California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Facebook Put Profits Over People: What Else Is New?

by John Lawrence

Putting profits over the welfare of the public is the M.O. of American capitalism, baby. Congress crying crocodile tears over this is hypocritical to say the least. In fact if Facebook didn't put profits over people, they could be sued by their shareholders. A corporation's highest responsibility is to maximize profits for their shareholders. That's the way the American version of capitalism works. It's no huge surprise. Every publicly traded corporation puts profits over the welfare of the public. That's what their shareholders want. That's what Wall Street wants. That's what corporations have always done. That's what the law requires. Fast food franchises advertise their wares knowing that the American public is suffering from an epidemic of obesity and diabetes, diseases that their products contribute to. Even movies promote the consumption of cigarettes, alcohol and guns knowing that none of these items are good for you. But not to worry. After you become angry, depressed, overweight or suffering from various diseases of the mind and body, the American pharmaceutical corporations will sell you a plethora of products to deal with all these ailments at premium prices after they lobby Congress not to let Medicare negotiate with them for lower prices.

It keeps the economy humming right along even if some or most Americans have to suffer because they are easily persuaded to consume products which either aren't good for them or have no identifiable beneficial effects as far as curing them. The best cure is to adopt a healthy lifestyle which means resisting the implorations of advertising especially on TV and social media. Yet advertising is a billion dollar industry. In fact it spent $38 billion in 2019 up from $66 billion in 2004 more than double what it spent just 15 years ago. Combine this with the $3.5 billion corporations spend on lobbying and you have a powerful 1-2 punch to get consumers to buy products which aren't good for them and to spend considerable money doing it. Without all this spending the economy might collapse. GDP would decrease. There might even be a recession unless the government stepped in and put people to work solving the real problems of society and the earth like global warming and cleaning up the environment.

Should Facebook change its algorithms to become a kinder, gentler Facebook, impervious to the misinformation and conspiracy theories which have made it rich? Of course, but this would require government censorship. I say bring it on. Facebook is too powerful in the scheme of things influencing elections and social movements all over the world - even genocide. The New York Times reported:

"They posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes as they flooded Facebook with their hatred. One said Islam was a global threat to Buddhism. Another shared a false story about the rape of a Buddhist woman by a Muslim man.

"The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country.

"Members of the Myanmar military were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group, the people said. The military exploited Facebook’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the internet. Human rights groups blame the anti-Rohingya propaganda for inciting murders, rapes and the largest forced human migration in recent history."

This is another reason China is pulling ahead of the US. It doesn't let social media contribute to the decline of its society. Free speech needs to be limited because it has become toxic. There can be too much of a good thing, and Facebook is leading the way in creating a toxic environment not only in the US but in the world in general which is threatening democracy itself. But not to worry, Facebook. Probably right after the Congressional hearings, many of the hypocritical Senators met with Facebook lobbyists and reassured them that Congress would not stand in the way of Facebook maximizing its profits. After all that's the American way.

Off the Top of My Head

The Elevation of Personal Beliefs Above Objective Truth

by John Lawrence

I saw an amazing interview involving a health care worker who refused to get vaccinated even though it means she will lose her job. Talk about obstinacy. She admitted to being Catholic and even the authority of the Catholic church, whose Pope himself got vaccinated and recommended that others follow his example, was not enough to sway her towards getting the shot. So she's denying the authority of the whole medical science system and the Pope of the Catholic church, elevating her own personal beliefs above those authorities, while at the same time being willing to lose her livelihood. Is this a gigantic child's tantrum or what? Did this person stomp her feet and refuse to eat her pablum? Has she been totally captivated by Fox news and social media? She must be basing her refusal on something. The knowledge that statistically very few vaccinated people have died with COVID while the vast majority of the current deaths are among the unvaccinated evidently means nothing to her.

We've seen this phenomenon before. Strong leaders can even lead willing participants to their deaths. Rolling Stone reported:

"Until the September 11th attacks, the tragedy in Jonestown on November 18th, 1978 represented the largest number of American civilian casualties in a single non-natural event. It is unfathomable now, as it was then, that more than 900 Americans – members of a San Francisco-based religious group called the Peoples Temple – died after drinking poison at the urging of their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones, in a secluded South American jungle settlement. Photographs taken after the carnage forever document the sheer enormity of the event: the bodies of hundreds of people, including children, lying face down in the grass."

We have to ask "how could the Jonestown massacre been prevented?" So could Jim Jones' rights of free speech been curtailed? Could the Peoples Temple have been dissolved by authorities as detrimental to human welfare? Of course to do any of these things would have violated our Constitution and people's rights of free speech and religion. It comes to mind that China wouldn't have any problem doing both if the authorities there felt it was in the people's and/or the country's interest to do so. So is our Constitution flawed when it comes to letting massive deceptions of the American public go on or is it people's right to allow themselves to be deceived which results in their losing their livelihood or even their life?

Where I come down on this is to disallow snake oil salesmen from doing their jobs. Basically, I would censor social media especially as it pertains to the proliferation of lies and untruths. I would censor the purveying of misinformation. This lady that denied the authority of both the Pope and the consensus of medical science probably got her mentality altered by social media which is known to proliferate misinformation. Obviously, Facebook, Instagram and others are not doing enough to police themselves for obvious reasons. Their profit model depends on the proliferation of lies and mistruths. If they weeded out every lie being purveyed on Facebook, it would drastically cut their profits. Misinformation and lies especially if conveyed in a flambuoyant fashion get way more hits than does the bland truth and valid information. Sensationalism sells and makes big profits for social media as well as tabloid newspapers such as the National Enquirer.

Wikipedia explains sensationalism as follows:

"In journalism (and more specifically, the mass media), sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emotionally loaded impressions of events rather than neutrality, and may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story. Sensationalism may rely on reports about generally insignificant matters and portray them as a major influence on society, or biased presentations of newsworthy topics, in a trivial, or tabloid manner, contrary to general assumptions of professional journalistic standards."

"Some tactics include being deliberately obtuse, appealing to emotions, being controversial, intentionally omitting facts and information, being loud and self-centered, and acting to obtain attention. Trivial information and events are sometimes misrepresented and exaggerated as important or significant, and often include stories about the actions of individuals and small groups of people, the content of which is often insignificant and irrelevant to the macro-level day-to-day events occurring globally."

Some people are more easily manipulated than others. The example of the lady in the interview that denied the authority of both medical science and the Catholic church doesn't bode well for unlimited freedom of speech and religion. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, but freedom of speech should have a much greater threshold than that. Lies and misinformation in social media at least need to be fact checked by an authority whether governmental or quasi-governmental or otherwise so that every time the misinformation pops up, the fact check also pops up. This in and of itself is not censorship, but it is an intrusion into private business, a regulatory effort to prevent the general public from being hoodwinked. China would have no problem with this and no problem with outright censorship. If the US is to maintain itself as a cohesive society with everyone moving in more or less of a positive direction, some sort of restraint on lies and misinformation needs to be put in place.

Off the Top of My Head

Wanted: A Billionaire to Run Ads Directed at Anti-Vaxxers

by John Lawrence

Interview unvaccinated patients dying with COVID, then interview the Moms, Dads and Children left behind after their Mom, Dad or Child has died from COVID. Put together a powerful ad of people who believed the anti-VAXX lies and then got COVID and died and/or were left behind to grieve. Spend millions running these ads, and pretty soon no one will believe the lies and misinformation any more. These ads should be run on all the channels and social media that anti-Vaxxers and Trump supporters watch. So many of the ads running currently are superfluous, their only purpose being to get you to buy more stuff. Instead of spending billions on private space missions, spend some money where it really influences people to do the right thing - TV and social media advertising oriented toward getting people vaccinated.

Advertising could be transformed into a socially meaningful operation. I don't need to see ads telling me to buy more stuff. Force feeding Americans ads to buy more stuff is part of the problem. Americans are over consuming while the rest of the world is barely eating. Americans need to consume less, but advertising could also have a socially redeeming purpose. I don't know what the ethics are of the government itself running ads on TV and social media, but for sure a private party can run ads of any type and description. So why don't they? Powerful ads could be put together to get people to do the right thing and get the vaccine. Dying parents and crying children might convince people not to follow in the footsteps of the unvaccinated. We need that to get the pandemic under control.

Advertise on all the anti-vaxxers' favorite social media platforms. Facebook will target ads for you. So the buys for pro-Vax ads could be targeted at all the anti-vaxxers. This is not only completely ethical; it will save lives. In fact it would be unethical not to do it since Facebook's algorithms are set up to link anti-vaxxrs together. It should be a no brainer to target antivaxxers with pro vaccination material, and the most powerful and poignant material is the remorse of the dying for not getting the COVID shots and the grief of distraucght wives and children at the loss of their husband and parent. Michael Bloomberg and the Gates Foundation, where are you?

Off the Top of My Head

A Miasma of Misinformation

by John Lawrence

This is how Fareed Zakaria characterized the current state of vaccination rhetoric. 12 people on Facebook are pushing anti Vax information, and making money doing it. Needless to say, Facebook is making money sponsoring their "free speech." The question is does government have the right to effectively censor Facebook and tell them to get these 12 people off their social media. Guess not according to our Constitution. Rephrased the question might be does the government have the right to tell Facebook to diminish their profits by getting these 12 people off their social media. Unwritten rule: government doesn't have the right to tell any private company to diminish their profits by making changes to their business model. So we are in a quandary. A pandemic is raging and killing Americans. Yet the government is powerless to do things that would bring the pandemic to an end, and Facebook has financial incentives not to get the anti vaxxers off their social media. Let's be clear. If they wanted to do so, it could be accomplished in a nano second. Technology has the capability to identify and terminate any account espousing anti vaxxing.

So is there something wrong with our Constitution that it prevents government from doing much about the twin pandemics of anti vaxxing speech and gun violence. I guess the courts are supposed to clarify that, but so far they haven't or they haven't done so in a way that has solved these twin problems. So these twin pandemics could stymy us in perpetuity. This is so much wasted energy. How can our society successfully recover from the pandemic and get back to work full steam ahead if we are being retarded in perpetuity by COVID despite having miraculously developed an effective vaccine against it? How can our society get on with the business of healing the sick, alleviating poverty, educating the masses and saving the planet from the ravages of climate change if we have to perpetually deal with foolishness and ignorance on the part of people who assert their right of free speech even if that speech represents misinformation? How can we get on with business if a certain segment of society is proliferating and utilizing firearms to kill one another? We can't. We're stuck. Stupidity and ignorance rule the day.

Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows. This article on on NPR goes on:

"Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

"The 'Disinformation Dozen' produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts.

"Now the vaccine rollout is reaching a critical stage in which most adults who want the vaccine have gotten it, but many others are holding out, these 12 influential social media users stand to have an outsize impact on the outcome.

"After this story published on Thursday, Facebook said it had taken down more of the accounts run by these 12 individuals.

"These figures are well-known to both researchers and the social networks. They include anti-vaccine activists, alternative health entrepreneurs and physicians. Some of them run multiple accounts across the different platforms. They often promote "natural health." Some even sell supplements and books.

"Many of the messages about the COVID-19 vaccines being widely spread online mirror what's been said in the past about other vaccines by peddlers of health misinformation."

Sending children back to school unvaccinated is a disaster waiting to happen. COVID is watching and waiting. While other countries beg for the vaccine, in the good ole US, where there is a vaccine glut, people are saying "No thank you. I just don't feel I want to do it. My feeling is it's not in my best interests." People are feeling too much and not thinking. So what did they learn in school? Not much I guess.

Trump to the Barricades

by Robert Reich

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

The former guys is suing Facebook, Twitter, and Google for violating his 1st Amendment rights by keeping him off their platforms. 

Perhaps someone should remind him that they’re private companies to which the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply.

Presumably Trump or his lawyers know this. The purpose of the lawsuit isn’t really to win it. It’s to give him more ammo for his incessant grifting – raising more money from followers who are eager to show their support for him, now by “sticking it” to Facebook, Twitter, and Google. 

The irony here is that in many respects Facebook, Twitter, and Google are mini-governments. They’re monopolies with extraordinary power over both the economy and our personal lives. They should be brought under control – but by antitrust laws and government action, not by a failed president who has used them to sow lies and inspire sedition.

Off the Top of My Head

Future Generations Will Analyze This Era and Judge Whether Autocracy or Democracy Was More Successful

by John Lawrence

So far autocracy is winning. The vast majority of the Chinese people are on the same page as the Chinese government while the US is a nation divided - one half diametrically opposed to the other half. The Constitution itself needs to be revised as its First and Second amendments are causing many of the problems. The Second amendment is contributing to the US being the mass murder capitol of the world, but the First amendment is also insidious as it has morphed into something perverted and toxic in the form of social media and spun out of control allowing the spread of vicious gossip and lies gone viral. This has given vent to the worst impulses among the American people. Facebook's very business model has contributed mightily to this outcome as it allows hate groups to identify one another and come together on a common platform provided all too profitably by Facebook.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clipped in an article in The Guardian. She of course has been the victim of outrageous character assassination perpetrated by lies on social media over the course of 30 years or more. The Guardian reports:

"Her bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.

"The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works."

Uncontrolled social media makes more money by perpetrating lies than it does the truth because the truth is often boring, bu lies especially when shared by a large group of people are often very entertaining, and the American people demand constantly to be entertained. Maybe this is because their lives are otherwise quite boring. Anyway boredom is the crux of the matter. The “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which made the preposterous claim that Clinton ran a child sex trafficking ring at a Washington pizza restaurant, entertained the masses in a viral manner. This segment of society loves them a reality show TV star like Donald Trump or even a B movie star like Ronald Reagan. They would rather have the impersonation of a competent leader than a competent leader him or herself, but then Hitler was very entertaining as well. So are most autocrats. Social media represents the First amendment run amok.

The Guardian continues:

"Far-right Republicans have become openly anti-democratic, endorsing Trump’s falsehoods and seeking to suppress voters of color.

"The traditional the-truth-is-somewhere-in-the-middle approach will no longer do, Clinton argues.

“They’ve got to rid themselves of both-sidesism,” she says. “It is not the same to say something critical of somebody on the other side of the aisle and to instigate an attack on the Capitol and to vote against certifying the election. Those are not comparable, and it goes back to the problem of the press actually coming to grips with how out of bounds and dangerous the new political philosophy on the right happens to be.”

"The press cannot be expected to restore a common baseline of truth on its own, however.

“The technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press, and I do think that there has to be not just an American reckoning but a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the platforms currently enjoy,” Clinton said."

News shows on TV need sponsors and sponsors want eyeballs glued to the tube. What is more gluing than some outrageous lie such as the ones Qanon perpetrates. So the "business of America is business" crowd is out there perpetrating lies because that is more profitable than perpetrating the boring truth. Entertainment is everything. We are entertained to death and that had resulted prepandemic in a full employment society where the lower 50% serve, bartend, cater, cook, work as baristas, housekeep, provide security, take tickets for the upper 50%. Profitable business decisions have made lies and deception profitable. Every day during the Trump administration, the media covered Trump's outrageous lies and behavior because it was more profitable than reporting the dull facts. Even Trump's adulterous affairs were "forgiven" because they made him a more vivid character providing juicy gossipy entertainment even for the tsk tsk crowd.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued presciently 35 years ago that television was reshaping our culture and trivializing public life—news, politics, religion, education, and business—by turning it into entertainment. He warned that we would become so inundated with irrelevant information that we’d lose sight of what was important—even worse, we wouldn’t care as long as we felt entertained. With the proliferation of digital media today and worries about excessive “screen time,” his analysis still resonates.

Hillary added: “In particular Facebook, which has the worst track record for enabling mistruths, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy, for goodness’ sake, even genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya. So governments are going to have to decide right now that the platforms have to be held to some kind of standard, and it’s tricky.” So do the Chinese have a better idea to control the out of control lies perpetrated in the West? For one thing they wouldn't stand for it. Freedom of speech has morphed into something sinister and out of control. The same could be said about the Second Amendment. Maybe the moral of the story is that constitutions need to be updated at least once a century in order to keep up with new technological developments. The US Constitution is 233 years old.