Thomson Reuters paid $9 million for social deception

Coming Soon: a government contract with X or other Trump donor to perform the same task that is double the cost

 

Seriously, has skepticism and critical thinking been lobotomized right out of the Trump fanboys?
Constant genuflection at the feet of Trump is creepy and super embarrassing.

 

That assumes they possessed those qualities in the first place. I mean you remember the chain emails people posted here before Trump was even relevant.

 

It really is pretty funny, but sad at the same time that the country is having to go through this crap. The actor/director Ron Howard posted Reuters article headlined, “Musk’s DOGE cuts based more on political ideology than real cost savings so far.”

So Musk goes looking for fraud by Reuters. Finds a government contract with another wing of the company that is not part of the news operation. Declares it to be 'social deception' and it's immediately picked up by Trump supporters including here.
Yes, it was a real contract. No it had nothing to do with the news agency. No, it wasn't social deception. And the contract was signed under Trump.
Other than that, you guys nailed it again!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/15/musk-doge-deception-reuters/

 

It actually says "Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) Large Scale Social Deception (LSD)" ...

Sounds like it was something defending against that. Why did Musk edit the word "defense" out of his tweet where the quoted the purpose? Why does Musk lie about everything?

 

This is precisely why, when looking at something so important as a review of government spending, the review needs to be done by an entity that is politically neutral and completely objective. There are massive companies,like Deloitte, KPMG, PWC, amongst others, that have the capabilities to INDEPENDENTLY review things like this.

Musk is neither independent nor politically neutral. Thus, his “review” carries an incurable taint.

The idea of a comprehensive review of government spending is really great. Why not let it be done through independence and objectivity.

 

It may have been already mentioned so I apologize if this redundant, first, the news and data analytics branches of Thomson Reuters are two separate companies although they have the same corporate parent and secondly and more significantly, the contract was to disseminate social deception it was to uncover and neutralize attempts at social deception by adversaries of the US. The fact that the original poster believed Musk's lie does demonstrate that when properly deployed social deception is effective.
Musk accused Reuters of ‘social deception.’ The deception was his.
The contract was real, but the Orwellian phrase Musk seized on to suggest a shadowy conspiracy wasn’t what it seems. A slightly closer look would have revealed that the contract, signed during President Donald Trump’s first term, was for help defending against cyberattacks — that is, combating deception, not fueling it. And it went to a separate division of the company, not the news agency.

 

I’m saying exactly that. Musk is politically motivated, and economically motivated, and power motivated. Musk lacks the necessary element of independence to fairly and objectively determine waste—not all waste, but program-specific waste, for sure.

I’d say the same thing if someone like Obama, or Gates, or even Buffet ran the “study.”

The accounting profession, for example, has a series of rules in place to ensure auditors—those who independently review financial statements of publicly traded companies—are truly independent and are free of anything that might taint their judgment or the appearance of their independence.

Why is independence something that bothers you? It seems to me that independence and objectivity are qualities that would be welcome by all sides—even those like me which remain independent.

 

Well, it is pretty obvious that he lied to you about this "waste" or "fraud." You thought, based on his post, that they were paying Reuters, a media company, money to deceive the public. Now, when a variety of sources looked into the contract, what they found was that the government paid an analytics company for data and analytics related to cyber security. That company is named "Thomson Reuters" and is one of the largest data and analytics companies in the world.

Given this set of facts, why would you trust Musk if the goal was to actually find fraud? It seems like maybe that isn't really the goal.

 

That is an interesting perspective. So what is your contention here: that there is no company named Thomson Reuters, that they aren't a very well known and large data and analytics company, or that they did not receive a contract for data and analytics related to cyber security?

Perhaps the reason that "the left" is so good at pointing out falsehoods is that you guys fall for a lot of things that are false because they feel good to you despite being false? Basically like junk food for the mind.

 

“Lefty Liar”

 

This retort sounds to me like what you’re really saying is, “MAGA is always accurate, even when it’s wrong.” Where’s the intellectual honesty here?

 

Bill, maybe rather than just claiming the left doesn’t care about fraud and waste, you could explain why you think this is an example of fraud and/or waste?

 

Well, according to Bill, BECAUSE MUSK SAID IT! There is no need, or more particularly, no desire to look past the tweet.

 

According to the real facts, the contract with Reuters which was negotiated during the first Trump Administration was to more effectively defend against cyberattacks. According to the alternative facts, the contract was to utilize social deception. Giving credit when credit is do, you seem to be a poster boy for the effectiveness of the Trump/Musk Administration's promulgation of alternative facts.

 

You're a flat earther, aren't you?

 

Independence and objectivity is a hard thing to achieve in politics imo.
Also, libbies would never do anything like this…they’re opposed to the entire philosophy.
It’s imperfect but possibly our only opportunity to do something like this.
Exciting times indeed!

 

“Independence and objectivity is a hard thing to achieve in politics.” YES, EXACTLY CORRECT. But when the goal is to discern whether our tax payer dollars are being wasted —something we should roundly agree deserves a studied investigation— shouldn’t we at least TRY to take the steps to mitigate the politics from the investigation?

On the issue of our Nation’s treasure, isn’t it paramount we get a point of view as politically neutral as possible?

Otherwise, what we get is one party deciding how our money is spent, or wasted. That’s ABSOLUTELY FAIR in the political spectrum; elections have consequences. But of that is what you want, don’t lie about it by calling it an audit to find waste. It’s politically-driven purse strings, not the objective ferreting and elimination of waste.