Top all-time · #734
Judd Legum
Personal blog · popular.infopoliticswriting
Judd Legum writes Popular Information, a personal blog at popular.info about politics and writing. Since 2019, 89 different Hacker News readers have linked it 121 times, most often “The Republican political operatives who call the shots at Facebook”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 38 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Judd Legum's Popular Information newsletter on corporate and political conduct, such as Facebook moderation, Musk, Kushner and retail shoplifting claims. Readers cite it as background and sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 38 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Independent accountability journalism.
Most-linked posts?
- The Republican political operatives who call the shots at Facebook6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-10-17
- Facebook says Trump can lie in his Facebook ads4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-10-03
- Lies, damn lies, and shoplifting statistics4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-12-19
- Amazon soliciting public donations to pay workers' sick leave4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-03-24
- Money Flows from Amazon to 8chan4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-05-13
- Facebook allows prominent right-wing website to break the rules3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-10-28
- Facebook’s top news exec has own media outlet3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-11-11
- A Tale of Two Thefts2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-30
- The Dangers of Musk's Votesafe.org2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-09-11
- The NSA's "Big Delete"2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-02-10
What Hacker News says?
I believe GP was specifically referring to Citadel, nee SAC: https://popular.info/p/the-merry-adventures-of-robinhood
Comment linking /p/the-merry-adventures-of-robinhood
on “Robinhood is limiting purchases of stocks: AMC, Blackberry, Nokia, and GameStop”Submitted Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook as a story · 62 points
HN discussionsome different takes: https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-operation... https://popular.info/p/musk-associates-given-unfettered no matter political affiliation, this should be alarming the level of access these people have been given without security clearances etc. this is a national security issue.
Comment linking /p/musk-associates-given-unfettered
on “The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE”Submitted Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults as a story · 49 points
HN discussionhttps://popular.info/p/what-will-happen-if-the-united-states This is the end of any hope. Iran will now do everything in its power to get one. And it has all the skills it needs. Refinement keeps getting easier.
Comment linking /p/what-will-happen-if-the-united-states
on “U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites”Submitted Facebook creates fact-checking exemption for climate deniers as a story · 42 points
HN discussion(you're not being censored for your political views, it's because you're posting too many times in one thread. I get the same alert sometimes) Again, my point isn't that there are no Democratic Facebook execs, it's that they play both sides. To whit: > Indeed, the three top leaders of Facebook's DC office all have extensive backgrounds in Republican politics: Vice President for Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan; Vice…
Comment linking /p/the-republican-political-operatives
on “Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting”Submitted Facebook’s top news exec has own media outlet as a story · 32 points
HN discussionOk those other things I mentioned were still pretty daunting I guess. But corporations are still not interested in having their actions called out. Relatively low-budget operations like https://popular.info/ get good results in shifting behavior of big companies. (Note you can skip the signup page, just click "Let me read it first").
Comment linking /
on “Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge”Submitted The dirty secret behind Ben Shapiro's extraordinary success on Facebook as a story · 26 points
HN discussionTo your point, this article¹ recently analyzed records from the Federal Procurement Data System and found that ICE has boosted their weapons spending by 700%: > Most of the spending was on guns and armor, but there have also been significant purchases of chemical weapons and “guided missile warheads and explosive components.” I'd really like to know why ICE needs guided missile warheads to do their job. (Edit: point…
Comment linking /p/ice-boosts-weapons-spending-700
on “You can't refuse to be scanned by ICE's facial recognition app, DHS document say”Submitted Facebook says Trump can lie in his Facebook ads as a story · 21 points
HN discussionThe Elon era seems to emphasize hypocrisy and censorship at the command of authoritarian regimes, while Elon himself posts disinformation about election laws in the US. https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or... https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/15/once-again-free-speech-a... https://popular.info/p/musk-uses-megaphone-to-promote-mislea...
Comment linking /p/musk-uses-megaphone-to-promote-misleading
on “"If nothing changes, all remaining Nitter instances will go down eventually"”Submitted Pro-Trump “I Love America” Facebook Page, Is Run by Ukrainians as a story · 21 points
HN discussionThe guy that bought it is not an artist, he was just trying to distract from some good-old-fashioned corruption: https://popular.info/p/a-chinese-national-charged-with-fraud Based on the coverage of his purchase it seems like he succeeded.
Comment linking /p/a-chinese-national-charged-with-fraud
on “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery”Submitted Strategic Corruption Reserve as a story · 20 points
HN discussion>Regulatory authorities and courts enforce against wage theft. Shoplifting enforcement is mostly up to businesses. Wildly naive and incorrect. Wage theft enforcement is limited by access to government labor rights protection resources and legal counsel, and usually just the first. Even simply filing a claim against shoplifting losses, let alone pursuing criminal prosecution, requires getting law enforcement involved…
Comment linking /p/lies-damn-lies-and-shoplifting-statistics
on “Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts”Submitted SEC halts fraud prosecution of Chinese national who sent Trump millions as a story · 20 points
HN discussionI think this is one of the more interesting and important debates of our time. As so much moves online, we realize that our speech belongs to these huge companies. On one hand, it's great to see these toxic people kicked off, because deplatforming them works wonders in terms of stopping them from spreading their hate. I think most of us have some doubts as to how it might play out in the future, though, and there ar…
Comment linking /p/trump-ad-contagion-spreads-on-facebook
on “Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others”Submitted The NSA's "Big Delete" as a story · 18 points
HN discussionIs this comment missing a /s? The Daily Wire is actual fake news, with a long track record of misinformation and poor quality content[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]... While not perfect, NYT has a long track record of quality journalism that goes back hundreds of years, winning 130 Pulitzer Prizes. [1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-daily-wire/ [2] https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing [3] https:/…
Comment linking /p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing
on “What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes”Submitted Prime Day Is a Scam as a story · 17 points
HN discussionA few links that may indicate in which direction Facebook is biased: https://twitter.com/donie/status/1188593050546855937 https://mashable.com/article/facebook-false-green-new-deal-a... https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing
Comment linking /p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing
on “Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads”Submitted Lies, damn lies, and shoplifting statistics as a story · 16 points
HN discussionBut you're completely wrong. Facebook does have Republicans at senior levels in their company - Republicans as in "Joel Kaplan, vice-president of global public policy at Facebook, manages the company’s relationships with policymakers around the world. A former law clerk to archconservative justice Antonin Scalia on the supreme court, he served as deputy chief of staff for policy under former president George W Bush…
Comment linking /p/the-republican-political-operatives
on “A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company”Submitted The Dangers of Musk's Votesafe.org as a story · 12 points
HN discussionIt was recently revealed that 8chan is funded primarily by selling sex tourism-themed audio books on Amazon. To my knowledge, Amazon has still not answered requests for comments, nor have they discontinued funding. Here's the article: https://popular.info/p/exclusive-how-money-flows-from-amazon
Comment linking /p/exclusive-how-money-flows-from-amazon
on “8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now”Submitted Mamdani did not 'doxx' wealthy New Yorkers as a story · 12 points
HN discussionFacebook is similarly pretty bad: https://popular.info/p/the-tiny-alaskan-public-broadcaster-5...
Comment linking /p/the-tiny-alaskan-public-broadcaster-528
on “Twitter analysis: identifying a propaganda bot network”Submitted New Oklahoma curriculum includes pro-Trump conspiracy theories as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
