Peter Thiel's Origin Story His ideology dominates Silicon Valley.

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/peter-thiel-silicon-valley-contrarian-max-chafkin.html


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In 2019, while on a trip to Washington to answer questions from Congress about his digital currency, Thiel joined Zuckerberg, Jared Kushner, Trump, and their spouses at the White House. The specifics of the discussion were secret — but, as I report in my book, Thiel later told a confidant that Zuckerberg came to an understanding with Kushner during the meal. Facebook, he promised, would avoid fact-checking po­litical speech — thus allowing the Trump campaign to claim whatever it wanted. In return the Trump administra­tion would lay off on any heavy-handed regulations. Facebook had long seen itself as a government unto itself; now, thanks to the understanding brokered by Thiel, the site would push what the Thiel confidant called “state-sanctioned conservatism.”

Zuckerberg denied that there had been any deal with Trump, calling the notion “pretty ridiculous,” though Facebook’s actions in the run-up to the election would make the denial seem not entirely credible. During Black Lives Matter protests, Twitter hid a post by the president that seemed to condone violence: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”; Face­book allowed it. In the days leading up to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Facebook mostly ignored calls to limit the spread of “Stop the Steal” groups, which claimed that Trump had actually won the election.

In the months since, journalists, policy-makers, and even some Facebook employees have struggled to explain why the company remains indifferent to the objections of regulators and lawmakers as well as those raised by common sense. Why is Facebook — and so much of what comes out of what once seemed like the crown jewel of American capitalism — such an obviously malevolent force?

The answers to these questions are partly structural, of course, involving regulatory failures that allowed Zuckerberg to dominate social-media advertising. But they are also ideological. Both figuratively and literally, Thiel wrote the book on monopoly capitalism, and he recruited an army of followers, including Zuckerberg. This is to say that the Facebook founder, like almost every successful techie of his generation, isn’t a liberal or a conservative. He is a Thielist. The rules do not apply.

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[PortTack]

1. Anybody still using and supporting FB ..you okay with this??!! Seriously

[Budi]

2. Thiel's reach in Silicon Valley is more widespread than Zuckerburg. But FB had the mass media needed

Silicon Valley is it's own arm of the global criminal network.

From Thiel to STRIPE cr card processing, it's large personal info data base & connection to the Mercers.

US was not ready for what SV had already prepared in 2016 & improved on for 2020 & beyond.

They live by their own rules of business.

[Equomba]

3. I don't have a FB a/c per se,

although I did create a 'fake' kind of account just to read certain things that were otherwise off-limits without being a subscriber. Initially, I didn't think of FB in political terms, more of, at least for me, a waste of time. People posting selfies and describing what they had for lunch.

That being said, I am completely floored by this expose of Thiel, I had not a clue as to how strange/weird/dangerous he is. I've never liked Zuckerberg, but this guy is exponentially worse. I like to think I keep up on things but this, until now, was off my radar.

Thanks for posting this, I'm definitely going to learn more about him. The chess club trip to Monterey, when he was driving, seems to be a predictor for things to come. Wowser.