In Pavel's interview with Tucker Carlson, he mentions how he (VK) met with Zuckerberg, and he told them new features they were planning. And Zuck nicked them all.
Zuck is on a major PR campaign drive, I would not trust a word he says.
He also said that he doesn't visit Russia anymore, yet a recent FSB leak indicates that he was frequenting there. And before that he heavily marketed Telegram as ad-free forever. And before that there were quite weird populist PR tactics when professional cryptographers pointed out Telegram's crypto is a mess.
YMMV, but I wouldn't trust a single word from this guy.
This is not the first time Pavel being not very truthful. I rememeber when he was the CEO of Vkontakte, in 2012 he published a post claiming that he is living a modest life: "I don't own planes, cars or homes. My world is walking or riding the subway and sleeping in a 215 sq ft rental apartment. Those who want to be me would also have to give up meat, alcohol and expensive clothes". And just a year later there were the news that he broke the traffic rules while driving a Mercedes, hit a traffic cop, showed an indecent sign to him and ran away into Vkontakte office located nearby while his guard blocked the cop trying to chase him.
There also was a story when he claimed that Telegram is developed abroad but it turned out that many of Telegram employees actually worked at the same beautiful historical office building where Vkontakte was located at that time.
Also, a fun fact, when he was a CEO of Vkontakte, one day he was throwing banknotes into the crowd from a window in that notable historical building. Maybe he was conducting an experiment with universal basic income, who knows.
Telegram's crypto may be weird, as the professional cryptographers you allude to have pointed out; I don't know, not being a cryptography expert. But MTProto 2.0 has been shown to enjoy many nice security properties (including a version of forward secrecy, though one afaik not as good as that enjoyed by Signal): formal proofs available here https://github.com/miculan/telegram-mtproto2-verification/tr... and some peer reviewed papers describing the formal verification effort are linked to there as well. Considering that I think calling Telegram's crypto "a mess" is misleading.
The characteristics of MTProto are barely relevant when it is not used in the real world: group chats cannot be encrypted with it, 1:1 chats have caveats like terrible UX and the need for both parties to be online to initiate a session.
Ironically, just being able to produce a valid proof is hardly proof that an implementation has those properties, it just means they put some effort into it.
This would be a valid point if the client source code wasn't available; you can build the app from source and sideload it onto your Android phone or verify [0] that the build available for your platform matches the code you've audited for compliance to the protocol. Granted I don't know if anyone's performed such an audit, but it's at least an option.
It used to have issues, they have improved since, but I don't consider Telegram to be encrypted or private (and I'm also not a crypto expert, so the details elude me anyway) so I haven't really kept track of this.
Honestly, the issue was not about their crypto at all, but about the attitude and how they reacted. It's literally as if someone says "dude, I know a thing about crypto and you might've made a mistake there" and Pavel immediately goes into offensive defense, preaching how they have the best ACM champion PhDs and shifting the burden of proof, basically a canonical Putin/Trump-style of evading an argument.
That's what makes me wary of this guy, not his product.
Doubtful that he’s “frequenting” there given how he left the country. When the FSB (Russian FBI) demanded he comply with the laws and provide the decryption keys he had his lawyers send a prank letter to the head of the FSB with two physical keys (as in, the actual keys you open your door with) attached to it as a sign of “compliance”. Try that in the US and see if you can “frequent” the country after that.
Agree, Zuck has zero integrity and I think he sees the tea leaves in where things are headed in November and is trying to say he was bullied into making alot of disastrous decisions that he and he only ordered for an administration/party that he personally donated $400M+ to.
There are concerns that they paid for infrastructure in deeply democratic areas and ignored areas that were republican-leaning, in effect making it a Democratic get out the vote initiative.
The media doesn't seem too interested in figuring out the actual impact, so I don't think any of us really know if it was balanced or not. But this doesn't strike me as the type of thing we want billionaires doing regardless.
Where are you sourcing this from? Personally, I’ve only heard of the opposite happening. (For example, polling places getting shut down in some majority black areas in Georgia.)
> There are concerns that they paid for infrastructure in deeply democratic areas and ignored areas that were republican-leaning
Concerns without evidence are nothing. Is there any evidence at all this occurred? Why aren't Republicans attacking Musk donating 10's of millions of dollars to directly help Trump?
I mean, we know why they aren't attacking him. Because they're complete hypocrites.
This is an extremely disingenuous and intellectually dishonest strawman of the views that people of the political party that you're attacking actually hold. This shouldn't be on HN:
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
> Reducing voter turnout under the fig leaves of 'protecting the vote' or 'fighting rampant voter fraud'
You describing these justification as "fig leaves" proves rather conclusively that you are making partisan, as opposed to factual, statements.
> is a long-term party strategy
...and your goalpost-moving from describing individuals on HN ("You can tell someone's political party merely by asking whether they support a high voter participation rate. You can also offend members of the other party by pointing out this fact.") to the strategy of political organizations further undermines the idea that you're making this comment in good faith.
If you're making this comment in good faith, then you don't understand how biased you are. You are, factually, not approaching this from a neutral standpoint.
> You describing these justification as "fig leaves" proves rather conclusively that you are making partisan, as opposed to factual, statements.
This is just electioneering 101: The party leadership can’t explicitly say “voter participation hurts us,” they have to instead pound on the table with unfounded claims of widespread fraud as an explanation to the party rank and file for the voter suppression they’re engaging in.
I’m not saying I don’t have opinions, but I don’t need to lean on them when the facts make the case for me. The fact is that the low information voting bloc of the party is indoctrinated with the rampant fraud myth, and they support policies that suppress participation as a result. The high information leadership encourages this false belief because they know they lose elections when voters participate at high rates.
It gives me no pleasure to report these facts. They are what they are.
What I'd like to see from the Democrat camp is making mail voter registration easier, making government IDs mandatory, and also improving voter identification. Maybe also moving all voting to Sundays, so most people have time.
Better voter identification IMHO is a reasonable ask from Republicans that's always shot down by Democrats. They say it excludes people that don't have ID.
To me it seems reasonable to make having ID mandatory. And also making your ID mandatory for voting, like in every other developed nation I know. Make it free to get a state ID in the same legislation.
This would take away the main argument Republicans have for saying there's potential fraud. Having ID is also good for people, because it eases interaction with the state in other things.
Voter ID would be reasonable if everyone had them, or had free and very easy access to get them. Most countries have some kind of unified government ID, in Germany for example it's mandatory to own one of two kinds of government ID. Sadly this is not the case in the US, where many disparate state IDs exist, and many people never have any government ID for their whole life.
Now, Republicans could take away this argument by instituting a government ID like you're suggesting. It would have to be well thought through - the structure of US society puts many roadblocks in front of those least likely to have IDs, like:
- often large distances to government offices, which can be expensive to travel if you don't own a car
- many people basically can't take time off work, sometimes from multiple jobs, or they risk losing their health insurance
- usually you need some kind of documentation to get a new government ID, and many people don't have this available for a number of reasons - according to this source[0] at least 1.5%
Any solution would have to work around these issues, but it's definitely not impossible. And once this is implemented, the Democrats' concerns would be taken care off - why don't Republicans seem to ever work on this? If you started requiring voter ID without doing this, you'd de-facto be banning people from voting - often times those who are already marginalized. Yet I haven't seen Republicans running on implementing such IDs. Why do you think that is?
I would agree with you that the Democrats should bring this up too, if there were evidence for voter fraud beyond the usual margins (that also exist in elections in other countries). But I haven't seen such evidence, and all attempts by Republicans to find evidence in investigations has completely failed. So why should Democrats compromise with them on this point? Why can't Republicans alleviate their concerns before implementing voter ID?
This reminds me a lot of the attempts during Trumps presidency to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Somehow they always tried to repeal it first, and never presented their better replacement. Four years ago, they promised that their plan is two weeks away, yet it's still nowhere to be found. But they are still running on repealing the ACA. I wonder why? Why does this pattern keep coming up?
Didn’t some Republicans literally say equivalent of “voter participation hurts us” recently? I can’t find the quote right now but I remember seeing it float by in my news feed.
> This is just electioneering 101: The party leadership
Again, you moved the goalposts from "individual voters including people on HN" to "party leadership". You are either incapable of understanding that voters are not equivalent to party leaders (which is an extremely serious flaw), given that I already pointed it out to you, or you aren't acting in good faith.
> I don’t need to lean on them when the facts make the case for me
> It gives me no pleasure to report these facts. They are what they are.
The "fact" that you are claiming is: rank-and-file republican voters ("You can tell someone's political party merely by asking whether they support a high voter participation rate") are using voter fraud as a "fig leaf" for voter suppression. You have provided exactly zero evidence for this claim, despite repeatedly asserting that it is a fact, and changing the goalposts when challenged.
Furthermore, "Fig leaf" doesn't have anything to do with whether or not voter fraud exists - it has to do with whether the users of that justification honestly believe in it. And, speaking as someone with many conservative friends who honestly believe in it, your assertion is factually false,
Your claims are uncited, false, and politically biased. This is partisan political activism.
the party that controls election infrastructure is the kingmaker
thusly, if one observes the king that was made, one knows the party who decided
see: GW Bush victory in FL
see: Biden victory in >100% vote cities
The funny thing about this thread is that I have no idea where the Trump starts and the Harris ends. I have learned nothing about anyone's political stances from this back and forth.
> The funny thing about this thread is that I have no idea where the Trump starts and the Harris ends. I have learned nothing about anyone's political stances from this back and forth.
Me neither.
I think it's a very sophisticated two-way dog whistle.
The ideologists on both sides can spot each other a mile away; the rest of us look from pig to man, and man to pig, and can not tell the difference.
for me the most salient difference, harris is gung ho on the environment. expect limited oil and high energy prices
trump is the opposite - if nothing else he understands "cheap oil good"... doesn't really care either way about the environment, seeing as last EPA chief he appointed had a history of battling the EPA.
It's difficult to parse subsubzero's post after his edit, but he's saying Zuck believes Trump will win in 2024, so Zuck's spinning a narrative that he was forced to remove COVID misinformation, because COVID misinformation was largely a right-wing phenomenon.
My response to him was to point out that Harris is strong and trending stronger, while Trump is weak, so the tea leaves are saying the opposite of what he thinks they're saying.
> because COVID misinformation was largely a right-wing phenomenon.
That isn't really a fair assessment; it is true that large groups of people generate more wild theories but there was a lot of misinformation everywhere. Most of it inconsequential.
But weighting by consequence it is hard to overlook things like:
- "Plague of the unvaccinated" and the tide of misinformation saying that the vaccine would halt COVID. A lot of people believed that. They were wrong. And a lot of the blatant human rights violations through the COVID era were probably driven by that particular mistake. It wasn't a right-wing phenomenon.
- "14 Days to Flatten the Curve", which turned out to be critical misinformation that derailed any debate over the wisdom of lockdowns. Certainly a forgivable move given the urgency and confusion in the first few months, but the fact that it was material and misinformation stands out in hindsight.
- Dismissing a lot of legitimate studies related to Ivermectin. It turned out that they were showing that people who had parasites + COVID had a much better response to COVID if they took an anti-parasite drug so, y'know, fair enough but not that useful in the west. But there was a lot of misinformation that the studies themselves were fake that undermined trust that the responders were looking at evidence. That dismissal was also certainly not coming from the right wing.
> Dismissing a lot of legitimate studies related to Ivermectin. It turned out that they were showing that people who had parasites + COVID had a much better response to COVID if they took an anti-parasite drug
I read along from Australia during that period and I saw little evidence that people who knew what they were talking about "[Dismissed] a lot of legitimate studies related to Ivermectin".
It was clear cut at the time that meta-studies from "the Global South" showed that Ivermectin greatly improved M&M stats (recovery from infection, death rates) across the board for the cold, the flu, COVID, .. everything really.
No great suprise there, when parasites are killed off the host has more resources to fight off infection.
What was repeatedly dismissed, perhaps not always clearly, was the great leap being put about that Ivermectin would magically cure COVID in G20 coutries with little to no general parasite problems.
The big deal was that social media meta study that sourced 80% of COVID bullshit back to 12 "people" | groups that were all snake oil sales types peddling miracle cures on the vack of sowing fear doubt and uncertainty.
It was an endless sisyphean task pushing back against the amplification of bullshit in US social media.
There were a large body of studies showing that Ivermectin helped with COVID. Some people said that evidence should be dismissed and, fair enough. I get to be consistent in my belief that people should be able to ignore evidence because sometimes it is misleading. In this case it was a good move.
But there was also a large crowd of people spreading misinformation that the reason the evidence was misleading was because it was fake or the studies were faulty and that only crazy people would want to take Ivermectin. It turned out not only were the studies were fine but also that there are many people who should probably take Ivermectin immediately upon recognising COVID symptoms. That large crowd were, in a pretty clear-cut way, spreading misinformation. Not right wingers, they tended to be more of a pure-play authoritarian variety based on the arguments I had.
> I read along from Australia during that period and I saw little evidence that people who knew what they were talking about "[Dismissed] a lot of legitimate studies related to Ivermectin".
Bit of a tautology there, we'd expect the people who got things right to know what they were talking about in hindsight and vice versa. People who spread misinformation have a fairly particular profile, it just isn't partisan.
Those studies have consistently shown that Invermectin (a de-wormer) helped people with COVID when those people lived in countries where people have a lot of worms.
The studies were not faulty, but any meta-analysis of the studies that did not take this into account was.
In case this was needed to be said, Ivermectin is an antiparasitic substance. If used to a player with parasite infection debuff, it may remove the effect and restore small amounts of hit points.
It is not established, but a player's hit points remaining and parasite infection status may negatively affect COVID survivability dice roll.
Correlation doesn’t equal causation. It’s the typical case, there are studies showing the former, yet it absolutely does nothing for COVID, it was a “hidden” third variable all along (having parasites).
You're presenting evidence that it is causative. The chain of causation is: take ivermectin -> kill parasites -> better COVID outcomes.
This would be correlation not causation if it were something like parasites caused better COVID outcomes and people in the global south were being given sugar-water. Then there'd be studies showing that sugar water caused better COVID outcomes but it'd be correlation not causation.
In this case though the correlation was because of causation.
In a study, you are usually interested in the relation of two things — here, ivermectin intake and COVID morbidity. The two variables do correlate in countries where parasites are a commonly infecting people. What can we claim from such a study? That the two correlate, that’s it. To conclude causation, you would have to make a double-blind study with control groups, where both have COVID (and neither have parasites) and one are given sugar pill, the other ivermectin. If that showed a significant difference between the two groups we could say that ivermectin causes decreased morbidity. But no such evidence has been shown.
What the actual studies show is simply a correlation, and we can do some educated guesses based on prior knowledge: ivermectin is an effective dewormer, the human body can produce anti-bodies against COVID, and that the immunesystem is better fighting a single thing, than multiple ones. Putting these together, we get a reasonable hypothesis showing a third variable that explains the measured correlation, through a causative mechanism (parasite hindering healing and parasite getting killed).
But surely you'll have to admit that if we do a double-blind study where all the participants have parasites we would probably get a significant difference between the two groups? Then we could also say that ivermectin caused decreased morbidity. We'd probably even say "it caused a decreased morbidity in populations with parasites, as expected". You can't just pretend people without parasites don't exist, they do. There are countries where the base rate is really high. That is where the results that show ivermectin as causing better COVID outcomes are coming from.
You've misunderstood the correlation-causation complaint. We have a pretty clear theory of causation here and the results back it up. Just because causality depends on specific conditions doesn't stop it being causal. Any medical treatment that isn't 100% effective (ie, most of them) depend on specific conditions being present - otherwise they'd be perfectly effective. Of course since the chain of causality is quite clear on this one we can conclude from the base rates of parasite infections there isn't much point taking ivermectin for COVID in the west.
Okay, why don’t we also waste money on bullshit like proving that tylenol increases intelligence (if you measure IQ tests on people with headaches)? It is just as useless. It was known that dewormers.. deworm.
There are zero new info in studies like that (unless you believe every logical conclusion requires a new study? If A is proved, should we separately prove A or B or what?), and they can’t even shut up all the idiots that still go on about ivermectin, so not even that goal is achieved..
I imagine the study-ers started with something like "hmm, these people have parasites and are getting COVID, we should see how big an effect giving them antiparasite medications has" and then went from there. Or maybe "we're throwing everything at the wall with COVID, this thing was involved in Nobel Prizes, lets try it to". Something like that. Maybe other things I can't think of. Proving up effect sizes is valuable in itself.
> There were a large body of studies showing that Ivermectin helped with COVID.
Nope. Not now, not then, and not in the absence of parasites.
The early pandemic studies you "recall" were real studies, meta studies that looked at the use of Ivermectin in "the Global South" in countries with high incidence of worms | parasites | etc.
These studies showed a distinct improvement in the face of COVID for treated groups .. eg: those untreated that had parasites and caught COVID Vs. those treated and caught COVID but now had immune responses uncomprimised by parasites.
more recent studies, in G20 type countries,
A Cochrane meta-analysis of 11 eligible trials examining the efficacy of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 published through April 2022 concluded that ivermectin has no beneficial effect for people with COVID-19.1
Since May 2022, an additional 3 large randomized clinical trials including several thousand participants have been published, each reaching a similar conclusion.
Today JAMA publishes a new trial of ivermectin treatment for mild to moderate COVID-19 that addresses the possibility that the existing literature may have missed the efficacy of ivermectin because the previously tested dose (approximately 400 μg/kg daily for 3 days) was insufficient.
At a higher treatment dose (600 μg/kg daily) and longer treatment duration (6 days), Naggie and colleagues again conclude that ivermectin is not beneficial for the treatment of COVID-19.
New study shows ivermectin lacks meaningful benefits in COVID-19 treatment (March, 2024)
New research led by the University of Oxford has concluded that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin does not provide clinically meaningful benefits for treating COVID-19 in a largely vaccinated population.
Damn- no effect in any trial in the absence of worms.
> Bit of a tautology there, we'd expect the people who got things right to know what they were talking about in hindsight
whereas I'm talking about qualified epidemiologists who were correct then (2020) and still correct today .. the likes of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Stanley (who I worked with in the 1980s) et al.
That is a powerful response against someone who I suspect you're imagining. Maybe try assuming I more or less agree with all that re-read my comment? I don't see any points of disagreement.
>There were a large body of studies showing that Ivermectin helped with COVID.
No, there wasn't. I haven't kept up with the science, so there may be such studies now, but there certainly wasn't back in late 2020, when the ivermectin craze spread like wildfire among right wingers.
> But there was a lot of misinformation that the studies themselves were fake
That was not misinformation. The idea that Ivermectin was helpful in dealing with CoVID was determined from a meta analysis that included a fake study that nobody can confirm happened and even used dead people. It was pushed by grifting doctors who sell Ivermectin.
Yes, if you have parasites and take an anti-parasite drug you're gonna feel better, whether you have CoVID or not.
> the tide of misinformation saying that the vaccine would halt COVID
It halted it as much as it could considering 30% of people didn't complete vaccination. I finished and have had every booster and never got CoVID despite all of my family members getting it (who refused to get vaccinated).
> No, those mistakes did not justify the downright biblical flood of COVID misinformation that emanated from the right.
> The examples you've given are just right wing apologetics.
> That particular delusion is entirely due to right wing misinformation
This is blatantly violating the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), in addition to being logically invalid emotional attacks and fallacies that do nothing to actually respond to GP's points. Suggest against this - it absolutely destroys the credibility of the points that you do make, in addition to reducing the quality of HN.
> the statements you've pointed out either do not violate HN's guidelines
These statements:
> No, those mistakes did not justify the downright biblical flood of COVID misinformation that emanated from the right.
> The examples you've given are just right wing apologetics.
> That particular delusion is entirely due to right wing misinformation
Violate these parts of the guidelines:
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work.
There was virtually zero factual content to your comment. It almost pure partisan political activism.
> None of what I've said is "logically invalid emotional attacks and fallacies."
It seems like you don't understand the difference between an emotional plea and a factual statement. "the downright biblical flood of COVID misinformation that emanated from the right" is not a fact - it's an emotional plea, as are the other cited statements. It is impossible to find a citation for this statement because "biblical flood" isn't a technical term that you can back up with facts. "right wing apologetics" is another instance of something that you cannot prove because it does not have a factual status.
> "the downright biblical flood of COVID misinformation that emanated from the right" is not a fact - it's an emotional plea
The term "flamebait" is also an emotional plea, but we trust adults to use their brain and decide how to report that in good faith.
"Biblical Flood" is a euphemism indicating "a lot of" misinformation (which is a fact [1]) and anyone not being willfully obtuse could interpret what the commenter meant. but I suppose it's easier to immediately dismiss that very true statement than engage with it.
Incorrect. Emotional pleading is a logical fallacy wherein one manipulates the emotions of the listener in an attempt to convince them of an argument without actually supporting it. Labeling something "flamebait" is a characterization of the tone of an argument, and whether it appears to be designed to incite low-quality discussion/flaminess, which is orthogonal to the argument itself. An argument can be flamebait without containing emotional pleading, and vice versa. The two are unrelated, and the fact that you so confidently state that they are indicates that you don't actually know what either of them are.
> "Biblical Flood" is a euphemism indicating "a lot of"
Yes, I know that - and that's completely irrelevant as to its factual nature. It's still an euphemism designed to manipulate the listener, and is something that is impossible to prove factually. There is no objective test for whether something is a "Biblical flood" (and you can't even get different people to agree on what meets the threshold for it) - you thinking that it can assessed as true indicates that you don't have a good handle on what it means for something to be "factual".
> which is a fact [1]
Copy-pasting journal article links is not an argument, and that article in particular doesn't support the point that you think you're making.
> Labeling something "flamebait" is a characterization of the tone of an argument, and whether it appears to be designed to incite low-quality discussion/flaminess
Which is also not measurable and manipulates the reader. I don't see the readers comment as flamebait. Just because misinformation comes from right-wing media and people have eyes to see that and call it out doesn't make it flamebait. What should we call it? An unknown amount of totally apolitical misinformation from [insert party here]?
> It's still an euphemism designed to manipulate the listener, and is something that is impossible to prove factually
As are most arguments when we use phrases like "a lot", "similar to", etc. If you dismiss things based on such broad criteria, I am puzzled by your comment history. You have told users they are bad and support Tyranny[1], said it's malicious to support infrastructure spending[2], and called Snowden a narcissist (which proves he had no altruistic motives?)[3].
These are not emotional statements supported by an argument, these are arguments supported by emotional pleas.
And a simple cmd+f shows "Emotional plea" is a phrase you do not use sparingly either. You are using this word very broadly. If you cannot hold yourself to the same standards you hold other users, you aren't debating in good faith.
You have obviously constructed a belief system that makes it impossible to engage with things you disagree with while allowing yourself to lash out at users however you see fit and bring up whatever politics suits you.
> Copy-pasting journal article links is not an argument
An argument is not a theoretical bottle exercise for one to wordsmith their way towards not engaging with the facts. In the real world, we have eyes.
Yet most people can still recognize it when they see it, it's relatively easy to provide good heuristics ("is it unnecessarily politically partisan? does it bring up irrelevant examples?"), and is against the guidelines.
> and manipulates the reader
I already pointed out that the characterization of "flamebait" is not an emotional plea, as you incorrectly called it, and you didn't respond to that characterization at all and merely ignored it, so I can only conclude that you're inventing some other definition to fit the word.
Regardless, it's also against the HN guidelines, so we can safely put aside the problem of whether or not it's appropriate to point out, because it is.
> I don't see the readers comment as flamebait. Just because misinformation comes from right-wing media
...and that's why you don't see it - because you're pushing the same political agenda that they are.
This is also deceptive goalpost-moving - the poster didn't just say that "misinformation comes from right-wing media", but that it was a "Biblical flood" from "the right", which means an objectively large quantity, which neither you nor they have provided any evidence for.
It's pretty clear that that comment is flamebait. It made a politically-charged claim meant to attack a particular political group that had zero evidence for it, which you have also provided zero evidence for. Most of that user's other comments have been flagged and the account was eventually banned, which pretty clearly shows that they were engaging in flamebait.
> people have eyes to see that and call it out
Yet more emotionally-manipulative rhetoric. You still haven't provided evidence for these claims, either (although even if you had, it wouldn't excuse this).
> I am puzzled by your comment history.
Yet more emotionally-manipulative rhetoric (you are clearly not puzzled - you're personally attacking me), coupled with profiling, which is an ad-hominem that is extremely inappropriate (for HN, and for anywhere) and bad-faith.
> said it's malicious to support infrastructure spending[2]
This is a straight-up lie. I said "Proposing that we should continue to throw more money at infrastructure, before diagnosing and fixing the problems that are causing that inefficiency [...], is straight-up malicious." This is very different than what you claimed I said. You read my comment, and lied about what I said.
> and called Snowden a narcissist
Which is an irrelevant, intentionally misleading and out-of-context fragment of what I said - which was saying that he had narcissistic tendencies as an explanation for his actions, not as a means of trying to distract from an argument that he made.
> And a simple cmd+f shows "Emotional plea" is a phrase you do not use sparingly either. You are using this word very broadly. If you cannot hold yourself to the same standards you hold other users, you aren't debating in good faith.
More profiling. This is not appropriate for HN. Please do not do it.
> You have obviously constructed a belief system that makes it impossible to engage with things you disagree with while allowing yourself to lash out at users however you see fit and bring up whatever politics suits you.
This is yet another character attack - again, inappropriate for HN. As we've seen, you're also willing to lie about my words, so this assessment isn't based on fact anyway.
> An argument is not a theoretical bottle exercise for one to wordsmith their way towards not engaging with the facts. In the real world, we have eyes.
More emotionally-manipulative and deceitful rhetoric. Also, it's worth noting that you ignoring my point and instead proceeded to link-drop like it proved your point.
This is completely irrelevant to claims that there's been a "downright biblical flood of COVID misinformation that emanated from the right".
I don't need to read the others - if you have a claim that you want to make, you can source the claim from the paper, because given that you lied about what I said, the burden is on you to prove that your claims are based in reality. Posting a link is not proof behind a claim.
If you can't argue in good faith without profiling other users, making personal attacks, making partisan political comments, justifying guideline-breaking behavior because you agree with the opinions made, claiming that your opinions are "facts" without providing evidence, sneering at people who don't agree with said opinions, and actively lying about other people's words and claims, then you shouldn't comment on HN.
Please do not respond if you can't avoid doing the above - especially if you can't avoid lying about my own words back to me.
Some of this stuff happened in 2020 (who was president in 2020?) and some of it happened later. So seems to be saying the both teams were playing the game if you read between the lines (ie. you're likely right).
“During their dialogue, both tech leaders probed each other’s intentions for expansion. “I remember him asking me whether we were planning to start something on a global basis, on the global level, go for international expansion. I said no,” Durov recalled.
Zuckerberg similarly denied any plans to target Durov's domestic market, yet both moved to expand their respective reaches shortly after the meeting. “We both ended up doing exactly that in two or three weeks,” Durov noted.”
That's why I brought the quote, let people draw their own conclusions. Mark isn't to be trusted for a variety of reasons, that conversation isn't one of them lol. Durov was laughing because they both lied to each other
Tuckster is an "anti-elite" heir to a fortune who grew up in a castle. The only job he ever had was outrage baiting naive people. People like him are against regulation, but will clap any time big tech is dragged in front of congress. It's all a scam. You're being had. Why are you treating any part of his interviews as valid information.
Elon's path may not be the best path to popularity.
If Zuck wants popularity, maybe a good way to go about that would be to de-shittify Facebook, Instagram, and so forth so that those platforms respect their users.
I don't think that age is everything, but I feel like it is a significant factor.
At the very least, it is very frustrating as a younger person that the vast majority of our lawmakers are _very_ old. This has (historically, but not recently) been more of a problem with congress: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/aging-congress-boomers/
As a (just) boomer, I'd be in favor of having the voting age lowered to 16. Certainly there are many reckless, feckless and uninformed 16 year olds, but the standard of debate coming from the seniors in the room is horrifying and needs to be diluted by the people who have the biggest stake in our planet's future.
Why would lowering to 16 from 18 make a difference? Plenty of data out there shows that age demographic is the least likely to show up on election day and vote.
There is some evidence getting people to vote earlier results in them being more consistent voters over time. And they would potentially be fresh off a civics class.
Then vote for Chase Oliver. Not saying that you wouldn't, it's just if you're going to be talking about political hypotheticals, there are still actual alternatives to pulling the lever for Zuckerberg.
More specifically, he was born in Africa and neither one of his parents was a US citizen. While all past presidents were born in the USA, it hasn't yet been definitively ruled that you must be born on US soil to be a "natural born Citizen", and my understanding is that you likely don't, you just need to have been a US citizen at birth rather than naturalized later.
Facebook has insane pull. Sometimes I forget about it, but it is used by majority of every single demographic base once you consider different portions of the FB app (markets, groups, messenger), Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads (don’t think it is that relevant yet). That being said, to my understanding, Meta has been trying to move itself away from political-adjacent conversations. While Twitter is completely the opposite, and thrives on poli-rage.
Well, he's also on video recently at a church saying, "I need you to come out and vote for me. And if things work out the way we want, you won't need to vote again."
Apparently this is the smoking gun and Trump is going to become dictator for life? Is this where we are in the debate? You might as well be talking about what kind of ice-cream he likes then.
Come on, we both know that he means (specially if you read the full context) that there will be no reason to vote afterwards (to a group that seldom votes) because their wishes/goals will be delievered by trump. He was just trying to convince them that this election matters most.
> He was just trying to convince them that this election matters most.
Sure. And he said he was going to "act as a dictator from day 1" (after saying repeatedly that "America could benefit from a dictatorship" and praising what other dictators "have been able to do for their country") for what reason? He said he'd terminate the constitution. The guy who just got indicted again for his BS on and around Jan 6.
Really, he just means "I'll fix the country so well, and there will be so much love, that people will be happy to keep voting us back in".
I don't think he'll succeed. I don't think he'll be elected. But if you think there's not a part of Trump that wants to be President For Life, and will if he thinks he can get away with it, then ... you haven't been listening to him.
>Really, he just means "I'll fix the country so well, and there will be so much love, that people will be happy to keep voting us back in".
No, it means exactly as Trump said it would - he wants to be a dictator, and is willing to terminate the constitution to make it so. Even then, he won't fix jack shit, because that would actually require working, which is something he cannot and will not do. He had a supermajority in congress in his first term...and did nothing besides pass tax cuts for billionaires.
I'd never in my youth imagine that the country I grew up in would elect a guy who trashes the constitution who wears lifts and orange makeup, let alone potentially doing it twice. May you live in interesting times indeed.
>Yeah because Trump is the one who's going after his opponents using the judical system.
I'm sorry, the $450 million judgement was for systemic fraud committed for decades prior to his involvement in politics.
Further, the going after him for retaining government documents could have been avoided completely if he didn't lie to the FBI, lie to them again, and then lie to his own attorneys so they'd unknowingly lie to the FBI on his behalf. It's not like they were benign documents about what the secreatary of HUD or eudcation eats for lunch; they were SCI documents pertaining to Israel's nuclear weapons program...that were gifted to the Saudis so the Saudi PIF would in turn fund a golf tournament Trump could host at his courses in an attempt to give the middle finger to the PGA Tour.
> More than eight-in-ten White evangelical Protestant voters who attend religious services frequently (85%) voted for Trump in the most recent election, as did 81% of those who attend less frequently.
> White born-again or evangelical Christians made up 24 percent of the electorate in the 2022 elections, according to the media consortium exit poll conducted for CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS. Black (11 percent) and Latino (11 percent) voters and those from a union household (18 percent) combined to constitute 40 percent of the vote.
Can you please cite the court case that proves Trump won in 2020? Regardless of how many people believe that the Democrats cheated, asserting that Trump won AND that his alleged victory was proven in court is quite a bold claim. Post proof or gtfo.
The rules don't apply to the people who make them. What do you expect is going to happen if he does show up on the ballot and the most people vote for him?
> Also, he's almost as toxic to the left as Trump is at this point because he doesn't want kids to be transitioned and doesn't think people that say mean things (or things someone in particular thinks are mean) are automatically bad people.
That's a pretty big understatement about all the wacky, inept and dumb things he has said (and presumably believes)
If you go back 4 years, Trans and Black Lives Matter very much dominated the DNC, and those topics today get barely a whistle. I read the whole DNC platform, it's very much not what it was a few years ago.
Meanwhile the VP candidate on the other side has a non white, non Cristian wife and has very much repudiated the racist part of the party.
I suspect that in 4-8 years you will have seen some massive shift in US politics and party platforms away from where we are today. Because it looks like both sides are making some pivots
Zuckerberg sees the writing on the wall. I suspect that he would rather see a trump admin and avoid an anti-trust fight or privacy legislation.
I'm pretty into right wing blogs and forums. I have yet to see even a glimpse of a Nazi and even anyone that goes beyond "why is half of Bidens Whitehouse Jewish? Isn't that weird? Why do so many politicians have to take a photo in Israel?" That's as 'Nazi' as it gets.
I'd be surprised if Elon's detractors know about his daughter, generally speaking. The tech conversations don't overlap with the gossip conversations very often.
Elon detractors love to focus on made up bullshit instead of the very real, more problematic issues with Elon. But this is the same of anyone unpopular.
The person was clearly trying to say "it wasn't a big thing, and is huge now in comparison to just a few years ago". But hey, you won debate there with some counter examples that prove them wrong. But did we move the debate forward?
Me jumping in for everyone to understand the push-back and why the "data" you propose is not swaying our opinion. The reason something like a study isn't changing our minds about the topic is because we've seen how profit-making institutions, researchers, academia, and even the school system have all been "captured". The topic is taboo, and any sort of dissent is met with a huge amount of pushback, mockery, cancelling, "phobe" calling, and all manners of ugliness. The "literature" is then effectively rigged.
And even if the study is true, and valid, and there was no bias in the research conducted, because we've seen the above "capture" we can't reasonably convince ourselves to trust "the science". This is why it's so tragic that the left has gone scorched-earth with previously-trusted institutions. The trust and reasonable debate will take decades to be re-established, and until then we're stuck with this weird tribal "us vs them" hell hole.
"It wasn't a big thing" - how do you know? You do not. A group of people ask for a place at the table and you and your ilk question their legitimacy as human beings - that's what you're doing. People are saying "I feel this way, I am this way, I see others who feel like me and and feel empowered to come forward and live as the person I feel I am"
And your response is 'it's a phase' - like their identity is a fidget spinner. Nothing is being lost or endangered by making trans people feel welcome and valid and allowing them to pursue treatments that make them happier.
The topic is not taboo. What's taboo is invalidating the lives and existence of other human beings just finding a voice and a place in the world and figuring it out. After all if it's a phase, or a social contagion, it'll blow by and you can relax - but the amount of effort going in to making these people feel scrutinized and unwelcome doesn't seem like that's the point at all.
> "The topic is not taboo. What's taboo is invalidating the lives and existence of other human beings just finding a voice and a place in the world and figuring it out. After all if it's a phase, or a social contagion, it'll blow by and you can relax - but the amount of effort going in to making these people feel scrutinized and unwelcome doesn't seem like that's the point at all."
Every single person I know that isn't on-board with the Left or trans issues (someone the left would call a bigot and nazi), is 110% fine with actual real-world average trans people that want to just live their lives. What everyone has an issue with is the fact that trans activists have an obsession with "being allowed" in opposite-gender spaces such as toilets (like WTF, why?!?). They also have this weird obsession of wanting to have trans issues exposed, taught and presented to kids (again, why?). Also the whole thing about promoting, encouraging and allowing minors that can't consent to be transitioned and have their bodies effectively butchered (on this I will take a stand - this is a tragedy and history will judge those that participated). All of these have nothing to do with normal people questioning the "legitimacy" of trans individuals as humans, that's just been the catchy marketing hook presented by professional activists as they usurped the trans movement, so that they could polarize and perpetuate "The Movement" at the detriment to peace and harmony among all humans (whether they're trans or not).
The fact that the whole trans movement go co-opted by activists is sad, and causing real harm to trans individuals. Meanwhile, the rest of us, normal people, average people, have no desire to prevent trans individuals from being who they are or want to be.
There are people going back thousands of years which seem to fit pretty well under modern conceptions of trans people.
Even if you want to limit consideration to people who self-professed an identity under our modern conceptions, there's a full century of consistent examples. There was a thriving community of trans people in Berlin in the 1920s and early 1930s, until it was rather abruptly cut off in 1933. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...
> because he doesn't want kids to be transitioned and doesn't think people that say mean things (or things someone in particular thinks are mean) are automatically bad people.
Characterising the critiques of Musk in this way is not only reductive, but flat out wrong.
I discovered telegram around 2017 and I thought it was a fake whatsapp at first. Idk about 10 years ago, but 5 years ago it def did look like a re-skin
>Zuck is on a major PR campaign drive, I would not trust a word he says.
You can tell because the lizard has begun looksmaxing
However, we know from numerous leaks now that the White House has indeed pressured every major social media company to target specific citizens and censor them.
Zuck is on a major PR campaign drive, I would not trust a word he says.