I think it's more that all of these things are gaining traction and people are trying to relate it to Trump.
There's been a growing discussion about data collection and shady advertising practices for a long time. It's not about Trump. And this isn't the first time I've seen distrust raised towards Facebook or Google about this stuff.
The Russian propaganda was mostly divisive messages surrounding things like race / guns. People keep trying to make it about Trump but investigators have been saying that it's more broad the whole time. Regardless of him it's still something we need to investigate.
Anything that seems scandalous or sketchy will probably be tied to Trump by people who don't like him if possible. But the same behavior has been going on for longer than Trump (people tried to accuse Obama of all kinds of stuff, and don't even get started on what people were accusing the Clinton campaign of). It shouldn't distract from the fact that it's scandalous and sketchy and we should keep an eye on these issues.
PS: Get ready to see everything being related back to Trump. All actions of government, law, etc. The positive and the negative. Because that's how this always works. The current administration gets more credit for change than they deserve.
> (people tried to accuse Obama of all kinds of stuff, and don't even get started on what people were accusing the Clinton campaign of). It shouldn't distract from the fact that it's scandalous and sketchy and we should keep an eye on these issues.
Accusations are one thing. We have actual documented evidence here, and that's what so startling.
In addition, I'd argue that if Trump wasn't such an incompetent, bumbling, authoritarian moron, the backlash absolutely wouldn't have been as bad.
But the fact of the matter is that this is absolutely something new. Unless you're trying to suggest that both Obama and Clinton engaged companies who had a history of generating fake news, emotionally charged propaganda, and outright honeypotting political opponents with hookers and blackmail.
That's what makes this different. I'm absolutely flabberghasted that this point isn't being driven harder, instead defaulting to "well both sides...".
All of these things are alarming, yes. But not because Trump is involved. These issues should be investigated regardless of who was doing it.
And I was trying to convey to the parent post that these issues of data use and disingenuous campaign practices would have come up, Trump or not, because it's happening and we don't like it as a society. But since Trump is the one, right now, people will point the finger at him like he's to blame for it all. That's why I mentioned Obama (because people did the same to him).
It looks, to me, like Trump sought help from shady people in multiple cases. And that's worth noting but it's irrelevant to the fact that those people were doing shady things in the first place.
> We have actual documented evidence here, and that's what so startling.
No. Sadly we only have a situation where an app was collecting data using Facebook and a video where two individuals were pitching their product by saying things to try and win a customer.
We know that the Trump campaign hired them, but we don't know that the Trump campaign knew about their data practices any more than their other customers knew. They had many other customers before Trump.
PS: I'm not a Republican and am not supporting Donald Trump. But trying to spin this as real evidence is stooping to their level of misinformation. We don't know that the Trump campaign knew about this. And we don't know that the recent videos weren't just CA lying to sell their product. But yes we absolutely need to investigate both of those possibilities.
> And I was trying to convey to the parent post that these issues of data use and disingenuous campaign practices would have come up, Trump or not, because it's happening and we don't like it as a society.
Right, but then you said Obama was doing the same thing. He was not. Nor was Clinton. So the fact of the matter is that it may have come up, but there's been literally no evidence to suggest it's happened in the past by any of the winning Democratic campaigns.
That's the false equivalence I'm talking about. You're shifting blame away from the Republican party, the Trump campaign, and placing it solely on Facebook and unscrupulous data collection parties, when the issue should mostly be on the fact that a political campaign not only engaged said parties but won using them.
> No. Sadly we only have a situation where an app was collecting data using Facebook and a video where two individuals were pitching their product by saying things to try and win a customer.
And the words/documents provided by the CA whistleblower. That's immensely important.
> but we don't know that the Trump campaign knew about their data practices any more than their other customers knew.
Steve Bannon knew. Unless you're now claiming that he, as VP of CA, didn't know what his own company was doing.
> We don't know that the Trump campaign knew about this. And we don't know that the recent videos weren't just CA lying to sell their product.
That's because you're removing broader context that shows that we should probably err on the side of "they probably knew about all this" rather than "there's no way they could have known".
The fact is, CA was testing phrases used by the Trump campaign literally years before they approached Trump. The Mercers pumped money into the Trump campaign at a critical time (June 2016), and forced all campaign processes to go through CA. This is all documented. In August of that year, Bannon left CA (which was already running Trump's campaign) and joined the Trump campaign directly.
You're trying to pretend like there's more ambiguity than there actually is.
> Right, but then you said Obama was doing the same thing.
No. I didn't say anything like that. I literally said "people tried to accuse Obama of all kinds of stuff" and my point was to the parent post who said "Its purely Trump hatred driving this".
You missed the point because you don't like that I'm not blaming this entirely on Trump.
I want an investigation into all of this. And other sketchy behavior surrounding the Trump campaign.
But I was stating that I don't think the parent post was correct in saying that this is all about Trump.
> You're trying to pretend like there's more ambiguity than there actually is.
You're trying to pretend like there's more certainty than there actually is and that this is somehow all Trump's fault.
I think that's dangerous because the Trump team keeps claiming that there's a witch hunt going on so when all new scandals are pinned to him it actually helps them as far as optics go. We need to investigate this all and get to the bottom of it and I hope Trump is exposed for the scam artist that he is in the process.
> I literally said "people tried to accuse Obama of all kinds of stuff" and my point was to the parent post who said "Its purely Trump hatred driving this".
Right, but that's still comparing the current amount of information we have on what the Trump campaign and CA did to mere baseless accusations. The comparison is implicit.
> because you don't like that I'm not blaming this entirely on Trump.
No, I don't like the fact that you're trying to cast this as mere accusation like the many false accusations against other prior campaigns.
> But I was stating that I don't think the parent post was correct in saying that this is all about Trump.
And I agree with that bit. Which is why I didn't engage it. Instead, I engaged the implicit false equivalence that the parent post was outright stating and that you were merely suggesting.
> You're trying to pretend like there's more certainty than there actually is
And yet you haven't refuted any of my statements, sources, or facts.
> and that this is somehow all Trump's fault.
Just like how it's the fault of the person composing and releasing doxxing info, not the fault of the person the dox is about for putting it online.
So if it isn't Trump's fault, whose is it? Bannon's? CA? The Mercer's?
> the Trump team keeps claiming that there's a witch hunt going on so when all new scandals are pinned to him it actually helps them as far as optics go
Are you seriously suggesting that we not use new information as it comes out to paint a larger picture, simply because of the optics on the part of Trump?
> We need to investigate this all and get to the bottom of it
We are. The media is. And this is what is coming out. What, are we not supposed to connect the very obvious and extremely public dots? Are we just supposed to pretend that the Paradise Papers don't exist and don't show money being moved around from sanctioned, Kremlin-owned finances, through shell companies residing in tax havens, and finally on to various American/European companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica?
We have different approaches but we're on the same side in case you haven't picked up on that.
I agree with you on most of these points but until the proper investigations proceed not much will happen. And this administration will attempt to block or obstruct any investigations that they think are part of a "witch hunt" so putting too much emphasis on Trump himself seems risky in the meantime. Let the investigators put those dots together.
Also, Trump is just the tip of the iceberg in this story of corruption. Companies like CA and groups like Internet Research Agency need to share this blame because Trump didn't create them. He just benefited from them (because he has no morals).
PS: If you haven't contacted your representatives (or candidates) to ask them to support ongoing investigations into these particular issues (like the Special Counsel one). Do it please. Especially if you have a representative up for reelection.
> We have different approaches but we're on the same side in case you haven't picked up on that.
I did. I'm just more concerned with giving an accurate picture of what happened than trying to pass off some kind of false equivalency.
> but until the proper investigations proceed not much will happen. And this administration will attempt to block or obstruct any investigations that they think are part of a "witch hunt" so putting too much emphasis on Trump himself seems risky in the meantime. Let the investigators put those dots together.
On the contrary, its necessary that we connect these dots. IMO, it's an insurance policy against the eventuality that Trump decides to fire Mueller or stall/block the FBI investigation. We the people need to democratize this information and disseminate it whenever possible.
This is not normal. This is not business as usual. This is a tale of a corrupt political campaign using every dirty trick in the book, the likes of which we've never seen before, and winning because of it. Every party involved deserves to be punished, but the fact of the matter is that while we can't do much to stop people from putting together intel via publicly available data sets, we sure as heck can do something about corrupt politicians using said data sets.
In much the same way, we punish the doxxer for using the dox, not the target for putting said information online in the first place, or the social networks for giving them the outlets to publish said information. Obviously Facebook deserves some blame, especially if they were somehow complicit in this (in as far as investment money/advice from Russian sanctioned industries/individuals).
> IMO, it's an insurance policy against the eventuality that Trump decides to fire Mueller or stall/block the FBI investigation.
We really do need to make sure that doesn't happen and make sure they don't grab any more power while they have the upper hand.
As far as getting people to see realize this stuff... You can't convince a Trump supporter of the sheer level of corruption as long as they think there's a witch hunt trying to make this stuff up.
First the evidence has to be established and legitimized without being attached to Trump at all or the premise of the evidence is compromised in their mind. Does that make sense?
Suppose a report came out that shows how drinking soda is actually good for you. But it was published by the sugar industry. Even if they had some good points you'd probably be skeptical. That's how these people will feel as long as the narrative of this being a witch hunt is perpetuated.
> This is not normal. This is not business as usual. This is a tale of a corrupt political campaign using every dirty trick in the book
I agree.
> Obviously Facebook deserves some blame, especially if they were somehow complicit in this
I think we need to look into them for their data practices in general. Way beyond this case.
> First the evidence has to be established and legitimized without being attached to Trump at all
It already has been. The bread crumbs have been laid out for years now, and all it takes is looking back at all the legitimate outlets that were at the time slightly mystified by the occurrences.
We have outlets like Tech Crunch, The New York Times, Wall St. Journal, etc. all reporting on these things as they happened (as early as in 2009), and we are now able to piece them together thanks in part to the Paradise Papers.
> I think we need to look into them for their data practices in general. Way beyond this case.
There's been a growing discussion about data collection and shady advertising practices for a long time. It's not about Trump. And this isn't the first time I've seen distrust raised towards Facebook or Google about this stuff.
The Russian propaganda was mostly divisive messages surrounding things like race / guns. People keep trying to make it about Trump but investigators have been saying that it's more broad the whole time. Regardless of him it's still something we need to investigate.
Anything that seems scandalous or sketchy will probably be tied to Trump by people who don't like him if possible. But the same behavior has been going on for longer than Trump (people tried to accuse Obama of all kinds of stuff, and don't even get started on what people were accusing the Clinton campaign of). It shouldn't distract from the fact that it's scandalous and sketchy and we should keep an eye on these issues.
PS: Get ready to see everything being related back to Trump. All actions of government, law, etc. The positive and the negative. Because that's how this always works. The current administration gets more credit for change than they deserve.