THE ZUCKERCIRCUS

It's the old bait and switch.

For about the last decade  Facebook has baited you with a host of features, under the guise of helping you, and the "world" to be in "better communication."  Here's the way Kathleen Chaykowski put it in her report, when she wrote in Forbes, in the "Tech Section in 2017.  In this she quotes Zuckerberg:

"... When Facebook ... filed to go public in early 2012, Mark Zuckerberg noted that the social network wasn’t originally designed to be a company. 'It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected,' Zuckerberg wrote in Facebook’s S-1 filing, presenting the business as an engine supporting this goal ..."

You see, he didn't design it to be a company.  It was all for you.  But, fast forward, a few years later, and, well, he made it into a company.  Bait. Switch.  And we all know what the Corporate bottom line is:  $.

And part of that bottom line is to increase profits.  How do you do that in a business model that is based on "free" use?  Change it so that there is an initial "free-use" basic level, and then incrementally charge for additional features. Why would they do it this way?  Because they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  The cookie jar contained YOU and your personal info which you gave to them so they could make their mega-bucks.  It's a big scandal now, as you may have heard, and Zuckerberg is now going to supposedly get a shellacking from congress, and woe is he, he will self flagellate,  until the cows come home, and then he will make the changes accordingly.

Except, it's all a ruse.

How is it a ruse?  Well let's start with an article by Daniel Lyons in May of 2010 in NEWSWEEK:  Lyons told us that:

"...you might not know about the latest trend among hipster techies: quitting Facebook. These folks, including a bunch of Google engineers, are bailing out because Facebook just changed its rules so that much of your personal profile information, including where you work, what music you like, and where you went to school, now gets made public by default. Some info is even shared with companies that are special partners of Facebook, like Yelp, Pandora, and Microsoft. And while there are ways to dial back on some of this by tinkering with your privacy settings, it’s tricky to figure out—intentionally so, according to cynics..."

Lyons said, also that:

"... The fear is that people are being lured into Facebook with the promise of a fun, free service, and don’t realize that they’re paying for it by giving up loads of personal information. Facebook then attempts to “monetize” one’s data by selling it to advertisers that want to send targeted messages ... Most folks using Facebook have no idea this is happening. Even if you’re very tech-savvy and do know what the company is up to, you still have no idea what you’re paying for Facebook, because people don’t really know what their personal data is worth ..."

Mind you, that was May of 2010.

On March 21, 2018, Zuckerberg, speaking to CNNMoney's Laurie Segall, he says this:




How does he not get struck by lightning?  Makes you wonder, doesn't it, especially since Lyons told us in 2010 that:

"...The biggest problem, however, is that the company keeps changing the rules. Early on, you could keep everything private. That was the great thing about Facebook—you could create your own little private network. Last year, the company changed its privacy rules so that a lot of things—your city, your profile photo, the names of your friends—were set, by default, to be shared with everyone on the Internet. Sure, you could change everything back and make it private. But most people probably didn’t bother. Now Facebook is going even further by insisting that unless you agree to make things like your hometown, interests, and friends’ names public, then you can’t list them at all..."

And, of course, there was also this, again, from Lyons:

"...The whole kerfuffle is a misunderstanding, according to Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy. In his version of events, the company is simply making changes to improve the service it provides to users by giving them more 'granular' control over what they share, and if people don’t share information they have a 'less satisfying experience.' Facebook is innovating so rapidly, he says, that people don’t fully understand what the company is doing, and that change is scary ... Some critics think this is more about Facebook looking to make more money. Its original business model, which involved selling ads and putting them at the side of the page, totally flopped. Who wants to look at advertisements when they’re online connecting with their friends? Facebook denies that financial motives drove the changes. 'Of all the criticisms, that’s the one I find most distressing—that anything we’ve done is damaging to users in order for us to make more money,' says Schrage..."

Lyons also said in that article that the privacy issue had already landed Facebook in hot water in Washington, and that Senator Charles Schumer and two others had called on Facebook to change its privacy policy, and that they were urging the Federal Trade Commission to set guidelines for social-networking sites.  He said that in May of 2010, "...a group of 15 online-privacy groups filed a formal complaint with the FTC accusing Facebook of 'unfair and deceptive trade practices.' ..."

It is now April of 2018.  See the time lapse here?  What has Zuckerbook been doing for eight years?  Can you say "caching!"

 It gets better.  Actually it gets much worse.  And this is why this is a ZuckerBook Circus:

Zuckerberg is going to testify before a Congressional committee, but Zuck's not going to be Under Oath.  Oh, he's still "compelled by statute to tell the truth," but he's not under oath.  So watch his testimony.  If he claims he didn't know about all this until recently, then he will have lied, will he have not?


And then there is this little anecdote:  FACEBOOK just happens to be a BIG contributor to the committees that are going to be questioning him:  "...The congressional panel that got the most Facebook contributions is the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which announced Wednesday morning it would question Zuckerberg on April 11.

Members of the committee, whose jurisdiction gives it regulatory power over Internet companies, received nearly $381,000 in contributions tied to Facebook since 2007 ..."  according to Herb Jackson at USA TODAY.

AND Paul V. Fontelo, reporter at ROLL CALL, tells us that 30 lawmakers hold stock in Facebook, including THREE who may be questioning the Zuck.


Of course, no one told Mark Zuckerberg back in 2010 about that article in NEWSWEEK by Daniel Lyons. He runs Facebook, but he didn't know about Schumer and Co., and that oh so tiny complaint  filed with the FTC that was so minuscule that he never found out about it.

TODAY he is saying that he swears he found out just two weeks ago that bad actors were harvesting users’ private info by the millions.  Kevin Poulsen, writing for the Daily Beast, intimates he's lying:

"... But the company was alerted long, long before that ... Facebook was warned five years ago that the 'reverse-lookup' feature in its search engine could be used to harvest names, profiles, and phone numbers for virtually all its users..."  

But the company just found out two weeks ago?  (You can read that HERE)


So, have you been scammed?  You signed on to be in communication with your loved ones, your friends, your groups, but in reality you were providing information that Facebook had promised you it would not sell.  In effect you were an unwitting employee of Facebook, and if this is the case, how much back-pay does Facebook owe you for the use of the precious personal data you, your friends, your family, etc., have provided to ZuckBook, so that it could be sold for zillions?

Mark Zuckerberg in an "Open Letter" said this in 2006:

"...I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about..."  (Read it HERE)

As Rich Lowery put it in a New York Post editorial today, "...Facebook has always been one big swindle.."  

My money is on the money:  I think the purpose of the ZuckerCircus is more money, but not for you.

What are you going to pay for this time?