And who is using data to identify vulnerable people then algorithms and dark ads to push psychologically arousing disinformation and propaganda at them about Jewish people, often cloaked in conspiracy theories about George Soros, reptilians, vampires etc.?
And which social media platform "opened a file" on George Soros to "research" him because they were incensed about him criticizing them publicly?
During my tenure at Snopes, Facebook gave us algorithmically-generated lists of stories that we were to look into and decide whether they were true or false. We would get many of the same stories in a bloc with slightly different wording long after we had marked them false...
...we would get a lot of "junk" stories, like "satire" stuff that scooped up existing photos online and used them with outlandish stories. Think "Fappy" the anti-masturbation mascot or that woman who ate at a buffet for six hours with her kid in the car (both false.) The more
corrosive stuff, though, never made it to us. We found that on our own. When we asked, we were met with responses such as, "Why don't you focus on the stories we gave you for a change?" I spent a lot of time bitching at them about the way they treated my reporters, until they cut
me out of the meetings entirely in favor of those with no journalistic experience and no pesky curiosity. (Hi guys! I know you're reading this so hiiiiii, I was right and you look like real dumbasses now.) We thought it might be because there was such a smear campaign against us
from the far right and their enablers. Breitbart did a whole series about our "lefty" backgrounds, calling us out by name and delving into our purported histories, and Tucker Carlson talked about me on his lame-brained show, which opened us up to a lot of death and rape threats.
Carlson's project, the Daily Caller, runs Check Your Fact, which is now a Facebook fact-checking partner, by the way. You can probably see why I want nothing to do with either Facebook's program or IFCN, which went ahead and allowed those disinfo purveyors in despite that.
We were battling a ton of anti-Latinx and antisemitic shit, casting Latinx people as "criminals" and Jewish people as rich, corrupt manipulators. But none of that showed up on our debunking lists, ever. Why? We never got an answer, although I asked more than once.
After the Definers and George Soros shit came out in Nov 2018 though, it became clear. We were fucking with Facebook's business model.
That's what propelled me to come forward the next month with what I knew. I have known this whole time what was going on and what it would do.
That's what propelled me to come forward the next month with what I knew. I have known this whole time what was going on and what it would do.
So did they.
But I tried to stop it. I spoke out about Myanmar when I realized what was going on, I saw what the true purpose of Internet dot org appeared to be - to gather still more data and do algorithmic experimentation on crowd behavior in far-flung places without robust judicial systems
or much wealth or influence on the global narrative - and tried to say what I saw. I hoped to stop this before it got worse, but I was unable to do so. But now, I think, more people see what I began to realize back in early 2017.
It wasn't just anti-Latinx and anti-semitic btw. It was a whole host of things but all led back to pushing people across the political rainbow with authoritarian tendencies into white supremacy to cause chaos in the national narrative.
So just keep that in mind when I'm going off about "diversity" and "equality" and things of that nature. This isn't some feelgood liberal hug-it-out narrative for me as I've been accused of in the past by people who know nothing about me, of course.
It is a matter of national security, because otherwise look how the cracks in society are exploited and the narrative gets ratcheted up incrementally until suddenly a bunch of idiots are calling for a fucking second civil war. Who benefits from a broken, busted country? Cui bono?
And that's the weight I've been carrying around for years. I didn't want this, I didn't ask for this responsibility. I hate responsibility and spent decades avoiding it! I'm a lazy person! But there's work to be done. As I said earlier, I hope more and more people see it now.
I'd really like to go back to playing around town in jazz bands and reading books and spending my mental energies being a pretentious insufferable twerp at parties.
