They fail to see what every outsider, and many insiders, clearly see. Paraphrasing Upton Sinclair:
It is difficult to get people to see something if their wealth, status, and self-worth depend upon not seeing it.
The problem is that half of those outsiders clearly see the evil as Facebook censoring too much. And the other half clearly see the evil as Facebook censoring too little.
Ignoring so many people asking them to examine their bias and human fallibility is definitely a form of stupidity. That is unless they believe the people are more flawed than they are and that they are better placed to judge what the people need. In that case, it becomes more malice than stupidity.
"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice".
If responsible people are blind to the problem, and claim incompetence, they're probably profiting from it.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by wishful thinking and unconscious self-deception motivated by profit."
Truly? Sincerely? Earnestly? All that?
I must be a lot more cynical than you. I think they absolutely know the score. I think they sincerely would rather not be painted with the brush of accountability, would prefer deniability.
That's hard to believe when they've responded to international catastrophes that they had a role in like this[1], and admitted this themselves[2]:
> Facebook admits it was used to 'incite offline violence' in Myanmar
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
The left wants to own online political discussion in the US, and they are very bothered that the right finds a ready audience when they are allowed to compete.
Actual socialist politics are not permitted in US discourse, just stuff around the margins which is not threatening to corporate power (identity politics, maybe some health care reform).
I remain flabbergasted by the increasing number of people who can somehow in the same breath complain about "radical socialists" and "cultural marxists" while at the same time somehow equating those people with "corporate elites" and "silicon valley" -- the two are the enemy of the other.
EDIT: as a person with actual radical socialist politics, I can assure you that both Facebook and the NYT want nothing to do with my views.
> That's a very odd definition of "left" floating around down there in the US. What is being called "left" in that context is nothing but neo-liberal centrist politics, and it has wanted to own political discussion in the US in some form or another for over a century.
I don't think that's the "left" the GP was referring to. I think were most likely talking about the "culture war" left.
> I remain flabbergasted by the increasing number of people who can somehow in the same breath complain about "radical socialists" and "cultural marxists" while at the same time somehow equating those people with "corporate elites" and "silicon valley" -- the two are the enemy of the other.
It's because we don't always get to control definitions, even ones we care a lot about (ask me about "crypto" sometime). IMHO, those are both fashionable (in some circles) new terms for the "culture war" left, somewhat inflected by plutocratic interests that harness opposition to it to further their own agenda.
Edit: IMHO, I think a flag-waving socially-conservative socialism could be surprisingly successful in America, if someone could get it off the ground.
I think that's basically Trump's base to be honest. Politicians just haven't figured out how to wrangle them into something useful.
I see this kind of talk from people with Q & Trump-inflected politics all the time. It's bizarre.
The way I see it, the US has two "lefts".
Traditional left/progressive values would include things like affordable healthcare, worker protection, progressive taxation, livable wages, the like. Importantly, for all.
The Democrats don't seem to deliver on any of these basics long achieved in many other western countries, therefore I agree that they are neither left nor progressive.
By comparison, not even our main right wing party (VVD) would be as conservative as the Democrats on the matters above. So locally, we would see the "left" Democrats as near far-right. That's one huge gap.
(as a weird complexity, over here "liberal" means right-wing. In the US it means left-wing. yet since US left-wing is in fact right-wing, I guess it does add up)
The second type of left in the US, I do consider truly left. It's hard to put your finger on it, but it includes identity politics, the "woke", down to even marxists.
Clearly they are on the rise, at least in media and institutes. Yet they are now in an unhappy marriage with the core of the Democrats, which as we established is right-wing. Good luck with that.
For the record, here in the Netherlands we largely reject that type of left.
So I agree with most of what you said, except for the Silicon Valley part. You're going to be super surprised how the biggest supporters of extreme left policy are in fact rich comfortable people.
I'll refer to one of the most mind blowing tweets ever produced (now deleted). A co-founder of Twitter took issue with the founder of Coinbase disallowing political discussion in the workplace, and tweeted:
"When the revolution comes, me-only capitalists like X will be the first to be put against the wall. I'll be happy to provide video narration."
The extremity and cruelty is impressive, but the truly shocking part is that the person tweeting it has a net worth of 300M.
We have multiple socialists elected to US Congress.
Like I get that there's a popular meme that taxes and government services are "socialism". But that's a wildly inaccurate boogeyman conjured up by people who really, really don't want to pay taxes. (No one wants to pay taxes, but most of us accept they're the cost of having a society)
If taxes that fund government services are "socialist" then having a police force is "socialist" too. Do you agree with that? It sounds ridiculous to me but that's where that logic leads.
Also, there was election fraud. There always is. Was it enough to turn the election? Who knows. To say that people shouldn’t be able to discuss it is mind-boggling to me. The only way we can have trust in our election process is if we can ask questions.
This is a wild misrepresentation of the opposing perspective. Nobody is arguing that we can't discuss election fraud.
The argument—which I'm sure you are actually aware—is that there needs to be some level of credibility to the idea that a) fraud occurred, and b) that it happened in meaningful quantities before we spend significant time, cost, and effort in investigating claims.
Simply having lost is not a credible claim to investigate widespread fraud. Finding one or two isolated cases in elections with margins of thousands or more votes is not a credible claim to investigate widespread fraud.
Further, fraud cannot simply be a claim that is made and then perpetually reinvestigated by decreasingly-reputable third parties until you are able to invalidate an election whose outcome you disagree with.
Whatever gatekeeping rules you agree or don't with shouldn't matter. The gatekeeping is the problem. Being afraid of ideas and shutting down anyone who doesn't speak about approved topics is the issue not whether your gatekeeping rules have been met.
Zero people are being stopped from talking about election fraud. You and I are sitting here discussion election fraud right now. The only thing that has been stopped is investigations of claims of widespread fraud for which there is virtually zero evidence.
This is precisely the kind of wild misrepresentation that people—including myself—are tired of fighting. If you need to misrepresent your opponent in order to defeat them, maybe you should reflect: are we the baddies?
The comment 2 levels up by eggsmediumrare seems to be arguing exactly that.
I think that's currently how the game is played. You can try to be better than that, but then the other side wins because they are still happy to play dirty.
It's funny that the party of "my body my choice" is so against people wanting a say over what goes into their bodies. I am personally vaccinated, but I think it's reasonable to let individuals make that choice.
Also regarding election fraud, when on election night you see charts like [1] with enormous one party spikes, it is entirely natural for people to be suspicious. Those people then asked for audits and were told to go to hell. If you want to undermine trust in the election system, that is exactly how to accomplish it.
None of this is "you aren't allowed to lie" it's "You aren't allowed to ask questions"
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/politics/us/2020/michigan-w...
Again, I don't believe there was widespread fraud but people who refuse to discuss what happened and refuse inspections sure aren't helping us becomong more confident.
Who was told to "go to hell"? There were plenty of recounts in all of the close states. Even the recent farcical commission checking fraud in Arizona didn't find anything.
As to the "spike" in that picture, a simple Google search of "Michigan spike voting" produces plenty of resources showing how the "spike" was not fraud. And if you're so worried about the spike in Biden votes later in the process, why are you not also worried about the spike in Trump votes at Nov 3 21:00 (on the graph on the right)?
You're being downvoted because these arguments are so bad as to almost clearly be in bad faith.
I'm being downvoted because some subset of people here view down vote as "I disagree". I used to be bothered by it. I don't think much about it anymore.
Edit:
I'm also fairly certain I've got some followers who take it upon themselves to go through my comment history and start downvoting other posts of mine just for good measure. You know, really sticking it to the man or whatever.
> It's funny that the party of "my body my choice" is so against people wanting a say over what goes into their bodies.
Unlike anti-abortion laws which force women to take pregnancies to term against their will, I am aware of zero proposed legislation that aims to force people into vaccination against their will. The one potential exception to this is for entry to public schooling, for which religious exemptions are (generally but not always) easy to come by.
If not bad faith or misrepresentation, then what?
> Also regarding election fraud, when on election night you see charts like [1] with enormous one party spikes, it is entirely natural for people to be suspicious. Those people then asked for audits and were told to go to hell.
It is reasonable for people to be suspicious. But far from being told to go to hell, people have been given repeated and convincing evidence for why these spikes occur (blue votes tending to cluster in high-density, high-population districts). There was even ample discussion in advance of the election about how, where, and when we expected these spikes to occur, why they're expected, and demonstrating their historical precedent.
Some people still demanded investigations of fraud. Most of those claims were dismissed through official processes due to lack of evidence. Being denied an investigation into claims that have been repeatedly debunked is not being told to go to hell. In fact some of those claims were investigated, but essentially zero systemic fraud has been found to date.
If not bad faith or misrepresentation, then what?
Just this week, Biden was talking about having people go door-to-door to push the unvaccinated to get the shot. Arizona publicly told him to get bent - they weren't going to do that in their state.
So, that's not "forcing" people, but it's too close for my taste. I'm going to presume that you wouldn't be fine with the state sending people door to door to push those who were pregnant to carry to term.
Can you acknowledge that—even taking this completely at face value—going door-to-door encouraging the use of a vaccine has absolutely nothing in common with legally forcing women to take unwanted pregnancies to term, regardless of which side of either policy you care to take?
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Trying to draw parallels between these two situations is absurd to the point of bad faith or willful misrepresentation.
> I'm going to presume that you wouldn't be fine with the state sending people door to door to push those who were pregnant to carry to term.
For reasons completely independent of "my body, my choice" which was the original goalpost.
This is an issue of public health for which we had to globally shut down international travel and social gatherings for a year and a half, and which had incalculable economic impact on billions. Can you also acknowledge that such consequences might perhaps clear a higher bar than that of a choice whose impact is fundamentally limited in scope?
Recognizing that difference in impact is why we've spent $20bn on vaccine development and who knows how much on the actual vaccine rollout.
"Fundamentally limited"? Given that a fetus is genetically human, and genetically different from the woman who carries it, it's clearly both human and not part of her body. There are plenty of completely reasonable people who see those two facts as putting abortion as being perilously close to murder, at best.
First, given that it's genetically a different individual, "my body, my choice" seems willfully blind to the rest of what's involved in abortion. Second, though, if you do regard abortion as murder, the death count per year is of the same order of magnitude as from Covid. So "fundamentally limited in scope" is assuming the answer to something that is, at best, very much still in debate.
Why is there no uproar about this after decades of it...?
Public health is public health, not purely your business.
> I am personally vaccinated,
Good on you!
> but I think it's reasonable to let individuals make that choice.
No, it's not and if you don't see why then you have a major problem with understanding modern medicine.