Another commercial I’ve been seeing is Facebook’s version of “we’re sorry” that BP ran after killing the Gulf Coast, but for Facebook it’s because they helped undermine our democracy.
We shouldn’t have been all that surprised when the Cambridge Analytica scandal became known to the public. After all, the first outside investor in Facebook was Peter Theil. A man who once said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
In 2015, Facebook tried to have an Indian village get the Facebook service Free Basics, “who could possibly be against this?” asked Zuckerberg. When the people of India were opposed to Facebook data mining, Facebook board member Marc Andressen sent out and outrage tweet, “Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?” It was clearly a smart decision by India to refuse the service of a company who would soon give a Cambridge Analytica researcher the data of up to 87 million Facebook users.
Cambridge Analytica was created by the Mercer’s at the request of Steve Bannon. It was Cambridge Analytica that created the slogans “drain the swamp” and “build the wall.” Between Trump winning the election, and him being inaugurated, Trump held a rally in Alabama. I remember CNN showing some of the rally, when Trump began telling the crowd that his aid’s told him to use the phrase “drain the swamp.” He said he didn’t think it would work, but he decided to just give it a shot. What the hell, and said he was shocked it worked (Cambridge Analytica tested these slogans with media users before Trump started using the phrase, that's why the aid's told him to say it).
Sociopath Mark Zuckerberg wrote a response to the scandal:
“I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”
In other words, to prevent the thing from happening, it was done years ago, even though the thing happened after actions were put into place to prevent that thing. Ok Mark....
Cambridge Analytica is a scandal that should’ve inspired people to find new social media websites to remain in contact with people, which obviously did not happen. The Cambridge Analytica scandal garnered a lot of publicity, but morally that was the second worst thing Facebook has been involved in.
I’ll admit that I never heard about the Rohingyan’s before Myanmar began ethnically cleansing them, but I also didn’t own a website that Myanmars used to post hate speech at the beginning of the crisis.
“Facebook definitely helped certain elements of society to determine the narrative of the conflict in Myanmar,” digital researcher and analyst Raymond Serrato told the Guardian. “Although Facebook had been used in the past to spread hate speech and misinformation, it took on greater potency after the attacks.”
Alan Davis, who is an analyst from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, told the Guardian “…I don’t really know how Zuckerberg and co sleep at night. If they had any kind of conscience they would be pouring a good percentage of their fortunes into reversing the chaos they have created.”
Sorry Alan, but Facebook doesn’t have a conscience. It’s purpose of existence is to data mine users information to give to advertisers for profit. It’s as sociopathic as any corporation is, and that goes for its CEO.
The Zuckerberg hearing before the Senator’s was just a PR stunt for both sides. Senators had only five minutes each to ask questions, so they couldn’t ask follow up questions. For fuck sakes, Orrin Hatch asked Zuckerberg how Facebook made their goddamn money.
It was an orchestrated performance:
I come to the hearing. You ask lame questions, maybe even praise me some too. You guys pretend to do your job, I pretend to give a shit. Afterwords, nothing will get done, and nothing will change. And then I’ll put a bullshit commercial on Television that makes people like Walter want to smash the television with a baseball bat… Problem solved. Everybody go back to using Facebook like nothing happened..
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