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 Twitter is genuine trending. I use Twitter without “reading feeds,” like when the terror attack happened last night or when the Preds won game 5. I think Twitter is just what things are actually popular at the moment. Sure, it’s filled with libs, but all conservatives post there too. It seems to be more of a neutral vehicle and not a tricky scam like FB.

“What’s the general consensus? Does anybody care?”

I don’t care, sarasota.
I was on Facebook once, my wife’s account, and was startled by the venomous lefty comments left by a couple of her old college friends and I raised some hell with them, (they thought I was her?). Anyway, I’ve never had a Facebook account.

I stopped going to Target a long time ago, before they went pervert. JC Penneys a long, long time ago. And I don’t listen to those windbags Limbaugh or Levin. They’re just trying to jack their flagging ad revenues with stuff like this.

Anyone flustered over Facebook, or over retailers committing seppuku—over the way any private company conducts itself—I can only conclude that you want to keep patronizing them.
Zuckerberg is a young, lefty tool. He’ll prolly be a neo-con in twenty years.
If they offend you that much, then just cast them from your life. Turn your back on them. Don’t obsess, you’ll make yourself sick.

Yeah. I like this site better.

I think people should avoid these types of claims. It just isn't flattering for someone to claim that he thinks his thoughts are being controlled or manipulated by a website. People should take pride in their ability to think for themselves.

But, it seems like everyone wants to be a victim these days.

It’s important because the heading “Trending” at the upper right of the FB user’s homepage makes the user think that these (listed topics and headlines) are the “objectively” trending issues of the day. When FB management manipulates this feed to alter the reality, the hundreds of millions of FB users get an altered reality...

It’s not relevant to dismiss this as FB’s “right” (it is their right as a pvt business entity but people should know about it and choose alternatives), or as reflecting the stupidity of FB users etc. The relevant fact, previously undocumented, is that the largest “social media” site in the world is providing a carefully scripted “reality” to further liberal biases.

Sure, this should not surprise anyone, but it is always important to document and combat the ways in which Orwellian elites are working to re-shape our world.

I can't find anyone who thinks that their minds are controlled or manipulated by Facebook. Now, that being said, there are probably a lot of people who spend so much time on Facebook that their lives are being adversely affected, but that has nothing to do with content.

I read the story that underlies all these claims about Facebook. Apparently, some old Facebook employees said that some employees at Facebook were actively selecting which news stories about a topic and which topics would be displayed with what prominence. They said that what stories were picked might depend on who was working on a particular shift. So, what? That's true of every single website on the planet.

The idea of an altered reality suggests incorrectly that human beings can somehow project a perfectly accurate reality with a website. That is a total pipe dream.

Persons with any kind of self-respect should be reluctant to claim that their minds and thoughts are being controlled and manipulated by a website. Of course, they never claim that. Instead, they claim that everyone else's thoughts are being controlled or manipulated, but that they are personally immune.

It's all baloney. It's just a pathetic effort to cast oneself as a victim of malignant forces. There seems to be a need by many people to find an external excuse for what is happening in their lives.

Much closer to an objective reality is the view that we live in a country that is bathed in conflicting information and opinion from which to choose. In fact, there are people who have suggested that we receive too much information and that it has become very difficult if not impossible for us to even sort through all of the conflicting information that surrounds us. We are not victims here.

The CEO's of the following companies:

Amazon.com
Apple
eBay
Facebook
Google
LinkedIn
Microsoft
Pinterest
SnapChat
Twitter
Yahoo!

...are going soon be asked questions in front of Congress to find out if the data algorithms for searching and discovery were subtly "tweaked" to favor anything Leftist. This is a simmering scandal that will boil over quickly and will cause tremendous damage to the technology industry.

I don’t need to be told by Rush that what Facebook has done is wrong...

But I do have to wonder... who the hell gets their news from Facebook anyway..?

And... are we actually shocked that this was happening..?

Seems to me that there are more important things to be upset about...

But I do have to wonder... who the hell gets their news from Facebook anyway..?

I suspect that there may be people who read nothing but Facebook, but the important thing is that they have the freedom to read what they wish.

How are Trending Topics determined? By whatever topic has the most articles? If that is the case, doesn't it depend upon how specific a topic must be to be a topic? For example, at any given time, there are probably more worldwide articles about the weather than any other topic unless we choose to decide that weather is too broad a topic to count as a topic. Is "politics" in general too broad a topic to be a topic to count? Should we choose to count all stories about Trump separately from stories about how Trump has chosen someone to help pick his VP? How narrow must a topic be before we start counting it as the topic to be measured by articles?

Those are all choices that have to be made in order to determine what is "trending" in terms of having the most articles. And, machines cannot make those choices. Human beings have to make those choices. And, no matter how they choose to make those decisions, there exists an argument that by making the choices that they made, they have altered reality.

This is really all baloney.

ragamuffins

Haven't seen that word in a while.

ragamuffin:

NOUN

1. a person, typically a child, in ragged, dirty clothes.

synonyms: urchin · waif · guttersnipe · street kid

By purposely misrepresenting their business practices, thus gaining users or keeping them, who otherwise may not use Facebook, they are committing fraud.

Yes!
It infuriates me when I read pseudo-conservatives snidely writing that this the free market at work.
Deceiving your clientele is not the free market!
Facebook commits the media equivalent of bait and switch: Come to us for freedom of speech, but we will give you covertly selected propaganda instead.

I'm not aware that anybody's claiming that facebook is controlling their own thoughts. They're worried that other people are being manipulated.

The assumption was that "trending topics" were chosen by some kind of algorithm that statistically determined what people were searching and sending. It would not be a 100% "objective" determination, but the assumption was that it would be free from manipulation. Now the allegation is that it isn't.

This story strikes a chord because of the history of the company, which has involved fraud and manipulation from the beginning (see The Social Network). If you don't see that, then you don't see it, but other people do.

I'm not aware that anybody's claiming that facebook is controlling their own thoughts. They're worried that other people are being manipulated.

I think it is a lack of self-esteem that causes people to believe that Facebook is controlling their own thoughts. I think it is arrogance that causes people to think that other people are more susceptible than themselves to manipulation by Facebook. I don't think either is healthy. And, I don't want to pretend that the world is victimizing me.

A machine cannot count articles relating to a topic until a human being tells the machine what subjects are sufficiently specific to qualify as a topic that warrants counting. Only people can define the "topics" to be counted. And, that is inherently subjective.

This story strikes a chord because of the history of the company, which has involved fraud and manipulation from the beginning (see The Social Network). If you don't see that, then you don't see it, but other people do.

I don't spend much time at Facebook and I can't say that the company has ever victimized me. And, it really would't matter if it had. The important thing is that people should understand that there isn't any computer that can do what some people wish that Facebook computers could do (project for them a perfectly accurate view of public opinion and interest unfiltered by human input). Like all websites, the content is ultimately determined by human beings. And, like all websites, it will matter which human beings are making the decisions.

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INDEED!