Why the Fakebook Scandal Is Important

RUSH: So the guy that they granted immunity to can't find any emails, not a single email, Pagliano, whatever his name is, the guy they granted immunity, Hillary's IT guy, no doubt sent emails back and forth to her for four years. Yeah, they can't find any. And anybody that's still surprised over this, you need to be committed. Anybody that thought this was ever gonna amount to anything, the evidence every day is that nothing's gonna happen to Mrs. Clinton on this email stuff.

There is no rule of law when the left is running things, folks. All it is is their agenda.

Greetings. Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

It's like this thing, the stuff that we're learning about Fakebook. You know, Fakebook is out there is, "No, no, no, none of these allegations are true." But of course they are. Fakebook has been deceiving every Fakebook user all of these years. The newsfeed on Fakebook is called the newsfeed. I was asking yesterday what's the newsfeed on Fakebook called. Turns out it's called the newsfeed.

And it also turns out that your average Fakebook user has been convinced, has been persuaded that whatever shows up on the Fakebook page as trending in the newsfeed is the result of popularity. An algorithm is determining which of the stories are the most read, the most passed around, the most forwarded, whatever you do with things on Fakebook, and therefore the only stories that mattered were those stories that advanced the Democrat Party or the leftist agenda.

Well, of all people, of all places, Gizmodo exposes the fact that there weren't any algorithms being used. That in fact it was a bunch of Ivy League 20-something Millennials who were nothing but a bunch of young, average liberals who were actually choosing the news. They are making it all up, not the news, they were making the list up. There was no algorithm being used. They simply decided amongst themselves what they wanted to appear as the most-read news story. A classic illustration is Black Lives Matter.

It turns out that Black Lives Matter is exactly, it's a replica of Occupy Wall Street. It's not real. Black Lives Matter is made to look as massive and big as it is because of fake news construction on places like Fakebook and the Drive-By Media. You know, Occupy Wall Street was not organic. Occupy Wall Street was not happening until the Tea Party came along. The Tea Party was organic. The Tea Party was genuine. It was actual Americans fed up and ticked off, and they began to organize, and many of them had never been involved politically at all beyond voting.

They found a way to organize. It was leaderless. There wasn't one person you could focus on to destroy or impugn and thus destroy the whole movement. And so the left didn't know what to do with it. They couldn't censor it. They couldn't stop it because they couldn't control it and there wasn't one person that was in charge that they could destroy and thus destroy the movement.

So they did what they always do. They created their own response to it called Occupy Wall Street. It was like Wag the Dog. Wag the Dog happened on TV but it never really happened. The movie about a fake war that some political consultant arranged to make it look like it was actually happening on TV to help this candidate when there was no war.

Well, there was no Occupy Wall Street. You had some people, you had some ragamuffins, you had some protesters, and they pitched tents in various places, but it was all bought and paid for. It looks like Black Lives Matter is the same thing. It never did have the massive popular support that Fakebook and other leftist organizations wanted people to think that it was or had, and that is the case with so much of popular culture liberalism.

Now, while all that's going on, conservatism is being censored, actively censored, not by virtue of algorithms, not because Fakebook users are not reading conservative things, but because these 20-something Ivy Leaguers hired as news curators at Fakebook were simply eliminating anything that had anything to do with conservatism except things that portrayed it in a negative light.

Your average Fakebook user has no idea, thinks that all of this is the result of popularity, all of this is the result of trending by actual Fakebook users creating these trends, when in fact it wasn't. Grab sound bite number two. This is Michael Nuñez. This is Jake Tapper last night, CNN. Nuñez is the Gizmodo tech editor and he ran the story about what was happening at Fakebook, suppressing conservative stories.

And Jake Tapper said, "Why might Facebook executives or officials want to keep stories about people like Mitt Romney or Ted Cruz or Chris Kyle, American Sniper, why would they want to keep those stories off the trending list and inject others into --" (laughing) Well, why do you do it at CNN, Jake? Not Jake personally, but why does who whoever arranges the news, whoever decides what's gonna be the news at CNN, why do you do it?

It's the same thing. It's no different. That's the point. Fakebook has editors, Fakebook has curators, Fakebook has people selecting the news, and also selecting what isn't news. We've talked I don't know how many times about something as important as deciding what is news is deciding what isn't news, what people never hear about.

By the way, that explains the success of conservative media. Whenever conservative media is allowed to be heard, it triumphs, it wins big time. That's why the left has to suppress it. That's why the left has to censor it. They're scared to death of it. When they can't control it, look it, of all the news organizations that the Drive-By Media controls, what are they focused on? Fox News and this program, they've got to shut us down. They've got to shut this show down, they've gotta shut down Fox News, even though they own 90% of mainstream news. And it's not news. It's another thing. It isn't news. It's the Democrat agenda.

So, anyway, Jake Tapper is asking this guy from Gizmodo why would Fakebook want to purposely keep conservative stories off -- (laughing) Jake can answer the question himself. But it's Fakebook and it's Gizmodo reporting so it's going to the source from Gizmodo, that's Michael Nuñez. Here's his answer.

Nuñez: They have just basically tried to wash the existence of these curators from the face of the planet. For the last two years they've been saying an algorithm is doing this sorting. We have found that actually, a small group of 20 journalists that are recent graduates from East Coast private schools -- and often Ivy League schools -- are the ones that are actually activating a "trend" so that it can show up in your 'feed, or blacklisting it. So, you know, it's not that Facebook has any bias here. It's that these young journalists are the ones choosing what trends and what doesn't. And the question then becomes whether you trust recent graduates to determine what the most important news of the day is.

RUSH: It's the same thing that happens in the Drive-Bys. It's not an actual conspiracy, meaning they don't get together and collaborate on what they're gonna report, what they're gonna leave out. It's just what they do. I mean, they're liberals, and they believe everything liberals believe, and at the top of the list is that conservatism is insignificant. It's corrupt. It's way the hell over there on the extreme right. It's abnormal. It's whatever. So they're not even interested in it. They don't have to collaborate. That's the point about liberalism.

Lois Lerner. I make the point about her. Everybody says, "Well, where's the smoking gun from Obama? We need the smoking gun that shows that Lois Lerner was instructed to do what she did with the Tea Party groups." She didn't need a memo. Lois Lerner did what she was hired to do. Lois Lerner was there for the express purpose of denying tax except status to conservative Tea Party groups. Nobody had to tell her not to do it. That's why she was there. The left doesn't have to send reminder memos. That's just what they do. They censor.

Look at precedence. They censor anything and anyone that says something that threatens them, something they disagree with. But folks, it's a bigger story than you're gonna see reported on the Drive-Bys, and that is the evidence of how big it is. It's basically a one-time shot. They report it, and then they move on. The reason it's so big is because, sadly, but it's the reality. Fakebook has quickly become the primary news source for a whole lot of Americans, because they trust it.

They actually think that the newsfeed is the result of an algorithm determining most-read, most-liked, most-agreed-with, most-popular, or what have you. So they buy into the scam, and as such, everybody in the news -- the Drive-Bys -- are threatened by it. I mean, everybody that is in the, quote/unquote "news business" is threatened by it because that's where most Americans now get their first taste of the news every day is at the Fakebook newsfeed.

Now, Fakebook is denying that they did any of this. Fakebook is... Fakebook is denying that they have anything do with this. But it's silly to deny it because it's eminently and totally believable. But it's big because this is how... The same thing with pop culture. It's how most people find out what's going on. You know people are followers. If something's hot and popular, they want to be in on it, and they want people to think they agree with it and see it the same way.

So it's pretty hideous. And once again, all it does is confirm -- amplify -- that the left really has to censor its opposition because it cannot compete. Greg Gutfeld. Grab sound bite number one. Gutfeld, he says this pretty well. This was on The Five yesterday on the Fox News Channel, and Kimberly Guilfoyle was asking the group there on the show, "Why wouldn't [Fakebook] want those messages there? Because they have an agenda?"

GUTFELD: The reason why they don't want it there is because it always wins. Wherever restrictions are removed, conservative thought takes over. If you think about talk radio in 1987 when all of a sudden those restrictions were gone, Rush Limbaugh took over. When the internet became a thing, what was the biggest site? Drudge Report. Cable news, CNN for a little while; then all of a sudden, boom! Fox News comes in; becomes number one. Wherever restrictions are pulled, conservative thought takes over because it's thought.

RUSH: And it does win, and it triumphs, and the left can't deal with it, and the left can't legitimately debate or fight, so they choose not to. They just censor it. That's what political correctness is: Censor it or eliminate it, or stigmatize it or attack it, and criticize leaders of movements that they perceive to exist and discredit them to discredit all the followers and discredit the thoughts and the beliefs. Anyway, nothing new here that you haven't heard before, other than the left has found a way to corrupt yet another what turns out to be sizable element of major, big time media.

I think that you ought to sit down and see if you can figure out a perfect way to "count" what people are saying. I don't think that you can take one thread on this website and determine how many people are on the many sides of any one issue without your making subjective determinations as to what other people mean by the words that they use. It's inherently subjective and there is no "mathematically neutral" way to objectively evaluate subjective opinions.

There seems to be a natural desire for people to cast themselves as victims. It's easy to do.

It’s important because people under 30 consume their news almost exclusively through social media feeds.

My Millennial daughter had no idea the Planned Parenthood Videos story was even a story until I told her about it.

I have been on FB since 2008 and never saw the trending news until today. I have gotten items trending but never paid any attention to the few I got. I click on the site to get family/friends news. I get a lot of posts from conservative news groups and others send me links to others. Guess I am kinda slow. Bless my heart. I even get a few from a nut who says he is from FR. I have hidden those.

It’s not that it was presented as neutral, it’s that it was presented as a metric of real activity. It’s fraud, and there is no way to remove it from your Facebook home page, so it’s a slimy way to force an impression of politics and culture on the unsuspecting.

Well, I don't hang around Facebook so I don't know how persuasive it might be. How many times has Facebook been able "to force an impression of politics and culture" on you? And, whatever it is that is happening to you - doesn't that happen to you at all websites?

I don’t like people who tweak to get results that aren’t pure. I know a public figure, and he has 4 young boys, working 24 hours a day to remove any toxic or blight posts people put on his wall. HEY, if someone wants to slam you and speak out... it ought to stay on the wall, and not sanitize it to make us all think we are WAY outnumbered. I gave up FACEBOOK because I saw it was manipulating everyone....

You’re still missing it. Fakebook claiming it is completely neutral and hands off because the news feed is determined solely by what it’s users are looking at. That there are NOT Fakebook workers determining the news feed. It’s all done by a computer based on the users interests. But it it is all a lie. There would be no story if they hadn’t lied about how objective and non-biased their news feed is.

I had not until today. Who looks at that stuff? I thought they were ads. If I want to see if something is on there, I do a simple search. I do not need someone telling me what I should be interested in.

Facebook makes money on advertising.

Their desktop advertising has collapsed and they are now relying on mobile advertising. That may end up being short lived if they don’t produce results for their advertisers.

When the crash comes a company like Facebook will be a very early casualty.

Whether or not it is effective has nothing to do with whether or not it's fraud.

Personally, I think it is very effective on most people. Do think the billions spent on advertising are wasted?

I think that you ought to sit down and see if you can figure out a perfect way to "count" what people are saying.

You don't think that is exactly what Facebook and Google are doing? Really?? Do you do much on the internet?

I doubt very much that Facebook is telling anyone that there aren't people involved in the process of adding and removing content from Facebook or that it is all done by computers free of human input I don't think that it's possible to operate a human-free, hands-off website as you are envisioning and I don't think that Facebook is making that claim. Human beings are required and decisions have to be made.

I do think that there are people who are trying to cast themselves as victims. The world of "Neutral-land" is right next door to a "Socialist Utopia." Neither place exists.

“I know a public figure, and he has 4 young boys, working 24 hours a day to remove any toxic or blight posts people put on his wall.”

At what ‘level’ of a public figure is this person? I can see that it makes sense that a person can take down comments or things that are inappropriate from their page, but what you’re descibing, especially since the person is a public figure, is plain old censorship. When he takes things down, does it show it? As in, is there something that says “this comment has been removed by the user”, similar to what Jim has here?

I think that if you can design a computer that perfectly sorts out opinions without any human input, you will make a fortune. But, there is no real danger of that happening. You can count words, but you need to evaluate content.

“Managers on the trending news team did, however, explicitly instruct curators to artificially manipulate the trending module in a different way: When users weren’t reading stories that management viewed as important, several former workers said, curators were told to put them in the trending news feed anyway. Several former curators described using something called an “injection tool” to push topics into the trending module that weren’t organically being shared or discussed enough to warrant inclusion—putting the headlines in front of thousands of readers rather than allowing stories to surface on their own. In some cases, after a topic was injected, it actually became the number one trending news topic on Facebook.”

This explains how an issue concerning .03% of our population (men wanting to use the ladies room) can become a ‘big’ news story.

http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006

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