ancianita
ancianita's JournalJill Lepore: Facebook's Broken Vows
A modern history from today's best "warts and all" historian.
Lapore likens Zuckerberg's monopoly power to Rockefeller's. Her excellent section on the muckraking and groundbreaking journalism of Ida Tarbell gives us an idea of how important Biden's latest anti-trust appointments are in checking "one of the world's most dangerous monopolies."
from The New Yorker, August 2 2021
(paragraphs broken up for readability).
Facebook’s stated mission amounts to the salvation of humanity. In truth, the purpose of Facebook, a multinational corporation with headquarters in California, is to make money for its investors. Facebook is an advertising agency: it collects data and sells ads. Founded in 2004, it now has a market value of close to a trillion dollars. Since 2006, with the launch of its News Feed, Facebook has also been a media company, one that now employs fifteen thousand “content moderators.” (In the U.S., about a third of the population routinely get their news from Facebook. In other parts of the world, as many as two-thirds do.)
Since 2016, Facebook has become interested in election integrity here and elsewhere; the company has thirty-five thousand security specialists in total, many of whom function almost like a U.N. team of elections observers. But its early mantra, “Company over country,” still resonates. The company is, in important respects, larger than any country. Facebook possesses the personal data of more than a quarter of the world’s people, 2.8 billion out of 7.9 billion, and governs the flow of information among them. The number of Facebook users is about the size of the populations of China and India combined. In some corners of the globe, including more than half of African nations, Facebook provides free basic data services, positioning itself as a privately owned utility...
“Our mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” is a statement to be found in Facebook’s Terms of Service; everyone who uses Facebook implicitly consents to this mission. During the years of the company’s ascent, the world has witnessed a loneliness epidemic, the growth of political extremism and political violence, widening political polarization, the rise of authoritarianism, the decline of democracy, a catastrophic crisis in journalism, and an unprecedented rise in propaganda, fake news, and misinformation. By no means is Facebook responsible for these calamities, but evidence implicates the company as a contributor to each of them. In July, President Biden said that misinformation about covid-19 on Facebook “is killing people.” ....
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/02/facebooks-broken-vows
Sidebar
Lawmakers used the session as an excuse to grill Facebook about privacy too, with Democratic senator Dick Durbin asking: "Mr. Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?"
The point was to illustrate Facebook's uncanny ability to show people ads and friend recommendations based on their whereabouts.
Unsurprisingly, Zuckerberg said no.
https://i.insider.com/5ade4f0619ee864f008b46fd?width=1300&format=jpeg&auto=webp
Oversight Report Says Commerce Dept. Investigative Unit Went Rogue, Engaged In Biased, Retaliatory
InvestigationsJul 29th 2021 3:29am — Tim Cushing
(17 paragraphs plus the original U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation Report)
The ITMS (Investigations and Threat Management Service) operated largely under the radar, thanks to its housing within the Commerce Department -- an entity that very rarely raises too many eyebrows. But its reach extended far past the confines of this department. And it was given broad discretion to initiate investigations -- something that led directly to the Justice Department crafting new rules for espionage investigations after a series of failed prosecutions indicated the intel coming from the ITMS was extremely questionable...
The ITMS originally had no power of its own. Its power was derived from the US Marshals Service, which provides protection to the Commerce Department and its "critical assets." It's the last term that caused trouble. Authority to protect "critical assets" allowed the ITMS to abuse the poorly-defined term to open investigations and engage in activities that went beyond its original purview, as well as limits placed on the Marshals Service...
Abuse of power, retaliation, unjustified investigations, violated rights, racial profiling… all of this overseen by no one and tracked solely by an Excel spreadsheet that provided no way for investigators to attach documentation or submit findings. With no internal tracking or external oversight, millions of tax dollars were misspent and resources utilized to engage in fruitless, pointless, or retaliatory investigations. In the end, the ITMS was mainly concerned about sustaining its own existence.
One former senior official even described the network as a “vanity project” designed to showcase an unusual volume of open cases rather than facilitate a user-friendly system for agents to use in processing them. The official said leadership of the ITMS is more interested in appearing productive to retain the ability to investigate a wide variety of purported threats with broad discretion––and continue receiving funding from Congress––than processing cases within an acceptable period of time....
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210718/12502447198/oversight-report-says-commerce-dept-investigative-unit-went-rogue-engaged-biased-retaliatory-investigations.shtml?fbclid=IwAR1XnA3uHwt9ia5xeyxmVpN1jv7VzOQJSd4vHo4HoDbL5VPTkK3Y2V-5kTs
This report reveals more than a history of Republicans' longstanding racist actions within (Bush, big surprise) the cabinet department that controls our government's largest databases. This racist, rogue department had set up conditions (Wilbur Ross of Cyprus Bank fame, big surprise) that Trump tried and failed to use through this already weaponized operation within the U.S. Commerce Department.
The Senate Commerce Report also raises one huge DOJ law enforcement issue: just how much will this DOJ hold the U.S. Marshals Service to account for its activities throughout the morphing of the Commerce Department since Bush. How much will Congress investigate for documents to prove who ran USMS's
-- counterintelligence operations,
-- CIA communications, and
-- mismanaged its funds by outsourcing to "security" firms with known criminal histories, firms that poorly secured federal courts.
Because, while USMS has declared itself underfunded to Congress, the USMS has also improperly spent appropriations for its own and outsourced illegal operations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marshals_Service
Lawrence O'Donnell on Biden's Legislative Strategies
This might get pulled but is too good to wait for MSNBC to post.
From Slashdot and The Economist: A 3-degree Celsius World Has No Safe Place
Planetary systems are catching up to humans' energy systems.
Either we coordinate, coordinate, coordinate on the front end to spend everything we have to mitigate climate crises, OR, as we and our lands burn up (as we cope with desert from the Mississippi to the Pacific), there will be no amount of back end spending that will ever create safe spaces anywhere.
If temperatures rise by 3C above pre-industrial levels in the coming decades -- as they might even if everyone manages to honour today's firm pledges -- large parts of the tropics risk becoming too hot for outdoor work. Coral reefs and the livelihoods that depend on them will vanish and the Amazon rainforest will become a ghost of itself. Severe harvest failures will be commonplace. Ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland will shrink past the point of no return, promising sea rises measured not in millimetres, as today's are, but in metres.
Six years ago, in Paris, the countries of the world committed themselves to avoiding the worst of that nightmare by eliminating net greenhouse-gas emissions quickly enough to hold the temperature rise below 2C. Their progress towards that end remains woefully inadequate. Yet even if their efforts increased dramatically enough to meet the 2C goal, it would not stop forests from burning today; prairies would still dry out tomorrow, rivers break their banks and mountain glaciers disappear.
Cutting emissions is thus not enough. The world also urgently needs to invest in adapting to the changing climate. The good news is that adaptation makes political sense. People can clearly see the need for it. When a country invests in flood defences it benefits its own citizens above all others -- there is no free-rider problem, as there could be for emissions reduction. Nor does all the money come from the public purse; companies and private individuals can see the need for adaptation and act on it. When they do not do so, insurance companies can open their eyes to the risks they are running.
Some adaptation is fairly easily set in place. Systems for warning Germans of coming floods will surely now improve. But other problems require much larger public investment, like that which has been put into water-management in the Netherlands. Rich countries can afford such things. Poor countries and poor people need help, which is why the Paris climate agreement calls for annual transfers of $100bn from rich to poor. The rich countries have not yet lived up to their side of this.
On July 20th John Kerry, President Joe Biden's special envoy on climate change, reiterated America's pledge to triple its support to $1.5bn for adaptation in poorer countries by 2024, part of a broader move to increase investment in adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. More such efforts are vital.
Illinois' Tammy Duckworth: "You're Not Going To Find A More Patriotic American Than Abdulla"
We must stand up for those who stood up for us. America's word is on the line here.
Fellow Democrats, does dear President Biden know something we don't?
President Biden and you and I know that only one half of Congress is in chaos, and that the other half, our half, are trying to conserve -- as in "be conservative of" -- democratic order.
I love our Democratic leaders and this democratic republic.
But after the last four years, President Biden and Schumer must listen to the nation's cry.
They are hearing us, but not listening enough to end the Senate's filibuster rule. A rule.
If there is no For The People Act because of that one Senate rule, dark money fascism -- fully allowed by SCOTUS -- will then fund one party minority rule across 26 red states.
The preservation of that one Senate rule that is now a wall, will keep the owners of those states' representatives hidden. Dark. Owners of the federal government will remain dark. It's is only a matter of time before they hollow out the DOJ and use privatized militias nationally. Just as they do with our southern neighbors.
That the ACLU and SPLC have fought voter suppression for years; that Congress people have protested, been arrested, that media don't worry about their own existence in a non-democratic nation -- all that will have been for nothing if this last wall is not torn down, and the For The People Act is not passed.
If the For The People Act is not passed, the world will see that majority party rule can be rendered useless by corporate forces.
Those who have "tried hard," and media who have ignored this horror, will not be around anymore to help revive democracy once it is dead.
The military? They will still get paid.
Senator Schumer can help end the filibuster without a floor vote.
He can tell the Rules Committee to vote on it, and then tell the parliamentarian.
He and the Rules Committee can end the rule. End it.
And Dems can always reinstate it, even though it was a rule that never should have existed to start with, not being fairly established OR fairly used.
As for the Senate's deliberative body reputation, that calling will still be conserved IN SENATE COMMITTEES.
Democrats always could win up or down votes based on the merits of their arguments, as can Republicans. So, their passing bills through deliberative committees not hinder Senate deliberation at all, but will only hinder minority word game politics before the whole Senate body. Without the filibuster there will actually be MORE deliberation on record through committees.
When all senators take up or down votes on bills for The People's business, they continue the truthful history of the Congressional Record. Ending the filibuster will end all the chaos of stupid word games that have not been deliberative at all.
The chaotic half of Congress know that keeping the Senate filibuster rule will strangle majority rule democracy.
Eventually, nothing good comes from dark money. We will live under taxation without representation.
Dark money is pressing state houses, Wall Street and banks not to care about any of that, just keep the power of money. In the gambling world of Wall Street (kicking Exxon out) this is one bet even they don't want to make.
Does it even matter enough if Americans know that
-- corporate rule perverts freedom in the name of freedom?
-- freedom is not money, but part of nature?
-- they will not survive corporate-made climate catastrophes by rule of money?
Is it that President Biden knows, like Texas Democrats, that democracy is as democracy does?
Is it that we, like Texas, are going to have to learn that the easy or hard way?
I don't know that Joe Biden knows something we don't.
But I know it's hard to wait to find out, meanwhile feeling both anxious over dark money, and trusting that our leadership will help things turn out okay.
EDIT: for clarity
Back in Facebook jail for 30 days for saying this about Lindsey Graham
who says he's at war in support of Chick-fil-A.
I posted "FUCK THAT DARK MONEY WHORE."
FUCK FACEBOOK AND THE COMMUNITY STANDARDS HOBBY HORSE THEY RIDE ON.
On The Occasion of Bastille Day,
(and because 23 And Me says my French ancestry goes back to Napoleon), it's notable, imo,
that in the context of The West's fight to preserve democracy, we're not the only Western nation that is reckoning with its past.
Title in Vanity Fair's print version: "Fighting For the Soul of France" by Tom Sancton
This is the linked digital version. (It's got a paywall, but allowed me a first look; I hope you, too.)
LE PEN VS. “WOKISME”: THE SOCIAL JUSTICE WARS RESHAPING FRANCE
The debate over Napoleon’s merits and demerits goes far deeper than the assessment of a long-dead ruler. It is part of a fundamental reexamination of France’s history, culture, and society. On the one hand, there are the traditionalists who defend France’s “universal” values of republicanism, egalitarianism, secularism, and national unity; on the other, an increasingly vocal faction—derided as avatars of what they call American-style wokisme—focuses on issues steeped in identity politics, postcolonialism, anti-racism, and feminism. And beyond that debate, the country is undergoing profound political, economic, and demographic changes that portend a very different France emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the political front, France is losing faith in its traditional parties and leaders. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy was recently convicted in a corruption scheme and handed a three-year jail sentence, two years of which were suspended. He went on trial in May for alleged improper campaign financing during his unsuccessful 2012 attempt at reelection. His former prime minister François Fillon was convicted of paying his wife more than a million euros out of public funds for a fictitious job. (Both cases are under appeal.) And these are just the more prominent examples of French politicians running afoul of the law. Some analysts blame the wave of guilty verdicts on activism by left-leaning judges. But the main effect is to feed into a populist rejection of the whole political class as tous pourris—all rotten.
Though Macron and his government have so far avoided becoming ensnared in such scandals, the president’s standing has been weakened by this populist distrust—witness the massive Yellow Vest movement that began in 2018. Macron rode to power as a fresh-faced reformer denouncing politics as usual. But many of his policies—especially his proposed pension reform—have sparked resistance, while his ad hoc movement, Republic on the March, has suffered numerous defections prompted by his often brittle authoritarian style. His disapproval rating, per the French Institute of Public Opinion, stands at 62 percent (though harsh criticism of sitting presidents is something of a French custom).
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/the-social-justice-wars-reshaping-france
Happy Bastille Day!??
https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/60e62498fd437d70b02160c3/master/w_2240,c_limit/Fighting-for-the-SOUL-OF-FRANCE.jpg
The Revolution-Will-Not-Be-Televised Politics of Gil Scott Heron -- Whitey On the Moon
also with a short shot of his "Alien" 
"The reason we get up every day and decide to try it again is because we have dreams of doing better."
Like Obama say: "Better is good."
Lookin' at you, Branson, Bezos, Musk, and the Republican tax hobby horses you rode in on.
As with Democratic Party good trouble politics, the revolution will not be televised.
A rat done bit my sister Nell
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arm began to swell
And whitey’s on the moon
"I can’t pay no doctor bills
But whitey’s on the moon
Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still
While whitey’s on the moon
You know, the man just upped my rent last night
Cause whitey’s on the moon?
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey’s on the moon
I wonder why he’s upping me?
Cause whitey’s on the moon?
Well I was already giving him fifty a week
With whitey on the moon
Taxes taking my whole damn check
Junkies making me a nervous wreck
The price of food is going up
And as if all that crap wasn’t enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arm began to swell
And whitey’s on the moon
Was all that money I made last year
For whitey on the moon?
How come I ain’t got no money here?
Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon
Y’know I just ’bout had my fill
Of whitey on the moon
I think I’ll send these doctor bills
Airmail special
To whitey on the moon."
DOJ Nails Swedish Crypto Scammer
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/08/swedish-crypto-scammer-sentenced-to-15-years-in-prison.htmlThe DOJ says 47-year-old Roger Nils-Jonas Karlsson ran an investment fraud scheme from 2011 until his arrest in Thailand in June 2019. He pleaded guilty in March.
According to court documents, Karlsson encouraged victims to buy shares in a scheme called “Eastern Metal Securities” using cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, promising “astronomical returns” tied to the price of gold.
The funds paid by these victims were instead directed to Karlsson’s personal bank accounts, where the money was put toward expensive homes, a racehorse, and a resort in Thailand. Karlsson has been ordered to forfeit this Thai resort and various other properties and accounts as part of the sentence.
U.S. banks moving into cryptocurrency aren't havin' it.
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