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Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board
- aqualinux 5y agoOne of the ones who gets it.
- nabla9 5y ago
- rvz 5y agoIf the rats are leaving this sinking ship now, perhaps its captain has told them to build them a new one called: 'The Metaverse'.
- tpmx 5y agoI don't think it's okay to call another human a rat. It's pure hate without reason.
- brnt 5y agoIn this case, I believe we should make an exception.
- skrbjc 5y agoThis says everything about what is wrong with the woke/anti-woke, in-group/out-group craziness playing out on in the world right now.
- long_time_gone 5y agoWhich seems to correlate with Facebook user numbers, ironically.
- brnt 5y agoNo it does not. He is a self-declared anti-democrat. By your measure soldiers in WW2 would be woke.
- hinkley 5y ago>Co-founder of Palantir Technology. I'm gonna need a DNA swab on that one. Dude is filthy rich. Emphasis on the 'filthy'.
- toss1 5y agoNo, there's plenty of reason Thiel has worked hard to earn that disrespect; there's no reason to deny him that which is due.
- mewse 5y agoI spent some time at university doing psychological research on rats. In my experience they’re the sweetest things and actually quite affectionate, as long as they’re given somewhere safe to live, aren’t too hungry, and you handle them with kindness and care. (they have quite sharp claws which can accidentally pierce your skin if they’re startled or scared of you. Also, their vision isn’t great; you can wind up getting bit if they mistake your finger for a piece of food being offered to them, so you do need to keep your fingers together whenever you present your hand to them. But other than those? Absolute sweeties.) I guess I just mean to say that I think I might agree with you.
- Banana699 5y ago>as long as they’re given somewhere safe to live, aren’t too hungry, and you handle them with kindness and care. What I wouldn't give so that the preconditions for human being sweet are this weak !
- hinkley 5y ago<find in page> rats <enter> Mmmmhmmm.
- nosianu 5y agoThe sub headline is a better summary of what is happening: > Peter Thiel to Exit Meta’s Board to Support Trump-Aligned Candidates He just wants to be free to involve himself in politics but not get Meta involved. Maybe he also has additional motivation for leaving, but that's speculation and this right here is a solid reason. From the article: > In October, the two Senate candidates argued in an opinion piece in The New York Post that Mr. Zuckerberg’s $400 million in donations to local election offices in 2020 amounted to “election meddling” that should be investigated. To avoid any such issues for the company leaving the board looks like a logical precaution to me.
- joelbondurant1 5y ago
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y agoI don't know could also be this.. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/02/01/billionaire-facebook-investor-peter-thiel-secretly-funded-a-cyber-warfare-startup-that-hacked-whatsapp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/02/01/billi...
- breckenedge 5y agoI think this could mean he wants to involve himself in a competing social network.
- fearfulofview4 5y ago
- ukie 5y ago[dead]
- newbie789 5y ago
- rm_-rf_slash 5y agoI realize this is a petty and inconsequential question, but does anyone else think that the Forbes estimate of $2.6bn is a little low for a guy that was a key early investor in Facebook and has multiple other holdings like Palantir? Is there a bunch of money Forbes isn’t counting or something?
- client4 5y agoNot to mention his investments in Tesla and space x...
- stingrae 5y agoI thought his roth ira was worth $5b alone? https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tec...
- hobo_mark 5y agoLike Thiel's famous "$5B Roth IRA" loophole that was making the rounds here a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27616090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27616090
- vmception 5y agoAll net worth lists are just finance porn for plebs. There is no way of knowing. There are only some public transactions, and they are fixed in time that assume it was never lost. Additionally you would have no idea if he's holding a bunch of Dogecoin from the lows or an investor in extremely high performing PE/VC/Hedge funds. People's balance sheets are all nuanced. Those lists are not really worth anyone's time.
- colechristensen 5y agoThose are just wild guesses. You can often find actors commenting "yeah, I wish!" when somebody asks them about their net worth.
- paxys 5y agoReally rich people want to hide their wealth from the public as much as possible. Slightly rich people want to exaggerate their wealth as much as possible. Ultimately magazines like Forbes have very little real data to go off of, and so these lists all need to be taken with a huge grain of salt. If they were forced to put error bars on their projections people would see how worthless they really are.
- user249 5y agoThis podcast "The Peter Thiel Paradox" [1] explained a lot about the mystery of Peter Thiel to me. Turns out that there is less than meets the eye but he does have a specific talent for manipulating the political systems and government coffers to enrich himself, much like Richard Branson, or so the British podcast claims. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/the-peter-thiel-paradox https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-p... One nitpick; Theil said "We were promised flying cars and call we got was 140 characters" not "We were promised bases on the moon and all we got was Facebook" Link claims Buzz Aldrin said "You Promised Me Mars Colonies. Instead, I Got Facebook." http://files.technologyreview.com/magazine-archive/2012/MIT-Technology-Review-2012-11-sample.pdf http://files.technologyreview.com/magazine-archive/2012/MIT-...
- beebmam 5y agoWhy do people with this much wealth want even more wealth for themselves? I've never understood this.
- yumraj 5y agoPeople with this much wealth start competing to up their position in the world's richest ranking. And, when you're #1 in the ranking you work hard to keep that ranking .. and so on and on .. Me, I would just retire if I had a fraction of that, or so I think since I'm nowhere there ..
- davidw 5y agoPerhaps part of getting 'this much wealth' is a desire for more, more, more that doesn't seem to be something they can turn off? I have enjoyed seeing PG just sort of fade into the background of YC and enjoy his kids (his twitter feed). He seems to have done well by doing well and seems fairly satisfied with all of it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nodesocket 5y agoIt's not about wealth once you reach a certain level. That's a simple and incorrect way of thinking about it. It's about legacy. Wealth is freedom and power to make change in society, politics, and the world that governments frankly are to ineffective, don't have the stomach, or intentionally choose not to change.
- jdrc 5y agoWhatever happened to facebook in the span of 1 month that is so different than what was happening the past ~10 years? devaluation in multiple dimensions
- Waterluvian 5y agoTheir pivot to Meta deeply reinforced the writing on the wall. And then their first ever report of a declining user count was the coup de grace. Come to think of it I need to verify that the user count did decline. I only heard that anecdotally.
- rahulgoel 5y ago- DAUs decreased -0.05% from 1,930m in Q3 22 to 1,929m in Q4 22. ("sequentially") - DAUs increased +4.5% from 1,845m in Q4 21 to 1,929m in Q4 22. ("year over year") - See pp18: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4/Q4-2021_Earnings-Presentation-Final.pdf https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4... DAUs are those using FB app only. Metric for those using all apps (Insta, Whatsapp, etc) increased. Btw - there are ~4.66B internet users - and FB has 77% of those log into one of their apps a month (MAPs = 3.59b, pp11).
- Nextgrid 5y ago> FB has 77% of those log into one of their apps a month I would suspect some of those are bots or sockpuppet accounts.
- swamp40 5y agoFB pushes you to Insta via its Reels preview videos right on top when you open the FB app. Instagram Reels is more addicting - full screen videos that just show you more of what you watch most intently, doesn't care that you "liked" a page 5 years ago. Zuck is depreciating FB.
- skrtskrt 5y agoReels is probably >90% recycled from TikTok, with the TikTok video waterwark still on it. The original content that is there has nothing on TikTok, and the Reels recommendation algorithm is crap - feels like a bunch of if-then statements and you have to make a massive effort to get yourself out of having a particular category in your feed (constantly swipe away as fast as possible if a video of that category comes up; but watch a single video all the way through in that category and it becomes half of your feed) I joined TikTok recently after watching Reels for a few months (I figured it's probably just as good, right and why have yet another app tracking me), and I was blown away by how much better TikTok content & algorithm is. Part of it is the user base. TikTok has truly some cool content for every niche you could imagine, and by and large comments are positive and funny.
- nodesocket 5y agoFun fact, Peter Thiel gave Vitalik Buterin a Thiel Fellowship to work on Ethereum. Let's count the wins Peter Thiel has had: - Paypal - Facebook - Palantir - Etherum - Took on deplorable Gawker
- missedthecue 5y agoThe guys behind Figma, Upstart, and Ocean Cleanup were also Thiel Fellowship recipients.
- memish 5y ago- Zero to One, arguably a must read book - Popularized memetic theory
- vineyardmike 5y agoHis attack on gawker are anything but commendable. They may have been a trashy gossip site, but attacking press like that is not good for society.
- nodesocket 5y agoWait, are you really calling gawker press? I assume TMZ is right up there with the Walls Street Journal as well. Yikes that is scary.
- vineyardmike 5y agoThey were the press. They can be trashy tabloid, as opposed to a respected international publication, but they're still press. Gawker was also a series of publications, not just one (eg. Gizmodo the tech site, LifeHacker, etc).
- morelish 5y agoReally? Gawker published intimate photos of someone without their permission. What Gawker did was very wrong. I don't get why people defend Gawker.
- fuckpeterthiel 5y ago
- missedthecue 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fuckpeterthiel 5y ago
- lnxg33k1 5y agoTo be honest from your article itself it doesn't seem to be reported that he has been convicted as a rapist but that he had uncommon ideas about the topic? Does that make someone a rapist?
- PaulRobinson 5y agoThis is a good move for both Thiel and Facebook. This helps Facebook with advertisers, the DC machinery still reeling from the Trump fallout, shareholders and almost all their staff. They can wash their hands of what looks - to many - a toxic situation. This helps Thiel, because he's no longer going to have to explain himself - his writing game me the impression that he is somebody who despises having to explain himself to people who think he might be wrong - and allows him to carry on with his Trump project, unquestioned, unencumbered. From a certain perspective and distance this is all deeply depressing, though. They walk away from each other knowing all sides face fewer consequences for their terrible decisions, many of which have caused significant - perhaps irreparable - damage to the standing of United States politics and industry in the wider World.
- speed_spread 5y agoPeople don't think he's merely wrong, people think he's outright evil.
- grey-area 5y agoOh come on, he only drank a little blood, just a tiny amount. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to...
- sangnoir 5y agoHiring a Blood Boy[1] on the free market for a fair price is pro-capitalist,and can't be evil, unlike vampires who take without paying the service provider, so to speak. 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6267506/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6267506/
- paxys 5y agoHow soon do people think we will see his candidacy for President? 2028 is my guess.
- chrchang523 5y agoLike Elon Musk, he wasn't born in the US and is therefore ineligible. (edit: "natural-born citizen" is not as well-defined as I thought, and Ted Cruz qualifies on account of having a US citizen parent at the time of his birth. But it's clear that Thiel doesn't.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- palijer 5y agoThat requirement seems pretty bizarre to myself as a non-US person. Haven't heard of being natural born as a requirement for president before, but seems like another aspect that the US shares with a small list of other countries. It seems pretty on-brand to be honest though, I wonder why that rule exists and what benefit it provides. The first couple presidents couldn't have met it, so I wonder when it was introduced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidential_qualifications_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidential_qualifica...
- eruleman 5y agoArticle II, Section 1, Clause 5: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President" The first few presidents were citizens of the US when the Constitution was adopted (previously, the US had been governed by the Articles of Confederation.)
- tevon 5y agoThis rule was enacted to prevent Alexander Hamilton from becoming president. He also wasn't born in the US. The term "naturalized" wasn't yet well defined. The first American born president (born after the revolution) was Van Buren, the first 7 were born British citizens!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
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- omegaworks 5y ago>He has also been seen as the contrarian who has Mr. Zuckerberg’s ear, championing unfettered speech across digital platforms. His conservative views also gave Facebook’s board ideological diversity. What a fawning, iconoclastic corruption of "diversity." The New York Times is blatantly courting Thiel's fascist endeavor. This journalistic abortion glosses over exactly what kind of speech Thiel's cohort seeks not just to "unfetter" but to blast loudly across all mediums: Xenophobic, genocidal conspiracy theories to the very front of the line.
- strangesongs 5y agonytimes staying on brand, courting lil' wannabe fascists
- starik36 5y agoI would take "unfettered speech" over alternatives any day of the week.
- dennisnedry 5y ago[flagged]
- cehrlich 5y agoThiel recently hired former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who resigned from that position after a bunch of corruption scandals came to light. That should make it quite clear what direction he wants to take.
- Rebelgecko 5y agoHe wants to become chancellor of Austria? Or just parlay that relationship into another citizenship for his collection?
- vanusa 5y ago"High-level corruption as a service" is likely to be his main value proposition, basically. That's the takeaway to get from his partnering with Kurz.
- coldtea 5y ago>"High-level corruption as a service" is likely to be his main value proposition, basically. He could have gotten that from almost anybody in Washington or Wall Street...
- vanusa 5y agoAh, but there's a certain cachet that comes from partnering with major figures who've been caught with their hands as explicitly in the cookie jar as were Kurz's. And on camera, no less.
- coldtea 5y agoIs there? Because the cachet usually comes from the opposite, to do it with figures who managed not to be caught.
- vanusa 5y agoRight -- and that is precisely his intended message: To be openly court corruption of this sort, as a way of rejecting the accepted norms of Western democracy. In its current effete, collectivist form. "Burn it down, burn it down!", in other words. Until the world is ready to accept his profoundly more enlightened norms -- of evolved, "capitalist" democracy.
- oger 5y agoReferring to Palantir I once asked him if he ever had a Robert Oppenheimer moment - he did not answer. No more words were needed.
- paisawalla 5y agoYou asked him whether he ever reflected on database visualization and query tools (that's what Palantir is) and considered that he had brought a previously unimaginable capability for destruction into this world? Non-answer seems about right -- how do you treat nonsensical questions?
- ASalazarMX 5y agoYou're speaking of a company named after the device that Sauron used to control the Middle Earth equivalent of the Internet. A user with sufficient will power could decide what the palantirs would show (and hide) to other users. The "Database Torturer" would inspire more trust.
- paisawalla 5y agoThis is a bad critique for two reasons: 1. Linking the name of a company to people and places that don't exist doesn't demonstrate anything. 2. You don't even know enough to know that the Palantiri were originally created and used by the elves, not Sauron.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago> 2. You don't even know enough to know that the Palantiri were originally created and used by the elves, not Sauron. I take offense to that. I know the Palantiri were originally made by the elves, with good intentions. Sauron just took hold of one and poisoned the network.
- paisawalla 5y agoSorry to have assumed ignorance on your part, but you see then, it's totally possible that the company name refers to their original positive nature.
- yalogin 5y agoI was hoping Theil is being opportunistic when he pandered to the previous guy, but looks like he fully believes in that form of governance and really likes everything the guy stands for. So much so that Theil is heavily supporting candidates that are aligned with the previous guy. Very disappointing. I would really like to know what he stands for and what his political motivations are, but I guess its obvious.
- whydoineedone 5y ago
- JaimeThompson 5y agoIs he stepping down to spend more time with our families?
- vmception 5y agoAfter his political underdog bets 6-8 years ago got him into the white house briefly, I bet he feels emboldened to double down on this strategy. He took those bets with asymmetric returns at the risk of complete social ostracizing in the Bay Area tech community, only to come out on top and retaining his access and control everywhere including at Facebook, all the way till now! Thats pretty impressive, regardless of the topic or regime being discussed! These are our role models, so don't be surprised to see more of this as others accumulate power and access. I’ve personally found it fascinating how low the bar for access becomes when entrenched special interests leave the center all the way to far edges of the parties for causes that will never reach consensus. Its an amazing opportunity for new entrants. That’s personally how I look at the game and this has been largely successful over the last couple Congressional sessions.
- fuckpeterthiel 5y ago
- ramyarjahani 5y ago[dead]
- mFixman 5y agoWhat a weird bot.
- girafffe_i 5y ago[dead]