Where does she think the profit comes from?
Ocasio-Cortez, who has one of the safest seats in Congress, has spent over $870,000 on Facebook ads in calendar 2021 while excoriating the company for destroying democracy. What ads does she run? Fundraising appeals! Her campaign is just a Facebook profit center with extra steps.
I also think Facebook is evil, which is why I don't give them money.
Who else doesn't pay Facebook hundreds of thousands of dollars? The other members of the Squad. So just maybe it's politically possible to cling to one's D+25 district without adding to Zuckerberg's mountain of money with the very donations you solicit nonstop on his website.
If you want a better sense of how bizarre AOC's runaway cycle of fundraising and spending is, take a look at the equally safe districts adjoining hers. All these numbers are for 2021, when no one is up for election. She could stop writing giant checks to Facebook tomorrow.
I understand the argument that you have to play by the dirty, bad rules in politics if you want a chance to reform them. But Ocasio-Cortez's circular Facebook spending on fundraising ads is in fact very unusual. I'm struggling to find any other members of Congress who do this.
Ocasio-Cortez in 2020 raised so much she wound up with $4.3 million she wasn't able to spend. That's more than an entire budget for many House races. So I encourage the people defending her Facebook largesse as "participating in society" to be a little more honest with themselves

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More from @Pinboard

27 Oct
Ah, the annual "tech workers are organizing" article is out! latimes.com/business/story…
I have no idea what happened at Hootsuite, but Coinbase and Basecamp solved their activist employee problem quite effectively by getting them all to quit. You'd also think an article like this would mention the crushing defeat of the drive to unionize an Amazon plant at Bessemer. Image
A more honest take on what we're seeing is that the evaporative cooling model of driving out prominent complainers, coupled with the skillful provision of places to vent feelings internally, has been extremely effective at keeping tech employees inert and without a say in policy
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27 Oct
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Keeping their off-grid airless mobile home working is the full-time mission of the ISS crew when they're not exercising to slow bone loss. Making this primate zoo not require constant repair and resupply is the real impediment to Mars exploration, not "we need a bigger rocket". ImageImageImage
Read 11 tweets
22 Oct
What we could really use is a whistleblower from Facebook's dirty tricks division.
The last thing the world needs or want is another one of these. But they are apparently an unavoidable waste product of the surveillance economy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_H…
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Read 6 tweets
22 Oct
The buried lede here is we need to think harder about preparing for another solar event like happened in 993 that left its mark in the tree rings, because such events are not all that rare and the next one will destroy GPS and much of the power grid. nytimes.com/2021/10/20/sci…
Another solar event about 200 years earlier was nearly twice as intense. And for the less intense ones (that would still fry our infrastructure) we're basically dependent on some monk somewhere writing down how weird it is that he can read by aurora light en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80…
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Every election cycle there's one of these explainers about how having a 20 minute conversation on your porch with a condescending stranger is so much different from just telling them to go away. The one thing deep canvassing really *is* good for is as a fundraising fairy tale. Image
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But expect to hear all about this secret progressive weapon to bridge the political divide just around the time when campaigns badly need your donation to meet their filing deadline.
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20 Oct
I really like this question and the challenge of answering it. I believe what makes NFTs different is a transformative vision of a future that true believers find inspiring and achievable. In their eyes, the current speculative bubble is a mechanism for growing something enduring
A good analogy to NFT believers are the people who are really into colonizing Mars. You can argue with them on the technical demerits of their project (no air, far away, all our stuff is here, slow internet), but you're not really getting to the heart of their belief system.
People want to colonize Mars because they (pick one) want to live out a libertarian fantasy, have deep anxieties about human extinction, want humanity to take over the galaxy, want a fresh start in Year Zero without all the baggage that comes with life on Earth, you name it.
Read 14 tweets

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