violation of Facebook rules that prevent app developers from giving away or selling users' personal information. Facebook learned of the violation that year and removed his app from Facebook. It also asked Kogan and his associates to certify that they had destroyed the improperly collected data. Everyone said that they did. The suspension is not permanent, a Facebook spokesman said. But the suspended users would need to take unspecified steps to certify that they would comply with Facebook's terms of service.
In a blog post, Facebook deputy general counsel Paul Grewal laid out how SCL came into possession of the user data. In 2015, Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge, created an app named "thisisyourdigitallife" that promised to predict aspects of users' personalities. About 270,000 people downloaded it and logged in through Facebook, giving Kogan access to information about their city of residence, Facebook content they had liked, and information about their friends. Kogan passed the data to SCL and a man named Christopher Wylie from a data harvesting firm known as Eunoia Technologies, in violation of Facebook rules that prevent app developers from giving away or selling users' personal information. Facebook learned of the violation that year and removed his app from Facebook. It also asked Kogan and his associates to certify that they had destroyed the improperly collected data. Everyone said that they did. The suspension is not permanent, a Facebook spokesman said. But the suspended users would need to take unspecified steps to certify that they would comply with Facebook's terms of service.
What a joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
And they seriously say they don't know how that information could have been misused? Bullshit. If I can figure it out after spending 20 minutes with their stupid API, then they built it into the business plan and it's not possible they aren't fully aware of exactly how it was meant to work.
Re:What a joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is rather amazing how they can track everything about you down to what you had for breakfast this morning, but when comes to determining any possible negative information about their operations, why, they just have no idea.
Re:What a joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
From bulk of available data, completely new, formerly unavailable data can be extracted. Correlations, statistics, trends - stuff "hidden in plain sight". Use geolocation and racial background and you can reliably predict credit capacity. Analyze shopping patterns and you can find hobbies. Finding political preferences, in particular "hesitant, open to suggestion" is definitely possible following history of likes on various articles, and sites frequented.
Of course the excuse of "misusing" here is total bullshit. Facebook constantly misuses personal information. Their app listens in [youtube.com] while your phone is in sleep mode, to fine tune their ad suggestions,
The only "misuse" here was "regular use, but helping Trump".
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Remember about how about 10 years ago Democrats were gloating about how those old, rickety Republicans were at a tremendous disadvantage because they didn't know how to leverage the internet and social media? It sounds to me like they figured out how to use social media AS THE GREAT DATA SPONGE IT WAS DESIGNED TO BE perfectly fine. The indignation is that the "wrong" people figured it out.
The "shame" is on everyone who freely gives out their personal information for, what? Nothing at all. Here you go, w
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I read that article. And I deem it bullshit.
"This is functionally equivalent to an always-on phone call from you to Facebook." Except all the preprocessing can be done in the phone boiling the 3kB/s to 20 bytes per second, only when speaking. If you speak 4 hours a day, that's still less than 300K per daily digest. The built-in hardware of the phone is custom-made to make this easy and power-efficient (the GSM encoding!) and since it doesn't keep broadcasting live, with transmitter powered down the power re
"Nobody can misuse our data but us!" (Score:2, Interesting)
They're only mad that their proprietary data got out, not that it was being "misused." That's the power of marketing, baby!
Re:"Nobody can misuse our data but us!" (Score:5, Insightful)
They're only mad that their proprietary data got out, not that it was being "misused." That's the power of marketing, baby!
Exactly. Can't have other people selling personal data, only Google and Facebook are allowed to do that.
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Terse, but perhaps worth an insightful mod if I ever saw one to give. The soulless and cancerous corporations should NOT own our personal data to abuse for their greater profits. Not even a real problem, since there is no amount of profit that could satisfy the fake problem.
I think we should own our own personal data, including where it is stored and how it is used. In the case where we post something (like this comment) for public consideration, that should be available for public use, and Facebook (but ev
Re: "Nobody can misuse our data but us!" (Score:2)
The right to bear arms is regularly considered near unlimited, at least with respect to things up to and including AR15s.
The right to privacy implied in the same constitution is regularly limited all over the place. Our personal data should be covered in that right to privacy even if we have to have another amendment to do it.
You're terribly confused. Your right to bear arms is not some magical pixie dust which protects you from everyone; it's a limitation on what the government is allowed to do to you. It has no bearing on private individuals. If I disarm you, I am not violating your 2nd amendment rights. This has been tested in the courts, so feel free to look it up. I may or may not be violating some federal or state law, but as a private individual I can never be said to have infringed on your constitutional rights. Er
Re: "Nobody can misuse our data but us!" (Score:3)
How much of Facebook's revenue comes from fedgov black budget?
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I think you need to see this [theonion.com] for a good laugh.
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> If I disarm you, I am not violating your 2nd amendment rights.
If you disarm me, you are committing a common law crime and a tort and I have legal recourse against you.
You are also risking getting shot by the rest of my family including the ones that live nearby. Some of them are within rifle range.
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They're only mad that their proprietary data got out, not that it was being "misused." That's the power of marketing, baby!
Exactly. Can't have other people selling personal data, only Google and Facebook are allowed to do that.
Like it or not I've given consent to Google and Facebook to use my personal data for targeted ads, search results, etc. You may think I and others who've done this have made a dumb choice, you might think there should be regs that manage this relationship, but there has been consent.
Kogan made an agreement with FB that he's collect data only for his app's benefit. He also made an agreement with each user who used his app that the data would only be used for the app's benefit.
And then he went and sold the da
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All their base are belong to them.
pure political bs (Score:1, Insightful)
The DC kleptocrats, from DNC-Hill to Sen. Cruz(R) had much more intrusive data operations.
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The DC kleptocrats, from DNC-Hill to Sen. Cruz(R) had much more intrusive data operations.
By what absurd granule of cognitive dissonance did you come to the conclusion Facebook isn't an integral part of that?
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How many sock puppets in your herd to get the fake moderation points? And how did you hack the relatively low user ID?
The problem wasn't being intrusive (Score:2)
Now, would FB have gone after them if Trump hadn't won? Probably not. What would have been the point? But Trump did win (thanks Hilary, you i
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Re: The problem wasn't being intrusive (Score:2)
You sound like someone who has never read Mao.
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Re: The problem wasn't being intrusive (Score:2)
Naxalites?
Re: The problem wasn't being intrusive (Score:2)
Lick those boots!
Re:pure political bs (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot comments are increasingly just ranting conspiracy theories. Sad.
Blame allocation (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would attach more blame to Facebook for allowing people to pull a stunt like this
If you are referring to the elevation of Donald Trump we should attach all blame where it belongs: on the idiots that voted for him.
Whatever stunts were pulled with social media by these guys and the Russians, the essential facts about Donald Trump and what an incredible dishonest, morally cretinous fraud he is were out there for anyone with the slightest inclination to do so could find. They elected this scumbag all pumped up with inane slogans. To this day too many of them defend him regardless of the c
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That's right, fellow Tolerant Liberal! As we all know, ONLY politicians with a (D) should be able to collude with Russians and accept 150 million dollar bribes from them. It's only bad when other people do it!
Re:Blame allocation (Score:4, Interesting)
But that's the thing: I think a lot of people don't just like Trump; they want to be him. They want what they see in Trump: the TV job; the cars; the helicopters; the glamorous parties; the flash and bling; the commanded "respect," etc. At some point, though, many of us realized that we weren't going to be the next DLR or EVH. We might have even changed our minds completely, and rejected that person after learning of this or that scandal. Evidently, with Trump, the scandals and his obvious inadequacies for the job of president do not register with these folks. Instead of bringing them down to earth, they just dig in deeper. Maybe someone with a better grasp of psychology could tell you why. I'm guessing dissatisfaction with their personal lives, with likely a large touch of insecurity.
Bottom line: Is it really "idiocy," or is it escapism? Are Trump's supporters, in fact, a legion of fantasizing Walter Mittys?
Re:Blame allocation (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because you seemed to have missed the unending stream of scandals that are getting pretty hard to keep track of at this point both due to their depth and number. I guess if you don't want a fully functioning US Federal government for whatever reason it looks pretty good, but there big gaping holes in multiple key federal agencies functions, and those holes have only been growing bigger this week. Neither the political appointee level nor the career civil servant level seem par
Re:Blame allocation (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you kidding? Trump is running out of staff to fire and just started a damaging trade war. He failed to improve healthcare, backed out of Paris, made the office of POTUS a global laughing stock...
Is there anything positive he has actually done? H1B reform perhaps. He was a useful idiot for Kim. Not much of an achievement.
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As for me, if he doesn't start a war, then he's not the worst president this century.
Re:Blame allocation (Score:4, Informative)
Trump did a few positive things...
1. Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch
2. 59 missiles dropped in Syria
3. He took us out of TPP
4. Illegal immigration is now down 70%( the lowest in 17 years)
5. Consumer confidence highest since 2000 at index 125.6
6. Mortgage applications for new homes rise to a seven year high
7. Arranged from 7% to 24% Tariff on lumber from Canada
8. Bids for border wall are well underway
9. Pulled out of the lopsided Paris accord
10. Keystone pipeline approved
11. NATO allies boost spending by 4.3%
12. Allowing VA to terminate bad employees
13. Allowing private healthcare choices for veterans
14. More than 600,000jobs created
15. Median household income at a 7 year high
16. The Stock Market is at the highest ever in its history
17. China agreed to American import of beef
18. $89 Billion saved in regulation rollbacks
19. Rollback of A Regulation to boost coal mining
20. MOAB for ISIS
21. Travel ban reinstated
22. Executive order for religious freedom
23. Jump started NASA
24. $600 million cut from UN peacekeeping budget
25. Targeting of MS13 gangs
26. Deporting violent illegal immigrants
27. Signed 41 bills to date
28. Created a commission on child trafficking
29. Created a commission on voter fraud
30. Created a commission for opioids addiction
31. Giving power to states to drug test unemployment recipients
32. Unemployment lowest since May 2007
33. Historic Black College University initiative
34. Women In Entrepreneurship Act
35. Created an office for illegal immigrant crime victims
36. Reversed Dodd-Frank
37. Repealed DOT ruling which would have taken power away from local governments for infrastructure planning 38. Order to stop crime against law enforcement
39. End of DAPA program
40. Stopped companies from moving out of America
41. Promoted businesses to create American Jobs
42. Encouraged country to once again - 'Buy American and hire American'
43. Cutting regulations - 2 for every one created
45. Review of all trade agreements to make sure they are America first
46. Apprentice program
47. Highest manufacturing surge in 3 years
48. $78 Billion promised reinvestment from major businesses like Exxon, Bayer, Apple, SoftBank, Toyota
49. Denied FBI a new building
50. $700 million saved with F-35 renegotiation
51. Saves $22 million by reducing white house payroll
52. Dept of Treasury reports a $182 billion surplus for April 2017 (2nd largest in history)
53. Negotiated the release of 6 US humanitarian workers held captive in Egypt
54. Gas prices lowest in more than 12 years
55. Signed An Executive Order To Promote Energy Independence and Economic Growth
56. Has already accomplished more to stop government interference into people's lives than any President in the history of America
57. President Trump has worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any President since Truman
58. Has given head executive of each branches 6 month time frame, dated March 15, 2017, to trim the fat, restructure and improve
efficiency of their branch. (Observe the push-back the leaks the lies as entrenched POWER refuses to go silently into that good night!)
59. Last, refused his Presidential pay check. Donated it to Veterans issues
60. Repealed the abusive EPA WOTUS regs imposed by Obama.
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1. Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch
2. 59 missiles dropped in Syria
3. He took us out of TPP
4. Illegal immigration is now down 70%( the lowest in 17 years)
7. Arranged from 7% to 24% Tariff on lumber from Canada
8. Bids for border wall are well underway
9. Pulled out of the lopsided Paris accord
10. Keystone pipeline approved
11. NATO allies boost spending by 4.3%
12. Allowing VA to terminate bad employees
13. Allowing private healthcare choices for veterans
18. $89 Billion saved in regulation rollbacks
19. Rollback of A Regulation to boost coal mining
20. MOAB for ISIS
21. Travel ban reinstated
22. Executive order for religious freedom
24. $600 million cut from UN peacekeeping budget
29. Created a commission on voter fraud
31. Giving power to states to drug test unemployment recipients
36. Reversed Dodd-Frank
39. End of DAPA program
43. Cutting regulations - 2 for every one created
45. Review of all trade agreements to make sure they are America first
55. Signed An Executive Order To Promote Energy Independence and Economic Growth
56. Has already accomplished more to stop government interference into people's lives than any President in the history of America
58. Has given head executive of each branches 6 month time frame, dated March 15, 2017, to trim the fat, restructure and improve
60. Repealed the abusive EPA WOTUS regs imposed by Obama.
These are all bad things he did.
5. Consumer confidence highest since 2000 at index 125.6
6. Mortgage applications for new homes rise to a seven year high
15. Median household income at a 7 year high
16. The Stock Market is at the highest ever in its history
23. Jump started NASA
27. Signed 41 bills to date
41. Promoted businesses to create American Jobs
47. Highest manufacturing surge in 3 years
52. Dept of Treasury reports a $182 billion surplus for April 2017 (2nd largest in history)
53. Negotiated the release of 6 US humanitarian workers held captive in Egypt
54. Gas prices lowest in more than 12 years
These would have happened anyway.
Re:Blame allocation (Score:4, Insightful)
How is Judge Gorsuch bad? Everything that I have seen and read about Gorsuch has shown a well tempered, honorable, intelligent, and principled man.
If you think he was soooo bad you have to explain why he was appointed to the Circuit court of appeals unanimously by the same people that voted against his Supreme court nomination.
You may not like Trump or what Trump does but Gorsuch is a good judge by every measure.
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It was supposed to be Obama's pick. The system is stupid but that's how it works, and Obama made a perfectly good choice. Republican's refused because they saw an opportunity to stack the SCOTUS.
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Ok, that has nothing to do with Gorsuch. That was politics and a gambit that McConnell bet big and won. Saying Gorsuch is bad because politics is stupid. Saying that the POTUS nomination == confirmation ignores the Constitutional power of the Senate and again has nothing to do with Gorsuch.
You don't have a leg to stand on and that is apparent that your excuse is comes down to the constitutional power of the Senate.
45 contained the MAFIAA by leaving the TPP (Score:3)
3. He took us out of TPP
These are all bad things he did.
I see this particular item differently: a stopped-clock moment in which President Trump helped save the world from the United States. After the United States left the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it passed without the harmful copyright provisions on which USTR insisted at the behest of the music and film industry associations of America. How is helping to contain the MAFIAA's push to spread copyright maximalism a bad thing?
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I completely agree with that assessment. TTP has been very good for the remaining countries that went with it sans I.P. provisions.
The problem is that now the US wants to do individual trade deals, and they are all terrible for the other countries involved. Japan is trying to stall and wait it his presidency, for example.
Pulling out wasn't a terrible thing to do, especially compared to the other stuff, but it would have been better to fix it.
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Trump hasn't raised NASA's budget. Trump hasn't put a cogent NASA or national space policy in place. (In fact, his "policy" is President Obama's with a couple of lines changed and a whole bunch of puffed chest and meaningless propaganda.) Trump has done shit for NASA except to assemble yet another committee to put their political fingers in the pie.
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From the very first fucking line of the article:
The next few lines, if you're familiar with NASA other than through Trump's propaganda, are meaningless puffery - they're more-or-less exactly what NASA has been doing all through the Obama administration and some of it as far back as President Bush. When you read the rest of the article, it's just more of the same -
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Healthcare was ruined by the last president
You mean how more people got coverage, preexisting conditions went away, and the rate of healthcare growing slowed?
Yeah, it was destroyed.
that needs to be reformatted and reinstalled from scratch
How? Trump said he had a brilliant solution during the election... yet for some reason all we got was a gong show from the legislative branch.
Backing out of Paris was a Very Good Thing since the US was basically going to pay for all the other countries.
Good point, except for the fact it was a non-binding agreement for which you didn't have to pay a dime.
We don't need to sign some agreement to improve our global warming responsiblities.
True. But putting industry lackeys in charge of the DOE and EPA who go out of their way to subsidize coal plants isn't a very goo
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Yes I included the voter fraud commission, just because it was disbanded doesn't mean it was a bad idea, just means this commission didn't work out but voter fraud is a serious issue and Trump should be applauded for at least trying to tackle it https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com]
Voter fraud is not a problem in the US [politifact.com].
I can't recall how many times I heard some Republican claim "oh we found rock solid evidence of 1000 cases of voter fraud!" and you'll later hear that at least 999 of them turned out to be due to crappy government databases and the remaining one almost certainly was as well... but there's also a small chance it was a green card holder who got confused. The GOP just keeps pushing the lie because it serves as an excuse to implement voter IDs, and when you insist that vot
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Trump said he had a brilliant solution during the election... yet for some reason all we got was a gong show from the legislative branch.
To be fair though, who knew healthcare was so complicated?!? Certainly not Trump.
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Is there anything positive he has actually done? H1B reform perhaps. He was a useful idiot for Kim. Not much of an achievement.
I hate trump, but one positive thing was the first ever audit of the DOD 'misplacing' 21 thousand billion dollars [npr.org] Given that this could have paid off nearly all national debt, or expanded health care to everyone and paid for free college for all, I think some kind of accounting for unconstitutional appropriation of vast sums of money is a good thing.
Re:Blame allocation (Score:5, Insightful)
Line ticket democrats will never, ever admit that a Republican is doing a good job. They will admit grudgingly to Republicans that might have done a good job in the past so long as there is a greater Republican evil in the present.
The people nor the country matter.
It's all about that Blue Tribe.
What's happening today including foreign collusion by political parties, corruption, and the bitter division among people, was foretold with shocking accuracy and precision over 200 years ago.
A portion of a quote on the subject of the dangers of political parties:
"...It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. ..." -- George Washington
I don't think Washington could have written more of a spot-on description of the current state of the US body-politic, unless it had a line at the bottom; "sent from my damned iPhone"!
Strat
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No need to over-think this. He is a populist, a demagogue. Same technique that has worked over and over throughout history. When times are hard someone like Trump can promise simple solutions like getting rid of immigrants, building a wall, opening up obsolete industries and "draining the swamp".
People respond to simple ideas that seem like they will produce quick results. The truth, that the problems are complex and difficult to solve and will require them to charge too is a much harder sell.
Re: (Score:3)
You're making it too complex (Score:2, Informative)
There's a ton of really desperate folks in swing states. Hilary called them the Blue Firewall and ignored them. Trump listened to them and told them what they wanted to hear. It doesn't matter that he was lying. There was a chance, however small, that he wasn't. They had nothing to lose.
The real problem
Re:You're making it too complex (Score:4, Insightful)
Was he lying? It seems to me that he is actually trying to fulfill those promises. You may disagree on what he is doing and disagree on whether his policy will help but I honestly do not believe he lied about trying to help those people. He has been keeping is campaign promises.
How has he lied to them?
We have two years of evidence (Score:2)
a. Backed off on ending DACA and endorsed amnesty. Whatever your opinion (personally I think it'd be nuts to try and deport them at this point) of this it was core promise.
b. Gave Carrier millions in subsidies to keep jobs that they promptly sent to Mexico as soon as nobody was looking.
c. Expanding the number of H1-B & H2-B recipients, failed to repeal Obama's executive order allowing their spouses to work in this country.
d. Did a $1.5 trillion tax cut where 80% of the benefits a
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lol. What are you talking about?
A) DACA wasn't mentioned in campaign. How was that a lie? Immigration law is being enforced. Illegal immigration is down. Travel bans in place. Promise kept from what I can tell.
B) What does Carrier have to do with anything during the campaign promises? He tried to keep them in the US and htey are leaving anyway... so he kept a promise to try and help. Ok? I think you misunderstand what promise being kept means.
C) Okay. [cnn.com]
D) People paying less taxes is lying to them? Lowering co
Amenesty was (Score:2)
You'd support Sanders & the Democrats (NOT the DNC, there's a difference) because unless you're independently wealthy you're a member of the working class and he (and his ilk) are the only ones who genuinely have your interests at heart. If you think you're some kind of mover and shaker who's going to make it in the world, well, you're shit-posting in response to a borderline libtard troll. That ship sailed my friend. Like it or not you're one of us, and Trump
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Yes, DACA is amnesty that started by Obama executive order. There are court battles over DACA renewals and the proper fix is immigration reform via Congress. Trump offered amnesty for DACA for other compromises. That proposal was sank. I don't understand your point. How has he lied about his position on immigration? He brought the conversation of DACA front and center by not renewing it.
I am working class. Sanders doesn't give a shit about working class or poor people. He pays lip service but his policies a
He promised his followers no amnesty (Score:2)
And you have to start somewhere. Single payer healthcare is a good place. Regulating Wall Street to prevent another market crash is another. Just because good ideas won't pass doesn't mean you throw up your hands and give up. You've surrendered to easi
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Go out there and vote Bernie (and the Justice Democrats,
No thanks. I disagree with many items on their platform and frankly Cenk is a buffoon. Additionally, anyone that thinks "ban on assault weapons" is "common-sense" is an idiot which tends to be the type of person to push for more gun regulation because they don't understand guns or the existing laws we currently have. Anyone that thinks suicide will be solved by banning guns is in an idiot (US is average for suicide). Using suicides to inflate the statistics is dishonest, at least they mention only a third a
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Well, day one came and went. What day are we at?
You don't need congressional approval. Just ask somebody to do something. Instead, he killed TPP, which helped China. And China officially became a dictatorship again. Wow, Tru
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Was he lying? It seems to me that he is actually trying to fulfill those promises. You may disagree on what he is doing and disagree on whether his policy will help but I honestly do not believe he lied about trying to help those people. He has been keeping is campaign promises.
How has he lied to them?
So he's going to pass steel tariffs and raise the cost of manufacturing in the US? Sure he's kinda fulfilling a promise, but he's actually harming the people he was supposed to help.
What about the "tax cut" which was effectively just a massive wealth transfer to the rich (including himself), which one of his promises was that?
Or when he made a bunch of nonsensical promises on healthcare and then pushed for a healthcare bill that broke all of them?
I'll agree he's trying to keep out immigrants, reduce trade d
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...steel tariffs... Sure he's kinda fulfilling a promise, but he's actually harming the people he was supposed to help.
Again, "You may disagree on what he is doing and disagree on whether his policy will help". I think we both agree that it does count as "fulfilling a promise". Whether it achieves the goal or not is debatable.
"tax cut" which was effectively just a massive wealth transfer to the rich
Taxing less is a wealth transfer? That doesn't make sense. Keeping more of the money you earned is a wealth transfer? I guess if you feel entitled to other peoples money. However, can you explain: "When upper-income Americans prosper, so do middle-income and lower-income Americans. Conversely, when hi [aier.org]
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...steel tariffs... Sure he's kinda fulfilling a promise, but he's actually harming the people he was supposed to help.
Again, "You may disagree on what he is doing and disagree on whether his policy will help". I think we both agree that it does count as "fulfilling a promise". Whether it achieves the goal or not is debatable.
There were two parts to your claim, first he's trying to fulfill promises, and second, he's trying to help people.
With the tariffs I think it's fulfilling a promise, but I don't think he actually believes it will help people as much as he thinks a trade war will be exciting and good for his poll numbers.
"tax cut" which was effectively just a massive wealth transfer to the rich
Taxing less is a wealth transfer? That doesn't make sense. Keeping more of the money you earned is a wealth transfer?
The money to fund the tax cut is coming from the treasury and massively raising the debt. Sooner or later that money has to be paid back, either through inflation (everyone is a bit less wealthy), raising ta
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it just transfers more of that wealth to the richest.
Again, I have a hard time understanding that phrasing. It assumes that anything the federal government spends money on is worthwhile to the universal benefit. Is that true? Why should it be spent at the federal level? Take the Department of Education. Since 1980, has American education been improved with the billions of taxes we spent? I am not sure there are many successful measures to say that education has been better primarily because we spend more taxes on the DoE. Education in the US has been characte
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But that's the thing: I think a lot of people don't just like Trump; they want to be him. They want what they see in Trump: the TV job; the cars; the helicopters; the glamorous parties; the flash and bling; the commanded "respect," etc. At some point, though, many of us realized that we weren't going to be the next DLR or EVH. We might have even changed our minds completely, and rejected that person after learning of this or that scandal. Evidently, with Trump, the scandals and his obvious inadequacies for the job of president do not register with these folks. Instead of bringing them down to earth, they just dig in deeper. Maybe someone with a better grasp of psychology could tell you why. I'm guessing dissatisfaction with their personal lives, with likely a large touch of insecurity.
I don't think that's quite it.
People overestimate their capabilities, as a result most people feel they're not doing as well as they deserve to be. Who is to blame for this injustice? The system.
That's why every politician runs on change, because people think if you fix system you'll fix the injustice and they'll be better off.
The problem is that system, while flawed, isn't quite as corrupt as they believe, and when confronted by this reality most politicians end up sounding roughly the same.
Trump is comple
Re: Blame allocation (Score:1)
"Polls say Hillary in a landslide. Be prepared to eat crow!"
-You, circa October 2016
Who shall guard these selfsame mindless mushrooms? (Score:2)
For that you got an insightful mod? Fundamental misconception of lumping the Trump voters into one mass. How can you claim much insight with such a flawed foundation?
There are many small groups that form Trump's constituents. It will be interesting to find out which ones remain in his "deep base" when this next election comes around.
While I sort of agree that collectively they are responsible for the #FatNixon fiasco, this story is about a couple of groups that were subject to convenient manipulation via Fa
Re: (Score:2)
For that you got an insightful mod? Fundamental misconception of lumping the Trump voters into one mass. How can you claim much insight with such a flawed foundation?
There are only two kinds of Trump voter: wealthy people who want to keep all their money and don't care about anyone else, and total goddamned idiots who will never, ever get out of Trump what they thought they would get when they voted for him.
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Your main comment is an imposed ontology, but I regard that as unfair. It is important to understand that the binary decision to vote or not vote for #PresidentTweety was overlaid on a rather complicated reality. I actually think the key to understanding Trump's so-called victory is the poor analytic skills of people who could convince themselves that Trump was lying to everyone else, but telling ONLY THEM the truths they wanted to hear. Yes, they might well know that Trump had said exactly opposite things
Re: (Score:2)
Then it's fair to say that only Dem sycophants and recipients of Clinton graft were the voters on the other side, n'est-ce pas?
And people who choose the lesser of evils.
There's plenty of blame to go around (Score:5, Insightful)
Worst thing is the right wing corporate Dems haven't learned a damn thing and they're probably gonna run Hilary 2.0 (Kamala Harris). What they hell is the bloody point of voting for a Democrat who's gonna run things like a Republican?
Re: There's plenty of blame to go around (Score:5, Insightful)
All Hilary had to do was take him seriously and campaign properly (or at all) in the swing states.
Hillary's campaign had and spent about double the money that Trump did on his campaign. Seems they were pretty serious. The thing is ... no matter how much money you spend buying makeup for a pig, it's still going to be a pig.
She spent $700 million of that (Score:3)
Re: She spent $700 million of that (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure she got Rhomey'd. e.g. the firms thought they had an easy win so they pocketed the money and didn't campaign.
If that's the case, she should sue.
It's certainly a possible explanation, but less likely than the alternative. Ockham's Razor says that, all else being equal, the explanation which requires the fewest assumptions is more likely to be true. We know that she was an unlikable candidate with very little "organic" appeal. We know that a massive portion of the people who would normally constitute the Democrat base were extremely pissed off that she got nominated over Bernie. Given those two things, we don't n
I don't think she has it in her (Score:2)
Yes, if she was less incompetent her firms wouldn't have fleeced her. If she'd had less baggage Trump couldn't have won. If nationalism hadn't grown so much she could have won. If the Russian's hadn't interfered she could have won. If she hadn't ignored the working class she could have won. There's
Re: There's plenty of blame to go around (Score:2)
tl;dr: the republicans did to her image what the democrats did to Trump's image.
Shocker. Never before in politics have we seen political parties trying to malign the reputation of opposing politicians. This is a truly horrific and completely unexpected development.
Re: (Score:2)
Worst thing is the right wing corporate Dems haven't learned a damn thing and they're probably gonna run Hilary 2.0 (Kamala Harris). What they hell is the bloody point of voting for a Democrat who's gonna run things like a Republican?
This is exactly what I'm afraid of. Her reputation is totally disconnected from her actions; it's worth repeating a previous post of mine about her...
[...] from all indications, the Dems have learned nothing from losing to Trump and will find a way to do it again. Probably by trying to run Kamala Harris for instance. So they lose everyone not cool with 'equality is racism/sexism and white men are evil' and eliminating all due process for sex crimes (particularly on college campuses) to staying home or even
Facebook operating as designed (Score:1)
But for the wrong side, so we're suspending them.
Seriously, though. The data was from a relatively small number of users who were not necessarily all U.S. voters a year before the firm was hired by the Trump campaign and there's a possibility that maybe not all of it was deleted, so the Verge acts like Facebook confirmed Trump stole the election. Look at the weasel language in the current version of TFA as of this writing (almost the opposite of the excerpt in the summary, incidentally):
Facebook’s disclosure suggests that the company improperly obtained user data that could have given it an unfair advantage in reaching voters.
The Verge thinks tha
virtue signalling? (Score:3, Interesting)
It was not that long ago that the Trump team announced the guy who will run the 2020 re-election campaign is going to be the guy who ran Trump's digital campaign efforts, and there were stories about how he had cleverly taken advantage of a program Facebook offered to BOTH campaigns to embed teams to help with digital outreach (Facebook was NOT favoring Trump, Hillary simply turned down Facebook's offer).
In the modern era of outraged boycotting left wingers who go nuts against any company they suspect has been anything other than hostile to their enemies, is is possible this is Facebook's way of trying to deflect and protect itself from blowback?
Odd and bad things can happen when mobs with torches and pitchforks (real or virtual) are on the rampage.
Support freedom (Score:2)
Great brands will move in to support the freedom of speech.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm afraid that "Great brands" is not the same as supporting open competition or the marketplace of ideas. What makes you think that a "great brand" would welcome competition?
Anything to make the President look bad (Score:1)
Curious (Score:2)
...I recall the plaudits and praise that was widespread after the 2008/2012 election for the Obama team's aggressive and comprehensive use of Facebook and other online data to target and sway voters.
Funny that the dems went from cutting edge to incompetent in 2 elections, and even more interesting that use of those tools is now somehow considered malignant.
Almost like there's a double standard...
Call me cynical but... (Score:2)
Sure, it is wrong for one political group to have such a decided advantage
Might be time for SNS regulation after all (Score:3)
Here's the problem with this:
Facebook could legitimately feel that terms were broken, or they might not. They might or might not choose to enforce those terms against customers that they "like" (no pun intended) that just so happen to be affiliated with the other side. There's a normal liberatarian-ish response to just say that private companies can do whatever they want, but the Social Networks are *so* powerful (80%+ engagement, 90%+ ad revenue if you include Google AdWords) that removal of that is a huge competitive disadvantage to disfavored candidates and parties.
We already have some regulations requiring equal broadcasting time and access to over-the-air political ads during a campaign season, which were developed during the time when TV was the most important demographic advertising source around. In 2018, this is social media.
We need real regulation of the handling of personal data and ad networks, to prevent tech industry's overwhelming power being used only for candidates its employees specifically support. These aren't just "regular companies" any more... They have more day-to-day power over American culture than Standard Oil ever did, and unless/until real anti-trust regulation happens and data storage is handled independently from advertising, we need to ensure the situation doesn't get more and more worse.
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're right, it's the other way around.
Cambridge Analytica is owned by SCL which is owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his harridan daughter/wife, Rebekah. They also own the Breitbart septic tank, as well as the manchurian candidate known as Donald J Trump, who is currently on loan to some Russian oligarchs and a terrorist named Putin who just murdered people in Britain with chemical weapons. One of the people he murdered was business partner of a Russian-born business partner of Donald Trump, a guy named Sater, who is a double-agent and convicted money launderer who tried to get Trump financing for a Moscow Trump Tower and is now an informant for the Mueller investigation.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/... [rawstory.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/16... [cnn.com]
This is all gonna make a great movie after Trump is done. It's like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, except with vulgar, money-grubbing sleazebags, porn stars, Slovenian prostitutes and two large failsons who like to run around the world killing endangered animals and posting Pepe memes.
Re: (Score:1)
> Robert Mercer and his harridan daughter/wife, Rebekah.
Wait, what? He's married to his daughter?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
From everything I've seen about them and their relationship, yes. Robert Mercer is "married" to Rebekah. I think it's one of the reasons Donald Trump was drawn to the Mercers. He understands the "special bond" between an ostensibly wealthy man and his daughter.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Hmm.. guess I gotta differ there. I vote based on what I think is best for the country, you vote to win a 5th-grade level argument. I'm guessing life treats me nicer than it does you.
Re: So? (Score:2)
This is what happens when you play too much "Clue" as a kid.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have trouble keeping up with all the new stuff coming out. Isn't there some Russian oligarch whose name began with the letter "B" who was just found dead? He's the guy who was the business partner of the guy Felix Sater who was Cheetolini's business partner in the Trump Soho and the one who babysat L'il Don and Ivanka when they went to Moscow to kiss the ring.
Yeah, there's dead Russians turning
Re: So? (Score:5, Informative)
I figured out the female lead when the movie of this whole tawdry and treasonous Trump/Russia affair is made. This is the story of the nice-looking young lady who went undercover in the Russian troll farm and exposed them to the world.
https://www.npr.org/sections/p... [npr.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Neither of the two links I provided is to Buzzfeed, and neither story mentions Buzzfeed. What does Buzzfeed have to do with this story or anything I've said?
Re: (Score:2)
This
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Re: Congratulation, Facebook (Score:1)
It happened under Johnson with the passing of the Civil Rights Act. Then Nixon (with his Sothern strategy) basically flipped the white southerners to the Republicans. This basically flipped the racial makeup of the two parties.
Re: (Score:2)
OK, once again, I guess I have to post a definition of Net Neutrality. It has nothing to do with content, or speech, or "Network Neutrality".
https://www.eff.org/issues/net... [eff.org]
Re: (Score:2)
No. And you won't reach the end of it. It's an overly simplified causal model, but it has it's element of truth.