
A Look Inside the Tactics of Definers, Facebook’s Attack Dog - chablent
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/technology/facebook-definers-opposition-research.html
======
dirkgently
Key takeaways:

1\. Before Ms. Sandberg’s Senate testimony, Facebook lobbyists pushed
lawmakers to refrain from questioning her about privacy, censorship and other
issues, and to stick to election interference. The committee’s chairman,
Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, was swayed and warned
members to stick to the hearing’s planned topic, The Times reported Wednesday.

2\. Facebook had also lobbied for the hearing to include a Google emissary of
similar rank to Ms. Sandberg. Mr. Burr invited Larry Page, a Google co-
founder, but he did not show up.

3\. In an email days before the hearing, a Definers employee pressed a Times
reporter to write that Facebook was taking the senators’ concerns seriously
while Google was irresponsible for skipping the hearing.

4\. The day before the hearing, NTK Network reported that Senator Marco Rubio,
Republican of Florida, had suggested that Google was possibly a monopoly.

5\. Those pieces were just two of at least 11 negative items NTK has posted
about Google since late March.

Facebook really seems butthurt about Google. Instead of learning from Google
about being transpernt on how they use user data, they basically dragged
Google in the controversy, and I would say they have been pretty successful.

~~~
ForrestN
Just a polite reminder that using "butthurt" to mean "resentful"or "angry"
paints a picture that is often homophobic and nearly always making light of
rape. In my opinion, we should try not to normalize its use any further.

~~~
ehsanu1
[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/323628/etymology...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/323628/etymology-
of-butthurt)

~~~
ForrestN
This is incorrect. Derivation doesn’t prove usage.

[http://persephonemagazine.com/2013/01/can-we-please-stop-
usi...](http://persephonemagazine.com/2013/01/can-we-please-stop-using-the-
term-butthurt/)

~~~
spangry
_" Essentially, the term is used when someone is upset that someone else has
gotten the better or them or beaten them or bested them in some way. That is
to say, they dominated them. You know, like when someone is raped."_

Your source is the blog entry of some self-professed 'angry feminist' making
up an etymology and then trying to police everyone's language on that basis.
People like this are such insufferable know-it-alls.

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nonbel
>"While senators are no strangers to opposition research — they use it all the
time against political rivals — they take a dimmer view when it used against
them outside of election season."

Why? And how long is "election season" these days? It seems to be almost
always.

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wpietri
I have not closed my account, as I don't want to entirely lose touch with a
bunch of people. But I've decided I'm not going to log in more than once a
month. I just can't in good conscience let them rent my eyeballs or use my
content any more.

~~~
grogenaut
I can't decide if this is a beautiful troll or what goes for taking a moral
stance these days.

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imgabe
Hmm, Facebook pays firm to dig up dirt on politicians in order to expose them
as hypocrites.

NY Times then digs up this fact and uses it to expose Facebook as hypocrites.

It's hypocrites all the way down, folks.

~~~
ucaetano
Nice tu quote!

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Sabinus
Ah so this is why I saw the Diamond and Silk stuff on the media for a while.

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ilovecaching
From the HN Guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
> evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news,
> it's probably off-topic.

Can we please stop with the NYT assassination pieces on Facebook? This piece
is barely tangentially related to technology at all, and serves no purpose
other than to allow more virtue signalling and hearsay arguments and personal
opinions on right and wrong.

