The Other Side #71 spoon fed
Mark Zuckerberg testified this week before both houses of Congress. It was a little embarrassing in that it seemed like a grandson attempting to explain how to program a remote control at a senior center. Most of our aged legislators seemed to have no clue. I believe it was an attempt to shift the blame for the Russian meddling of Trumps campaign staff and Cambridge Analytical to Face Book.
It didn’t work, it actually showed how easy it is to fool our aged and confused elected officials. While it is true that Bannon, Bolton and their Russian bots used Face Book to spread their fake news and manipulate voters, it’s clear that Face Book simply sold ads just like every other media outlet in the country while turning a blind eye to who was really behind all the new face book pages. I’m no spring chicken, but I understand that when I signed up for face book I was exposing myself to the world and anyone or company that is on the social media. When you go on line on one of the many social media aps, or send an email, that data is out there for the world to see.
There are no privacy protections when you push post or send. Even though you are sending your email to a specific person, or messenger account, that data goes out on the web, and becomes part of the business of data selling that exists today. Try this experiment, send a or post a message that you really love and want to buy a big screen TV. You will begin to see ads on every platform that you use offering big screen TV’s. Your interests and purchases are worth money to data brokers who sell that info to retailers all across the web.
That’s commerce and we are all accustomed to it and support it. Even when you pay for TV programming, you expect and accept the fact that you will spend half of your time watching barkers pitching goods or services. However, when it comes to political ads, TV and print media are supposed to disclose who is paying for the political ad, but now that is all out the window. There is no requirement to disclose who is truly responsible for posting, tweeting or messaging.
Corporations and tycoons can spend their money as they want, with supreme court protection, while peoples candidates must disclose every donation and expenditure. We are spoon fed propaganda from conservative “think tanks” that are really fake news generators, we are spoon fed false attacks on public servants, and spoon fed false accomplishments by GOP crooks.
Until we pass serious public campaign finance laws, we would do best to believe only one thing; don’t believe anything. You will have one shot at changing things, one vote on one day in November, don’t miss it.