Comment by ocd
1 month ago
He said the thing that Canada, Greenland, Cuba, and various other countries are worried about, but is either publicly ignored in the US or dismissed as "trolling" by the president.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/25/lula-says-trum...
The same old cool-aid: the label on bottle reads "freedom". But if you look at the ingredients: greed, gluttony, looting, bullying, spread american culture, slavery, surveillance - the full nth-amendmend package. Dosages may vary.
And Meta (or the US government) seems determined to prove him right
Meta == US gov. It’s another tool in their toolbox. You shouldn’t trust US tech any more than Chinese tech. If anything, probably should trust it less than Chinese tech.
Correction: Meta == Israel + US gov.
20 million people wearing facial recognition glasses in public, always-on, networked and geolocated, with a Muse agent monitoring the feed, would 1000x the domestic surveillance capacity of current Flock, Ring, Tesla and CCTV cams.
The Fermi probability that you'll be ingested and inferenced by this network on any given day is incredibly high, even if you never buy a Meta product and never create an Instagram account.
It's hideously dystopian and you cannot opt out.
Maybe that's why the Muse avatar is a cute and cuddly Teletubby.
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Interesting that people trust foreign tech/government over their own to represent their interests. Not saying you're wrong.
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Comparing the two like this is interesting but there are fundamental differences. The US today could not delete tech companies, or the people who run them, the way China can its industries—and, crucially, the people who run them. The US’s version is personalist and would not survive even changing to another person other than Trump, not even going as far a a political party shift, which is possible in America.
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[flagged]
There is actually a very popular meme in Brazil for what you just did, where a character appears out of nowhere to ask, "What about Lula?" — meaning that if one can find any act (or accusation) of malice from Lula or his party, anything bad the other side does is justifiable and Lula (or his supporters) can't complain.
https://tenor.com/pt-BR/view/e-o-pt-e-o-lula-pt-lula-gif-174...
It's called "whataboutism" in general. The word is used to easily wave away criticism of the other side of the argument without actually addressing it.
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I think there is a difference of a country governing who can say what in that country vs. a foreign company. I don't care if you call it censorship or whatever, it's foreign companies meddling in political affairs.
US companies can meddle as much as they want in US affairs, I don't care. But not in the country I'm in.
By "the government", you mean "courts"?. I understand you may be confused as Trump imagines the law bends to his will, and you never heard of separation of powers.
Can you show us which court order Meta is following to ban Lula's page? Please.
You don't understand, it's different. Back then, it was the bad guys being censored, so it was a good thing. Now it's the good guys being censored, so it's a bad thing.
When the left censors their political opponents, they're "protecting democracy". When the right does the same, they're "threatening democracy". Those are the rules.
Indeed it seems that they only have problems with censorship when their team gets censored but they secretly enjoy their opposition getting censored. As it is the Lula admin mandated that X suppress the speech of about 600 opposition candidates.
https://derechadiario.com.ar/us/argentina/x-revelo-source-co...
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If those countries worried for real they would have built open platforms themselves. In reality they are making running any social platform next to impossible operate legaly.
That would require that Meta is carrying water for Trump. I don't think I see that as very likely.
"Likely" or not has nothing to do with it, it's well documented. https://www.wsj.com/tech/mark-zuckerbergs-meta-donates-1-mil...
Meta restored Lula's FB account hours after it got flagged for content that as posted on their page. That is a pretty weak basis for a conspiracy theory.
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donating money to the president and their party is something nearly every national corporation does. Using their corporate power to do political favors is not. those are two very different things.
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If the title of this article is not sufficiently eloquent, the photo should finish the job
https://www.wired.com/story/tech-ceos-donald-trump-white-hou...
Meta hired Dina Powell McCormick into a position directly under Zuckerberg after the election and appointed Dana White to their board of directors. Is that enough water?
Zuckerberg started pandering to the Trump admin mere months after he took office, publicizing "evidence" consisting of a few emails from Biden admin officials as proof of widespread government manipulation of tech platforms that Trump rightly put a stop to in the name of free speech.
At the time the story blew up on HN drawing lots of outrage from the self-styled free speech maximalists. Now, of course, there's comparative silence from that crowd after regular stories about the FCC routinely weaponizing licenses to enforce preferred speech, lawsuit threats against Wikipedia, coercion of universities to suppress specific political views, etc. But at the time it was a big thing and a political gift to the Trump admin's public image.
What universe have you been in for the past decade? Meta is hand in glove with authoritarian interests, including in the US.