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Not sure if that was always astroturfing. I certainly feel ambivalent about Julian Assange and he arguably cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election, which obvious

Not sure if that was always astroturfing. I certainly feel ambivalent about Julian Assange and he arguably cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election, which obviously upset a lot of people.

noofen 5y ago
The US media made sure not to make that mistake again with Hunter Biden's laptop.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  The most comicbook supervillain event so far was that Pfizer deliberately slowed down the Covid vaccine until after the election so that it wouldn't help Trump politically: https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1413658719938748428 https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1413658719938748428
  - adamors 5y ago
    It's mind-boggling you actually conclude this from > The companies said they had decided not to conduct the 32-case analysis “after a discussion with the FDA.” Instead, they planned to conduct the analysis after 62 cases. > Gruber said that Pfizer and BioNTech had decided in late October that they wanted to drop the 32-case interim analysis. At that time, the companies decided to stop having their lab confirm cases of Covid-19 in the study, instead leaving samples in storage. The FDA was aware of this decision. Discussions between the agency and the companies concluded, and testing began this past Wednesday.
    - _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
      It's because the tweet takes the article it quotes out of context. This is what leads up to the quoted part: > That study design, as well as those of other drug makers, came under fire from experts who worried that, even if it was statistically valid, these interim analyses would not provide enough data when a vaccine could be given to billions of people. Kind of an important passage to leave out, don't you think?
  - sprafa 5y ago
    Do you really think this was comic book supervillain? I remember this happening at the time and my impression was that it was happening without a doubt. Particularly when they announced the results a few days after the election. My thinking at the time was inside Pfizer the idea of turning an election on this data was deemed too controversial - they would forever be associated with Trump if he won again. That might cause issue with the Dems. No idea but unless there’s proof of something shadier? That would be my guess - just an American corporation making sure it doesn’t piss off half the country.
  - makomk 5y ago
    Nah, the most comicbook supervillain event was the fricking New York Times publicly hinting that if the vaccine was approved before the election because enough evidence was found that not doing so would definitely do more harm, they'd push the narrative that it was only approved to help Trump win and that people shouldn't trust its safety, effectively undermining safety in the vaccination program just to make sure Trump lost. All the other morally and scientifically dubious attempts to delay approval mostly seem to be downstream consequences of that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
raxxorrax 5y ago
The one responsible for loosing the election was Hillary Clinton, not Julian Assange. And supporting the prosecution because of this is also quite an apt reason to not vote for her in the first place. And I think that was made clear before the election.
- pydry 5y ago
  The DNC talking points on this issue were schizophrenic as hell. At first they said the most damning thing in there was recipes. Then they said it cost them the election. But they refused to say which leaks were responsible. Then they claimed the swing voters they lost believed in pizzagate as if it were a mainstream conspiracy theory believed by many and that all the swing voters were therefore complete idiots. Also if you're going to blame a conspiracy theory that was conjured out of thin air the leaks really didnt actually matter. An equally stupid pretext could have been invented, so why say they cost you the election? So, according to them the leaks both cost them the election and didnt matter in the slightest. If you think about all this for just a second it logically doesnt make any goddamn sense but people still parrot it. Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 5y ago
    > Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button. I read your message waiting, line after line, for the dumb statement that got you downvoted. How do people still claim that there's no politically motivated mass-flagging going on on HN?
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  Was sinking Hillary's Presidencial campaign personal for Assange? "Can’t we just drone this guy?" -- Hillary Clinton. Possibly.
  - simiones 5y ago
    Even if Assange's personal motivations had any relevance here, that comment alone would be enough to disqualify someone from holding any kind of public office in a functioning democracy that respects human life.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
The DNC only have themselves to blame, wikileaks exposed their Pied Piper strategy -- they encouraged their media connections to elevate Trump before the playing field thinned out, they were so sure they could beat him [0]. As a Hillary voter, we were sure Trump was a joke. We didn't realize he had the DNC on his side. See the politico piece for quotes from wikileaks: "How do we prevent Bush from bettering himself/how do we maximize Trump and others?" [1] "We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously." [2] [0] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clin... [1] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10348 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10348 [2] (PDF) https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/1120/251 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/1120/251
- dijit 5y ago
  I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Is it a crime to subvert democracy? Apparently not when it’s your side doing it. There were claims that Assange sat on Trumps mails, but genuinely I don’t think that’s the case and if it was then people likely would still vote for him as he is openly horrible: the emails proved Hilary was calculated. Honestly if your biggest gripe with Assange is that he caused your person to lose then you have to ask yourself: did you just not want to know that your candidate was trying to subvert democracy? The Sanders stuff was enough to put me off the DNC (actively hampering his chances of being a presidential candidate by removing him from ballots for instance), but learning that Hillary was the one with media contacts and pushing Cruz and Trump to be president is the ultimate backfire. Should this man go to prison, for life, because your person didn’t get 4 years in office? Because of things she herself said?
- willis936 5y ago
  The key question is: and? Both parties do this. Pointing it out isn't whataboutism. Pointing it out is showing that Assange is the one who made political moves. He targeted specific politicians to leak negative information at opportune times. He didn't do this out of a sense of bringing the truth to light, he did this to further a political agenda. Where are his leaks on the republican party?
me_me_me 5y ago
She lost to a guy that said 'grab her by the pussy', if you can't win against that I don't know... a rock with painted face might be a challenge to run against for her.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Personally, if I had to point at one single thing it would be calling millions of traditional democratic voters a "basket of deplorables".
  - ILMostro7 5y ago
    Lol not "traditional democratic voters"; the die-hards who saw, and continue to see, Trump as a messiah as he insults anyone from Gold Star parents, to disabled journalists, to Mexican immigrants... Anyway, off topic and deplorably exhausting. In the end, Assange is just a scapegoat. Although, he wouldn't be the first or the last. When WikiLeaks was being used to disclose information about other countries, US citizens and even the Government saw them as a positive force in the world. But, once the info focused on US affairs, especially around a Presidential election, Assange was public enemy number one (tied with Snowden).
    - andrepd 5y ago
      Still very much (1) a tactical mistake and (2) not everyone of the 60 million people who voted for trump fits your description. Working class people fucked over by the establishment voted for the "anti-establishment" candidate, surprise surprise.
      - whoaisme 5y ago
        Plenty of working class people didn't feel the need to vote for a piece of shit like Trump and the cry about the economy to excuse their own stupidity. Hilary Clinton was absolutely right - if you voted for Donald Trump you're a deplorable piece of shit. The fact that there happens to be 10s of millions of them doesn't change that.
snomad 5y ago
How many years was he in forced isolation by that point?
pessimizer 5y ago
Which is certainly why people supported the Trump administration's prosecution of him. Wait, what?

Not sure if that was always astroturfing. I certainly feel ambivalent about Julian Assange and he arguably cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election, which obviously upset a lot of people.

noofen 5y ago

The US media made sure not to make that mistake again with Hunter Biden's laptop.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
The most comicbook supervillain event so far was that Pfizer deliberately slowed down the Covid vaccine until after the election so that it wouldn't help Trump politically: https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1413658719938748428 https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1413658719938748428
- adamors 5y ago
  It's mind-boggling you actually conclude this from > The companies said they had decided not to conduct the 32-case analysis “after a discussion with the FDA.” Instead, they planned to conduct the analysis after 62 cases. > Gruber said that Pfizer and BioNTech had decided in late October that they wanted to drop the 32-case interim analysis. At that time, the companies decided to stop having their lab confirm cases of Covid-19 in the study, instead leaving samples in storage. The FDA was aware of this decision. Discussions between the agency and the companies concluded, and testing began this past Wednesday.
  - _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
    It's because the tweet takes the article it quotes out of context. This is what leads up to the quoted part: > That study design, as well as those of other drug makers, came under fire from experts who worried that, even if it was statistically valid, these interim analyses would not provide enough data when a vaccine could be given to billions of people. Kind of an important passage to leave out, don't you think?
- sprafa 5y ago
  Do you really think this was comic book supervillain? I remember this happening at the time and my impression was that it was happening without a doubt. Particularly when they announced the results a few days after the election. My thinking at the time was inside Pfizer the idea of turning an election on this data was deemed too controversial - they would forever be associated with Trump if he won again. That might cause issue with the Dems. No idea but unless there’s proof of something shadier? That would be my guess - just an American corporation making sure it doesn’t piss off half the country.
- makomk 5y ago
  Nah, the most comicbook supervillain event was the fricking New York Times publicly hinting that if the vaccine was approved before the election because enough evidence was found that not doing so would definitely do more harm, they'd push the narrative that it was only approved to help Trump win and that people shouldn't trust its safety, effectively undermining safety in the vaccination program just to make sure Trump lost. All the other morally and scientifically dubious attempts to delay approval mostly seem to be downstream consequences of that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

raxxorrax 5y ago

The one responsible for loosing the election was Hillary Clinton, not Julian Assange. And supporting the prosecution because of this is also quite an apt reason to not vote for her in the first place. And I think that was made clear before the election.

pydry 5y ago
The DNC talking points on this issue were schizophrenic as hell. At first they said the most damning thing in there was recipes. Then they said it cost them the election. But they refused to say which leaks were responsible. Then they claimed the swing voters they lost believed in pizzagate as if it were a mainstream conspiracy theory believed by many and that all the swing voters were therefore complete idiots. Also if you're going to blame a conspiracy theory that was conjured out of thin air the leaks really didnt actually matter. An equally stupid pretext could have been invented, so why say they cost you the election? So, according to them the leaks both cost them the election and didnt matter in the slightest. If you think about all this for just a second it logically doesnt make any goddamn sense but people still parrot it. Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button.
- DarkWiiPlayer 5y ago
  > Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button. I read your message waiting, line after line, for the dumb statement that got you downvoted. How do people still claim that there's no politically motivated mass-flagging going on on HN?
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
Was sinking Hillary's Presidencial campaign personal for Assange? "Can’t we just drone this guy?" -- Hillary Clinton. Possibly.
- simiones 5y ago
  Even if Assange's personal motivations had any relevance here, that comment alone would be enough to disqualify someone from holding any kind of public office in a functioning democracy that respects human life.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

The DNC only have themselves to blame, wikileaks exposed their Pied Piper strategy -- they encouraged their media connections to elevate Trump before the playing field thinned out, they were so sure they could beat him [0]. As a Hillary voter, we were sure Trump was a joke. We didn't realize he had the DNC on his side. See the politico piece for quotes from wikileaks: "How do we prevent Bush from bettering himself/how do we maximize Trump and others?" [1] "We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously." [2] [0] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clin... [1] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10348 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10348 [2] (PDF) https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/1120/251 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/1120/251

dijit 5y ago
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Is it a crime to subvert democracy? Apparently not when it’s your side doing it. There were claims that Assange sat on Trumps mails, but genuinely I don’t think that’s the case and if it was then people likely would still vote for him as he is openly horrible: the emails proved Hilary was calculated. Honestly if your biggest gripe with Assange is that he caused your person to lose then you have to ask yourself: did you just not want to know that your candidate was trying to subvert democracy? The Sanders stuff was enough to put me off the DNC (actively hampering his chances of being a presidential candidate by removing him from ballots for instance), but learning that Hillary was the one with media contacts and pushing Cruz and Trump to be president is the ultimate backfire. Should this man go to prison, for life, because your person didn’t get 4 years in office? Because of things she herself said?
willis936 5y ago
The key question is: and? Both parties do this. Pointing it out isn't whataboutism. Pointing it out is showing that Assange is the one who made political moves. He targeted specific politicians to leak negative information at opportune times. He didn't do this out of a sense of bringing the truth to light, he did this to further a political agenda. Where are his leaks on the republican party?

me_me_me 5y ago

She lost to a guy that said 'grab her by the pussy', if you can't win against that I don't know... a rock with painted face might be a challenge to run against for her.

skinkestek 5y ago
Personally, if I had to point at one single thing it would be calling millions of traditional democratic voters a "basket of deplorables".
- ILMostro7 5y ago
  Lol not "traditional democratic voters"; the die-hards who saw, and continue to see, Trump as a messiah as he insults anyone from Gold Star parents, to disabled journalists, to Mexican immigrants... Anyway, off topic and deplorably exhausting. In the end, Assange is just a scapegoat. Although, he wouldn't be the first or the last. When WikiLeaks was being used to disclose information about other countries, US citizens and even the Government saw them as a positive force in the world. But, once the info focused on US affairs, especially around a Presidential election, Assange was public enemy number one (tied with Snowden).
  - andrepd 5y ago
    Still very much (1) a tactical mistake and (2) not everyone of the 60 million people who voted for trump fits your description. Working class people fucked over by the establishment voted for the "anti-establishment" candidate, surprise surprise.
    - whoaisme 5y ago
      Plenty of working class people didn't feel the need to vote for a piece of shit like Trump and the cry about the economy to excuse their own stupidity. Hilary Clinton was absolutely right - if you voted for Donald Trump you're a deplorable piece of shit. The fact that there happens to be 10s of millions of them doesn't change that.

snomad 5y ago

How many years was he in forced isolation by that point?

pessimizer 5y ago

Which is certainly why people supported the Trump administration's prosecution of him. Wait, what?