‘All Your Data Are Belong to Them’

by James Corbett
April 14, 2018

It’s shocking, shocking, I tell you! Apparently, and I’m just learning this from some breaking news headlines so bear with me, but apparently Facebook has not been on the up and up when it comes to protecting their users’ privacy. Incredible, I know. I mean, these are still early reports so we’ll have to wait and see, but…

…OK. Enough sarcasm. But you probably have seen the headlines by now.

Facebook scans the photos and links you send on Messenger

and

Zuckerberg says most Facebook users should assume they have had their public info scraped

and

Australia launches investigation into Facebook over data scandal

and

Facebook Decides Now’s Not a Great Time to Harvest Patients’ Medical Data

And on and on and on. Yes, it seems even the normies are now finally aware of what we have known for years: Facebook is not so much a social media platform so much as it is a giant data vacuum sucking up your personal details for fun and profit (and social engineering and political control).

But rather than mocking the MSM addicts who are just getting the news, why don’t we do something even more productive. Why don’t we inform them about the bigger picture? With facts to back it up, even!

Like a link to the now-infamous IM exchange that Zuckerberg shortly after launching Facebook, in which he bragged that “I have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS. People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They ‘trust me.’ Dumb fucks.”

Or a link to the story of how Zuckerberg hacked into his rivals’ email accounts using data he obtained from Facebook’s server logs?

Or a link to a report about the hot mic that caught Zuckerberg promising German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he was working on the “problem” of political wrongthink on Facebook?

But then we run the risk of misleading our poor, information-starved mainstream friend into thinking that this whole steal-your-data problem starts and ends with Facebook and Zuckerberg.

So we’ll also have to point out Google’s own repeated violations and abuses of users’ privacy, and how, despite all the creepiness emanating from Facebook these days, Google still manages to find ways of being way creepier in its privacy invasions. (Can anyone really doubt that Google knows more about you than you know about yourself at this point?)

And then, of course, we could start outlining the real history of Silicon Valley for our puzzled friend. You know, the history of how all the major tech firms of the last half-century have been associated in one way or another with the military-industrial complex, including Oracle and Mitre and, of course, Google, with its now long-admitted relationship with the NSA. And let’s not forget Facebook, with its ties to In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm.

Heck, you could even throw some “fun” information at your MSM-addled compatriot. Like how the Pokémon Go app that briefly turned everyone into real-life zombies last year had its own ties back to the Criminals In Action gang.

Do you think that’s enough info to throw at one person in one sitting? Because we could go on, of course. And on and on. (And on.) But let’s not overload them with information. Baby steps.

But maybe, just maybe, the next time you want to tell your pal about how the CIA wants to spy on you through your dishwasher they might actually look at the link instead of laughing you off as a kook.