The Wall Street Journal has published “the Facebook papers,” which revealed that Facebook and other big technology companies have been more than willing to monetize disinformation and misinformation, even when it needs to people’s deaths. Legacy media is laughing, but they should look at themselves too.
Big Tech Is Killing People
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Just break Facebook up, and go after Google with hammer and tongs.
Ted, do you still owe Patrick Soon-Shiong that million dollars?
He thinks so.
Gee, I read something completely different into this before reading your commentary, namely this: we used to hear a lot about how repressive the Chinese internet was, and how people who criticized the government of China were barred from social media and even lost the ability to use the country’s airlines, as well as other ways of socially stigmatizing them. We don’t hear that criticism so much any more. Instead, we’re seeing a lot of people who criticize the government being barred from social media in this country, to the loud applause of the liberal elite. How long till being in Facebook jail puts you on the no-fly list?
I’m pretty surprised it hasn’t happened yet.
Well, the whole issue(s) of privacy/surveillance is pretty much over anyway, and has been for decades. In the 1970s, the U.S. government had satellites that could read a license plate from orbit. A friend tells me of the (and this was declassified, godknows what’s still tucked away) photograph he saw of someone’s wristwatch (again from a satellite in orbit) where you could tell the time.
So all the phobia about the CCTVs and such? Too late. We’ve been observed (or at least observable) for a long time. Ditto wire taps, mail interception, and all the rest of it.
Welcome to the fishbowl, everyone.