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Sunday 7th of December 2025

2016 Presidential election After the election, I made a comment that I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a crazy idea. Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive.  Mark Zuckerberg, after Facebook agreed to provide Congress with 3,000 ads paid for by Russian agents  © 2017 Kwiple.com
2016 Presidential election Regrettably, it appears that the platforms may have misrepresented or evaded in some of their statements to Congress. From a report published by the Senate Intelligence Committee about the responses submitted by Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms to its requests for data about Russia's attempts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election © 2018 Kwiple.com
Bad news A study once found that using the Fox News website as a news source made you less informed than watching no news at all. It's the Ozempic of knowing things. And still not as bad as the “news finds me” people.  That's the growing cohort of Americans who believe that if a story's important enough, it will find it's way to their social media feed. Yeah. These are the people who trust their  Facebook friends to watch Hannity for them. Bill Maher,  Real Time with Bill Maher, June 21, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Big Brother Facebook Inc. says it has developed a way to recognize people in photos even if their faces are obscured. In the future, this technology could help advertisers law-enforcement officials and academics mine photos for clues about a person's activities, interests and social circles [without their consent], experts said. Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Big Brother Facebook stalking © 2016 Kwiple.com
Big Brother Given the massive scale of social networks such as Facebook, small effects can have large aggregated consequences. conclusion, Facebook research report about an experiment it conducted on its users without their knowledge that demonstrated it could control their emotions and behavior by controlling the content of news feeds sent to them © 2015 Kwiple.com
Breitbart News If you haven't heard of Breitbart News, that means you do not have a racist uncle on Facebook. Stephen Colbert © 2016 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say Facebook does not benefit from hate. Nick Clegg, Facebook VP, Global Affairs and Communications 10:55 AM · Jul 1, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Social-media sites such as Facebook and Twitter Inc. shoulder “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of responsibility for preventing the distribution of fake news, according to 71% of the U.S. adults polled [by Pew Research]. Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say Did you know I was number one on Facebook? I just found out I'm number one on Facebook. I thought that was very nice. For whatever it means, it represents something. Donald Trump, to an April 1, 2020, conference about COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
Corporate welfare As the data centers' labor needs have shifted [from low- to high-skilled jobs], tech companies have begun breaking ground in less rural areas. New Albany, the wealthy suburb of Columbus, Ohio, where Facebook is putting a $750 million facility, has a poverty rate below 3 per- cent, an unemployment rate of around 4 percent, and a median household income of $196,000. Even so, Ohio is offering $371,000 in tax credits for each of the 100 full-time positions Facebook has promised there–none of which is likely to provide a lifeline to a laid-off factory worker. Bloomberg Businessweek, October 2, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Corporate welfare Congress grills flak clatchers from Facebook, Google and Twitter about subverting American democracy by enabling trolling by Russians in the 2016 presidential election and, shortly afterwards, plans to cut corporate tax rates nearly in half © 2017 Kwiple.com
Facebook A business with an exceedingly low ratio of invention to success. Timothy Wu, The Attention Merchants © 2016 Kwiple.com
Facebook But Facebook is also, effectively, a hostile foreign power. This is plain to see in its single-minded focus on its own expansion; its immunity to any sense of civic obligation; its record of facilitating the undermining of elections; its antipathy toward the free press; its rulers’ callousness and hubris; and its indifference to the endurance of American democracy. Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic, September 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Facebook Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. Andrew Bosworth, Facebook vice president, in a memo leaked to the press, which caused many employees to begin a witch-hunt to find and punish the leaker and to delete potentially controversial comments or newsworthy messages © 2018 Kwiple.com
Fox News To an extent that many people still don't recognize, Fox News is a grinding, daily cesspool of white grievance, mistrust of deep-state government, and a belief that liberals are literally trying to destroy the country out of sheer malice. Facebook and other social media outlets might have made this worse over the past few years — partly by acting as a sort of early warning system for new outrages bubbling up from the grassroots that Fox anchors can draw from — but Fox News remains the wellspring. Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, September/October 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
The Frightful Five Nearly a year ago, I argued that we were witnessing a new era in the tech business, one that is typified … by a posse I like to call the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet … As in 2016, they are half of the world's 10 most valuable companies … Their wealth stems from their control of the inescapable digital infrastructure on which much of the rest of the economy depends – mobile phones, social networks, the web, the cloud, retail and logistics, and the data and computing power required for future breakthroughs … they have begun to set their sights on the biggest industries outside tech … on autos, health care, retail, transporation, entertainment and finance. citation Farhad Manjoo, New York Times, Jan. 5, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Institutions Is it better to be outside the organisation, without any power to change, or to try to reform it from within? But this is what I want you to remember: sometimes institutions are better at reforming the people they hire, than the people they hire are at reforming them. This was the case at the CIA, this was the case at NSA, at Google, at Facebook. Edward Snowden © 2019 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Require public records of all political ads sold by Facebook, Google and other online advertisers, just as they are already required for ones sold by radio and TV stations and by print publishers © 2017 Kwiple.com
Monopoly It is time to do what Teddy Roosevelt did: pick up the antitrust stick again. Elizabeth Warren © 2017 Kwiple.com
Power In today's unequal digital society, power accrues to those who already have too much of it,  fuelling popular discontent with the elites and giving rise to conspiracy theories about the omnipotence of Silicon Valley. Evgeny Morozov, Financial Times, September 1, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say Why should she? She's already leading Facebook. Unnamed participant at a meeting of corporate executives responding when asked if he thought Sheryl Sandberg could run for president one day Quoted by Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 7, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Social media In a leaked memo, a Facebook executive, Andrew Bosworth, describes this willful disregard for truth and meaning: “We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. … That can be bad if they make it negative. … Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack. … The ugly truth is … anything that allows us to connect more people more often is “de facto” good.” In other words, asking a surveillance extractor to reject content is like asking a coal-mining operation to discard containers of coal because it's too dirty. Shoshana Zuboff, New York Times, January 29, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Everyone is distracted. All of the time. Justin Rosenstein, creator of Facebook's “like” button © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tech bros say If a startup's app grows fast and it won't sell out to us, kill the motherfuckers by cloning its features and deterring investors --> © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tech bros say They "trust me" Dumb fucks Mark Zuckerberg, in Facebook's early days, when asked why so many people give him so much personal data  --> © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say You look at what Russia did – you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent and do it – and it's a terrible thing. But I think the investigations, and all of the speculation that's happened for the last two years, has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads. Donald Trump © 2019 Kwiple.com
 
Truth We don't have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true. Facebook, defending its decision to not take down a video created by Trumpists that depicts Nancy Pelosi as drunk and that its fact checkers labeled as “false” © 2019 Kwiple.com