FTR #946 In Your Facebook: A Virtual Panopticon, Part 2

In FTR #718 (record­ed on Inde­pen­dence Day week­end of 2010), we not­ed that the new social medium–Facebook-might very well be the oppo­site of the lib­er­at­ing, empow­er­ing enti­ty many believed it to be.

On the con­trary, we said–it received finan­cial back­ing from the CIA, per­mits unprece­dent­ed gath­er­ing and data­bas­ing of users’ per­son­al infor­ma­tion, and might very well be a “panopticon”–a type of prison in which the interned can nev­er see his or her jail­ers, but their keep­ers can see the interned at all times.

In par­tic­u­lar, we not­ed the promi­nent posi­tion of major Face­book investor Peter Thiel in “Mon­do Zucker­berg.” Of Ger­man (and prob­a­ble I.G. Far­ben) ori­gins, we opined that Thiel was Under­ground Reich. Opposed to democ­ra­cy because he feels it is inim­i­cal to wealth cre­ation and does­n’t believe women should be allowed to vote, Thiel has now emerged as one of the most promi­nent of Don­ald Trump’s sup­port­ers, tran­si­tion team cre­ators and influ­en­tial pol­i­cy wonks.

Where­as we explored the “vir­tu­al panop­ti­con” con­cept of Face­book with a ques­tion mark in 2010, we now feel affir­ma­tive­ly on the issue.

A very impor­tant sto­ry from New York mag­a­zine sets forth Face­book’s role in the just-con­clud­ed elec­tion. ” . . . . Facebook’s size, reach, wealth, and pow­er make it effec­tive­ly the only one that mat­ters. And, boy, does it mat­ter. At the risk of being hyper­bol­ic, I think there are few events over the last decade more sig­nif­i­cant than the social network’s whole­sale acqui­si­tion of the tra­di­tion­al func­tions of news media (not to men­tion the polit­i­cal-par­ty appa­ra­tus). Trump’s ascen­dan­cy is far from the first mate­r­i­al con­se­quence of Facebook’s con­quer­ing inva­sion of our social, cul­tur­al, and polit­i­cal lives, but it’s still a brac­ing reminder of the extent to which the social net­work is able to upend exist­ing struc­ture and trans­form soci­ety — and often not for the bet­ter. . . .

” . . . . Facebook’s enor­mous audi­ence, and the mech­a­nisms of dis­tri­b­u­tion on which the site relies — i.e., the emo­tion­al­ly charged activ­i­ty of shar­ing, and the show-me-more-like-this feed­back loop of the news feed algo­rithm — makes it the only site to sup­port a gen­uine­ly lucra­tive mar­ket in which shady pub­lish­ers arbi­trage traf­fic by entic­ing peo­ple off of Face­book and onto ad-fes­tooned web­sites, using sto­ries that are alter­nate­ly made up, incor­rect, exag­ger­at­ed beyond all rela­tion­ship to truth, or all three. . . .

” . . . . And at the heart of the prob­lem, any­way, is not the moti­va­tions of the hoax­ers but the struc­ture of social media itself. Tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, invig­o­rat­ed by insur­gent out­sider can­di­dates and anger at per­ceived polit­i­cal ene­mies, were served up or shared emo­tion­al­ly charged news sto­ries about the can­di­dates, because Facebook’s sort­ing algo­rithm under­stood from expe­ri­ence that they were seek­ing such sto­ries. Many of those sto­ries were lies, or ‘par­o­dies,’ but their appear­ance and place­ment in a news feed were no dif­fer­ent from those of any pub­lish­er with a com­mit­ment to, you know, not lying. As those peo­ple and their fol­low­ers clicked on, shared, or oth­er­wise engaged with those sto­ries — which they did, because Trump dri­ves engage­ment extreme­ly bigly — they were served up even more of them. The engage­ment-dri­ving feed­back loop reached the heights of Face­book itself, which shared fake news to its front page on more than one occa­sion after fir­ing the small team of edi­to­r­i­al employ­ees tasked with pass­ing news judg­ment. . . .

” . . . . Some­thing like 170 mil­lion peo­ple in North Amer­i­ca use Face­book every day, a num­ber that’s not only sev­er­al orders of mag­ni­tude larg­er than even the most opti­mistic cir­cu­la­tion reck­on­ings of major news out­lets but also about one-and-a-half times as many peo­ple as vot­ed on Tues­day. Forty-four per­cent of all adults in the Unit­ed States say they get news from Face­book . . . ”

Symp­to­matic of Face­book’s fil­ter of what its users see con­cerns the social medi­um’s recent non-cov­er­age of the wom­en’s march:

” . . . . We don’t usu­al­ly post on Pan­do at the week­end, but this is too top­i­cal and too shame­ful to wait until Mon­day. As you cer­tain­ly know, today is the day of the Women’s March on Wash­ing­ton in protest of Don­ald Trump. The main event is in DC, where some­thing close to 500,000 pro­test­ers of all gen­ders and ages have packed the streets — but there are also major protests in Chica­go, New York and around the world. Includ­ing Antarc­ti­ca.

You cer­tain­ly know this because the protest march is the top sto­ry on every major news out­let, and because updates and pho­tos from the event are flood­ing your Twit­ter and Face­book feeds.

And yet, here’s what Facebook’s trend­ing news feed looked like at the height of the march…

And here’s its trend­ing pol­i­tics feed…

Notice any­thing miss­ing?

Like, say, a half mil­lion women? . . .

In case you think I’m see­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent from the rest of the world, be assured I’m not….”

Face­book has changed its algo­rithm, no longer fac­tor­ing in “likes” and oth­er per­son­al pref­er­ences in deter­min­ing its news feed.

This, how­ev­er, does not bode as well as Face­book would like us to believe. Face­book has pro­mot­ed, among oth­ers, Camp­bell Brown, to an impor­tant posi­tion in struc­tur­ing its news feed: ” . . . . Brown has long­stand­ing ties not just to the tra­di­tion­al news media, but also to con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, although she describes her­self as a polit­i­cal inde­pen­dent. She is a close per­son­al friend of Bet­sy DeVos, the Repub­li­can megadonor who is Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary, and is mar­ried to Dan Senor, a for­mer top advi­sor to Mitt Rom­ney who also served as spokesper­son for the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sion­al Author­i­ty in the wake of the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq. . . .

. . . . And along­side her main­stream media expe­ri­ence, Brown is famil­iar with the world of non-tra­di­tion­al news out­lets spring­ing up online. In 2014, she found­ed a non­prof­it news site, The 74, which bills itself as non­par­ti­san but which crit­ics have said func­tions as advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism, tilt­ed in favor of char­ter schools and against teach­ers’ unions. The site was launched with mon­ey from donors includ­ing the foun­da­tion run by DeVos, Trump’s pro­posed Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary. When the nom­i­na­tion was announced, Brown said she would recuse her­self from The 74’s cov­er­age of DeVos. . .”

Brown is joined by Tuck­er Bounds, a for­mer John McCain advis­er and spokesman for the McCain/Palin cam­paign.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the ter­ri­fy­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of the vir­tu­al panop­ti­con, we exam­ine the nexus of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, its prin­ci­pal investors, Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer and Steve Ban­non, a key mem­ber of the fir­m’s board of direc­tors and a polit­i­cal guru to Rebekah. ” . . . . For sev­er­al years, a data firm even­tu­al­ly hired by the Trump cam­paign, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, has been using Face­book as a tool to build psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­files that rep­re­sent some 230 mil­lion adult Amer­i­cans. A spin­off of a British con­sult­ing com­pa­ny and some­time-defense con­trac­tor known for its coun­tert­er­ror­ism ‘psy ops’ work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seed­ing the social net­work with per­son­al­i­ty quizzes. Respon­dents — by now hun­dreds of thou­sands of us, most­ly female and most­ly young but enough male and old­er for the firm to make infer­ences about oth­ers with sim­i­lar behav­iors and demo­graph­ics — get a free look at their Ocean scores. Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca also gets a look at their scores and, thanks to Face­book, gains access to their pro­files and real names.

“Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca worked on the ‘Leave’ side of the Brex­it cam­paign. In the Unit­ed States it takes only Repub­li­cans as clients: Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz in the pri­maries, Mr. Trump in the gen­er­al elec­tion. Cam­bridge is report­ed­ly backed by Robert Mer­cer, a hedge fund bil­lion­aire and a major Repub­li­can donor; a key board mem­ber is Stephen K. Ban­non, the head of Bre­it­bart News who became Mr. Trump’s cam­paign chair­man and is set to be his chief strate­gist in the White House. . .

” . . . . Their [the Mer­cers] data firm, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, was hired by the Cruz cam­paign. They switched to sup­port Trump short­ly after he clinched the nom­i­na­tion, and he even­tu­al­ly hired Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, as well. Their top polit­i­cal guru is Steve Ban­non, the for­mer Bre­it­bart News chair­man and White House chief strate­gist. They’re close, too, with Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er Kellyanne Con­way, who also has a senior role in the White House. They nev­er speak to the press and hard­ly ever even release a pub­lic state­ment. Like Trump him­self, they’ve flout­ed the stan­dard play­book for how things are done in pol­i­tics. . . .”

Ban­non’s influ­ence on Rebekah Mer­cer is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong: ” . . . Anoth­er of the Repub­li­can oper­a­tives described Ban­non as the ‘Obi-Wan Keno­bi’ to Rebekah Mer­cer, and a third was even more point­ed: ‘Sven­gali.’ Ban­non is ‘real­ly, real­ly, real­ly influ­en­tial’ with Mer­cer, said the for­mer Bre­it­bart employ­ee. The Mer­cers, the for­mer employ­ee said, made their wish­es known through Ban­non, who would some­times cite the company’s finan­cial back­ers as a rea­son for Bre­it­bart not to do a sto­ry. Ban­non didn’t respond to a request for com­ment about this. . . .”

In turn, the influ­ence of Steve Ban­non with­in the Face­book vir­tu­al panop­ti­con is even more sin­is­ter con­sid­er­ing Ban­non’s polit­i­cal out­look: ” . . . . But, said the source, who request­ed anonymi­ty to speak can­did­ly about Ban­non, ‘There are some things he’s only going to share with peo­ple who he’s tight with and who he trusts.’

Bannon’s read­ings tend to have one thing in com­mon: the view that tech­nocrats have put West­ern civ­i­liza­tion on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry and that only a shock to the sys­tem can reverse its decline. And they tend to have a dark, apoc­a­lyp­tic tone that at times echoes Bannon’s own pub­lic remarks over the years—a sense that human­i­ty is at a hinge point in his­to­ry. . . .”

One of the influ­ences on Ban­non is Cur­tis Yarvin, aka Men­cius Mold­bug, who has actu­al­ly opened a backchan­nel advi­so­ry con­nec­tion to the White House: ” . . . . Before he emerged on the polit­i­cal scene, an obscure Sil­i­con Val­ley com­put­er pro­gram­mer with ties to Trump backer and Pay­Pal co-founder Peter Thiel was explain­ing his behav­ior. Cur­tis Yarvin, the self-pro­claimed ‘neo­re­ac­tionary’ who blogs under the name ‘Men­cius Mold­bug,’ attract­ed a fol­low­ing in 2008 when he pub­lished a wordy trea­tise assert­ing, among oth­er things, that ‘non­sense is a more effec­tive orga­niz­ing tool than the truth.’ When the orga­niz­er of a com­put­er sci­ence con­fer­ence can­celed Yarvin’s appear­ance fol­low­ing an out­cry over his blog­ging under his nom de web, Ban­non took note: Bre­it­bart News decried the act of cen­sor­ship in an arti­cle about the programmer-blogger’s dis­missal.

Moldbug’s dense, dis­cur­sive mus­ings on history—‘What’s so bad about the Nazis?’ he asks in one 2008 post that con­demns the Holo­caust but ques­tions the moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Allies—include a belief in the util­i­ty of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion that now looks like a tem­plate for Trump’s approach to truth. ‘To believe in non­sense is an unforge­able [sic] demon­stra­tion of loy­al­ty. It serves as a polit­i­cal uni­form. And if you have a uni­form, you have an army,’ he writes in a May 2008 post.‘It’s been a while since I post­ed any­thing real­ly con­tro­ver­sial and offen­sive here,’ he begins in a July 25, 2007, post explain­ing why he asso­ciates democ­ra­cy with ‘war, tyran­ny, destruc­tion and pover­ty.’

Mold­bug, who does not do inter­views and could not be reached for this sto­ry, has report­ed­ly opened up a line to the White House, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Ban­non and his aides through an inter­me­di­ary, accord­ing to a source. Yarvin said he has nev­er spo­ken with Ban­non. . . .”

After dis­cussing Face­book’s new AI tech­nol­o­gy being employed to search users’ pho­tos, the pro­gram con­cludes with the shift of Sil­i­con Val­ley mon­ey to the GOP.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Steve Ban­non’s role on the NSC; review of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans drawn up by Oliv­er North dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, involv­ing the dep­u­tiz­ing of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers; review of Erik Prince’s rela­tion­ship to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Bet­sy De Vos, Trump’s edu­ca­tion sec­re­tary.

“Alt Right” Assange, the Facebook “Virtual Panopticon” and the Victory of the Trumpenkampfverbande

Wik­iLeaks is a fas­cist, “Alt-Right” insti­tu­tion that aid­ed Trump’s elec­tion. Face­book, one of whose largest stock­hold­ers is Trump sup­port­er Peter Thiel, also helped aid the elec­tion of “The Don­ald.” All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

FTR #931 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 10: Echoes From the Past, Visions of the Future

With the elec­tion over, the Trumpenkampfver­bande is now posi­tioned to solid­i­fy its pri­ma­ry function—the suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion of the Under­ground Reich from a clan­des­tine insti­tu­tion­al ele­ment into a broad-based, above-ground mass move­ment.

Clos­ing his cam­paign with an overt­ly anti-Semit­ic tweet: “ . . . . From a tech­ni­cal and the­mat­ic per­spec­tive it’s a well made ad. It’s also packed with anti-Semit­ic dog whis­tles, anti-Semit­ic tropes and anti-Semit­ic vocab­u­lary. I’m not even sure whether it makes sense to call them dog whis­tles. The four read­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able Amer­i­can bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clin­ton, George Soros (Jew­ish financier), Janet Yellen (Jew­ish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blank­fein (Jew­ish Gold­man Sachs CEO). . . . This is an anti-Semit­ic ad every bit as much as the infa­mous Jesse Helms ‘white hands’ ad or the Willie Hor­ton ad were anti-African-Amer­i­can racist ads. Which is to say, real­ly anti-Semit­ic. You could even argue that it’s more so, giv­en cer­tain lin­guis­tic sim­i­lar­i­ties with anti-Semit­ic pro­pa­gan­da from the 1930s. But it’s not a con­test. This is an ad intend­ed to appeal to anti-Semi­tes and spread anti-Semit­ic ideas. . .”
Again, Trump has for­mal­ly legit­imized Nazi/white suprema­cist ele­ments: “. . . .‘Trump has shown that our mes­sage is healthy, nor­mal and organ­ic — and mil­lions of Amer­i­cans agree with us,’ said Matthew M. Heim­bach, a co-founder of the Tra­di­tion­al­ist Youth Net­work, a white nation­al­ist group that claims to sup­port the inter­ests of work­ing-class whites. It also advo­cates the sep­a­ra­tion of the races. . . . ‘For racists in this coun­try, this cam­paign has been a com­plete affir­ma­tion of their fears, wor­ries, dreams and hopes,’ said Ryan Lenz, the edi­tor of the Hate­watch blog at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, which tracks such groups from its head­quar­ters in Mont­gomery, Ala. ‘Most things they believe have been legit­imized, or have been giv­en the stamp of approval, by main­stream Amer­i­can pol­i­tics to the point now where it’s no longer shame­ful to be a racist.’ . . . .”

Trump’s cam­paign will include the overt fas­cists who have sup­port­ed him. ” . . . . ‘I have been very sur­prised that we have not seen attrac­tive, well-spo­ken, racial­ly aware can­di­dates run­ning for local office,’ Jared Tay­lor, head of the white nation­al­ist Amer­i­can Renais­sance pub­li­ca­tion and annu­al con­fer­ence, told TPM in a Wednes­day phone call. ‘I think this will be inevitable, and I think that Trump will have encour­aged this. That our peo­ple will run for school board, city coun­cil, may­or, all that I antic­i­pate cer­tain­ly.’ . . . .”

Trump’s “alt-right” cam­paign man­ag­er Stephen K. Ban­non is being con­sid­ered for White House Chief of Staff: “Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump is strong­ly con­sid­er­ing nam­ing his cam­paign CEO Steve Ban­non to serve as his White House chief of staff, a source with knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion told CNN on Thurs­day. . . .”

In FTR #906, we not­ed the high­ly par­ti­san posi­tion tak­en by FBI direc­tor James Comey in the cam­paign, as well as not­ing the media promi­nence giv­en to the spu­ri­ous book “Clin­ton Cash,” authored by Koch broth­ers’ pro­tégé Peter Schweiz­er (aid­ed by Bre­it­bart edi­tor and Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Stephen K. Ban­non.)

It turns out that Comey’s (prob­a­bly) deci­sive last-minute inter­ven­tion in the cam­paign may well have been pre­cip­i­tat­ed by a “Trumpenkampfver­bande” fac­tion with­in the FBI, who were tak­ing their cues from “Clin­ton Cash!”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Trumpenkampfverbande’s com­pi­la­tion of an ene­mies list, a la Richard Nixon; the stun­ning acquit­tal of the Bundy Brigade, after their ille­gal occu­pa­tion of the Mal­heur Nation­al Wildlife refuge; reflec­tions on the impli­ca­tions of that acquit­tal against the back­ground of the mas­sive Trump fac­tion with­in the FBI; Alfa Bank con­sul­tant Richard Burt’s role as a for­eign pol­i­cy advi­sor to Don­ald Trump; Burt’s posi­tion as Regan’s ambas­sador to Ger­many; Burt’s lob­by­ing on behalf of a nat­ur­al gas pipeline financed, in part, by major Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions; review of the links between Alfa Bank and the Trump orga­ni­za­tion; review of the links between Alfa Group and Marc Rich’s oper­a­tions; review of James Comey’s inves­ti­ga­tions of Marc Rich; spec­u­la­tion about the pos­si­ble role of the Alfa/Trump and Alfa/Rich links in Comey’s behav­ior dur­ing the cam­paign.

Is Comey Destabilizing the Democratic Party for the GOP?

A Mitt Rom­ney backer and for­mer George W. Bush Jus­tice Depart­ment staffer, James Comey is tak­ing actions that are desta­bi­liz­ing both the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and the Clin­ton can­di­da­cy. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

Bitcoin Accepted for Political Contributions

If you thought that cam­paign finance had become a sticky wick­et in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon deci­sions, you might be bit­ter­ly amused by the lat­est devel­op­ment in the lubri­ca­tion of the wheels of democ­ra­cy. The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion has giv­en the nod to accept­ing Bit­coins as cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions. Fans of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon will be thrilled to know that the top tenth of one per­cent of Bit­coin own­ers con­trol 50% of the total of the cur­ren­cy in exis­tence.

FTR #760 Bit[coin]burg–The Rebels Without a Clue

In this pro­gram, we exam­ine a clan­des­tine, online cur­ren­cy called bit­coin. Bit­coin has been hatched from the same lib­er­tar­i­an, Lud­wig von Mis­es milieu to which Eddie “get rid of social secu­ri­ty, bring back the gold stan­dard” Snow­den adheres. Although the cur­ren­cy has usu­al­ly been attrib­uted to one Satoshi Nako­mo­to, an arti­cle in Fastcompany.com hypoth­e­sizes that the actu­al devel­op­ers of bit­coin were Charles Bry, Neal J. King (who offi­cial­ly denies any involve­ment) and Vladimir Oks­man. All three work for a Ger­man firm called Lan­tiq, evolved from Siemens A.G. Ger­many is the only nation that rec­og­nizes bit­coin.

Bit[coin]burg II

“Tech­no-lib­er­tar­i­ans” view bit­coin as a pos­si­ble alter­na­tive to the dol­lar as a reserve cur­ren­cy, man­i­fest­ing an anti-gov­ern­ment ori­en­ta­tion. It has been sub­ject to all of the same ills as reg­u­lar cur­ren­cies. Lib­er­tar­i­an-fas­cist Peter Thiel is a backer of bit­coin.

FTR #757 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 4: Dramatis Personae, Part 4 (The Gruppenhobbit and the Underground Reich)

Con­tin­u­ing our analy­sis of the “dis­clo­sures” of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook [Snow­den], we high­light the Palan­tir firm which, its offi­cial dis­claimers to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing, appears to be the com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tures the PRISM soft­ware at the cen­ter of Snow­den’s leak­ing. Osten­si­bly “left/progressive,” with a taste for smok­ing joints and J.R. Tolkien, Palan­tir CEO Alex Karp heads a firm that would per­mit one of its intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and/or cor­po­rate spon­sors to sit down at a key­board and check some­one for hem­or­rhoids. The largest investor in Palan­tir is Peter Thiel, whom we exam­ined at length and in detail in FTR #718. Thiel was also the main financier of Ron Paul’s 2012 Super PAC. (Ron Paul was Eddie Snow­den’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice.) Thiel is so far to the right that he explic­it­ly rejects democ­ra­cy, in no small mea­sure because we made what he sees as the mis­take of allow­ing women to vote. An exam­i­na­tion of Karp and his intel­lec­tu­al men­tor Juer­gen Haber­mas, sug­gests that both are “not as adver­tised.”

FTR #753 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook: Overview

Eddie the Friend­ly Spook Snow­den’s “dis­clo­sures” aren’t new. His actions only make sense as part of a hos­tile intel­li­gence oper­a­tion. Leak­ing jour­nal­ist Glenn Green­wald runs legal inter­fer­ence for mur­der­ous Nazis. Snow­den’s Wik­iLeaks asso­ciates track back to the ultra-right. Snow­den inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Ron Paul and Paul’s fel­low white suprema­cists. Among those being dam­aged by Snow­den’s actions are Barack Oba­ma. The biggest los­er will be U.S. inter­net econ­o­my.

Free advice for a multimillionaire

The US nation­al dis­course took a sharp turn towards divi­sive racial and reli­gious pol­i­tics yes­ter­day. Well, more than usu­al.