
Palmer Luckey: The Facebook Fat Cat Secretly Funding Trump’s Meme Machine - NelsonMinar
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/22/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-billionaire-secretly-funding-trump-s-meme-machine.html
======
unprepare
This NimbleAmerica group seems like some kind of scam to me, I can't believe
anyone would donate money to such a farce

Their FAQs page literally has filler text, and one of the four most frequently
asked questions is 'how do we know this is not a money grab?'

>I have personally donated $xxx to our Booster.com fundraiser.

really? you donated xxx dollars? Who is the "I" in that sentence?

[https://www.nimbleamerica.com/faqs](https://www.nimbleamerica.com/faqs)

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DominikR
Palmer Luckey supporting one candidate is not the problem, the leftist media
that seeks to financially, politically and even socially destroy and ostracise
anyone not supporting their candidate is the problem.

How can anyone support that? You turn on any major news channel today and what
you see is a warped world view where anyone supporting Trump is compared to a
Nazi, a deplorable, a racist or a homophobe.

Even Jimmy Fallon was attacked viciously for merely having Trump on his show
because this "humanised" him to his viewers. So Trump and his supporters are
subhuman according to the left? Did I get this right?

No wonder that it's always been the Socialists who built Gulags and
concentration camps. They just can't stop thinking in these categories of
humans vs subhumans.

~~~
throwanem
18th century Britain was socialist?

~~~
DominikR
Look, throughout history countries took prisoners during wars, so did Britain
and others, and many suffered because of that.

But to compare this to concentration camps that were literally built to
exterminate whole people isn't even funny.

In fact I don't particularly like the British because of my eastern European
heritage but they were always known to treat prisoners and people that lived
in the colonies they captured exceptionally well and more humanely than anyone
else at the time.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts)

"The book's main conclusion is that the deaths of 30–60 million people killed
in famines all over the world during the later part of the 19th century were
caused by laissez faire and Malthusian economic ideology of the colonial
governments. "

~~~
DominikR
Yeah sure, everything that happened in British colonies was the fault of the
British Empire. Even if it was a drought or natural disaster or if the country
wasn't even part of the Empire.

Let's just call it genocide because you feel like it. Legal definitions do not
matter, all that matters is how you feel about it.

~~~
meira
Yeah, sure. Nothing that happened in british colonies was not the fault of the
British Empire.

Let's just call it business because you feel like it. Legal definitions do not
matter, all that matters is how you feel about it.

------
red_blobs
Remember when memes were lauded as a part of the millennial culture? Now when
they are used for something you disagree with, it's seen as 'evil', 'wrong',
or 'unethical'.

The problem is that the vast majority of voters are swayed by emotion, not
fact.

These sorts of things are only going to get worse, because it is the only way
to get people to vote your way. Even if you have a good idea and a sound plan,
you need to dress it up in emotion-laced slop to get people to come out and
vote for you.

It also doesn't help that the mainstream media, which is a very powerful force
in the US when it comes to politics, is biased toward the Democratic party (as
seen in the recent Wikileaks emails from the DNC). It means that to counteract
this, you need to try another tactic, like posting on the Internet.

Even our leaders are swayed by emotion. Both Obama and Hillary have commented
prematurely on important events ('Clockboy' and various police shootings)
without having professionals and science weigh in on the actual facts of the
events after a real investigation.

This is one of the main problems with our society today: anti-science winning
out over facts and assuming someone is guilty before even attempting to see if
they are innocent.

There was even a book on the New York best sellers list called 'Weapons of
Math Destruction' claiming that math and statistics are somehow 'racist'.
Think about that for a minute to let it sink in....Facts are now racist.

Social media has made it worse because instead of just having the mainstream
media feed us hyperbole and rhetoric, anybody with a Twitter account can do it
too.

It has now had some real-world consequences and resulted in many people
getting hurt and even getting killed in riots over half-truths, hearsay, and
rumors.

If you want shit posting to stop, we have to live in a society where it has to
stop working so well. Maybe even holding people responsible for posting lies
that lead to riots or death.

Edit: _sigh_. I always try to have intellectual conversations here on HN and
am always disappointed. Most people here seem to just want to hear the current
San Francisco narrative about the world and live only within that bubble. It's
actually really sad.

~~~
acdha
> There was even a book on the New York best sellers list called 'Weapons of
> Math Destruction' claiming that math and statistics are somehow 'racist'.
> Think about that for a minute to let it sink in....Facts are now racist.

I don't know where you read that but you really, really, really need to learn
about that book before repeating it, much less complaining about the lack of
intellectual conversation.

Cathy O'Neil has a Ph.D in mathematics
([https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=38230](https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=38230)),
worked as a quant, and most definitely is not claiming that math is racist.
Rather, she's talking about how _MISUSING_ math – and especially machine
learning – can reinforce biases which were already present or introduced by
sampling error. She's actually calling for greater mathematical understanding
so people keep these things in mind and avoid them:

[http://www.npr.org/2016/09/12/493654950/weapons-of-math-
dest...](http://www.npr.org/2016/09/12/493654950/weapons-of-math-destruction-
outlines-dangers-of-relying-on-data-analytics)

[https://mathbabe.org/2014/08/12/weapon-of-math-
destruction-r...](https://mathbabe.org/2014/08/12/weapon-of-math-destruction-
risk-based-sentencing-models/)

------
JBReefer
Why is every article about the right so negative? Soros is rarely derided on
HN like this

~~~
acdha
It's not “the right” but a specific subset characterized kind of fact-free
propaganda and bigotry characterizing the alt-right. You can easily find
people from the more intellectually-coherent portions of the right who also
aren't happy with that type of attack, would prefer to be talking about actual
issues, and don't appreciate being grouped in with a bunch of self-described
shitposters.

If Soros was found to be funding an equivalent group – maybe PETA or one of
the black bloc groups, but there's really nothing comparable in both
popularity and derangement currently – you would find similar disapproval for
the same reasons. We don't because he's not the monster under the bed claimed
by the less factually constrained.

~~~
gozur88
The fact that you don't know about something doesn't make other people
"factually constrained".

>That funding comes in addition to more than $33 million in grants to the
Black Lives Matter movement from top Democratic Party donor George Soros
through his Open Society Foundations, as well as grant-making from the Center
for American Progress.

[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/black-
lives-...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/black-lives-matter-
cashes-100-million-liberal-foun/)

~~~
astazangasta
You shouldn't quote the Washington Times without doing your homework:

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/19/no-
george-s...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/19/no-george-soros-
didn-t-give-33-million-to-blacklivesmatter.html)

~~~
gozur88
You impugn a source and respond with a link to _The Daily Beast_? Isn't that
special.

If you'd read the article you linked you'd see, after much hemming, hawing,
and redefining terms they admit their own headline is wrong.

~~~
astazangasta
I did read the article; where do you see anywhere in there $33 million being
given to Black Lives Matters? The claim is specious.

~~~
gozur88
No it isn't. The article just tries a little mental flimflam with "umbrella
organizations". If you think about that for a minute it's just a no-true-
Scotsman argument.

~~~
narrowrail
Near as I can tell, Soros founded the Open Society Foundation (OSF) in 1993,
and Soros is not involved in the day to day operations. The OSF, in turn, gave
a grant to BLM. The way the washtimes puts it (and Limbaugh etc.), one might
think Soros himself gave money directly to BLM, but that's not the case. There
is more nuance and context that is relevant, and it _is_ a distinction with a
difference.

~~~
gozur88
So your contention is Soros founded OSF with a boatload of money but has no
influence on where the money goes?

I can get you a bridge for cheap. One thing I've found disturbing about this
election is the extent to which Democrats can stare blatant corruption in the
face and not see it.

