In order to have your data used by the Donald Trump campaign via Facebook in 2016, one of your friends had to fill out one of the silly psychological questionnaires sent out by Cambridge Analytica. I have 4800 Facebook friends. Not one of them did it.
I Am Extremely Proud of my Facebook Friends Because They Are Smarter Than Most People
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Love the last panel, and I wanna see the stats as well. Also – the respective proportions of fans who aren’t on FB in the first place. (like most of us here at the rallblog)
That said, a man must do what a man must do…
:: eh-HEM :: There is NO PRVF that CA colluded with Donald Trump! And even if there was, it doesn’t matter because the idea of FB influencing elections is absurd. And even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter unless you could mathematically PRUV that it was a major contributor to Hillary’s loss year before last. And even if you could PRUV that it would only be because you’re a Hillary-loving donkey ass-kisser.
To CrazyH:
And what you apparently “must do,” chronically, is to severely twist (and/or ignore) the argument of others, THEN mock it. This is certainly a well established rhetorical technique in US politics (not to mention its foreign affairs) but it does not make the argument go away.
What has been requested by those questioning the Russia-hysteria is NOT your (really cute) “PRVF” but, rather, EVIDENCE. If we are fortunate to eventually arrive at PRVF it will only happen with EVIDENCE. But, lacking EVIDENCE, there is only hysteria.***
The critical EVIDENCE, of course, is in the hands of the original accuser, the DNC. That EVIDENCE is its very own IT servers that Russia allegedly hacked. However the DNC refuses to give those servers to the governmental entities it has insisted must investigate its allegations anyway.
The irony (if not quintessential American hypocrisy) is, of course, that the DNC, itself, started hysteria to distract voters from its own excellent adventure in election fraud in its primary elections, all presumably well documented on said servers. The DNC’s preventing Sanders from getting the Dem nomination was THE crucial crime that “helped” His Hairness get elected.
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***See, for example, the Skripal “poisoning/gassing” in the UK (of all places!!!) that Rootin’ Tootin’ Putin allegedly engineered literally hours before the recent Russian presidential election ( … “coincidentally” within a stones throw of the notorious Porten Down chemical weapons plant.)
Presumably, if at least 87 million Americans respond to an online psychological questionnaire, then, maybe there IS good reason for our controllers to assume we ARE, in general, sufficiently stupid to fear a leader of another country who, given the situation, can only be taken as significantly MORE stupid?
Mock? Oh, hell yes, but please explain where I have “twisted” anything.
(1) Ted keeps repeating over & over & over & over that “there is no proof Russian hacked the election” I’m the one who keeps trying to steer the discussion towards “evidence.” But it doesn’t matter how much evidence I cite, the deniers keep insisting it doesn’t exist. Hint: Screaming “fake news” doesn’t work any better for lefties than for righties.
(2) YOU are the one making the argument that the only reason one might oppose Trump is because Hillary. You’ve accused me of being a Hillbot several times as we discussed this very issue. In fact – you’re making the same duopoly-based argument above (substitute “Hillary” for “DNC”)
(3) A5 keeps making the assertion that it doesn’t matter unless one can mathematically prove that it significantly influenced the election. Further probing has shown that they don’t really believe their own argument, but that doesn’t stop them from making it.
(4) One poster here evidently thinks that saying “absurd” over & over somehow disproves something-or-other, but I’m a little vague on how that works.
(1) Fallacy: straw man.
(2) Fallacy: false dichotomy
(3) Fallacy: Moving the goalposts / raising the bar
(4) Fallacy: argumentum ad nauseam
As always, if anyone wants to seriously discuss the issue I stand ready. But I am getting tired of hearing the same old fallacies over & over & over. Perhaps someone can propose a valid argument one of these days…
… and by “valid” I mean non-fallacious. Doesn’t matter whether I agree with the conclusion, I want to see some actual logic. You know, just for variety.
Oh, and yes indeedy, “PRVF” is mocking michaelmwee’s “TRVTH.” That being another example of argumentum ad nauseam.
May I ask, Ted, just how you know that none of your Facebook «friends» filled in one of those psychological questionnaires ? Was it Mr Zuckerberg or Mr Nix who informed – or was it rather that dastardly Gospodin Putin (who, as we know, is responsible for all the evil in this world) ?…
Henri
To my mind, Daniel Lazare nails the whole «Cambridge Analytical scandal» rather well in a recent Truthdig article….
There’s an awful lot of tails wagging dogs in Washington – and in London and in Paris – just now….
Henri
Actually, they’d be 1200 times smarter if one of them had filled it out. If none the ratio is infinite. (But for some reason, infinite doesn’t seem as funny as 1200.)
As one who has actively — for at least a decade — despised what Mark Zuckerberg stands for, I take a small degree of glee in seeing his nakedly conspicuous contempt for his herd of chumps being made so manifestly obvious. Unfortunately, very few people are going to, uh, get “woke” to what Zuck represents.
Martin Shkreli was pretty blunt about what motivates a CEO. In an interview response that got all of about 11 seconds of coverage, Shkreli, when asked about jacking up the price of the drug in question, said something like this: I am a CEO. I have an obligation to make as much money as I can for the company I work for. When I went to business school, they didn’t say ‘Give 48% of your effort 74% of the the time.’ I was told to give 100% effort 100% of the time. And I did. I bought the drug in question because NO ONE ELSE wanted to. I saw an opportunity and I took it.
Say what you want about Shkreli, at least in that one moment, he was 100% honest. Zuckerberg and Facebook use people to make money. If there was a way to monetize it, I am certain Zuckerberg would have a special Facebook for tween girls to harass and bully other tween girls, and there’d be a counter in one corner bragging about how many suicides the “vital service of connecting communities” provided.
Yep….
Henri
@alex_
re: “herd of chumps”
You nailed it. I looked at FB early on & said “I don’t want to live my life online.” Later on, I said “There is no furshlugginer way I’m going to post that much of my personal data online.”
It’s not like FB *hid* what they were doing – it’s right there in EULA the chumps didn’t read. The chumps automatically hit each & every ‘yes’ button without reading the fine print. (“we will give your personal data to the party of the first part; also that of your friends. Plus your immortal soul & all the beer in your fridge …”)
I do have an account, but it’s a fake name and picture. Fake birthday, home state, and the phone number is that of the North Carolina RNC.
Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.