Product managers, do you know how you get to 100 million users in 5 days for your MVP product?
By cutting features and only doing the barest minimum but make those features excellent.
Part of the reason that people that compete against Meta so often get smoked, is that their dislike for all things Meta clouds their judgement, making them incapable of seeing or acknowledging the things that Meta is extremely good at.
"Oh, they just copied from Twitter!" or "Oh, they just moved their other customers over!" is a remarkably shallow analysis of what they just did.
Even now, there are people reading what I just wrote, and interpreting it as some kind of glowing endorsement of Meta's business priorities.
Or they're getting ready to rage type some exaggerated nonsense at me about how big an impact Cambridge Analytica had on getting Trump elected. (The impact was tiny).
That type of myopia makes it really difficult to learn from people and organizations that you don't like. Which is a significant weakness.
@mekkaokereke @carnage4life Good points, well made but it’s good not to minimise the damage and even minimal influence on an election like the US presidential election is huge imo
I'm not minimizing anything.
People love to gloss over real racism in the electorate, and pretend like the big bad boogeyman of Cambridge Analytica tricked people's parents into voting racist. That's just not what happened.
Those people were enjoying Fox News for 20 years before Cambridge Analytica. Trump won because of extreme voter suppression, clear and simple.
The attitudes of those Trump voters didn't change before or after the election.
The number of Black people that were legally eligible to vote in 2016, but that were illegally prevented from voting, was larger than the entire margin of victory for Trump. But we don't like to talk about that.
People who know that their family members are racist for a long time, pretend that they only started being racist after Cambridge Analytica. That's a lie.
Trump gave people who were racist inside the house permission to be racist outside of the house too.
@mekkaokereke @oscarjiminy @carnage4life Please do talk more about the details of the voter suppression, if and when you're so inclined and have the opportunity.
I have a broad sense of the techniques (ID requirements, date/time/location restrictions, register purges, mail-in restrictions) but not a good sense of the numbers involved.
@georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
I'll give just 2 examples.
1) Black voters in Milwaukee were targeted with racist voter ID laws.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/voter-suppression-wisconsin-election-2016/
This caused a 20 point electoral swing to Trump.
2) 17 million voters purged from rolls between 2016 and 2018. Disproportionately Black, in places where Black voters have been intentionally disenfranchised.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/purges-growing-threat-right-vote
The purging was 4 million voters more effective than during Obama's election. 4 *million*. Not a typo
@georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
The reason that people like Rachel Bitecofer, me, and most Black folk, are so often right about who's going to win a US election, and people like Nate Silver are so often wrong, is that Nate looks at the stats and polls, which tell you how people *intend* to vote, while we look at turnout/suppression, which tells you how people *are able* to vote.
Voter turnout is all about suppression. And suppression is all about racism.
@mekkaokereke @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life Ohio is going to be bright red this year and maybe cost the Dems a Senate seat and the national media is going to cover it as if the state electorate suddenly got Even More Conservative instead of looking at the effects of new voter suppression laws. (Voting now requires a state issued photo ID, and getting one of those is more difficult and more expensive than in 2016 or 2020)
@q_aurelius @mekkaokereke @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
When WI made voter ID mandatory, the courts mandated a free option, as well as a way to vote without proper id if the voter was unable to get one. It's not ideal, but not as dire as you fear.
@MHowell @q_aurelius @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
It is as dire as we fear.
I honestly don't mean to sound harsh, but I need to be very clear about something:
The whole game of voter suppression efforts, is to design attacks to look innocuous, common sense, not racist, and "not that dire" to gullible white citizens.
Meanwhile, Black voters, and white folk that do understand voter suppression and want less of it, try to point out how it will have a huge negative effect.
@mekkaokereke @MHowell @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
EXACTLY.
I remember ten years ago a white libertarian I knew was arguing with me "I looked it up, a state id is $5. Stop making a big deal of this."
(The cost listed on the website does not include 'fees' which are assessed at the county and city level and are higher in urban areas.)
The whole thing is about providing plausible deniability for white people who don't want to think about it too much.
@q_aurelius
@mekkaokereke @MHowell @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
It's frankly ridiculous, getting an ID should be free. For non-driver's IDs they should let public libraries process paperwork so you don't have to go all the way to a DMV. Post offices could be a good option too.
@neckspike @q_aurelius @mekkaokereke @MHowell @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
At some point I was having a conversation with someone who is in favor of voter ID, and their argument was "well, Canada requires it!" Let's go see what Canda allows for voter ID, shall we?
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e#list
There are 48 things on this list, including library cards, transit passes, utility bills, letters from homeless shelters, etc.!
The laws being passed in the US are about reducing turnout among certain populations, full stop.
@ricci @neckspike @q_aurelius @mekkaokereke @MHowell @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life That's federal level in Canada. Elections on other levels may not even require any ID, as long as you are already on the voter list. It depends on the jurisdiction, but in various places in Canada you can just show up, state your name and address, and if you're on the list and haven't voted yet, you can vote.
@newstik @ricci @q_aurelius @mekkaokereke @MHowell @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life
That's also how it works in the state I live in, they have you sign the roll to verify you voted. If you want to vote from somewhere other than your registered polling place you can but they have you fill out a provisional ballot so it's slightly more hassle. They could definitely make this easier, but you don't have to show ID.
I presume they look into your eligibility when processing your registration, so it's taken care of long before you get to the polls.
I do my voting by mail these days because I'm disabled and at higher risk for Covid and other junk. It's very convenient and should be more easily accessible.
@newstik @ricci @neckspike @q_aurelius @mekkaokereke @MHowell @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life ... and when you did your taxes in Canada, if you checked "put me on the voters list"* then you're already registered.
@deborahh @ricci @neckspike @q_aurelius @mekkaokereke @MHowell @georgeeyong @oscarjiminy @carnage4life Yes, though, again, that way of #VoterRegistration works on the federal level, and some other election authorities use that data as well, but not all do.
The #Yukon, for example, used to send people to each house and apartment to stand up a list of voters for every single election anew. All the data was deleted and then recreated next time, by foot - that changed with the most recent election.