PARLIAMENT GRABS FACEBOOK DOCUMENTS

For weeks, Parliament, as well as legislators from six other countries, have been trying to get Mark Zuckerberg to appear at an "international grand committee on disinformation and fake news."  This looks like a move to get back at Zuckerberg for refusing to appear.

The internal Facebook documents were in the possession of an American software exec who was in the UK at the time. How he happened to be in possession of these Facebook documents is a complicated tale of lawsuits.

A member of Parliament who heads the "culture, media and sport select committee" sent a "serjeant at arms" (I think that's a cop) over to this poor bastard's hotel to "escort" him to Parliament where he was threatened with jail if he didn't turn over the Facebook goods.

It's gettin' ugly for Facebook. You know, with people collecting their data without  permission...

“I did not know we hired them or about the work they were doing..."

But on Nov.  22 (Thanksgiving is a great day to release bad news) Sandberg said...

"Some of their work was incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced..."

Translating that horseshit into English, it sounds like this: "My initial statement was bullshit and there are emails to prove it so I better issue some corporate doubletalk."

The gods of Wall Street are calling for a human sacrifice at Facebook and with this foolish lie Sandberg has positioned herself nicely to be it. This revelation gives Zuckerberg ammunition to hide even further behind her skirts.

Here's the political equation. Zuckerberg has shown himself to be completely incapable of running that company and should be the one thrown out. But that won't happen since he essentially owns it. Sandberg would be the next logical person to take the bullet as she is next in the pecking order. But being one of the very few high-ranking women in Silicon Valley, using her as his human shield would call up howls of indignation against the Z-man.

But now that she has been caught in a lie, Zuckerberg has leverage to either replace her or hire someone above her, which would inevitably lead to her leaving.

But then it gets even more Machiavellian.  What if Zuckerberg was also lying about Definers? Then it becomes a more complicated algorithm and he is open to even more righteous indignation if he moves on Sandberg.

Was he lying, too? I'll take the over.

The upshot of this ruling is that the entire practice of Real Time Bidding (RTB) is tainted. RTB is the method by which a huge amount of online advertising business is transacted. According to the ruling...

“It is clear that Vectaury is unable to demonstrate that the data currently collected through real time bid requests are subject to informed, free, specific, and unambiguous consent.”

In other words, as Vectaury asks for bids, it is receiving data from DSPs (don't ask) about potential ad targets to which it is not entitled. Vectaury is a tiny company, but the principle here calls into question the entire RTB structure.

This strikes at the very foundation that adtech is constructed on. To read more about this, read this article in TechCrunch.

A South Sudanese official said, "This barbaric use of technology is reminiscent of latter-day slave markets. That a girl could be sold for marriage on the world's biggest social networking site in this day and age is beyond belief."

Bleak Friday

A UK company called Which? that reviews products a la Consumer Reports in the US, did a study of Black Friday deals. They studied 94 popular consumer products on sale at leading retailers. Here's what they found:
   - An overwhelming majority (87%) of products were cheaper at other times of the year.
   - Almost half (46%) of products on offer were sold for less in the six months following Black Friday

     “This is a really great moment in time for us to reset, holistically, our social strategy on    the Coke brand handles."

Brand handles? Yeah, she really, holistically, said that.

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