Hacker News

points by kaldev 1 day ago | 0 comments

I felt like this whole thing is extremely inorganic. Funded by a WalMart heiress, website went up hours before a massive NYT ad buy, and (in my opinion) what felt like lot of coordinated / paid / botted engagement.

Idk, I don't want the internet to be dictated by followers/engagement that can be easily botted via a SMM panel for pennies.

[–] jfengel 1 day ago

How do I get in on that gig? I showed up because I thought I was protecting democracy from a felon who is taking billions in bribes. Like a chump!

[–] kaldev 1 day ago

Gambling companies literally pay people to post on twitter?

You can go to an SMM panel right now and get a bot farm to rebrand tens of thousands of accounts on any platform to align with your messaging and spam the fuck out of replies to manufacture consensus. There is a very high chance this exact playbook worked on you lol.

[–] digitaltrees 1 day ago

Bs. The facts are clear and independently verifiable. The Dutch government saw Jared k laundering money in real time. Trump is literally bribing voters from the stump. We literally invaded Venezuela took their oil and gold and transferred it to an a foreign bank account controlled by the executive rather than congress. There is an actual active market for bribery to buy pardons and get insider information about presidential policy for trading activities. I can go on and on.

[–] nitwit005 1 day ago

The call to protest at some specific location and time might be "artificial", but people have to want to protest. Trump has simply managed to inspire millions to do so.

[–] dualvariable 1 day ago

I feel like your reply is extremely inorganic.

And how come criticizing left-wing protests is fine, but bringing up right-wing botting/trolling operations on this website isn't?

"Curious..."

[–] jeremyjh 1 day ago

It’s really hard to believe how much people hate that dumb motherfucker?

[–] kaldev 1 day ago

People def do and that's totally fine. You don't feel like the fact that this "movement" is funded by a WalMart heiress is fishy? Full page NYT ads trying to mobilize people into protest?

Organic protests of any sort is fine. Between this shit and the "ChaoticGood" marketing operation ran for Geese, you cannot begin to understand how much of the interaction you see on the web is bought and paid for.

[–] digitaltrees 1 day ago

This is an ad hominem attack. It doesn’t matter what the origin of a fact is if it is verifiable and accurate.

[–] delecti 1 day ago

Elon is the largest individual political donor ever. I think a billionaire funding counter-protests is not that fishy in contrast.

I don't think a movement having a bit of funding for the organizers is that big of a deal though. The actual protesters are there because they want to be.

Edit: He's actually the largest individual political donor ever within a single political cycle, which is still quite significant (he's outspending the next largest in this cycle by about 3:1), but also very different. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/27/tracking-the-money...

[–] CGMthrowaway 1 day ago

I think Elon's big political contributions didn't begin until 2024, so pretty recent.

Do we know who was the largest individual political donor prior to Elon?

[–] delecti 1 day ago

I misheard the figure. He's actually the largest individual political donor ever within a single political cycle. I've updated my comment.

I'm not really sure who the largest cumulative donor would be. I tried to find that, and didn't feel like I was getting close to the answer.

[–] anigbrowl 1 day ago

It is inorganic, but no more so than the MAGA rallies. They're not trying to hide that they're organized by and on behalf of the Democratic party.

I also think they're pretty cringe, but that seems orthogonal to the question of why Meta is censoring their accounts. I haven't seen any suggestion that they violated meta's policies.

[–] NicoJuicy 1 day ago

I think a guy selling his own bible is more fishy.

Or a million dollar lottery ticket if you vote republican.

Or Oracle buying news stations and papers with the son of president.

But that's just my opinion

[–] stickfigure 1 day ago

How does it feel to be part of Putin's disinformation campaign?

What, you don't enjoy having your opinions dismissed because someone famous shares them?

[–] foobarchu 1 day ago

> Full page NYT ads trying to mobilize people into protest?

You don't think the fullblown fascist takeover of the American government warrants that? Agree to disagree I guess.