The political atmosphere in the USA, and worldwide let's be honest, has become so cynical that people aligned with the American president don't really see any issue with doing morally wrong things or downright illegal acts if that means a political victory for them.

We've redefined our communication medium worldwide in ~30 years. It's going to have consequences, the question is what we do about it. The edge lord cynicism came about because of economic issues, fix those first..

Perhaps something can change to help prevent poverty and hunger if the economic value produced by society results in such enormous gains by such few people.

Democracy becomes impossible is a real threat but it's again not something that affects the average person day-to-day until shit hits the fan and it's too late.

Again, follow the incentives, the behavior, and the motivations of the average person.

In "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism", Zhuboff poses that shame in a neoliberal society becomes tied to individual failure, such as failure to succeed. You feel shame for your shortcomings and not working hard enough, rather than for some mortal virtue you failed to uphold. Psychopolitics by Han-Byul also goes into this, kind of how the market managed to convince the individual to enslave themselves and set their own requirements for themselves without a king or master to order this.

In such a society, shame cannot be ascribed to doing something monetarily rational. It's not immoral to better yourself in any way. If you need to cheat to steal the election, so be it, you're just hustling and are clearly smarter than your opponent, so you deserve it.

I think a bit of the tragedy in this is that this stacks the incentives against morally right things in the long run. It was often better for resource accumulation to do the morally bad thing, and your counterweight would be shame from society, but now it's gone and the people who choose the (now much more accessible) morally corrupt path with run away with capital, power and social status. It's IMO a really good time in history to be a piece of shit as an average person

https://www.newsweek.com/topless-trans-woman-white-house-pri...

Idk, maybe having a lewd President is better than having a corrupt, fraud-supporting, law-discarding President who is now trying to kick people off voter rolls so he doesn't lose a midterm after his failed running of the economy despite having every single branch of govt in his control

Why are you people so obsessed with the genitals of others over the bald-faced corruption of the most powerful nation in the world?

The melodrama about "moral bankruptcy" is performative, especially when a few years ago there was live-streamed buttsex from the Senate chambers.

No one has a right to claim a moral high ground here.

> The melodrama about "moral bankruptcy" is performative.

Oh, on that point we could not agree more.

>“My trans masculine friends were showing off their top surgery scars and living in joy, and I wanted to join them,” she said. “And because it is perfectly within the law in Washington, D.C., I decided to join them and cover my nipples just to play it safe. Because I wanted to be fully free and myself. I had zero intention of trying to be vulgar, or be profane in any way. I was simply living in joy, living my truth and existing in my body. Happy Pride. Free the nipple.”

Perhaps one day you'll grow to understand that complaints about "flashing their bolt-ons" is dog whistle for moralist hypocrisy, whereas openly taking bribes, threatening close allies with invasion while launching economic war in the form of tarifs, and eliminating foreign aid programs causing hundreds of thousands of deaths digs a far deeper moral, ethical, and geopolitical hole to claw from.

The country's biggest scandal - Watergate, was fundamentally an election sabotage/political espionage scandal

Bush in Florida stopping the vote count was definitely democracy being tagged.

(Imagine if Trump requested a hand recount in 2020, but only in the rural parts of Pennsylvania, where every ballot that had been rejected by the machine but could be counted by hand was twice as likely to be a Trump vote than a Biden vote. Say 10,000 ballots were rejected by the machine, and 1,000 of them could be hand counted. If the county went 65-35 Trump overall, then you’d find 650 new Trump votes but only 350 more Biden votes. If you had done a statewide recount this effect would be cancelled out by the opposite outcome in Philadelphia, finding newly countable Biden votes. But in this hypo Trump deliberately engineered a selective recount to benefit from this skew.)

If Watergate would happen today, it would barely make the news.

I agree. This is what baffles me the most about USians. They know Watergate was one of the lowest points in the US history in terms of corruption and anti democratic maneuvers by a high level political group in the country.

Yet, the Trump administration outcorrupts any Watergate scandal very much each week. Yet, the US population is so docile and controlled that they barely react.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot

The Florida Supreme Court held that Gore’s first recount was unconstitutional and the U.S. Supreme Court held 7-2 that the second recount was unconstitutional. It hasn’t entered the public consciousness that Gore was blatantly cheating because the trick involves understanding a bit of math: if you do a recount in a precinct where the overall margin was say 2:1 Gore, then statistically the hand recounts (which find ballots the machine couldn’t count) will identify 2 Gore votes for every Bush vote. Over all precincts the effects will cancel out. But if you selectively recount only in certain precincts, or push to certify results including partial hand recounts, then you’ll “find more Gore votes.”

It was the most overt election fraud anyone in the U.S. has attempted in modern times but nobody knows because Americans are bad at math and you can’t explain how Gore was cheating with a football analogy.

That's just too funny Rayiner... really, you broke the record here.

You’re basically taking an error that is randomly distributed, but then partially correcting that error only from pools that you know skewed your way to begin with.

Imagine if Trump had initiated hand recounted undervotes (votes the machine couldn’t count) only for election day votes but not mail in votes. That would be election fraud, because it would be calculated to find additional votes from a pool that skews GOP while not finding additional votes in a pool that skews Democrat. What Gore did was exactly the same thing.

People scream “election interference” at these highly attenuated and indirect actions like Meta taking down a post. But Gore was statistically minting additional Gore votes before two Supreme Courts stopped him.

Don't be ridiculous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore

> Please provide a response instead of smug retorts like a high school student.

Flagged.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore

I'm trying to imagine what belief someone would need to have about the world to interpret those links as responsive to my point.

> Flagged.

I made a substantive post with facts and you repeatedly responded with snarky non-sequiturs without addressing a single point. I should flag you, but I won't.

I didn't quite believe its involvement with things in Myanmar where media, people vowed left and right of Meta's involvement.

But seeing it now firsthand, I certainly believe it.

- Accounts, posts from one cabal being pushed to your feed even if you don't follow any of them.

- If you open a fresh account, the accounts from those cabal are recommended at top.

- Relentlessly showing posts from one side and promoting them like hell.

Suspected bot activities. There were posts that are sans merit clearly, but Insta pushed it and had the unvelievable amount of likes, like Messi would have, had he posted his wedding reels.

I don't have publishable evidence, but I ask you to trust me. Human to human.

I read newspapers, I don't trust megaliked reels. But most don't nowaday, and I saw real people fall to blatant lies and propaganda. It's real. You can say anything, but I am convinced fully.

Myanmar - Facebook took responsibility from the moment they decided to "service" the country using shady tactics such as https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebook-misleading-indians-i... where they had what, one translator, two? Some of this is in Careless People

It shouldn't matter what specific political side - Facebook are bad actors (or Meta or whatever) across the aisle

[Meta apologises to India for restricting PM Modi's post](https://www.reuters.com/world/india/meta-apologises-india-re...)

Reading a good newspaper shows the megaliked reels push a false narrative. Even the paper that the oppositions like.

Watching all the techbros trying to crowd the stage to get in the shot with Modi when he went to SF was a precursor to them all crowding around Trump.

Everyone really need to go back and read the work of America’s founding generation. The founders understood the importance of structural and procedural rules versus substantive rules. A structural rule is some thing like: no politician can use Facebook, or alternatively, Facebook isn’t allowed to censor any candidate for political office. Such rules can be implemented with little room for debate.

A substantive rule by contrast requires some person to make a substantive judgment about particular content. Such rules turn that decision maker into a gatekeeper. And as a practical matter, nobody trusts such decision makers to render impartial decisions. This is why, in the U.S., judges largely police procedure and legal instructions, while substantive decisions about guilt or liability are made by randomly selected juries. In the U.S., a highly educated federal judge isn’t even trusted to decide guilt for a misdemeanor that could put a single individual in prison for more than six months. Meanwhile other countries trust random people at companies to make decisions that could swing entire elections and affect millions of people. It’s lunacy.

Except there's debate all the time in the USA stemming from this originalist tradition from the founders' intent.

Like: the First Ammendment, there was debate about the role of money, is it speech? Culminating with Citizens United which is absolute lunacy.

The American system isn't objectively better by any means, it's just the one you're used to.

Why should everyone care about founders of a different country that's not even working particularly well at this time.

> while substantive decisions about guilt or liability are made by randomly selected juries

A system gamed as easily as any other one.

> Meanwhile other countries trust random people at companies

They don't trust them to do the right thing, which is why there is a law telling them what to do. The alternative is to ban privately-owned social networks (either all of them or at least those that don't follow the laws).

Because the U.S. was the first country in the world created, with great study and deliberation, by high-IQ political philosophers. Because the country was already a successful democracy for 189 years before all the EU17 countries became democracies even on paper. Because the U.S. was having orderly transitions of power since it was as poor as Bangladesh is today.

> A system gamed as easily as any other one.

Decisions of randomly selected jurors are much harder to “game” than decisions of corporate censors or election board bureaucrats.

> They don't trust them to do the right thing, which is why there is a law telling them what to do.

Every dysfunctional third world has beautiful “laws telling people what to do.” We have those in Bangladesh. As often as not, such laws just become vehicles for manipulating elections because what the law says to do or who is following the laws or not is highly debatable. Such laws effectively turn the prosecutors and the court system into the locus of corruption, because they have the power to decide “who is following the law.” (It’s like Iran’s system with more steps. Iran actually has fair, functioning elections. It’s just that the Guardian Council, an expert body of highly educated scholars, gets to screen who is allowed to run for office.)

Please try to understand the difference between procedural/power allocation laws and laws that incorporate substantive standards. Instead of having laws that say “what to do”—which is always open to interpretation—you should have laws that focus on “who decides” and “how do they decide.” You need to either make the decision mechanical so everyone can see whether the rule is being followed or not, or you need to put the decision in the hands of a body that can’t credibly be accused of having their own agenda.

Sure, which is why the laws in the US are not approved by randomly selected lawmakers. In that way it's irrelevant what some random jury decides, when the executive branch, the lawmakers and top judges are owned by the ruling class.

> We have those in Bangladesh. As often as not, such laws just become vehicles for manipulating elections

Sorry about that, but that's not a rule that applies everywhere, far from that. And of course the elections in the US are already heavily manipulated even without that.

That’s the problem with having the executive branch, lawmakers and judges oversee the mechanics of the voting and elections. You’re making my point for me.

Meanwhile in the US, if a majority party does not like the voting districts, they just redraw them, and if they don't like the voters, they disenfranchise them. Truly great high-IQ work.

The "fake news" nonsense is just plain old censorship and questionable in its own right, but the true reason why it's so destabilizing is the inconsistency.

The vast majority of judges are partidarian and openly support the left, so what happens in practice is only the left gets to censor the "fake news" of others. Whenever right wing candidates try to exercise the exact same rights, they are simply ignored.

It's literally happening right now: Lula's requests get accepted within a day while Bolsonaro's just sit there unseen forever. That way they get to censor the right and avoid being censored themselves.

This obviously partidarian "fact checking" censorship directly caused January 8th. It's not a fair election if you're censored and your opponent isn't.

I agree with you on structural and procedural rules.

Does anyone remember Cambridge Analytica activity on Facebook during US elections in 2016.. Look it up if you don't remember. The same entity was also active in South America aka Colombia, Brazil, Argentina.. Cambridge Analytica was never charged and Facebook was never charged because it was all made legal. After the revelations, some laws changed but has it really changed. Is it stopping American interference in other countries? it doesn't look like it. What about at home? You know better than I do if you have an account; I don't.

Pathetic

Literally it translates to "Don't put yourself" where "put" is the closest I can think of to the verb "meter", which is sort of what you do when you insert something haphazardly instead of carefully.

Truly literally the words are "No + self + put" and the conjugation of "meter" into "meta" makes it clear the subject is "you"

Nazis have this thing where they depict any political target as being both too weak and too strong, and too dumb and too smart.

They claimed it was a 'technical error'.

In September, as the elections geared up, they also suspened Lula's campaign account due to another 'technical error'. There are also thousands of complaints from users having their posts blocked.

In the U.S., if someone had programmed a generative AI to be unwilling to depict Obama, I imagine many people would assume that decision was meant to help Obama, not harm him.

I don't know how you can sleep at night.

It's over, and it's high time for him to get the hell out. If we're going to be a neoliberal shithole, then I sure as hell don't want him in charge of it.

USA big tech is just as bad as Russias or China's

It's much, much worse

It gives the appearance that Meta is not an impartial platform like they try to claim for regulatory purposes.

I remember NYTimes/WaPost pieces being concerned about Hindu nationalist influence on the Republican party. Anyone who has spend 2 seconds online know it's more likely the Republican party nukes India than forming alliances with the BJP.

Quick-cut to Musk funding right-wing political parties in Europe, JD Vance using the NATO bully-pulpit to talk down European center-right politicians, and Trump creating a slush-fund worth billions to Argentina to prop-up its failing experiment in right-wing libertarian governance, and America evangelicals funding regressive politics across Africa and Europe, reducing America's refugee program to resettle right-wing South Africans.

The alliance is so strong that people are coming even to HN to spread disinformation.

(they may have already, they can basically do mind control with recommendations algorithms and get swaths of people to do whatever they want).

i don't see the correlation with current events. do you have a source that establishes this based on evidence?

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/51954

Trump has also been posting maps that are identical to the North American Technate maps (that include Greenland).

https://bostonraremaps.com/inventory/technocracy-inc-technat...

Im not going to litigate reality with someone whos purposely denying it.

Fun read: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/joshua-haldeman...

I mean, this is South America we're talking about. It's not attitudes that undermine their democracy, it's very notoriously US-based three letter agencies.[1][2][3][4][5]

[1] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/legacy-posting/chile-united-states...

[2] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2025-1...

[3] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB133/index.htm

[4] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB465/

[5] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/events/operation-condor-1975-1980

America has recently done a huge amount to undermine faith in its own democracy, and that has been gleefully spread around the world. Absent any evidence. It's gross.

At that point, they've already won, neh?

(this is mostly to object that hyperbolic phrases like "basically mind control" don't do your argument any favor)

Secret? Its called "X" and Facebook.

Or if you're not immune, why do they allow you to keep making these posts calling them out?

I would say they can also successfully do "remote viewing" through a network of worldwide IOT devices.. While not metaphysical, modern surveillance techniques are certainly is inspired by those earlier more mystical ambitions.

Early intelligence programs had an outsized influence on Cybernetics and thus the internet.

Imagine telling a MK Ultra researcher in the CIA that in 50 years you'll be able to listen into, and steer the behavior of an individual through a glass screen they hold in their hands all day.. That you could target people individually, important people even, while they sit alone in a room customizing and tweaking the propaganda they see every 10 seconds as they touch the screen to swipe.

This all sounds pretty normal, and run of the mill to us now but if you take a step back its all very trippy. Its interesting to follow the evolution of early cybernetics research to the modern day and if you follow the lineage of researchers back in time you'll find some very suspect connections/influences.

From what I can see, the meta cutoff data was from a time where one candidate was confirmed and the other wasn't. The political interference here was actually the timely manner for them to fix this. It took weeks of public pressure / federal government pressure for Meta to act.

Is it overly conspiratorial to think the Meta is doing what they're accused of on behalf of the US?

By the way democrats never dared to call out Musk's endless lies for decades

Don’t let either loss aversion or irrational exuberance rule you. Weigh every possibility and prepare yourself for it psychologically. The result could be crushing defeat, but it could also be stunning triumph.

It’s basically impossible for elected Republicans to hold Trump to account without losing office, and even if Republicans get wiped out in the coming election (I’m skeptical), I doubt that dynamic will change. If the price of gas weren’t so high, Republicans would be fairly happy with Trump — he’s basically kept his promise to be a hard-ass on immigration and other culture war issues.

I don’t expect a Republican reckoning that would please Democrats. Future Republican standard bearers will probably be very similar to Trump but more competent — akin to Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Orban, Modi, and others.

Even among people I know who voted for him, Trump fatigue is setting in and growing. Iran, renaming lakes and oceans, high cost of food and gas, none of that is what they voted for.

This is the sad truth. Imagine if he hadn't invaded Iran. He probably would manage to finagle a third term.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/08/777466912/californias-prop-18...

The only important question is whether Democrats will get any sense if they win.

The worst outcome is actually Democrats winning and then keeping the status quo and continuing to serve corporations and special interest groups over the needs of their own constituents.

They won't have any real power to force through legislation even if they win, but if they win and don't use this time to shake up their own party and instead keep Schumer/Jeffries/et al in charge and keep towing the center-right Third Way-esque line then in a few years time we will find out that actually, yes, there are worse people that could be president than Trump (all of the malevolence, but perhaps with competence too next time).

Every election for over a decade has been a change election and the Democratic party refusing to understand this (because the consultant class and their high value donors don't want to understand it) is one of the primary factors in creating and enabling Trump. And it isn't yet clear they intend to address this. I mean, people are still taking a Gavin Newsom run in 2028 seriously ffs.

And it doesn't have to be criminal. You are hallucinating more than a 2024 LLM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy

"A conspiracy, also known as a plot, ploy, or scheme, is a plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful OR HARMFUL purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivation,[2] while KEEPING THEIR AGREEMENT SECRET from the public or from other people affected by it"

Edit: the point about Trump was facetious, but old Twitter actually DID actively interfere in the 2020 election by censoring all sharing (even in DMs!) the New York Post Biden laptop story.

You mean when Twitter "permanently" banned Trump in January of 2021, after the 2020 election (which he lost)? Which election do you suppose that interfered with?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Not at all. We all know it. There's just literally nothing we can do. The whole world is an US dictatorship

Oct 2020: Facebook demotes the same story. Zuckerberg wrote in an August 26, 2024 letter that Facebook temporarily demoted the story after the FBI warned of a possible Russian disinformation campaign.

Early to late 2020: Twitter labels Trump's election claims. Twitter first added a contextual label to a Trump tweet calling mail-in voting fraudulent in early 2020.

Dec 8, 2022: The Twitter Files describe "visibility filtering." Bari Weiss reported that Twitter staff limited the reach of some accounts without telling users, including Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk.

E: oh it’s a 1 day old account. Sad troll.

I didn't laugh at the joke.

I laughed because their username was "We Need More Luigis" with a Palestine flag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Everyone remembers evil Pinochet who killed some 3k out of 11 million, nobody cares about kind Hoxha who killed at least 6k (likely closer to 100k) out of 2 million, or plushy Castro (10k killed + 70k dead trying to flee out of 10 million).

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...

It’s their platform, they can boost who they want.

That and the fact that US is actively putting money into favouring the candidate that's offering them access to Brazilian rare earth reserves (https://valorinternational.globo.com/politics/news/2026/09/3..., https://amadomundo.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/memorando-... and https://youtu.be/xPlKzqiYH5c?si=Cw4YGXU8B2Xb2EHY) we are looking at a direct attack against Brazil's right to self determination by the US and its corporations.

Pretending only rational discourse is valid ways to plan or engage in politics omits a lot of what's important.

Liberal voters don't unite well, and they also tend to have lower trust when it comes to misinformation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity

Just to be clear though: the Communist Party of China is not a massive fan of far-right parties, there are certain ideological barriers there.

Russia employed the former left-wing German Chancellor as part of their strategy making an invasion of Ukraine economically viable for them (it is worth pointing out that when right-wing politicians pointed this out, it was received as a crazy conspiracy theory..."liberal voters" distinguish themselves as people who believe themselves particularly unlikely to believe in "misinformation" whilst simultaneously believing in things that make no sense, most people who have a knowledge of politics are required to believe things that aren't true...if they were in touch with reality, they wouldn't vote).

One problem the Brazilian left is facing is that the non-Musk platforms are not too fond of death threats against Protestants, landlords, farmers etc.

Either most of my friends are pro-Lula (they are not) or Meta is helping them, not Bolsonaro.

This is an excuse for them to challenge the election if they (hopefully) lose.

For my other Brazilian friends over here: to me both sides are terrible but Lula is the convicted felon that spent 2 years in prison, and he ruled the country since 2003 and the place gets worse by the day.

Hacked messages uncovered procedural fraud in Lula’s trial, leading to the annulment of his convictions.

Even if the trial was annulled due to procedural fraud (which it wasn’t), it doesn’t take away his corruption and what his group did to the country.

One can argue that there have been numerous procedural frauds in Bolsonaro's trial - but of course if it’s the other side you don’t care ;)

The fact is that Lula was not convicted.

And he was convicted. By several judges. It was the supreme court that voided Lava Jato. Essentially, they him in the presidential race specifically to take out Bolsonaro.

Hopefully tomorrow he will prove useless at even that, and his party will be buried for good.