#260/ September 19, 2021

WALL STREET JOURNAL EVISCERATES FACEBOOK

The most shocking aspect of the series is that all the most damning information comes directly from the mouths of Facebook executives themselves. It is in the form of memos they have written to each other. They know exactly what's going on, exactly the damage they're doing, exactly the lies they perpetrate, and yet they effectively do nothing to change. The net outcome of their "concerns" is overwhelmingly to cover up and perpetuate their disgraceful misconduct.

It is perfectly clear that Facebook is an organization that is thoroughly corrupt and rotten to the core. It is also perfectly clear that Zuckerbag and Sandbag know exactly what is going and are at the center of the depraved culture that permeates the company.

The Journal series focused on several areas...

- Criminal Activity: From the Journal, "In January, a former cop turned Facebook...investigator posted an all-staff memo on the company’s internal message board ... A Mexican drug cartel was using Facebook to recruit, train and pay hit men... the company didn’t stop the cartel from posting on Facebook or Instagram.." Internal Facebook research has shown that human trafficking, sex slavery, incitement to violence, organ selling and other lovely activities are openly conducted on Facebook. Brian Boland, a former Facebook Vice President said, “There is very rarely a significant, concerted effort to invest in fixing those areas.”

- Standards: Facebook claims that its policies regarding behavior on their platform apply to all users equally. But it has had an ongoing secret policy called XCheck in which celebrities, politicians, and certain journalists are "whitelisted" or exempted from the standards of acceptable postings. According to the Journal, "Whitelisted accounts shared inflammatory claims that Facebook’s fact checkers deemed false, including that vaccines are deadly, that Hillary Clinton had covered up “pedophile rings,” and that then-President Donald Trump had called all refugees seeking asylum “animals” ..."

- Mental Health: Facebook's internal research showed that its Instagram division was doing serious mental health damage to teen girls, but hid the research from the public and from Congress. 13% of teen girls in the UK who were considering suicide traced their thoughts to Instagram. A research company owned by Facebook reported internally that “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.” An internal slide presentation reported, “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression...This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” Of course, this was never shared publicly. Instead, at a congressional hearing, we got this horseshit from Zuckerberg, “The research that we’ve seen is that using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental-health benefits.”

- Political Radicalization: Facebook made a change to its algorithm in 2018 which made the platform more toxic to civil exchange and more susceptible to harmful content. As a result, executives proposed changes to Zuckerberg for the purpose of mitigating these harmful effects. Zuckerberg, knowing that outrageous lies and misinformation lead to greater "engagement" resisted the changes. As I stated in my comments to members of Parliament in the UK earlier this year, Facebook's algorithm feeds divisive content in order to keep users in the "corral." According to the Journal, Facebook researchers "concluded that the new algorithm’s heavy weighting of reshared material in its News Feed made the angry voices louder. 'Misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares'”

- COVID Misinformation: Mark Zuckerberg wrote, “Through this crisis, one of my top priorities is making sure that you see accurate and authoritative information across all of our apps.” Yeah, right. In fact, Facebook has been the world's largest source of lies and misinformation about COVID. According to an internal memo, at one point Facebook users were seeing 775 million vax items a day -- 41% of which were anti- vaccination. According to the authors of the memo, "even authoritative sources of vaccine information were becoming 'cesspools of anti-vaccine comments...That’s a huge problem and we need to fix it.'” Yeah, good luck with that. According to The Washington Post, U.S. government officials have become "deeply frustrated" at Facebook's policy of stonewalling them about COVID misinformation.

The summary I have made here of The Wall Street Journal's series does not even scratch the surface. I urge you to read the full series.

In a piece entitled The Endless Facebook Apology Kara Swisher, writing in the NY Times said, "It’s important to have this proof of Facebook’s duplicity. But these revelations come as a shock to no one who has been paying attention to the slippery machinations at the company over the years."

For a good laugh, here's the tone deaf response of a Facebook spokesquid to this week's bombshells, “...the suggestion we are trying to hide or prevent research into the role our platform plays is anecdotal and inconsistent with the facts.”

Dude, your company is a shit factory and you are a clown.

Memo to Our Elected Representatives: Lying to Congress is a felony. Time to get off your fat asses and lock these creeps up.

Facebook has never allowed third party validation of its audience claims. How any marketer or advertiser can be stupid enough to believe anything Facebook says about their advertising or audience metrics is beyond me.

The shame of our industry is on full display here. If our industry "leaders" - the 4As, the ANA, the pathetic holding company aristocrats -- had an ounce of integrity they would have questioned Facebook's probity years ago. Instead they waste their time and our money on moronic conferences about "The Future of the Inbox." Think I'm kidding? Check it out.

Our industry has been the silent partner to the decay of civil society engendered by Facebook. We are the hidden hand.

Ground zero for GDPR is Ireland. Why Ireland? Because Google, Facebook,
Apple, and Microsoft have their European headquarters there. Why are their HQs in Ireland? Here's a hint: What is it that you and I pay every April that these creeps go to any extreme to avoid paying?

Because these companies used favorable Irish tax regulations to put their HQs in Ireland -- and hide their otherwise taxable income -- they are also subject to the whims of the Irish DPC (Data Protection Commission) as far as their compliance with   GDPR is concerned.

Here's the scorecard on how the Irish DPC is doing. In the past three years, 164 major complaints of Europe-wide GDPR infractions have been reported to the Irish DPC. As of today, 98% of these cross-border cases are unresolved. In three years the Irish Data Protection Commission has acted on exactly four cases.

For the dreadful story on why the tech industry laughs at regulators, this report is an eye-opener.

Generation Alpha are people born between 2010 and 2024. I just checked my calendar and it seems 2024 hasn't happened yet. But that doesn't bother researchers. Understanding the values of people who can't speak yet and some who are not born yet is the disruptive innovation that makes the insights into Gen Alpha so powerful!

Listen to this horseshit about Generation Alpha from Ad Age... "they care about issues such as sustainability and social equality—but unlike previous generations, they have embraced activism from a very young age and expect brand change as a result." Are you fucking kidding me? Five year-olds expect brand change? Fetuses care about sustainability?

There is no word to describe the idiocy of these experts. These kids are still crapping their pants and they have "embraced activism?"

Go ahead. Try to tell me you could make this shit up. Is it any wonder marketing is viewed as the clown show of the business world?

WEBSITE         CONTACT        SPEAKING        SUBSCRIBE