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Facebook's actions are controversial for a few reasons. 1. Their focus was Soros. They were criticised, and they essentially said "we haven't done anything wro

Facebook's actions are controversial for a few reasons. 1. Their focus was Soros. They were criticised, and they essentially said "we haven't done anything wrong that needs to be addressed, he must have another motive for criticising us, find out if he's going to get rich from this somehow". They set out to attempt to discredit Soros, for the crime of criticising them. 2. Having failed to find a financial motive, they did discover that he was funding a FB pressure group (which you might expect of a wealthy critic). That was then used to smear the group, among the people for whom "is funded by Soros" is an effective smear. 3. Many of the people appealed to in (2) are anti-semitic. It's why the smear works. It's therefore an anti-semitic act to use Soros as a smear in this way. In sum: they used their financial power to attack a critic of theirs with an ad hominem smear that had an anti-semitic basis. That's not the act of a laudable organisation. It's a controversial act.

nostromo 8y ago
2 and 3 are also true of Soros attacking Facebook. So in effect you’re saying that Zuckerberg, Soros, and Sandberg - all jews - are antisemetic. Soros funded smear groups focused on Facebook. Facebook responding in kind doesn’t strike me as better or worse than what Soros did. Bringing antisemitism into it is a stretch.
- danso 8y ago
  > So in effect you’re saying that Zuckerberg, Soros, and Sandberg - all jews - are antisemetic. No, Facebook critics are saying that FB was OK with undermining its critics at all costs, even if that meant dogwhistling for anti-Semitic trolls.
  - nostromo 8y ago
    How is Facebook correctly pointing out that Soros funded a smear campaign against them a dog whistle? Is it not possible to criticize money in politics if they’re anyone other than WASPs like the Kochs?
    - danso 8y ago
      If Facebook was so correct, why did they hire a PR firm to launder that claim? I'll repeat something I posted in my other comment: Do you believe that George Soros is also actively behind a campaign to destroy Tesla [0]? Reveal has received money through Soros's Open Society Foundations [1]. [0] https://www.revealnews.org/article/inside-teslas-factory-a-medical-clinic-designed-to-ignore-injured-workers/ https://www.revealnews.org/article/inside-teslas-factory-a-m... https://www.revealnews.org/article/tesla-left-injuries-off-the-books-but-it-might-not-face-penalties/ https://www.revealnews.org/article/tesla-left-injuries-off-t... [1] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-dont-we-hear-about-soros-ties-to-over-30-major-news-organizations https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-dont-we-hear-about-soros...
      - nostromo 8y ago
        Soros is also laundering his attacks... Perhaps I’m being naive but I see two Jewish business leaders fighting a proxy war — and yet one is called antisemitic and one is not. And I suspect it’s because people are only attacking the side they disagree with politically.
        danso 8y ago
        You aren’t being naive, but you may be credulous. Whereas there is evidence that FB hired someone specifically to undermine their critics, where is the evidence that Soros commanded his philanthropic grantees to wage an attack against Facebook?
        shard972 8y ago
        The fact you see them as Jews and not just People shows your anti-Semitic bias to be honest.
        pl1234 8y ago
        never go full retard
        notSupplied 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Iamhisalt 8y ago
  Soros is also famously a Nazi collaborator. There’s a 60 Minutes interview of him talking about the joy he got in confiscating property from fellow Jews.
Stanish 8y ago
You forgot the most offensive part, which is that their entire business model is to leverage the utility provided by market dominance to force users into handing over information that they would otherwise like to keep completely private.
sublupo 8y ago
> 3 That's ridiculous. Every antisemite eats, does that make eating antisemitic? Most people on the right don't like when Soros pays for protestors. 75% of Orthodox Jews support Trump. Most of whom I assume disagree with Soros. Are they also antisemitic?
ankmathur96 8y ago
I think for (1), it's completely fair for a company to investigate the potential financial motivations of their critics (for example, people were not this upset when Google pointed out that the "search rankings are rigged" "independent" agencies were actually just Yelp and Microsoft paying for an attack.) I think the fact that a supposedly grassroots organization of protestors received a slew of money from a variety of significant liberal donors does point out that this isn't as grassroots as people think. There was so much else that FB did wrong (Stamos admitted in his WaPo opinion piece that Sheryl was upset at him for telling the board about Russia and that PR pieces about that were obfuscated). Why is the media so focused on what seems to me to be a routine investigation which even they engage in? This just doesn't seem like a winning argument to me.

nostromo 8y ago

2 and 3 are also true of Soros attacking Facebook. So in effect you’re saying that Zuckerberg, Soros, and Sandberg - all jews - are antisemetic. Soros funded smear groups focused on Facebook. Facebook responding in kind doesn’t strike me as better or worse than what Soros did. Bringing antisemitism into it is a stretch.

danso 8y ago
> So in effect you’re saying that Zuckerberg, Soros, and Sandberg - all jews - are antisemetic. No, Facebook critics are saying that FB was OK with undermining its critics at all costs, even if that meant dogwhistling for anti-Semitic trolls.
- nostromo 8y ago
  How is Facebook correctly pointing out that Soros funded a smear campaign against them a dog whistle? Is it not possible to criticize money in politics if they’re anyone other than WASPs like the Kochs?
  - danso 8y ago
    If Facebook was so correct, why did they hire a PR firm to launder that claim? I'll repeat something I posted in my other comment: Do you believe that George Soros is also actively behind a campaign to destroy Tesla [0]? Reveal has received money through Soros's Open Society Foundations [1]. [0] https://www.revealnews.org/article/inside-teslas-factory-a-medical-clinic-designed-to-ignore-injured-workers/ https://www.revealnews.org/article/inside-teslas-factory-a-m... https://www.revealnews.org/article/tesla-left-injuries-off-the-books-but-it-might-not-face-penalties/ https://www.revealnews.org/article/tesla-left-injuries-off-t... [1] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-dont-we-hear-about-soros-ties-to-over-30-major-news-organizations https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-dont-we-hear-about-soros...
    - nostromo 8y ago
      Soros is also laundering his attacks... Perhaps I’m being naive but I see two Jewish business leaders fighting a proxy war — and yet one is called antisemitic and one is not. And I suspect it’s because people are only attacking the side they disagree with politically.
      - danso 8y ago
        You aren’t being naive, but you may be credulous. Whereas there is evidence that FB hired someone specifically to undermine their critics, where is the evidence that Soros commanded his philanthropic grantees to wage an attack against Facebook?
      - shard972 8y ago
        The fact you see them as Jews and not just People shows your anti-Semitic bias to be honest.
        pl1234 8y ago
        never go full retard
      - notSupplied 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Iamhisalt 8y ago
Soros is also famously a Nazi collaborator. There’s a 60 Minutes interview of him talking about the joy he got in confiscating property from fellow Jews.

Stanish 8y ago

You forgot the most offensive part, which is that their entire business model is to leverage the utility provided by market dominance to force users into handing over information that they would otherwise like to keep completely private.

sublupo 8y ago

> 3 That's ridiculous. Every antisemite eats, does that make eating antisemitic? Most people on the right don't like when Soros pays for protestors. 75% of Orthodox Jews support Trump. Most of whom I assume disagree with Soros. Are they also antisemitic?

ankmathur96 8y ago

I think for (1), it's completely fair for a company to investigate the potential financial motivations of their critics (for example, people were not this upset when Google pointed out that the "search rankings are rigged" "independent" agencies were actually just Yelp and Microsoft paying for an attack.) I think the fact that a supposedly grassroots organization of protestors received a slew of money from a variety of significant liberal donors does point out that this isn't as grassroots as people think. There was so much else that FB did wrong (Stamos admitted in his WaPo opinion piece that Sheryl was upset at him for telling the board about Russia and that PR pieces about that were obfuscated). Why is the media so focused on what seems to me to be a routine investigation which even they engage in? This just doesn't seem like a winning argument to me.