4 ms·

Palmer Luckey secretly funding meme army on Twitter, Reddit

36 points by kefka 10y ago

threeseed 10y ago
This was pretty extraordinary news. It's been fine that company leaders take political positions because they have all been reasonably centrist (with leanings left/right). But Trump is the most provocative and polarising candidate we've seen in quite some time. And to not just support him but actively engage in this way is really unusual. I can't imagine Zuckerberg is going to be at all impressed by this.
- kefka 10y ago
  I mean, this can devolve in "Trump sux, Hillary sux"... but that's what I wanted to avoid. Think of this as a VC-Founder issue of differing politics with regards to social media. How do you balance this? Do you just shut up and acquiesce when the VC tells you to do something? Do you still voice your opinion? Luckey sold his company to Facebook. Facebook's CEO is a Clinton supporter, and it appears that Palmer Luckey is a Trump supporter. How much say does Zuckerberg have over Luckey, considering that Luckey is still the "face" of Oculus (even if the company was sold)? How do you balance these issues when there is a political rift(pun aside) like this?
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  The founder of Renaissance Technologies is one of the biggest backwards of the Democratic party ($10M+ in support routinely). The CEO of Renaissance Technologies is one of the biggest backers of the Republican party. It's been like this for a while. Life goes on. If you think someone will get punished by their boss because of their political leanings, well that's exactly why "closet Republicans" who fear repercussions you their careers is now a real thing in the bay area.
throwanem 10y ago
The Reddit post is just a link to a Daily Beast article which makes the actual claim, plus a lot of uninformed speculation in the Reddit comments. Maybe change the URL in this post? (Not that the Daily Beast article is especially good, and I don't mean that in a political way - it's just hard to make out the course of events they're positing.)
room271 10y ago
Can the mods explain why this was removed from the frontpage? It is clearly of interest to the community.
- kefka 10y ago
  Hmm.. I've had the same reaction when I modified/hacked/made the python ML code to fix Thalmic Myo's armband so Linux and the rest of us could use it. 1 In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Makes sense, to protect their income, but altogether sleezy without some sort of disclosure as to why (would have been nice to see "article not allowed due to YC ownership"). The only thing I can guess is there's some sort of fiduciary something, that caused the mods to dupe-delete. 1 http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-developer-access/ http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-...
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Last night's discussion wasn't dupe-flagged. If what you claim here is true, it should have been.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - dang 10y ago
    > In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Holy magoly, that is 100% untrue. The truth is the opposite: when there are articles critical of YC companies, we are careful to moderate them less, not more, than we normally would. That's the first principle of HN moderation and was literally the first thing pg said when he was showing me how to moderate the site. I hadn't even had a chance to grab a chair before he blurted it out. We wouldn't dream of doing anything like what you describe—not because it wouldn't work (though it wouldn't), but because as members of the community ourselves, we wouldn't want to be treated that way. It's always possible to get an answer to a question about a specific post. It's better to send such things to hn@ycombinator.com because (a) they're off-topic here, and (b) we might not see them otherwise. Please note that phrase specific post. Without specific links, it's harder to clear things up.
carsongross 10y ago
Literally, the guy has fuck you money.

36 points by kefka 10y ago

This was pretty extraordinary news. It's been fine that company leaders take political positions because they have all been reasonably centrist (with leanings left/right). But Trump is the most provocative and polarising candidate we've seen in quite some time. And to not just support him but actively engage in this way is really unusual. I can't imagine Zuckerberg is going to be at all impressed by this.

kefka 10y ago
I mean, this can devolve in "Trump sux, Hillary sux"... but that's what I wanted to avoid. Think of this as a VC-Founder issue of differing politics with regards to social media. How do you balance this? Do you just shut up and acquiesce when the VC tells you to do something? Do you still voice your opinion? Luckey sold his company to Facebook. Facebook's CEO is a Clinton supporter, and it appears that Palmer Luckey is a Trump supporter. How much say does Zuckerberg have over Luckey, considering that Luckey is still the "face" of Oculus (even if the company was sold)? How do you balance these issues when there is a political rift(pun aside) like this?
hkmurakami 10y ago
The founder of Renaissance Technologies is one of the biggest backwards of the Democratic party ($10M+ in support routinely). The CEO of Renaissance Technologies is one of the biggest backers of the Republican party. It's been like this for a while. Life goes on. If you think someone will get punished by their boss because of their political leanings, well that's exactly why "closet Republicans" who fear repercussions you their careers is now a real thing in the bay area.

throwanem 10y ago

The Reddit post is just a link to a Daily Beast article which makes the actual claim, plus a lot of uninformed speculation in the Reddit comments. Maybe change the URL in this post? (Not that the Daily Beast article is especially good, and I don't mean that in a political way - it's just hard to make out the course of events they're positing.)

room271 10y ago

Can the mods explain why this was removed from the frontpage? It is clearly of interest to the community.

kefka 10y ago
Hmm.. I've had the same reaction when I modified/hacked/made the python ML code to fix Thalmic Myo's armband so Linux and the rest of us could use it. 1 In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Makes sense, to protect their income, but altogether sleezy without some sort of disclosure as to why (would have been nice to see "article not allowed due to YC ownership"). The only thing I can guess is there's some sort of fiduciary something, that caused the mods to dupe-delete. 1 http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-developer-access/ http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-...
- throwanem 10y ago
  Last night's discussion wasn't dupe-flagged. If what you claim here is true, it should have been.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  > In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Holy magoly, that is 100% untrue. The truth is the opposite: when there are articles critical of YC companies, we are careful to moderate them less, not more, than we normally would. That's the first principle of HN moderation and was literally the first thing pg said when he was showing me how to moderate the site. I hadn't even had a chance to grab a chair before he blurted it out. We wouldn't dream of doing anything like what you describe—not because it wouldn't work (though it wouldn't), but because as members of the community ourselves, we wouldn't want to be treated that way. It's always possible to get an answer to a question about a specific post. It's better to send such things to hn@ycombinator.com because (a) they're off-topic here, and (b) we might not see them otherwise. Please note that phrase specific post. Without specific links, it's harder to clear things up.

carsongross 10y ago

Literally, the guy has fuck you money.