JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MORE CREEPY STUFF FROM FACEBOOK ON ITS WAY FOR CANADIANS - YOU MIGHT THINK PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE LEARNED THAT FACEBOOK IS MORE OF A GENUINE THREAT THAN ANY FOREIGN STATE IT POMPOUSLY PRETENDS TO DEFEND US FROM - BUT THE LEARNING CURVE IS LONG - A WORD FROM STEPHEN F COHEN

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ELIZABETH THOMPSON ON CBC NEWS



“Facebook rolls out high-tech ad registry with a low-tech twist

“Registering to run a political or issues ad in Canada could take up to two weeks”



Virtually nothing Facebook does, in any of its activities, can, in my view, be harmless and praiseworthy.

The company’s record of abusing users over the years is appalling, including everything from fake trending news stories to inflated audience numbers for ad rates and to insidiously tracking users even when they are not on the Facebook site.

Julian Assange, and he should know, expert that he is, has characterized Facebook as the most diabolical system ever devised for collecting intimate personal information about many millions of people.

The information goes to advertisers and others, but it also goes to American security services like NSA and its giant hi-tech farms of supercomputers.

This initiative comes as part of a supposed "answer" to foreign interference in Western elections.

But there has been no proved interference in our elections. None, of any kind. The claim reflects Washington's hysteria over China and Russia, and that hysteria has nothing to do with bad behavior by those states.

The claim reflects a new McCarthyism taking hold, one full of American establishment concerns over losing its privileged old place in the world owing to new competition and the rise of new states.

Facebook is just, in its own way, validating those fears. It is effectively serving the interests of the same American establishment busy trying to suppress China, overthrow Venezuela, abuse Cuba, and treat Russia as an untouchable.

It is, in a word, acting as a subtle agent for America's aggressive security services, not as a public service agency. It really could be called part of the problem of intrusion and spying, certainly not part of any solution.

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Response to a reader comment about what our government is doing:

Maybe, but I think our government is afraid of Washington.

They do everything they can think of to support it and its now often-outrageous pretensions.

Pretty sad, actually.

And definitely, in general, an outfit like Facebook is a threat to privacy and rights, one faithfully serving Washington.

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Here's an important quote from Stephen F Cohen, former distinguished Princeton professor, authority on Russian affairs, not a political partisan, a true liberal, and someone consulted over the years by many important figures:

"It cannot be emphasized too often: Russia-gate—allegations that the American president has been compromised by the Kremlin, which may even have helped to put him in the White House—is the worst and (considering the lack of actual evidence) most fraudulent political scandal in American history."

That entire episode of madness is the origin of all the noise, repeated a thousand times over by a compliant corporate press, we hear about foreign interference in elections.

Our government's going along to get along with Washington on this has been just distasteful.

And any initiative using Facebook is even more distasteful, given that corporation's history of abusing its users and itself being a major conduit of intimate personal espionage against tens of millions.