{"id":111693,"date":"2018-12-22T06:11:15","date_gmt":"2018-12-22T10:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=111693"},"modified":"2018-12-22T06:11:15","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T10:11:15","slug":"facebooks-deepest-dirtiest-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=111693","title":{"rendered":"Facebook\u2019s Deepest, Dirtiest Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Chris Lowe
\nThe Daily Cut<\/p>\n

Facebook is the world\u2019s biggest digital snoop\u2026 And it\u2019s selling access to your private messages\u2026 End 2018 with this defiant act\u2026 In the mailbag: \u201cDistance from the failing empire will be important in the years ahead\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

Using Facebook is \u201clike inviting Dracula into your house\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Legacy Research cofounder Doug Casey put it\u00a0earlier this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s right\u2026<\/p>\n

Facebook is a for-profit surveillance company disguised as a social media company. Once you invite it into your life\u2026 it will suck as much data as it can from you.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re on Facebook \u2013 or if you use Facebook-owned WhatsApp or Instagram \u2013 you\u2019re sharing the most intimate details of your private life with advertisers and political campaign strategists.<\/p>\n

If that doesn\u2019t alarm you, consider that Facebook is also an unofficial arm of the Deep State\u2019s surveillance apparatus.<\/p>\n

Leaked documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) revealed this back in 2013. As the result of secret court orders, Facebook \u2013 along with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo \u2013 routinely hands over users\u2019 account details to the U.S. government spooks.<\/p>\n

Facebook is spinning a very different story\u2026<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg, its 34-year-old CEO and founder, doesn\u2019t want you\u2026 and billions of other Facebook users\u2026 to know the company as the world\u2019s biggest digital snoop.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a mortal threat to Facebook\u2019s data harvesting power and reach.<\/u><\/p>\n

Instead, The Zuck wants you to believe that Facebook is all about \u201cconnecting people\u201d and \u2013 crucially \u2013 that he and his employees respect your privacy.<\/p>\n

But as\u00a0Daily Cut<\/em>\u00a0regulars know, that\u2019s hogwash.<\/p>\n

Along with fellow for-profit surveillance company Google, Facebook exists to harvest as much data as possible on you\u2026 your family\u2026 your fellow Americans\u2026 and another roughly 2 billion people around the world.<\/p>\n

This week, Facebook got busted again\u2026<\/p>\n

Facebook has become a leaky ship. Dozens of employees are lining up to spill their guts to the press about life inside the world\u2019s largest social network.<\/p>\n

The company was already caught earlier this year handing over private user data to Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy firm.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t go over well with shareholders. Since the scandal broke in March, Facebook shares are down 28%.<\/p>\n

And now, thanks to sources inside the organization, Facebook has been caught sharing the personal data it harvests on its users with some of the world\u2019s biggest corporations.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>, which broke this story\u2026<\/p>\n

Facebook allowed Microsoft\u2019s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users\u2019 friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users\u2019 private messages.<\/p>\n

The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users\u2019 names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends\u2019 posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Facebook shared details on hundreds of millions of people this way. And it did so without their direct consent.<\/p>\n

And it gets worse.<\/p>\n

The level of access Facebook gave these corporations is staggering\u2026<\/p>\n

The company didn\u2019t just let companies read users\u2019 private conversations.<\/p>\n

Internal Facebook documents leaked to the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0reveal that The Zuck also allowed Spotify, Netflix, and the Royal Bank of Canada to write and delete your Facebook messages.<\/p>\n

Stop and think about that for a moment\u2026<\/p>\n

Government spooks eavesdrop on your calls and emails<\/a>\u2026 supposedly to catch the bad guys and keep the rest of us safe.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t approve of government spying\u2026 but at least there\u2019s some attempt to justify it.<\/p>\n

Facebook is eradicating your privacy\u2026 and shattering your trust\u2026 simply to make a dime.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t just take our word for it\u2026 or the word of the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

Roger McNamee was an early investor in Facebook.<\/p>\n

In 2004, he co-founded private equity firm Elevation Partners with U2 lead singer Bono. And they invested in Facebook when it was still a privately held company.<\/p>\n

McNamee not only knows Facebook inside out. He also knows The Zuck personally. And his verdict on the news of the privacy breach is damning\u2026<\/p>\n

No one should trust Facebook until they change their business model.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Simply put, if you\u2019re using Facebook, you are volunteering to be spied on.<\/p>\n

Facebook is just one piece of the surveillance puzzle\u2026<\/p>\n

To try to piece the big picture together, we reached out to Dan Denning, who\u2019s been tracking the growing Surveillance Society over at\u00a0The Bill Bonner Letter<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

Bill and I chatted about all this surveillance business yesterday. It really is coming on faster and much more ominously than we expected.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about \u2013 and always has been about \u2013 people who want to control you. In early America, you could simply own other people by way of slavery. You owned their body, their labor, and their output.<\/p>\n

Technology and morality ended that. But for some people, the war to control you never ends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s why we\u2019ve been urging you to delete your Facebook account.<\/p>\n

The less others know about your private life the better\u2026<\/p>\n

Deleting your account is not only a blow to Facebook\u2019s bottom line\u2026 and a repudiation of its surveillance business model.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the most important thing you can do right now to shore up your privacy online.<\/u><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Dan made deleting Facebook step one of his\u00a0guide to going dark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget, Facebook isn\u2019t harvesting your data for the fun of it. It\u2019s a lucrative business.<\/p>\n

Interactive Advertising Bureau, an advertising research firm, says that U.S. firms will spend $20 billion by the end of 2018 to buy and process your personal digital data.<\/p>\n

Why? Because it gives them an unprecedented level of control to influence your behavior.<\/p>\n

Knowledge is power. The more these organizations know about you, the more power they have over you. By contrast, we know relatively little about what goes on inside Facebook, Google, and the NSA.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Dan again\u2026<\/p>\n

We think we have to be connected all the time. But by staying on the platform, you\u2019re sharing massive amounts of personal data about yourself with the world. You can\u2019t be a private citizen and be on Facebook.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So why not end 2018 with a defiant act?<\/p>\n

Find out how to permanently pull the plug on your Facebook account\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d love to hear how you get on. Send your stories and comments to\u00a0feedback@legacyresearch.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In the mailbag: \u201cDistance from the failing empire will be important in the years ahead\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

In our\u00a0discussion of the autonomous electric vehicle (AEV) revolution on Tuesday<\/a>, reader Janice M. warned:<\/p>\n

One need only add the\u00a0Social Credit System<\/a>\u00a0to self-driving vehicles to see another huge chunk of freedom destroyed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And it got your fellow readers thinking\u2026<\/p>\n

Oh my gosh. Thanks to Janice M. for her comments on self-driving vehicles! It never occurred to me how completely widespread this concerning issue will become in such subtle packages (or not-so-subtle, really).<\/p>\n

\u2013 Sandra P.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Janice M. raises some great points when one considers the amount of data information about our personal lives that is going to be generated by these AEVs. One may say \u201cthey\u201d would never restrict our AEVs on the basis of who the driver is but, the fact that it is possible is scary. Who\u2019s to say that some Type A megalomaniac wouldn\u2019t want to get even with his adversaries be they political, business, or otherwise? I think I\u2019ll stick with my self-driver until I\u2019m no longer physically\/mentally able to drive.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Phil U.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

AEVs will be just like any other new capability, tool, or technology. Just like the cell phone, AEVs will have many wonderful advantages and really great applications, and just like the cell phone, the Surveillance Society will take full advantage for their own devious, freedom-destroying purposes. One difference with an AEV might be that the day the spooks decide you need to be silenced, instead of tracking you down by using your cell phone, they\u2019ll just use a back-door to take over the AEV you get in (no matter where you are) and force that AEV to drive right to their \u201cretention facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

My interest is well beyond \u201cgoing dark\u201d as you like to say. That\u2019s easy but insufficient. My interest is in leaving the U.S. altogether as soon as I can manage that. Distance from the failing empire will be important in the years ahead, I suspect.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Shawn S.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Are you ready to turn your car in for an AEV? Or are you worried about losing the privacy you have left? Write us at\u00a0feedback@legacyresearch.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/www.legacyresearch.com\/the-daily-cut\/facebooks-deepest-dirtiest-secret\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}