It's the business model, STUPID!
It's not about third parties utilizing your data to surreptitiously influence your beliefs, it's about you coughing up your life story so Facebook itself can slice and dice this data and sell it to advertisers so you can be equally influenced. Sure, we need to question Cambridge Analytica, but even more we need to question Facebook itself, which is a glorified SURVEILLANCE OUTFIT!
That's right, while we're busy debating the ability of the government to invade our homes, under the Homeland Security Act, we're selling not only our souls, but our lives and activities, our core beliefs, to an outfit run by money-grubbing youngsters who will stop at nothing to get richer.
Come on, it's not only Zuckerberg. It's Sheryl Sandberg too, who fought with the company's security head, she wanted the customers to know less...and this is the woman who is lauded in the press?
We've driven off the cliff here folks. Sure, it's good to be able to connect with everybody you've ever known. But all this sharing of information, all these likes, all these things you do to burnish your image and make you feel included are gonna be your downfall, truly. You think it's bad enough that ads are following you around online, Facebook knows more about you than your spouse does, literally. Or to put it another way, if you want to bring anybody to their knees, just threaten them with the release of their Google search history. No one wants their inner demons and desires revealed, but these wankers at Facebook and Google know it all, AND THEY'RE UTILIZING IT!
The question here is the solution. It's not about penalizing Cambridge Analytica, it's not about fining Facebook, it's about the future of our whole damn country, WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?
Used to be bad enough that news outlets swayed opinion.
But when networks were king, we had the Fairness Doctrine.
But now Fox is so biased that a contributor jumps ship and false equivalencies reign but if you mention this someone brings up MSNBC and the Koch Brothers and I've got to ask you...how come liberals never blow up schools? Did you see the beliefs of that Austin bomber, all that right wing crap? And where did he get it? ONLINE!
It's bad enough that bloviators can influence the unformed and inane with bad information. What's even worse is that Facebook and Google are more powerful than our government.
That's right, where are the techies in Congress? I don't see them. Other than soon to go Darrell Issa, who made his fortune on car alarms, something that will be gone soon when we go to driverless cars. Oh, you think it ain't gonna happen? Funny how the Phoenix tragedy is getting so much less ink than that Tesla death. Was that because people have it in for Tesla?
And speaking of having it in...
You get completely different news on Fox than you do on CNN and MSNBC. I know, because I listen, on the satellite, all the time. On the latter they were going on about lawsuits against the President, the challenges to him, and for twenty minutes, from the top of the hour, Fox was on about the Austin bombings, and I'm not saying they aren't important, but how about Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal and Summer Zervos? Or, as the "New York Times" focused, Fox is continuing to run stories about female harassment, i.e. women bad actors, or actresses, even though the percentage of incidences, less than 9% of sexual crimes, has not gone up.
Talk about skewing your views.
But never forget that distribution is king. And Facebook trumps all news outlets, because the social network is the number one place people get their news. As for Facebook saying that it's now focusing on personal interactions rather than news... Come on, a company that's beholden to dollars?
Kinda like that hedge fund that just raped the "Denver Post," in pursuit of profits it laid off reporters, which is kind of like trying to win the pennant by laying off ballplayers.
So you've got an inefficient organism, i.e. the government, trying to stand up to Silicon Valley while a somnambulant populace keeps coughing up its data to its detriment.
Who is gonna stop this?
You, but you won't. You need to stop posting. On all these sites. Stop liking.
Then we need laws to scrub our data from all these companies on a regular basis. Every twelve months, Google and Amazon and Facebook must wipe their rolls clean, for the good of society. Hell, they'll still make beaucoup bucks.
You've given up your privacy and it's worse than you thought. You made intermediaries, social networks, profit-mongering whores, the rulers of our country. Misinformation reigns and it's all their fault. And they ain't gonna do anything about it, because they are myopic and ignorant and beholden to the mighty dollar. The government should protect us, but when one party says government is bad and we need less regulation and both parties are beholden to bucks, this will never happen.
It's down to me and you folks.
WAKE UP!
"At the Fox News Site, a sudden Focus on Women as Sex Offenders":
nyti.ms/2GtjF6a--
Visit the archive:
lefsetz.com/wordpress/ --
www.twitter.com/lefsetz --
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters,
Unsubscribe To change your email address
this link
