This isn't about privacy, this is about MONOPOLY!
Yes, we have a problem with fake news, did you read the story about the kid testifying against his mom, who didn't want him to be vaccinated? She gets all her information via Facebook.
There's nothing in Zuck's post to address this.
Meanwhile, the cognoscenti keep deriding the social network for its propagation of fake news. It's a problem, that's true. But it's the nature of the internet, it's decentralized. But everybody complaining wants to jet back to the past, with three nightly news shows and a paper of record in every burg. But that ain't happening, news on TV is entertainment, and every hamlet cannot support a full-service newspaper. So what we've seen in news is concentration, and the dirty little secret is you've got to pay for it. That's right, we heard for twenty years how everything on the internet was gonna be free, and eviscerate economics. But that's untrue. The "Wall Street Journal" was never free, and now most major news outlets, like the "New York Times" and "Washington Post," have soft paywalls. And these news-gathering operations deliver the facts, but they let the internet, the mob, set the agenda.
So we've got a two-tiered society. One that pays for information and one that does not. So you've got the informed and the uninformed. But it's worse, with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, everybody can spew their falsehoods with seeming impunity. They get rid of Bill O'Reilly and we get Tucker Carlson. As the Who would say, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Although with something to prove Carlson is never soft. He may not be abusing women, but he's even more strident than O'Reilly. So you whack one mole and you get another.
And for a long time we paid fealty to fairness. Wasn't that Fox's slogan, "Fair and Balanced"? But the "New Yorker" did a piece blasting through that haze and now the Democrats are refusing to let the right wing outlet host a debate. Give the Dems credit, they finally found their balls, even though the Republicans are crying foul.
But that's politics. When you dig deeper, when the usual suspects are not involved you get...
Endless biases. And falsehoods. And to eliminate these would require us to get rid of all the sub-groups about all subjects. That's right, the imbeciles in D.C. want to break the internet, but there's no way they can do that. They can only SUPERSEDE what already exists.
The right doesn't trust facts. Rather than blast them for it, create a site that's facts only. Like Snopes, but the right no longer believes that site. Finally, the NYT and WaPo are getting rid of false equivalencies, printing lists of falsehoods. How about a site containing only that? Wikipedia is further down this road than the usual suspects, who are busy selling cruises and wines and live appearances, not questioning their core businesses.
So don't expect Facebook to get rid of falsehoods. And even if they did, they'd resurface somewhere else. The barrier to entry is incredibly low online. As for the anti-vaxxers, they're not interested in science, that's not the point. This is how they feel POWERFUL in a society where they're just a number and have no impact, even though it's the more wealthy who refuse to inoculate their kids. You see the similarity between left and right? The left thinks it's always right, but it's not. Everybody feels powerless, everybody wants to upset the apple cart.
And Zuckerberg's screed does not eliminate mass groups, it just gives you the option of privacy.
Oh, come on, people gave up their privacy long ago. They don't want to adjust their settings, they can't understand how to, and furthermore Facebook keeps changing the rules because...
It's a business, and the dirty little secret is it's built on data. YOURS!
Nowhere in this post does Zuckerberg say he's going to stop collecting your info, he just says he's gonna keep bad actors from getting it. How insane is that! He collects data, shares it with corporations and feeds you ads. Oh, you can personalize the ads you get, but they're still collecting the data. Zuckerberg's head is so up his ass he cannot see sunshine, never mind truth.
But it's worse. Zuck wants to tie Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp together under the aegis of privacy. No, this is the biggest stealth business move in the history of man. Zuckerberg wants to control ALL communication! WhatsApp rules outside of the United States. It makes iMessage look like a gnat on the ass of an elephant. We keep hearing about how Apple is gonna triumph via services, but tell me how that works when Zuckerberg ends up with all the users? Zuckerberg wants to build WeChat in plain sight. That's why American companies are burdened in China, everything goes through, is built on top of, WeChat, so an individual vertical can't win. This is why Apple is screwed in China, not only are its devices too high-priced, all you need is WeChat, all the rest of the features of the phone are nearly irrelevant.
You tie Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp together and you control the majority of communication. This is like the old "Twilight Zone" episode, "To Serve Man." You think you're getting a bonus, when the truth is you'll be eaten alive. Yup, Zuck just wants you in his ecosystem.
He buys the non-profitable WhatsApp for nearly $16 billion and Apple isn't even smart enough to purchase Netflix. Apple keeps believing it must be invented here while its competitors run circles around it. Apple is playing for some of the marbles, Facebook is playing for THEM ALL!
But legislators are too stupid to know what's going on, the techies run circles around them. And the public is addicted to Facebook's services. With the carrot of "privacy," Zuckerberg is appeasing D.C. and getting away with owning the infrastructure of connection.
Meanwhile, the old and educated keep on telling us to put our phones down, isn't that like telling your teen of yore not to take the car? Furthermore, kids today don't even get driver's licenses. Uber has superseded car ownership.
But you get big swinging dick oldsters and uninformed entertainers purchasing instantly depreciating iron to illustrate they've made it, when the truth is they're demonstrating their ignorance.
We'll never get Facebook to deliver the truth. That's gonna be a third party startup. Facebook only believes in its own truth, leave out the human element and just make money. If it can't be digitized, they're not interested. But that's not how ideas and the dissemination thereof work.
Meanwhile, they charge more for ads that reach fewer people.
What Facebook has established is people want to connect. And they bought the future with WhatsApp and Instagram. And if you don't want to play by the company's rules, you're out, like the people who started WhatsApp and Instagram. It's out of control, Facebook is a runaway company.
But those who could change it don't understand it.
And those addicted are lemmings who can't let go.
And when they wake up, Facebook will fake us out, just like Purdue Pharma, they'll go bankrupt as to be judgment proof. Corporations are people? My ass.
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