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Comment by nielsbot | Hacker News Reader

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?

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> 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.

Trump should focus on America. In 15 days, he's going to wish he didn't.

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 Republicans 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.

While that much is true, I'm not sure how nationally successful that movement would be without Trump at the center of the cult of personality. The ideological movement will keep control of the party, and ideologically-motivated people will turn out to vote for it, but I think they will lose a lot of the low-information, incoherent-ideology people that Trump was able to bring into the tent once he's gone.

> 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.

I don’t know about that. I remember when California Hispanics turned on Republicans after Prop 187 in the 1990s, and the realignment was permanent[1]. This could be the timeline where national Republicans lose Hispanics for good, destabilizing the knife-edge balance between the parties.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/08/777466912/californias-prop-18...

Trump is a lame duck now and in 15 days there's nothing more he can do for senators or representatives since they will all be sucking up to whoever is their next nominee for president.

Even among people I know who voted for him, Trump fatigue is setting in and growing. Iran, renaming lakes and oceans, high cost of food and gas, none of that is what they voted for.

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.

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!

If you’re someone who treasures the scientific method and the scientific approach to understanding the world, you have to become comfortable with uncertainty. Particularly in the Senate are several possible outcomes with wildly different consequences, all of which are plausible.

Don’t let either loss aversion or irrational exuberance rule you. Weigh every possibility and prepare yourself for it psychologically. The result could be crushing defeat, but it could also be stunning triumph.

Its always those Two parties. Nothing changes. All are same. They all support big tech

My worry/expectation is that Democrats may win both the House and the Senate, then spend two years finding excuses to keep letting Trump have everything he wants.

they can not even dare to punish Zuck and Musk. flawed democracy what America got.

By the way democrats never dared to call out Musk's endless lies for decades

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.

Look up the definition of criminal conspiracy.

Look up the definition of conspiracy (not criminal conspiracy, as you sneakily modified):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy

"A conspiracy, also known as a plot, ploy, or scheme, is a plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful OR HARMFUL purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivation,[2] while KEEPING THEIR AGREEMENT SECRET from the public or from other people affected by it"

Why are you being a dick? Just have a conversation instead of trying to win something.

Uh, you came at me first trying to prove me wrong, this thread is plain evidence for anyone still looking, which is unlikely.

No one came at you. I replied to you. You accused me of hallucinating and sneaking. You’re a dick.

Coming at me, contradicting me, what ever you want to call it. "hallucinating" is a statement of fact. You just concocted false information out of nowhere, no different from an LLM. If being truthful is being a dick, so be it. If you had something else to say and the false statement was incidental, I could have been more lenient, but the entirety of your comment was just to contradict me, and wrongly at that.

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.

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.

But from your comment it seems like you think the right answer is to scrub left wing voices, rather than to let everyone speak equally.

I'm not sure where you derive that implication. I would rather have a strong culture of free speech, certainly.

> 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?

That is correct, both Twitter and Meta actively suppressed the Biden laptop story. That was clear election interference.

That's not the entire story and anyone who has done their diligence on it knows this.

Please enlighten me.

Oct 14, 2020, Twitter blocks the NY Post laptop story. The New York Post published a story based on emails said to come from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. Twitter flagged the tweets and froze the Post's account under a 2018 policy against sharing hacked materials.

Oct 2020: Facebook demotes the same story. Zuckerberg wrote in an August 26, 2024 letter that Facebook temporarily demoted the story after the FBI warned of a possible Russian disinformation campaign.

Early to late 2020: Twitter labels Trump's election claims. Twitter first added a contextual label to a Trump tweet calling mail-in voting fraudulent in early 2020.

Dec 8, 2022: The Twitter Files describe "visibility filtering." Bari Weiss reported that Twitter staff limited the reach of some accounts without telling users, including Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk.

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!

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).

Educate yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Hundred thousands, maybe millions of people didn't die in commie repression due to this involvement. If anything, it didn't happen enough.

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