• Billiam@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    What, the usual GOP modus operandi of “Launder Russian money by buying a shitload of these books to force them onto best-seller lists and then give them away at our klan rallies” isn’t happening now?

    • brothershamus@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Man web search is getting really bad. I can’t find where that happened and normally it would be pretty easy. Was that a Bush II-era thing or was that a Trump thing?

      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        It’s a standard way to funnel campaign donations into your personal bank account. You negotiate a big percentage of each book sell with the publisher or self publish, have a ghost writer whip out a book, then use campaign money to buy the books to hand out at rallies.

        So you get a 30% cut of each sale and you buy 1mil of books with politcal donations, boom! You just got 300k, and you profit from any rube actually buying the book out in the world.

        • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Just to add, there’s a reason the GOP and Conservatives are obsessed with the NY Times. I used to work in the Wall Street area, and all the top executives read it religiously. Every wannabe MBA reads it too.

      • Neato@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Same for search. If I’m trying to search for something that happened in the past and that person or subject has been in the news recently, that’s ALL I get. even using +/- and “” modifiers does nothing and gives me results without my specific search functions.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I have heard other users say that Google ignores those modifiers now, but I hadn’t seen anything from an official publication saying so. But it makes sense when you think about it- the faster you get your search results, the less time you spend looking at ads.

    • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      She’s pissed off a lot of people in the party so they aren’t helping her the way they would someone like Graham.