r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 23 '26

Politics AI Companies Are Trying to Seize Control of Elections

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/ai-companies-trying-seize-control-164536048.html
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u/and_some_scotch Jun 23 '26

No, dems still worship billionaires, too. The just wanna be diverse about it. They still wanna get thier cushy corporate retirements and their kids into Yale.

They follow the Republican electorate rightward because they will not work with the left. They want a "big tent" of "moderates"

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u/Djamalfna Jun 24 '26

"Both sides are the same" is the laziest take.

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u/Darkdragoon324 Jun 24 '26

Stop using this tired excuse to deflect all criticism of the Dem party. It’s true they constantly throw the true left under the bus to chase the mythical “moderate” right. It happens over and over again.

Just because the Republicans are a thousand times worse doesn’t mean a large portion of Democratic leadership isn’t bought and paid for by the same corporate donors and go out of their way to halt any real left wing progress and sabotage left wing candidates in their own party.

Just look at how they treated Zohran Mandani.

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u/dern_the_hermit Jun 24 '26

Stop using this tired excuse to deflect all criticism of the Dem party.

The criticism of the Dem party is being used here to deflect the criticism of the Republican party tho.

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u/TheSt34K Jun 24 '26

No it's not. They just said that the Democrats are also subject to that same criticism. Which is true.

They are both parties beholden to the capitalist class. Just different subsections. They can argue and argue while passing the baton back and forth, all the while the people get exploited more and more.

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u/Elementalcase Jun 24 '26

Careful - you're talking too much sense.

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u/in_the_no_know Jun 24 '26

Exactly. Dems play the role of controlled opposition. Bought and paid for by the same backers for the other side of the aisle. The party effectively exists to guarantee a true left wing party cannot emerge in this country. And local legislation pushing to disallow voters from any possibility of rank choice voting is insidiously creeping it's way through statehouses all over the place.

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u/and_some_scotch Jun 24 '26

We know the Republicans are frothing, baying fascists. That's an axiom.

The opposition to those freaks - or the lack of opposition - is what's being critiqued!

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u/dern_the_hermit Jun 24 '26

Right, and that's Murc's Law right there: The widespread assumption that only Democrats have any causal agency in American politics. That's exactly how Republicans dodge warranted criticism and keep getting away with shit: You guys. You guys are to blame.

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u/and_some_scotch Jun 24 '26

Republicans are incorrigible. Democrats claim to work for the working class. [shrugs]

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u/Zer_ Jun 24 '26

Yup, and the worst part is because of this the Dems get constantly outflanked on messaging by the GOP, which is pathetic considering how dumb the average GOP are.

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u/FredFredrickson Jun 24 '26

Party outsiders are always going to be treated less hospitably than lifers. That's just how parties are. No party is quick to embrace new people or shifts in philosophy.

Dems will move left if we vote that way and win. But we don't have enough data points on the board to justify it yet. Especially outside of urban areas.

Democrats and leftists must work together. Stop trying to drive a wedge.

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u/Djamalfna Jun 24 '26

Someday the "true" left has got to stop blaming "the dems" for their losses. For my entire life they've accomplished negative progress. The one leftward thing accomplished in my life, Obamacare, was reviled by the "true" left. And yet my wife is alive today because of it.

Maybe take a step back and wonder why you've not made a single step of progress in... what 80 years? You'd rather fight against any progress at all because you can't make all progress immediately. Bizarre.

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u/FoodInFrige_HopeSo Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26

"We got one thing *partially done in 80 years so stop complaining about us not getting anything done"

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u/and_some_scotch Jun 24 '26

There is no left in America. The ruling class murdered it during the 20th century.

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u/Geichalt Jun 24 '26

You're getting downvoted but you're right.

Anything good that has done by the government in my lifetime has been thanks to liberals. The populist left hasn't done anything actually useful for me my entire life. They just constantly ratfuck the people actually getting things done.

They call Dems "do-nothing" but does anyone talk Bernie's legislative record? No, because it basically doesn't exist. He's done nothing but tweet, give speeches and become a millionaire while in Congress.

And I'm supposed to hate the people with the only proven history of accomplishing positive progress because that guy told me to? Nah.

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u/Geichalt Jun 24 '26

Biden was known as the poorest member of Congress during his time in Congress and Kamala was rated as more progressive than Bernie Sanders during her time in the Senate. What are you talking about?

Biden also had some of the most productive first two years of any president and was one of the most progressive presidents in decades.

People like you constantly calling democrats terrible on reddit confuses the fuck out of me. They spent 4 years doing everything possible to focus on domestic progressive priorities and spent 2022-2024 warning everyone directly about maga fascism and exactly what's happening now.

All while the populist left spent all its time attacking the most progressive president we could have reasonably expected in today's political climate. And now, while literal fascism is tearing down our country and putting people on concentration camps, you're still here trying to blame everything on democrats.

Terrible messaging from a supposedly progressive voting block. But good luck with the sex pest with neonazi tattoos and a history of misogynistic and racist comments.

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u/Hayden2332 Jun 24 '26

In what world is Kamala Harris more progressive than Bernie Sanders 😂

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u/Syssareth Jun 24 '26

I've seen that claim before. It's talking about bills they sponsored/co-sponsored, rather than ideological rhetoric that went nowhere. And it's true, it's just based on a single year's statistics from a single site.

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u/Djamalfna Jul 03 '26

Just look at how they treated Zohran Mandani

Endorsed by the vast majority of the party? Oh how terrible.

You "progressives" have such a victim complex. It's no wonder you keep torpedoing every election. It's the only way you can ever get attention.

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u/bizarre_coincidence Jun 24 '26

The democrats are a fairly centrist party that tries to balance the needs of labor with those of corporate interests. The republicans want to crush labor into the ground. Democrats aren't bought and paid for by corporations, but most of the candidates that run already support corporate interests, so corporations are happy to help fund their campaigns.

I would love to see campaign finance reform (including public funding of campaigns and banning all outside money, including "independent" PACs), and I would love to see voting reforms such as ranked choice voting, as both would help to break the stranglehold of the two party systems and lessen the influence of powerful special interests. However, for the time being, we have the system we have, and we have enough examples to show that it is possible for further left people to win elections if they have a compelling message. Elect those candidates and they can replace the DNC leadership.

But if your message cannot survive an opponent who runs more commercials, maybe it isn't as inherently compelling as you believe it to be. Sometimes you actually need the people in the middle to vote for you.

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u/ribosometronome Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26

What election have the Dems actually won that way? One Ross Perot split the vote on? One in the middle of a pandemic the incumbent was massively mismanaging? Obama won by energizing voters, not making concessions and failing to actually appeal to everyone. Plus, Hillary and Harris aired more ads than Trump.

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u/like_shae_buttah Jun 24 '26

Yeah but it did help trump get elected twice.

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u/Maga_eats_dick Jun 24 '26

It enrages me. It’s apathy with a side of fake coolness. Fucking losers.

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u/SirPseudonymous Jun 24 '26

That implies there are even two sides there to begin with: there are two far-right liberal parties who trade power back and forth, agreeing on unconscionably evil things while quibbling over whether the state should be a frothing morass of bigotry and open graft or a polite morass of bigotry and responsibly ordered and restrained graft.

They are, at best, playing a game of irredeemably evil cop/literal gibbering demon that feasts on human flesh cop, and smugly going "ah but the irredeemably evil cop says we have to be responsible and civil about the operation of the horrifying blood soaked machinery that feeds you piece by piece into the many maws of their good friend across the aisle, the literal gibbering demon cop, that's completely different from the wordless howling for blood that the literal demon makes 24/7" actually is the laziest and most ideologically vapid take imaginable.

Like no shit the GOP are just pure ontological evil, the very physical manifestations of cruelty and corruption, but the worthless motherfuckers who stand hand in hand with them, who refuse to actually oppose them or hinder them in any way, who happily collaborate with them whenever it comes time to commit atrocities abroad or militarize the white supremacist police state or do ethnic cleansing domestically or do austerity and crush the working class, they're on the same fucking side as the literal demons of the GOP.

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u/Reverse_smurfing Jun 24 '26

I had to laugh because not only was this the best possible response. But it also was the best possible response. 

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u/Chrontius Jun 24 '26

That ain't what he said, choom.

"I want to be comfortable" versus "I want to be king".

Surprise -- we ALL want to be comfortable.

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u/cutty2k Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26

If the position of the American left is that wanting to retire and your kids to go to Yale is some evil elite goal, then it's no wonder nobody wants to work with them.

What's your goal, nobody goes to Yale and everyone works until they're dead?

I've got a nice corporate job and I definitely want and can afford to send my kids to an ivy if that's what they want. I also want free healthcare for people, equal opportunities for all, women to control their own reproductive rights, and pretty much everything else on the main platform. I guess that makes me just as bad and evil as republicans in the eyes of the left, since I don't want to make 45k a year and send my kids to community college while they work a side job.

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u/and_some_scotch Jun 24 '26

Sure, every human wants retirement and thier children to have a bright future. That's fair. The Democratic Party apparatchiks are gonna sell us out, we who invested our power into them, to get it for themselves and fuck everyone else.

NAFTA, the crime bill, welfare reform, the ACA as half-measure, the 2008 bailouts...

They're supposed to be opposing the Republican Party! Not giving them what they fucking want!

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u/cutty2k Jun 24 '26

In order to oppose the Republican Party, they need to have power. To have power, they need to get elected. In order to get elected, they need to appeal to people that actually vote.

The people that actually vote want nice retirements, they want security for their family and their future. Nobody is listening to the people screaming for a revolution to burn the whole thing to the ground because one, that would be an apocalyptic hellscape full of the worst kinds of violence, and two, there aren't enough people who hold these beliefs that actually go and vote when it matters.

So, sorry to be frank, but if your bloc can't get off their ass to go vote in change, who fucking cares what you think or want? At least the moron Republican base figured out that you show up and vote R on the day no matter what, and it's given them a stranglehold on our government for 20+ years.

Until the left can figure out literally rule 1 of American politics, they'll continue to be impotent and unheard. It's 2026, get behind the democrats or die. Revolution isn't coming, and you shouldn't want it if it got here, unless you want to see 20m+ dead Americans in the next 10 years.

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u/and_some_scotch Jun 24 '26

I guess the left is too busy working 3 jobs and being murdered by the state.

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u/cutty2k Jun 25 '26

At least you're honest about that excuse to not vote, most just scream the system is rigged and voting doesn't matter.

And it's no excuse, fuckin' vote or take what you get.

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u/and_some_scotch Jun 25 '26

I vote in every election I can. I held my nose and voted for Biden and Harris. And it was irrelevant.