Interference with an election is so in line with the current president's character that nobody has any reason to think otherwise.
The political atmosphere in the USA, and worldwide let's be honest, has become so cynical that people aligned with the American president don't really see any issue with doing morally wrong things or downright illegal acts if that means a political victory for them.
What's the incentives to not do it this way? Are there punishments for companies to lobby or influence things? How is the everyday voter affected by this?
> The political atmosphere in the USA, and worldwide let's be honest, has become so cynical that...
We've redefined our communication medium worldwide in ~30 years. It's going to have consequences, the question is what we do about it. The edge lord cynicism came about because of economic issues, fix those first..
The last people in history who had as much wealth as Elon Musk were emperors.
Perhaps something can change to help prevent poverty and hunger if the economic value produced by society results in such enormous gains by such few people.
Meta (Instagram) certainly pushes one side in India. I am sure of it.
I didn't quite believe its involvement with things in Myanmar where media, people vowed left and right of Meta's involvement.
But seeing it now firsthand, I certainly believe it.
- Accounts, posts from one cabal being pushed to your feed even if you don't follow any of them.
- If you open a fresh account, the accounts from those cabal are recommended at top.
- Relentlessly showing posts from one side and promoting them like hell.
Suspected bot activities. There were posts that are sans merit clearly, but Insta pushed it and had the unvelievable amount of likes, like Messi would have, had he posted his wedding reels.
I don't have publishable evidence, but I ask you to trust me. Human to human.
I read newspapers, I don't trust megaliked reels. But most don't nowaday, and I saw real people fall to blatant lies and propaganda. It's real. You can say anything, but I am convinced fully.
Even though I've shilled the book before, it's an opportune thread to repeat the recommendation: if you haven't, read Careless People. For much of her career at Facebook, the author worked for Joel Kaplan, who was VP of Global Public Policy and is now Chief Global Affairs Officer. She's not particularly complimentary.
Americans don't like any entity to interfere in their elections but the reality is that their corporations are knee deep in interference in other countries never mind what they themselves call the deep state!
Does anyone remember Cambridge Analytica activity on Facebook during US elections in 2016.. Look it up if you don't remember. The same entity was also active in South America aka Colombia, Brazil, Argentina.. Cambridge Analytica was never charged and Facebook was never charged because it was all made legal. After the revelations, some laws changed but has it really changed. Is it stopping American interference in other countries? it doesn't look like it. What about at home? You know better than I do if you have an account; I don't.
Exactly! It's a common expression to shoo someone off.
Literally it translates to "Don't insert yourself" where "insert" is the closest I can think of to the verb "meter", which is sort of what you do when you insert something haphazardly instead of carefully.
Truly literally the words are "No + self + insert" and the conjugation of "meter" into "meta" makes it clear the subject is "you"
A note on Meta AI was making the rounds the past few days: it will happily generate images featuring the right-wing candidate, logo or party number, while consistently refusing to generate anything related to the opposition Lula/PT/13.
They claimed it was a 'technical error'.
In September, as the elections geared up, they also suspened Lula's campaign account due to another 'technical error'. There are also thousands of complaints from users having their posts blocked.
I am quite sure meta does support the german AfD. Rage causes engagement. AfD (and Trump and Orban and le Pen) communicate in such emotional ways that algorithms prefer them. Facebook does not care about truth, it cares about active users
Both extremes on the political spectrum use and heavily rely on emotions over nuance/truth. Probably why both have been steadily growing and that the clashes tend to be explosive.
Political manipulation by Russia, China, etc, have been using wedge issues to push people into extreme sides on issues, but they throw support behind the far-right political parties, because conservative voters unite their votes and because they're more willing to accept mistruths.
Liberal voters don't unite well, and they also tend to have lower trust when it comes to misinformation.
This isn't the case. People assume this is the case because only one side is reported for various reasons.
Just to be clear though: the Communist Party of China is not a massive fan of far-right parties, there are certain ideological barriers there.
Russia employed the former left-wing German Chancellor as part of their strategy making an invasion of Ukraine economically viable for them (it is worth pointing out that when right-wing politicians pointed this out, it was received as a crazy conspiracy theory..."liberal voters" distinguish themselves as people who believe themselves particularly unlikely to believe in "misinformation" whilst simultaneously believing in things that make no sense, most people who have a knowledge of politics are required to believe things that aren't true...if they were in touch with reality, they wouldn't vote).
To call Scholz left-wing is quite a stretch. But what can one expect of someone that believes that not voting is the natural consequence of "being in touch with reality".
When has the US not interfere in other countries' elections, especially those taking place in its "backyard"? Nothing is off limits. Everything comes from the CIA playbook: bribes, threats, assassinations, social media trolling, censorship, etc. Of course, these days, interference is no longer limited to international affairs but has fully entered the domestic arena. Trump's top donors have already contributed billions to the midterm elections, but it may not be enough to sway voters. This coming midterm election, brace for the unexpected.
I remember NYTimes/WaPost pieces being concerned about Hindu nationalist influence on the Republican party. Anyone who has spend 2 seconds online know it's more likely the Republican party nukes India than forming alliances with the BJP.
this is turning out to be a disaster for the tech communities and powering technology fearmongers because people do not understadn the case here.
From what I can see, the meta cutoff data was from a time where one candidate was confirmed and the other wasn't. The political interference here was actually the timely manner for them to fix this. It took weeks of public pressure / federal government pressure for Meta to act.
People should look up the North American Technate, because we're living in it. Its been a mission of techno-fascist for a couple decades, they're finally succeeding. They will get rid of democracy altogether
(they may have already, they can basically do mind control with recommendations algorithms and get swaths of people to do whatever they want).
A large minority of people cannot cope with losing elections. Shadowy forces are behind every loss. Ironically, it's this attitude that undermines democracy. More than Facebook at any rate...
At least in certain parts of the world, there has been consistent efforts to manipulate the government and political movements for close to a century. It's not as if the US hasn't supported coup d'etats in Brazil, Chile, and other governments in South and Central America.
> Shadowy forces are behind every loss. Ironically, it's this attitude that undermines democracy.
I mean, this is South America we're talking about. It's not attitudes that undermine their democracy, it's very notoriously US-based three letter agencies.[1][2][3][4][5]
I mean, if they have secret mind control powers that they've hid from the rest of the world for years, it seems kinda pointless to try and oppose them?
At that point, they've already won, neh?
(this is mostly to object that hyperbolic phrases like "basically mind control" don't do your argument any favor)
Meta has interfered with elections before, we know the Trump admin wants Bolsonaro Jr in power, and the US establishment has supported anti-socialism in Brazil in the past. (The CIA agitated against Lula under Reagan, for example)
Is it overly conspiratorial to think the Meta is doing what they're accused of on behalf of the US?
As much as I wish I could say you're right -I think that's unlikely. Please feel free to say "I told you so" in fifteen days, however. I'd love to be wrong!
The majority of the Republican primary electorate demands Trump and won’t stand for elected Republicans who challenge him. There have been a fair number of Republicans who have stood up to him, but most of them are already out or on their way out.
It’s basically impossible for elected Republicans to hold Trump to account without losing office, and even if they get wiped out in the coming election (I’m skeptical), I doubt that dynamic will change. If the price of gas weren’t so high, Republicans would be fairly happy with Trump — he’s basically kept his promise to be a hard-ass on immigration and other culture war issues.
I don’t expect a Republican reckoning that would please Democrats. Future Republican standard bearers will probably be very similar to Trump but more competent — akin to Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Orban, Modi, and others.
Exactly. Even if Trump disappeared today, the voters/mentality who elected him is not going anywhere. All they need is someone else to say "I am exactly like Trump and will keep doing everything he did," and that politician will be their top candidate. (R) is no longer the party of guys like Mitt Romney and John McCain.
It doesn't matter whether Republicans lose the election or not. Trump will just ignore/dismiss the election results, or ignore/dismiss Congress, as he did has done for the last two years.
Republicans will not get any sense regardless of what happens.
The only important question is whether Democrats will get any sense if they win.
The worst outcome is actually Democrats winning and then keeping the status quo and continuing to serve corporations and special interest groups over the needs of their own constituents.
They won't have any real power to force through legislation even if they win, but if they win and don't use this time to shake up their own party and instead keep Schumer/Jeffries/et al in charge and keep towing the center-right Third Way-esque line then in a few years time we will find out that actually, yes, there are worse people that could be president than Trump (all of the malevolence, but perhaps with competence too next time).
Every election for over a decade has been a change election and the Democratic party refusing to understand this (because the consultant class and their high value donors don't want to understand it) is one of the primary factors in creating and enabling Trump. And it isn't yet clear they intend to address this. I mean, people are still taking a Gavin Newsom run in 2028 seriously ffs.
By this logic, old Twitter interfered with US elections by banning Trump.
Edit: the point about Trump was facetious, but old Twitter actually DID actively interfere in the 2020 election by censoring all sharing (even in DMs!) the New York Post Biden laptop story.
I am not making that argument, I just dislike double standards, especially considering that right wing voices have been repeatedly and consistently scrubbed from social media for years.
> Twitter interfered with US elections by banning Trump.
You mean when Twitter "permanently" banned Trump in January of 2021, after the 2020 election (which he lost)? Which election do you suppose that interfered with?
Nothing will shut him up. My god.. I wish killing his twitter account could do that.
He lost because he is a POS and people where tired of his blabbering and complaining.
All the future ones. Don't you see? If you're a big enough public figure and announce any ambition for public office, every attempt at holding you accountable for crimes is interference!
Those evil US imperialists and CIA agitators, not letting any new countries prosper like DPRK, Cuba and Venezuela, or be free of tyranny like PRC and Venezuela!
Sorry, are you suggesting that the CIA hasn’t done its best to prevent left-wing governments from succeeding in many cases? Because that would be very silly and ahistorical.
If by "succeeding" you mean destroying thousands or millions of people's lives by famine, labor camps and executions, then yes, it sure has.
Everyone remembers evil Pinochet who killed some 3k out of 11 million, nobody cares about kind Hoxha who killed at least 6k (likely closer to 100k) out of 2 million, or plushy Castro (10k killed + 70k dead trying to flee out of 10 million).
People being edgy on X seems unrelated. Comment seems completely off-topic. Or are you implying Meta suppressed Lula's account because he threatened to murder Protestants? I don't get it.
Interference with an election is so in line with the current president's character that nobody has any reason to think otherwise.
The political atmosphere in the USA, and worldwide let's be honest, has become so cynical that people aligned with the American president don't really see any issue with doing morally wrong things or downright illegal acts if that means a political victory for them.
I sincerely hope we can recover from this moral bankruptcy in some way, it’s going to be pretty dismal if not.
What's the incentives to not do it this way? Are there punishments for companies to lobby or influence things? How is the everyday voter affected by this?
> The political atmosphere in the USA, and worldwide let's be honest, has become so cynical that...
We've redefined our communication medium worldwide in ~30 years. It's going to have consequences, the question is what we do about it. The edge lord cynicism came about because of economic issues, fix those first..
> The edge lord cynicism came about because of economic issues, fix those first..
“Just fix the hunger and poverty, duh”
I also thought like that. When I was twelve.
let's not make this place glib like everywhere, it's one of the few places people stay mostly decent to each other.
The last people in history who had as much wealth as Elon Musk were emperors.
Perhaps something can change to help prevent poverty and hunger if the economic value produced by society results in such enormous gains by such few people.
No one will fix these issues, because the issues are in fact features for those in charge of the media companies/government.
Sounds like an issue.
Yes but it's very hard when those that make the rules are the same as those benefiting from them, as it's the case in olygarchies.
Meta (Instagram) certainly pushes one side in India. I am sure of it.
I didn't quite believe its involvement with things in Myanmar where media, people vowed left and right of Meta's involvement.
But seeing it now firsthand, I certainly believe it.
- Accounts, posts from one cabal being pushed to your feed even if you don't follow any of them.
- If you open a fresh account, the accounts from those cabal are recommended at top.
- Relentlessly showing posts from one side and promoting them like hell.
Suspected bot activities. There were posts that are sans merit clearly, but Insta pushed it and had the unvelievable amount of likes, like Messi would have, had he posted his wedding reels.
I don't have publishable evidence, but I ask you to trust me. Human to human.
I read newspapers, I don't trust megaliked reels. But most don't nowaday, and I saw real people fall to blatant lies and propaganda. It's real. You can say anything, but I am convinced fully.
Presumably the side is BJP?
> Meta (Instagram) certainly pushes one side in India. I am sure of it.
Watching all the techbros trying to crowd the stage to get in the shot with Modi when he went to SF was a precursor to them all crowding around Trump.
Even though I've shilled the book before, it's an opportune thread to repeat the recommendation: if you haven't, read Careless People. For much of her career at Facebook, the author worked for Joel Kaplan, who was VP of Global Public Policy and is now Chief Global Affairs Officer. She's not particularly complimentary.
Is the author still under gag order?
Americans don't like any entity to interfere in their elections but the reality is that their corporations are knee deep in interference in other countries never mind what they themselves call the deep state!
Does anyone remember Cambridge Analytica activity on Facebook during US elections in 2016.. Look it up if you don't remember. The same entity was also active in South America aka Colombia, Brazil, Argentina.. Cambridge Analytica was never charged and Facebook was never charged because it was all made legal. After the revelations, some laws changed but has it really changed. Is it stopping American interference in other countries? it doesn't look like it. What about at home? You know better than I do if you have an account; I don't.
Nao Se Meta, that's clever
Roughly translates to “stay out of it?”
Exactly! It's a common expression to shoo someone off.
Literally it translates to "Don't insert yourself" where "insert" is the closest I can think of to the verb "meter", which is sort of what you do when you insert something haphazardly instead of carefully.
Truly literally the words are "No + self + insert" and the conjugation of "meter" into "meta" makes it clear the subject is "you"
It means "Don't get involved" in Brazilian Portuguese.
Well, actually it would be, more literally "do not get into it".
A note on Meta AI was making the rounds the past few days: it will happily generate images featuring the right-wing candidate, logo or party number, while consistently refusing to generate anything related to the opposition Lula/PT/13.
They claimed it was a 'technical error'.
In September, as the elections geared up, they also suspened Lula's campaign account due to another 'technical error'. There are also thousands of complaints from users having their posts blocked.
I am quite sure meta does support the german AfD. Rage causes engagement. AfD (and Trump and Orban and le Pen) communicate in such emotional ways that algorithms prefer them. Facebook does not care about truth, it cares about active users
Both extremes on the political spectrum use and heavily rely on emotions over nuance/truth. Probably why both have been steadily growing and that the clashes tend to be explosive.
How dare you. It is only the people that I disagree with that are unstable. I am a stable genius. I am furious.
Yeah. Some things never change on the orange site.
Political manipulation by Russia, China, etc, have been using wedge issues to push people into extreme sides on issues, but they throw support behind the far-right political parties, because conservative voters unite their votes and because they're more willing to accept mistruths.
Liberal voters don't unite well, and they also tend to have lower trust when it comes to misinformation.
This isn't the case. People assume this is the case because only one side is reported for various reasons.
Just to be clear though: the Communist Party of China is not a massive fan of far-right parties, there are certain ideological barriers there.
Russia employed the former left-wing German Chancellor as part of their strategy making an invasion of Ukraine economically viable for them (it is worth pointing out that when right-wing politicians pointed this out, it was received as a crazy conspiracy theory..."liberal voters" distinguish themselves as people who believe themselves particularly unlikely to believe in "misinformation" whilst simultaneously believing in things that make no sense, most people who have a knowledge of politics are required to believe things that aren't true...if they were in touch with reality, they wouldn't vote).
To call Scholz left-wing is quite a stretch. But what can one expect of someone that believes that not voting is the natural consequence of "being in touch with reality".
When has the US not interfere in other countries' elections, especially those taking place in its "backyard"? Nothing is off limits. Everything comes from the CIA playbook: bribes, threats, assassinations, social media trolling, censorship, etc. Of course, these days, interference is no longer limited to international affairs but has fully entered the domestic arena. Trump's top donors have already contributed billions to the midterm elections, but it may not be enough to sway voters. This coming midterm election, brace for the unexpected.
They should probably protest with the structural integrity pf their nearest courthouse or prison
It sure is a coincidence that parties in opposition to right wing political movements in different countries keep getting silenced on Meta.
It gives the appearance that Meta is not an impartial platform like they try to claim for regulatory purposes.
There is really no "global right wing alliance"
I remember NYTimes/WaPost pieces being concerned about Hindu nationalist influence on the Republican party. Anyone who has spend 2 seconds online know it's more likely the Republican party nukes India than forming alliances with the BJP.
this is turning out to be a disaster for the tech communities and powering technology fearmongers because people do not understadn the case here.
From what I can see, the meta cutoff data was from a time where one candidate was confirmed and the other wasn't. The political interference here was actually the timely manner for them to fix this. It took weeks of public pressure / federal government pressure for Meta to act.
People should look up the North American Technate, because we're living in it. Its been a mission of techno-fascist for a couple decades, they're finally succeeding. They will get rid of democracy altogether
(they may have already, they can basically do mind control with recommendations algorithms and get swaths of people to do whatever they want).
> because we're living in it
i don't see the correlation with current events. do you have a source that establishes this based on evidence?
At long last! A Global Torment Nexus!!
If someone thinks they can profit off of or otherwise control the Torment Nexus, they will build it as fast as they can.
Some kind of a uh Prison Planet you say? Seems familiar. Oh, he's in on it and wants to sell me some boner pills instead?
Elon Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was a leader of that movement in Canada.
Fun read: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/joshua-haldeman...
From that article: "Haldeman died in a plane crash in 1974, when he was 72 years old. His grandson, Elon Musk, was just three."
That sucks.. so Im understanding correctly. Elon was not on the plane...?
For some reason this reminds me of the baby hilter paradox.
A large minority of people cannot cope with losing elections. Shadowy forces are behind every loss. Ironically, it's this attitude that undermines democracy. More than Facebook at any rate...
At least in certain parts of the world, there has been consistent efforts to manipulate the government and political movements for close to a century. It's not as if the US hasn't supported coup d'etats in Brazil, Chile, and other governments in South and Central America.
> Shadowy forces are behind every loss. Ironically, it's this attitude that undermines democracy.
I mean, this is South America we're talking about. It's not attitudes that undermine their democracy, it's very notoriously US-based three letter agencies.[1][2][3][4][5]
[1] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/legacy-posting/chile-united-states...
[2] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2025-1...
[3] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB133/index.htm
[4] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB465/
[5] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/events/operation-condor-1975-1980
I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
I mean, if they have secret mind control powers that they've hid from the rest of the world for years, it seems kinda pointless to try and oppose them?
At that point, they've already won, neh?
(this is mostly to object that hyperbolic phrases like "basically mind control" don't do your argument any favor)
> secret mind control powers
Secret? Its called "X" and Facebook.
don't forget youtube
Meta has interfered with elections before, we know the Trump admin wants Bolsonaro Jr in power, and the US establishment has supported anti-socialism in Brazil in the past. (The CIA agitated against Lula under Reagan, for example)
Is it overly conspiratorial to think the Meta is doing what they're accused of on behalf of the US?
Trump should focus on America. In 15 days, he's going to wish he didn't.
As much as I wish I could say you're right -I think that's unlikely. Please feel free to say "I told you so" in fifteen days, however. I'd love to be wrong!
Hopefully, trump loses so badly republican will get some sense.
The majority of the Republican primary electorate demands Trump and won’t stand for elected Republicans who challenge him. There have been a fair number of Republicans who have stood up to him, but most of them are already out or on their way out.
It’s basically impossible for elected Republicans to hold Trump to account without losing office, and even if they get wiped out in the coming election (I’m skeptical), I doubt that dynamic will change. If the price of gas weren’t so high, Republicans would be fairly happy with Trump — he’s basically kept his promise to be a hard-ass on immigration and other culture war issues.
I don’t expect a Republican reckoning that would please Democrats. Future Republican standard bearers will probably be very similar to Trump but more competent — akin to Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Orban, Modi, and others.
Exactly. Even if Trump disappeared today, the voters/mentality who elected him is not going anywhere. All they need is someone else to say "I am exactly like Trump and will keep doing everything he did," and that politician will be their top candidate. (R) is no longer the party of guys like Mitt Romney and John McCain.
> If the price of gas weren’t so high, Republicans would be fairly happy with Trump
This is the sad truth. Imagine if he hadn't invaded Iran. He probably would manage to finagle a third term.
It doesn't matter whether Republicans lose the election or not. Trump will just ignore/dismiss the election results, or ignore/dismiss Congress, as he did has done for the last two years.
Republicans will not get any sense regardless of what happens.
The only important question is whether Democrats will get any sense if they win.
The worst outcome is actually Democrats winning and then keeping the status quo and continuing to serve corporations and special interest groups over the needs of their own constituents.
They won't have any real power to force through legislation even if they win, but if they win and don't use this time to shake up their own party and instead keep Schumer/Jeffries/et al in charge and keep towing the center-right Third Way-esque line then in a few years time we will find out that actually, yes, there are worse people that could be president than Trump (all of the malevolence, but perhaps with competence too next time).
Every election for over a decade has been a change election and the Democratic party refusing to understand this (because the consultant class and their high value donors don't want to understand it) is one of the primary factors in creating and enabling Trump. And it isn't yet clear they intend to address this. I mean, people are still taking a Gavin Newsom run in 2028 seriously ffs.
> Is it overly conspiratorial to think the Meta is doing what they're accused of on behalf of the US?
Not at all. We all know it. There's just literally nothing we can do. The whole world is an US dictatorship
Or russian dictatorship or chinese dictatorship? I would still pick US, If I could choose.
AKA, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.
Conspiracies are hidden. It's a confirmed fact that they banned his account during the election. This is no conspiracy - it's out in the open.
A conspiracy is just people talking to each other about a crime. It doesn’t have to be hidden. Conspiracies can be in the open.
No, that just isn't true. It's almost always used to indicate secret coordination, both in idiomatic usage and formal definitions.
And it doesn't have to be criminal. You are hallucinating more than a 2024 LLM.
By this logic, old Twitter interfered with US elections by banning Trump.
Edit: the point about Trump was facetious, but old Twitter actually DID actively interfere in the 2020 election by censoring all sharing (even in DMs!) the New York Post Biden laptop story.
That is correct, both Twitter and Meta actively suppressed the Biden laptop story. That was clear election interference.
Why is the argument we should race to the bottom?
I am not making that argument, I just dislike double standards, especially considering that right wing voices have been repeatedly and consistently scrubbed from social media for years.
> Twitter interfered with US elections by banning Trump.
You mean when Twitter "permanently" banned Trump in January of 2021, after the 2020 election (which he lost)? Which election do you suppose that interfered with?
Nothing will shut him up. My god.. I wish killing his twitter account could do that. He lost because he is a POS and people where tired of his blabbering and complaining.
They interfered with him trying to steal that election. That doesn't count?
All the future ones. Don't you see? If you're a big enough public figure and announce any ambition for public office, every attempt at holding you accountable for crimes is interference!
I understand you're being ironic/sarcastic here, but please keep in mind Poe's law [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
You think people should be held accountable for their crimes by...being censored from social media?
It would be conspiratorial to not think that.
Those evil US imperialists and CIA agitators, not letting any new countries prosper like DPRK, Cuba and Venezuela, or be free of tyranny like PRC and Venezuela!
Educate yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Sorry, are you suggesting that the CIA hasn’t done its best to prevent left-wing governments from succeeding in many cases? Because that would be very silly and ahistorical.
If by "succeeding" you mean destroying thousands or millions of people's lives by famine, labor camps and executions, then yes, it sure has.
Everyone remembers evil Pinochet who killed some 3k out of 11 million, nobody cares about kind Hoxha who killed at least 6k (likely closer to 100k) out of 2 million, or plushy Castro (10k killed + 70k dead trying to flee out of 10 million).
Surprisingly the Brazilian left has embraced post-Musk Twitter instead of starting their own sovereign alternative platform.
One problem the Brazilian left is facing is that the non-Musk platforms are not too fond of death threats against Protestants, landlords, farmers etc.
People being edgy on X seems unrelated. Comment seems completely off-topic. Or are you implying Meta suppressed Lula's account because he threatened to murder Protestants? I don't get it.