Tag: Facebook

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Facebook and Google are the corrupt oligarchs of data

Last week the US House Judiciary Committee took time out from their busy schedule of impeaching Donald Trump to actually do something useful. They held a field hearing about the power of online platforms and spoke to witnesses specifically about Facebook, Google and Amazon. This was the title of the hearing:

Field Hearing: Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 5: Competitors in the Digital Economy

Date: Friday, January 17, 2020 – 10:00am
Location: 01/17/2020 10:00 AM MST
Tags: Antitrust

If you want to watch the whole thing, you can here (link). Fox had a good write up. All of the witnesses told compelling stories of how difficult it is to innovate in a market dominated by companies that have grown so huge. Throughout I heard a clear tension between business people who clearly want government to get out of the way and let them innovate, but a recognition that Google, Facebook and Amazon (in particular) have grown unnaturally large and are now a threat to innovation.

I pulled out the following clip by the CTO of software service provider Basecamp, David Heinemeier Hansson. He has decided not to use Facebook for advertising and he explains how that is so difficult to do. It is entirely analogous to a news site or prominent individual who choses not to be active on Facebook or is banned from it for whatever reason.

He’s arguing, and I completely agree with him, Facebook and Google managed to collect and gather a trove of personal information in an early gold rush. Most people had no idea they were handing over something this valuable in aggregate because individually they thought it a fair exchange for shiny beads and services. Amazon is also sitting on a similar power.

I no longer have access to Facebook and I absolutely know that for the kind of blog posts I write, I would receive something like 70% of my traffic from there if I merely had a Facebook mirror of my blog posts. Whether you’re buying adverts using their astonishingly intrusive targeting data, or just trying to have your thoughts heard, Facebook is the giant you can’t ignore. That’s one of the reasons why their ban on crypto advertising had such a devastating effect.

America doesn’t really have the same anti-trust regulations we’re using in Australia for our suit. Which is a pity, they don’t seem to know what to do. Toward the end of the hearing the politicians ask the panel what they suggest: the short version is they really don’t know what to do about it!

You can join the fight against the Tech Goliaths in two ways, you have a no win no fee claim or you wish to help finance the case.

⭐️ Please join the case if you held crypto and have a claim.

🏅 You can directly contribute crypto on Fundition. To send fiat currency via PayPal click here. If you want to talk about a large donation, Telegram or email me.

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Podcast puts words in Maxine Waters mouth, questions Zuckerberg and talks about indigenous identity

BrianofLondon's Forest Talks
BrianofLondon's Forest Talks
Podcast puts words in Maxine Waters mouth, questions Zuckerberg and talks about indigenous identity
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First up I’m talking about Maxine Waters asking Zuckerberg about the Crypto Ad Ban which forms the basis of @jpbliberty‘s Crypto Class Action court case in Australia. You can see that clip here on 3speak. This is a watershed moment, it’s by far and away the most important mainstream mention of this action taken by the tech Goliaths.

I’m also talking more generally about Zuckerberg’s recent interviews and his speech at Georgetown University.

Finally I address Indigenous Identity very briefly.

Happy to see comments and answer questions down below! Let me know what you think about any of this.

The Maxine Waters clip on C-Span is here:

You can join the fight against the Tech Goliaths in two ways, you have a no win no fee claim or you wish to help finance the case.

⭐️ Please join the case if you held crypto and have a claim.

🏅 You can directly contribute crypto on Fundition. To send fiat currency via PayPal click here. If you want to talk about a large donation, Telegram or email me.

If you derive value from my work, please consider donating some value my way. You can find all the details on the donation page.

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Podcast talks about itself and Mark Zuckerberg’s new found free speech zeal at Facebook

BrianofLondon's Forest Talks
BrianofLondon's Forest Talks
Podcast talks about itself and Mark Zuckerberg’s new found free speech zeal at Facebook
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Are you listening to me as a Podcast? Please let me know if you want this to continue. I’m seriously considering switching only to publishing on Steem. The simple fact is that’s a lot easier than maintaining my own WordPress site.

I also spoke about Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his new push toward free speech (or so he says). There’s a lot more to say on this, I’m listening to him in his Fox News interview as I type this.

If you derive value from my work, please consider donating some value my way. You can find all the details on the donation page.

You can join the fight against the Tech Goliaths in two ways, you have a no win no fee claim or you wish to help finance the case.

⭐️ Please join the case if you held crypto and have a claim.

🏅 You can directly contribute crypto on Fundition. To send fiat currency via PayPal click here. If you want to talk about a large donation, Telegram or email me.

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Podcast deconstructs the Danish Facebook Tommy Robinson spokeshole massacre

BrianofLondon's Forest Talks
BrianofLondon's Forest Talks
Podcast deconstructs the Danish Facebook Tommy Robinson spokeshole massacre
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Last week Tommy posted this full video from a Danish TV show questioning a Facebook Spokeshole all about the secondary effects of banning Tommy Robinson from Facebook. Specifically the observable fact that if you even mention Tommy Robinson by name, your post is likely to be removed. If you continue to do this your account will be deleted.

In this podcast I go over the transcript pointing out some of the astonishing details of what was said. The transcript comes from Gates of Vienna (one of the oldest and best counter Jihad blogs in the world). Many thanks to Tania Groth for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling.

Here are some of the points I make:

  • Lotte is the first journalists to ask Facebook directly for the evidence of what it claimed he did to deserve to be removed.
  • Facebook haven’t ever produced screenshots of problematic posts and can’t produce them.
  • The claims made by Facebook can’t be confirmed by any journalists.
  • The process by which people are chosen to be removed is entirely internal within Facebook though they may consult “experts”.
  • No details of these processes will be provided to journalists.
  • Facebook wishes there were global rules for “hate speech”.
  • Facebook is not content to just apply rules against illegal speech, they must go much further and prevent people being harmed by “hate speech”.

Facebook is unfit to be running their network with the kind of power they have. My personal belief is that the world does not need it and Facebook is indeed a massive danger to all free societies. Centralised control and power such that Mark Zuckerberg wields, is too dangerous. I wrote more about Zuckerberg here.

If you’re interested in a legal effort to challenge Facebook (in a way that could inflict a financial blow on them which could threaten the existence of the entire company, take a look at this post.

The full original interview with subtitles is here on the Rair Foundation Website.

If you derive value from my work, please consider donating some value my way. You can find all the details on the donation page.

You can join the fight against the Tech Goliaths in two ways, you have a no win no fee claim or you wish to help finance the case.

⭐️ Please join the case if you held crypto and have a claim.

🏅 You can directly contribute crypto on Fundition. To send fiat currency via PayPal click here. If you want to talk about a large donation, Telegram or email me.

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Facebook: Initial Crypto Ad Ban “intentionally broad to better understand the crypto market”

A few headlines for the progress JPB Liberty has made in our Crypto Ad ban class action case against Facebook, Google and Twitter:

  • Since July 1st the financial value of submitted claims has jumped from $30m to over $200m and are still streaming in;
  • We have more than 350 claimants;
  • We’re in discussion with established sources of funds for class action legal cases;
  • Significant private contributions to legal funds;
  • Written acknowledgement of our warning letter from Google Australia;
  • Significant press coverage.

We’ve gained more press coverage and sign ups to the suit have accelerated. People, especially Crypto insiders, are realising that what the tech Goliath did, by calling their entire industry a scam, was very wrong!

Up until now there seems to have been a sort of Stockholm syndrome mentality within crypto insiders. Some crypto insiders believe there were lots of scams and the whole industry needed to feel guilty about them. They just took the punishment from these huge mega corporations and felt they deserved some of it! Evidence just doesn’t back this up. We have to fight that mentality which seems to be a very strongly held belief in a myth. You can read more about why this is a hoax here.

This article in Decrypt contains a very interesting revelation from a Facebook spokesperson:

While the suit names Facebook, Google and Twitter directly, Hamilton said he considers Facebook the principle offender, and alleged that the tech giant instigated the ban.  

In comments to Decrypt, a Facebook spokesman who did not want to be quoted by name said the social network would look into any cases where unfairness is alleged. The spokesman added that the initial ban had been intentionally broad to better understand the crypto market; the intent had been to create clearer policy around what constitutes acceptable crypto advertising.

Decrypt – Sued for billions, Facebook is accused of killing crypto businesses by Ben Munster

The spokesman
added that
the initial
ban had been
intentionally broad
to better
understand the
crypto market;

Does this phrase: “the initial ban had been intentionally broad to better understand the crypto market” mean Facebook decided to ban an entire industry before they even understood it? That would be an astonishing admission. Or are they just gaslighting now?

In the meantime JPB Liberty has received an acknowledgement of our initial letter sent to Google in Australia. They confirmed Google Australia was talking with Google in the US and a few other details.

We were also covered by Nadja Bester of BeInCrypto with an excellent and detailed explanation of the case.

https://beincrypto.com/lost-money-during-the-2018-cryptocurrency-ad-ban-you-can-now-claim-damages-in-largest-class-action-in-history/

This video I recorded in Jerusalem was especially good at driving sign ups to our case.

Not directly connected with JPB Liberty’s case (but I did mention the Crypto Add Ban) I appeared on Block TV again talking about Brexit and Bitcoin.

If you want to join the fight, instructions below. We’re always looking for class members as no-win-no-fee participants and at the same time, if you want a financial stake in this project, you can send money by PayPal or various crypto and you will receive a cryptographic token representing your share in the damages.

You can join the fight against the Tech Goliaths in two ways, you have a no win no fee claim or you wish to help finance the case.

⭐️ Please join the case if you held crypto and have a claim.

🏅 You can directly contribute crypto on Fundition. To send fiat currency via PayPal click here. If you want to talk about a large donation, Telegram or email me.

If you derive value from my work, please consider donating some value my way. You can find all the details on the donation page.