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Aside from my personal experiences in this area, you can ask the Winkelvoss twins what happened when the judge in their case found out that Zuckerberg/Facebook’

by numair 5y ago

Aside from my personal experiences in this area, you can ask the Winkelvoss twins what happened when the judge in their case found out that Zuckerberg/Facebook’s lawyers lied and withheld evidence that would have gotten them a bigger payout. As the person who represented them told me: “Those guys can lie to the government and get away with it. I’ve seen them do it.” So, no, this is not the “mother of all lawsuits.” Nothing will happen to Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook. And, yes, there seems to be something rotten in the American political system — on both sides of the aisle — that’s keeping these scumbags protected.

lootsauce 5y ago
They play ball with intelligence and law enforcement agencies providing something to them the government could never practically or legally procure otherwise.
- beeboop 5y ago
  Between NSLs and Patriot Act, pretty sure the government gets anything it wants at any time with zero consequence.
  - Verdex 5y ago
    Maybe. But there's something to be said for getting a hard drive full of juicy info from 'just some guy' who has zero oversight now and forever. And even if the only thing you're accomplishing is giving the secret judge a break from rubber stamping all of your requests, I can see that having some inter-department social currency benefits.
  - nisegami 5y ago
    But fundamentally, it needs to be out there in order to be obtained by a TLA. Facebook and Friends help by giving us a reason AND a platform for us to put information out there that can then be tapped.
h2odragon 5y ago
Paypal got similar inexplicable treatment from the government. Other places trying to do online banking got regulated out of existence, often involving legal trouble for the individuals involved. Paypal, tho, apparently those regulations and laws behind them just don't apply. Remember E-gold?
- bluejekyll 5y ago
  As I remember it, PayPal worked to enforce many of the same laws the government requires of banks, as well as helps track transfers for taxation reasons. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, PayPal just made sure they were on the side of the law that allowed them to operate without government interference.
CountDrewku 5y ago
The rottenness is that our government wants to wield social media as a propaganda tool. They never discuss breaking these companies up, they only do things like bring Zuckerberg in and try to prod him into regulating his platform in their direction.
- Panqueca_do_mar 5y ago
  That and lobbyist padding their wallets.
tremon 5y ago
there seems to be something rotten in the American political system — on both sides of the aisle There only being two sides on the aisle is one of the main problems. It's an oligarchy, not a representative democracy.
- rolph 5y ago
  two ^official^ sides
- seph-reed 5y ago
  > representative democracy And given the degree to which lies have gotten better at mutating and spreading, while critical thinking is barely taught in schools, even if this "democracy" was representative it might not work too well. At this point, I think the only way to save the user base of this dying old system is a slow migration towards competing co-op social services... but once again -- without critical thinking -- most people would likely choose by lowest price and end up with much of the same.
  - kiba 5y ago
    And given the degree to which lies have gotten better at mutating and spreading, while critical thinking is barely taught in schools, even if this "democracy" was representative it might not work too well. I am skeptical of the notion that teaching critical thinking will do people any good in fighting lies. People believe in the narrative they want, and they'll employ tools to do that.
    - seph-reed 5y ago
      Very likely not a one-stop solve-all. But also very likely part of the tool set.
- 988747 5y ago
  Actually, I think that the system with "first-past-the-post" voting, tied with small voting districts is much better for representative democracy. Yes, the one visible result is that you get only two political parties (because being third, with no prospects of winning makes smaller parties to give up). However, the two parties tend to be internally much more diverse than you get in other systems. The system where there's a proportional representation means that the elections now become nationwide - first you count votes for each party, to determine how many seats they get, and only then you assign seats to individual candidates. The way it is implemented in Europe gives two terrible results: 1. The leader of the party now have much more power over individual candidates, since none of them can get into the parliament on their own, they need support of the nationally-recognized party. In American system individual congressperson is free to say "fuck you" to their party leader and will still be able to win their seat in the next elections. 2. After some small party gets into the parliament they are basically powerless, they have no way of delivering on their promises to their voters, so instead they focus on "just being there" and receiving Member of Parliament salaries. Basically, small parties are just there for comic relief.
donkeybeer 5y ago
The "right wing" doesn't really care about free speech, they are only talking about it because they "feel" that they are being "suppressed".

by numair 5y ago

lootsauce 5y ago

They play ball with intelligence and law enforcement agencies providing something to them the government could never practically or legally procure otherwise.

beeboop 5y ago
Between NSLs and Patriot Act, pretty sure the government gets anything it wants at any time with zero consequence.
- Verdex 5y ago
  Maybe. But there's something to be said for getting a hard drive full of juicy info from 'just some guy' who has zero oversight now and forever. And even if the only thing you're accomplishing is giving the secret judge a break from rubber stamping all of your requests, I can see that having some inter-department social currency benefits.
- nisegami 5y ago
  But fundamentally, it needs to be out there in order to be obtained by a TLA. Facebook and Friends help by giving us a reason AND a platform for us to put information out there that can then be tapped.

h2odragon 5y ago

Paypal got similar inexplicable treatment from the government. Other places trying to do online banking got regulated out of existence, often involving legal trouble for the individuals involved. Paypal, tho, apparently those regulations and laws behind them just don't apply. Remember E-gold?

bluejekyll 5y ago
As I remember it, PayPal worked to enforce many of the same laws the government requires of banks, as well as helps track transfers for taxation reasons. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, PayPal just made sure they were on the side of the law that allowed them to operate without government interference.

CountDrewku 5y ago

The rottenness is that our government wants to wield social media as a propaganda tool. They never discuss breaking these companies up, they only do things like bring Zuckerberg in and try to prod him into regulating his platform in their direction.

Panqueca_do_mar 5y ago
That and lobbyist padding their wallets.

tremon 5y ago

there seems to be something rotten in the American political system — on both sides of the aisle There only being two sides on the aisle is one of the main problems. It's an oligarchy, not a representative democracy.

rolph 5y ago
two ^official^ sides
seph-reed 5y ago
> representative democracy And given the degree to which lies have gotten better at mutating and spreading, while critical thinking is barely taught in schools, even if this "democracy" was representative it might not work too well. At this point, I think the only way to save the user base of this dying old system is a slow migration towards competing co-op social services... but once again -- without critical thinking -- most people would likely choose by lowest price and end up with much of the same.
- kiba 5y ago
  And given the degree to which lies have gotten better at mutating and spreading, while critical thinking is barely taught in schools, even if this "democracy" was representative it might not work too well. I am skeptical of the notion that teaching critical thinking will do people any good in fighting lies. People believe in the narrative they want, and they'll employ tools to do that.
  - seph-reed 5y ago
    Very likely not a one-stop solve-all. But also very likely part of the tool set.
988747 5y ago
Actually, I think that the system with "first-past-the-post" voting, tied with small voting districts is much better for representative democracy. Yes, the one visible result is that you get only two political parties (because being third, with no prospects of winning makes smaller parties to give up). However, the two parties tend to be internally much more diverse than you get in other systems. The system where there's a proportional representation means that the elections now become nationwide - first you count votes for each party, to determine how many seats they get, and only then you assign seats to individual candidates. The way it is implemented in Europe gives two terrible results: 1. The leader of the party now have much more power over individual candidates, since none of them can get into the parliament on their own, they need support of the nationally-recognized party. In American system individual congressperson is free to say "fuck you" to their party leader and will still be able to win their seat in the next elections. 2. After some small party gets into the parliament they are basically powerless, they have no way of delivering on their promises to their voters, so instead they focus on "just being there" and receiving Member of Parliament salaries. Basically, small parties are just there for comic relief.

donkeybeer 5y ago

The "right wing" doesn't really care about free speech, they are only talking about it because they "feel" that they are being "suppressed".