Wright Chat

[SDR]

This needn't go on for long, but those wondering what Special Counsel Mueller is finding can get a preview in three short videos released this week.

To start, confessions of an employee of Cambridge Analytica, the American arm of a British intelligence company, hired by Steve Bannon to assist
the Trump Campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M


Then, two looks at Cambridge Analytica: who they are and what they did. We learn of the Trump operation in the second piece. With that outfit
(and Facebook) now on the hot seat, Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix today resigned his position with the company.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=79&v=cy-9iciNF1A


I regret the opening commercials where they exist; this week YouTube seems to have inaugurated double commercials for the first time . . .


SDR

[peterm]

Ah, Stephen, don’t you know that’s all fake Internet news and propaganda from Bernie Bros and Communists? The Clinton Foundation financed those videos funneling money from child * trafficking in Haiti, along with posturing Chardonnay swillers like Oprah and George Soros... just like they financed the Florida High School students and Stormy Daniels and those other Democrat gold diggers. Pizzagate 2, the sequel...

No collusion! And even if there was, it’s been proven beyond a doubt that it had no effect, whatsoever, on the outcome of the election. Trump won fair and square. And he told us, so rightly, that we’d all grow tired of so much winning.

It’s also wonderful how he’s draining the swamp, as he promised, stopping those nasty leaks by using NDAs, which, by the way, have been so effective in quieting those chatty gold diggers, like Summer and Stormy (The elites, of course, say they’re illegal...)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-nda/trump-ndas-cant-silence-ex-white-house-officials-legal-experts-idUSKBN1GV2UT

While we’re at it, let’s not forget to join the president in congratulating V. Putin on his election victory! What a shocker that was... he’s just so charismatic, isn’t he? So loved, he doesn’t even have an opponent!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/21/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-congratulations/index.html

[Roderick Grant]

It's like a scene from (and I know you don't watch it, or admit to watching it) "The Big Bang Theory": Sheldon starts a lecture on tapioca, is interrupted by his friends, who delight in thwarting the monologue, until, fairly bursting at the seams, he's allowed to finish it. BOOM! Tapioca all over the cafeteria.

[peterm]

Criminality, greed, corruption, authoritarianism, racism, nationalism, *, big brotherism, unregulated runaway capitalism, with a narcissistic f-ing moron (Tillerson’s assessment, not mine) at the helm. What could go wrong?

You’re right. It could lead to a Big Bang.

[Roderick Grant]

It's the tapioca we all have to look out for, sticky stuff flying all over the place.

[peterm]

Right, sticky tapioca will be our undoing.

[SDR]

Looks like lots of made-up "tapioca" stuck to a lot of eyeballs in 2016. Too late to undo that, but we're maybe just in time now to make a difference in the
next election ? The tapioca has hit the fan at Facebook and at Cambridge Analytica, for sure -- but it will depend on the reaction in Washington and on
the media to determine whether what happened this week will translate into action. Will those who were gulled care, or be more vigilant going forward ?

Maybe -- if the national media on all sides make a big enough stink. All it will take is another jaw-dropping presidential tweet or two, and this will be pushed aside ?

Note that none of this week's revelations implicate Russia; their interference is apparently all but guaranteed to continue. Will social media platforms
actually move to stem that tide -- as is presumably within their power ? Mark Zuckerberg (and Sheryl Sandberg) would have to do a major mea culpa,
for one thing; Zuckerberg is apparently going to have a statement in a day or two.

SDR

[SDR]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-oversaw-cambridge-analyticas-collection-of-facebook-data-according-to-former-employee/2018/03/20/8fb369a6-2c55-11e8-b0b0-f706877db618_story.html?utm_term=.0ac4e3b7982a

https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction_period=2016&data_type=processed&committee_id=C00580100&recipient_name=cambridge+analytica&min_date=01%2F01%2F2015&max_date=12%2F31%2F2016


Others who paid Cambridge Analytica, reportedly from FEC data:

[SDR]

Zuckerberg responds to Facebook users.

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104712037900071

[Roderick Grant]

Big whoop. Politicians pay organizations to dig up dirt on opponents. As Clinton did with the Dossier. So what?

[SDR]

The "what" here is its degree of funding, its breadth of scope, and the depth of its impact, made possible only by our spectacular new forms of frankly addictive media.

Give a bad guy a pistol, and he can do some damage; give him a bazooka or a nuclear device, and watch out . . .


The truth-teller can be brought down by lies, the liar by the truth ?


SDR

[Roderick Grant]

The election was over before it was held. No one who had taken this side or that switched because of what was posted on Facebook or any other site.

SDR, were you bazookaed? Did you run across anyone who was? Was the content so cleverly composed that you changed your mind?

It's all nonsense.

[SDR]

Did you watch the videos from Channel 4 that I posted ?

You and I don't spend our time on Facebook. We don't get most of our "news" on Facebook. I don't "run across" those people, because my friends are
educated people living in a big, liberal town. But I've seen them on TV, sitting in a Trump rally being lied to -- "I'm with YOU ! Jobs ! Christian nation ! Trust
me . . ." -- grinning and shouting U-S-A, U-S-A. Those people were convinced that Hillary was the Devil Incarnate, and that Bernie was irrelevant. They were
sold so well that they still believe Trump is saving the nation.

It's nonsense to you and me, because we were blessedly unaffected by it. But it happened, and a man who lost the popular vote squeaked by, by a margin
small enough to have been affected by these money-and-power-hungry creeps, psy-ops specialists who for a price sold their weapons to the guys who don't
have a majority in this country without cheating.

SDR

[SDR]

Roger McNamee has been on the media this week. He's the early investor in Facebook -- still vested, he says, and losing money on their stock along
with everyone else, now -- who mentored the company and who describes it and its ilk, now, as fear merchants, second hand. That is, what the social
media companies want is eyeballs and clicking fingers that they can deliver to their clients, the advertisers. And they've learned that people who are
emotionally involved -- whose fear and/or anger has been aroused -- spend the most time on these platforms.

McNamee finally discovered, a couple of months before the election, that Facebook was being used as has now been revealed, by groups and
individuals posing as others, by bots sending out mass political messaging that was scientifically targeted to reach those most vulnerable to being
influenced. He took this to Zuckerberg and Sandberg at Facebook, and waited three months for some action to be taken. But he found nothing
being done. The election came and went, and it was not until much later that Facebook began to acknowledge a possible problem -- despite a consent
decree with the FTC in 2011 in which they promised to address the platform's vulnerability. They have made similar pledges since, but nothing has
changed.

The companies, according to McNamee and others (try Tim Wu at Columbia, another critic), have made promises to their investors and to advertisers
that they are unwilling to jeopardize for the sake of the public interest. It is just worth too much to them to have unfettered access to a vulnerable user
base. That's the sad but probably predictable state of affairs.

This week's shake-up may lead to improvement; we'll see. Independent Senator King of Maine said last night that he is for "self-regulation" of the
industry, and that he would be extremely reluctant to impose any restrictions on these companies -- because they have "done so well," in his words.

You may make your own interpretation of that statement; I have.

SDR

[Roderick Grant]

I don't have Facebook, and since I suspect it's populated mostly by adolescents, I won't even investigate it.

I do, from time to time, look at news stories online from many sources, old-line papers that have given up the ghost, new digital media, etc. ... a lot of which give The National Enquirer a run for its money. The quality of the reportage runs the gamut, but the stories themselves were not all that revealing as to where the electorate was in 2016; the comments sections were much more informative.

First, it is depressing what is happening to the English language, especially with younger posters. But the polarized divide I speak of that guaranteed the outcome was blatantly displayed in those comments. The fervor shown in favor of one or the other candidate, and the vitriol spat at the opponent, came in less than equal quantities from both sides, with the left out-spitting the right by a hefty margin, about 60/40. These people were not about to change their vote based on some Geekish nonsense posted on Facebook or anywhere else, and were quite adroit at spotting bots.

You might be one of those who regard anyone who disagrees with your political biases (dogma) a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, but there are plenty of scraped knuckles on the left, and they were as disturbingly inarticulate as those on the right.

Believe what you will, politically, that's fine. But the election is done, the electoral college has spoken, and everything the left is doing now is destructive. The right, in their turn, did much the same, and that was no better a situation. If this country goes down in flames, it will be with the help of both left and right.

You get no points as a Westchester suburbanite residing in Frisco, two provincial enclaves, unaware of, and uninterested in, the greater expanse of this country. Just as Nixon knocked the socks off Manhattan in '72, Trump flummoxed the liberal ghettos in '16.