
Don’t remember exactly when I closed my facebook account, it’s been at least one month. Seems like each week since there has been at least one bombshell discovery of another insidious action by facebook to either misuse its user’s identities and private information or another revelation that facebook actively work to not only protect users flooding pages with fake news, but to also trying to cover up their actions.
In every case it’s either a claim they didn’t know and will try to do better or it’s just impossible to police their own platform but they will try try to do better. The reality is the company whose motto is “Move fast and break things” knows they don’t have to do better because monopolies can do whatever they want. I don’t believe facebook set out to break democracy in America but now that they have become a trillion dollar enterprise they not only don’t care, they know democracy is an obstacle that must remain broken.
Don’t remember exactly when I closed my facebook account, it’s been at least one month. Seems like each week since there has been at least one bombshell discovery of another insidious action by facebook to either misuse its user’s identities and private information or another revelation that facebook actively work to not only protect users flooding pages with fake news, but to also trying to cover up their actions.
In every case it’s either a claim they didn’t know and will try to do better or it’s just impossible to police their own platform but they will try try to do better. The reality is the company whose motto is “Move fast and break things” knows they don’t have to do better because monopolies can do whatever they want. I don’t believe facebook set out to break democracy in America but now that they have become a trillion dollar enterprise they not only don’t care, they know democracy is an obstacle that must remain broken.
While I miss interacting with my facebook “friends” and my group pages for BlueRootsRadio, In The Memetimes and all the other group pages to which I belonged, I do appreciate how much of my time I’ve regained. My “screen time” has been roughly cut in half giving me more time to do big projects around the house, read and exercise.
The reason why I emphasized the word friends above is that I’ve learned facebook friends are pretty much just friends on facebook. Prior to leaving I announced my pending departure and invited everyone to visit here on the blog or by email but it has pretty much been crickets. I understand the attraction/addiction to facebook but it wasn’t enough to keep me as a user. A lot of people say they stay to fight back against facebook but it doesn’t work that way. No matter what you do on the platform, if you are using it you are just a tool to give facebook more profits to do more damage.
There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon coming out of Europe where facebook is fighting like hell to avoid being thrust into the possibility of class action suits. The demise of facebook may come from its success of having billions of users. If facebook is held accountable to its users by having to face class action suits that can result in damages able to inflict real financial damage to its bottomline, we might someday see real and lasting change or even its collapse. Facebook could be replaced by an honest social media platform that protects its user’s privacy and relies on an affordable subscription plan and not advertisers with billions of dollars to spend which has put facebook in the mess it now is in.
Feel free to discuss this topic or whatever is on you mind in this post, I just needed to get this off my back so I can move on.
Opinion
How the Upper Middle Class Is Really Doing
Is it more similar to the top 1 percent or the working class?
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Opinion
The Green New Deal Is Better Than Our Climate Nightmare
The ambitious plan has had a rocky start, but it has also changed the national conversation. That alone is reason to applaud it.
Note: I see the GND more as a means to a beginning than a means to an end. The sheer massiveness of the challenge to combat climate change will not be met with this effort. The editors hit the sweet spot with their assessment in this Op-Ed
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More information
Nine Key Questions About the Green New Deal
Dianne Feinstein Lectures Children Who Want Green New Deal, Portraying It as Untenable
The Long Read
Why ‘Trump country’ isn’t as Republican as you think
Appalachia wasn’t always conservative. In Virginia’s coal country, a long history of grassroots organising is inspiring a new wave of activism. By Elizabeth Catte
The question of whether mainstream liberal opinion is shifting further left has been hotly debated in the national press after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won the primary for New York’s 14th congressional district with grassroots momentum and a socialist-friendly platform. Both conservative and liberal commentators predicted disaster, framing the then 28-year-old rising political star as a gift to Donald Trump. Former Democratic congressman–turned–political pundit Steve Israel warned: “A message that resonates in downtown Brooklyn, New York, could backfire in Brooklyn, Iowa.” Nancy Pelosi waved off the win as a district-specific what-happens-in-the-Bronx-stays-in-the-Bronx phenomenon. A few months later, Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman elected to Congress.
Political veterans such as Pelosi and Israel think that the cornerstones of the emerging left platform – housing as a human right, criminal justice reform, Medicare for all, tuition-free public colleges and trade schools, a federal jobs guarantee, abolition of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for-profit prisons, campaign finance reform and a Green New Deal – might perform well in urban centres but not elsewhere.
Appalachia has become symbolic of the forces that gave us Donald Trump. After all, his pandering to white racial anxiety did find purchase here. His fantasies to make America great again centre on our dying coal industry. And the region’s conservative voters, who have been profiled endlessly, have been a reliable stand-in for all Trump voters, absorbing the outrage of progressive readers. But what Pelosi and Israel see as common sense and pragmatism can also be interpreted as tired oversimplifications and a failure of imagination.
. . .
When Ocasio-Cortez asks if voters are prepared to choose people over money, I hear echoes of a much older question that still resonates in Appalachia: which side are you on? In 1931, when Black Mountain Coal Company cut miners’ wages in Harlan, Kentucky, a long strike ensued. Harlan’s infamously corrupt sheriff, JH Blair, terrorised union families; law enforcement, including the National Guard, intervened on behalf of the interests of coal operators to force miners – through threats, coercion and violence – to return to work. When the sheriff and deputised coal company operatives ransacked activist Florence Reece’s home in search of her husband, who helped organise the strike, Reece penned what would become one of history’s most recognisable labour anthems, Which Side Are You On? The song galvanised workers and inspired bystanders to surrender the illusion that one could be impartial in the face of so much oppression. “Us poor folks haven’t got a chance unless we organise,” she sang. “They say in Harlan County there are no neutrals there.”
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‘Outrageous abuse of privacy’: New York orders inquiry into Facebook data use
Order follows report that Facebook may access highly personal information including weight, blood pressure and ovulation status
Are you ready? Here is all the data Facebook and Google have on you
Dylan Curran
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Opinion
An Emergency for the G.O.P.
The Constitution or The Donald? Why is this such a hard choice for congressional Republicans?
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Opinion: Economics
President Tariff Man may be learning all the wrong lessons from his trade wars
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Adam Schiff: An open letter to my Republican colleagues
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Opinions
Pelosi has started the resolution process. Republicans, be forewarned.
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Note: The story was tech was going to set workers free. The reality is it is turning workers into slaves.
“WHAT HAVE WE DONE?”: SILICON VALLEY ENGINEERS FEAR THEY’VE CREATED A MONSTER
Gig-economy companies like Uber and Instacart are on the verge of overtaking the traditional economy. And the only people who understand the threat are the ones enabling it.
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Podcast
Is Trump the Real National Emergency?
And what Amazon abandoning NY means for the city and the country
Listen: iTunes Spotify Google Play Radio Public Stitcher
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Opinion
A Better Path to Universal Health Care
The United States should look to Germany, not Canada, for the best model.
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CNN’s hiring of a GOP operative as political editor is even worse than it looks
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Just to be “fair and balanced, here’s Carlson’s next day response after the viral video above surpassed 6 million views.
First daughters’ club: Chelsea and Jenna rush to Malia’s rescue – while Ivanka stays silent
The offspring of former presidents share an uncommon bond that crosses political lines. So when the knives came out for Malia, most of them rallied round
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Background: You hear it, see it and read about it all the time, how will progressives pay for their lavish “social” programs? Well it depends which programs you are talking about. Not all need to be financed the same, some might require investment, some might require borrowing, some might require higher taxes on the rich and maybe the middle/working class and some may require none of the above because the government can already afford them.
Knowing the difference and being able to talk about it is greatly needed in these times of loud mouthed economically ignorant pundits, tv talking heads, politicians, opinion writers and more.
This article gets to the basics without diving too deep into the weeds.
Opinion
On Paying for a Progressive Agenda
Getting fiscal about policy proposals.
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Opinions
Trump represents the nadir of identity politics
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Opinions
Voters seem to like their democracy
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Opinion
Why Can’t Trump Build Anything?
Infrastructure won’t happen until the Democrats regain control.
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Maybe Only Tim Cook Can Fix Facebook’s Privacy Problem
Jan. 30, 2019
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This illustrates the problem of living with the monopolistic oligarchies of facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon. They have become so powerful only they can can police each other.