Facebook Crashed?

[ClaytonB]

In her Congressional testimony opening statement today, it took her about 30 seconds to veer away from the "for the children" cover story and right into the censorship agenda about divisiveness spreading violent reactions, misinfo, etc and how Congress must act to address it. Hearing just started but I figure it won't take long before questioning goes off into that tangent and leaves the children cover story behind. She's a Harvard MBA with a huge big tech resume so, for me, she's already suspect as a likely plant.

The Ds are clearly trying to twist this for their own use. She doesn't seem to have a clear political loyalty/affinity, which makes her maximally dangerous (in a good way). One sentence of verifiable testimony is sometimes all it takes to bring down an entire empire. So, let the Ds twist away. The era of "the 'elites' always win" is over. There is only Elite, who is God, and he is the only one who wins. All who oppose him are destroyed, I don't care what political party they come from, or even what religion they profess. God looks at the heart. This garbage is beyond done... it's so dead it doesn't even know how dead it is.

[devil21]

The Ds are clearly trying to twist this for their own use. She doesn't seem to have a clear political loyalty/affinity, which makes her maximally dangerous (in a good way). One sentence of verifiable testimony is sometimes all it takes to bring down an entire empire. So, let the Ds twist away. The era of "the 'elites' always win" is over. There is only Elite, who is God, and he is the only one who wins. All who oppose him are destroyed, I don't care what political party they come from, or even what religion they profess. God looks at the heart. This garbage is beyond done... it's so dead it doesn't even know how dead it is.

All well and good but it doesn't seem to be slowing them down much, at least with trying to maintain a facade of authority.

As predicted, only minutes into the hearing did Klobuchar's questions quickly veer off into January 6th and associated topics, which all, of course, agreed that social media has a "duty" to police. For the children, ya know. At that point I turned the hearing off. Camera shots showed both her speaking almost emotionally like she was choking back tears and likely plant FB "whistleblower" smiling broadly and nodding in strong agreement. So scripted.

[Occam's Banana]

She doesn't seem to have a clear political loyalty/affinity [...]

Apparently, she does.

https://twitter.com/thebias_news/sta...35441369415680

[ClaytonB]

Apparently, she does.

https://twitter.com/thebias_news/sta...35441369415680

Belonging to a political party -- in itself -- does not make you "owned by" or an "asset of" that party. Perhaps she is an asset, I don't know. But that alone doesn't establish it. There are two reasons I think her testimony has the "elites" genuinely shaken: (1) the FB-wide outage (including DNS) indicates that there was a Zuckerbucks-level corporate-security "reflex" response (corporate IT at companies of that size have this kind of protocol in the event of a data leak, it's the digital equivalent of a campus-wide lockdown) and (2) she actually talks about the real issue in the 60 Minutes broadcast, so "the damage is done" even if Congress has a big glad-handing post-exposure cover-up hearing to attract the lights off of what she said in the 60 Minutes interview, and have duped her into feeling like they're "taking this very seriously" and "getting on it". Both of these are inconsistent with a limited-hangout / controlled disclosure. Of course, it's still controlled, but they are clearly in damage-control, which is a vastly different kind of control from a limited-hangout.

[Occam's Banana]

Belonging to a political party -- in itself -- does not make you "owned by" or an "asset of" that party. [...]

Yeah. okay, whatever.

You seem to be under the impression that I am trying to argue with you about something. I am not.

You said earlier that she did not seem to have any party affinity.

I provided evidence that she does seem to have some party affinity.

Incorporate that into your preferred narrative however you like. Or just ignore it altogether. As you wish.

[devil21]

Also worth noting that 60 Minutes has long been known as a CIA front to springboard people and topics into the mainstream for mass consumption/social engineering.

[acptulsa]

Also worth noting that 60 Minutes has long been known as a CIA front to springboard people and topics into the mainstream for mass consumption/social engineering.

Their hatchet job on Assange was ridiculous.

[ClaytonB]

Folks, we are in the post-Snowden, post-Assange, post-Trump, post-2020-heist, post-Q, post-etc etc world... it's time to put our big-boy thinking caps on and not just rehash the old "60 Minutes bad" tropes. The Deep State is real, the Deep State is an infiltration of American institutions and organizations that has corrupted them from within, while the patriots and other white-hats within those organizations remained largely unaware of what was really happening. How hard do you think it is to convince that "silent majority" of good guys to oppose the Deep State's tactics... or even one-up those tactics completely?? Not hard! If you want to live in a paranoid delusion where there is a Marxist behind every blade of grass and Biden&co. magically own DC lock, stock and barrel, suit yourselves. I choose to believe that there are good guys in our military, our police institutions and, yes, even in corrupt institutions like the CIA. Those institutions that have institutionally gotten into bed with the Deep State have soiled their own reputations beyond repair and that's their own damn problem. But that still doesn't mean that there are no good guys. So cut it out with the 100% 24x7 doom-porn. "It's too late! They already control everything!" This is where faithlessness leads... total hopelessness. If you want to hurl yourselves into the quicksand, I'll still throw your dumb ass a rope, but don't expect me to jump in after you! Have faith! God is in control, humans are powerless! (Psalm 60:11)

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

What whistleblowing? All this dope said was that fedbook was valuing profits over public interest. Oooo, hard hitting.

[Occam's Banana]

FTA (bold emphasis added): https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2021/10...ildren-threat/

Following [Frances Haugen's] testimony, Facebook Policy Communications Director Lena Pietsch issued the following statement:

“Today, a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives – and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question. We don’t agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about. Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act.”

[A. Havnes]

Anyone else get the feeling that this lady is going to run for something in the future? Her entire platform will probably be based around censorship, for the kids, you know.

On a lighter note, my brain was happily playing around with her wording that she "lost a friend to conspiracy theories". I know, it probably just means that she and her friend broke up over a disagreement and she decided that her former friend should have never had the opportunity to be exposed to these theories or the ability to talk about their own opinion, but how else would you lose a friend to conspiracy theories? Did he/she die while hunting for the edge of the flat earth? Get arrested for demanding a recount? Murdered by the gay frogs?

This would be like if a friend said they were going vegan and my response was to limit their exposure to vegan things and crack down on any discussions that head into vegan territory. Sounds like Haugen was one very controlling 'friend'.

[ClaytonB]

how else would you lose a friend to conspiracy theories? Did he/she die while hunting for the edge of the flat earth? Get arrested for demanding a recount? Murdered by the gay frogs?

Maybe she lost him/her/zim/zer like this... (NSFW)

[donnay]

Raise your hand if you didn’t even notice.

[Brian4Liberty]

The unusual wrinkle to the FB outage is that the DNS records were wiped out completely. It apparently wasn't an internal platform crash. Even the facebook.com domain was briefly listed as for sale because the DNS records were gone. That's not really something that just happens and especially not to such a prominent site. Stay on toes y'all.

Not my area of expertise, but this sounds like a software update gone wrong. Or it could be a test of taking down major websites.

So if they installed new software that failed, what would it's purpose be? Could it be software that can control access via DNS? Perhaps to cater to individual nations that want something censored or controlled?

[DamianTV]

Raise your hand if you didn’t even notice.

Didnt notice.

Sadly, it was only a temporary outage...

[ClaytonB]

Not my area of expertise, but this sounds like a software update gone wrong. Or it could be a test of taking down major websites.

So if they installed new software that failed, what would it's purpose be? Could it be software that can control access via DNS? Perhaps to cater to individual nations that want something censored or controlled?

The official explanation:

At 15:58 UTC we noticed that Facebook had stopped announcing the routes to their DNS prefixes. That meant that, at least, Facebook’s DNS servers were unavailable. Because of this Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver could no longer respond to queries asking for the IP address of facebook.com.

... they go on to explain that automated BGP updates spread the non-presence of facebook's DNS info throughout the global DNS, bringing down DNS resolution of facebook (which technically doesn't take Facebook offline, but also practically blocks most non-technical users). I would like to emphasize that this is an awfully convenient cover story, like, if you were to explain a DNS cyber-attack without calling it a cyber-attack, this is exactly what the explanation would go like. So, who knows what really happened, but nearly 6 hours of global DNS blackout over a "whoopsie-daisy" just... isn't believable to me. Tech companies at Facebook's scale have on-site UPS + diesel backup generators ready to spool up on a moment's notice (I know this firsthand), 24x7 support staff who deal with local outages all over the world on a daily basis, and regularly perform fire-drills for emergencies just like this.

The least believable explanation to me is a software update or update of any kind. Again, at tech companies of this scale (and even much smaller, local companies) before IT performs an update/rollout of any kind, they make backup images of everything, so they can do an instant revert in case the update causes an unforeseen crash/incident. The last thing you want to be doing is troubleshooting the cause of an outage while everything is down. In addition, big rollout/updates are always piloted, even at smaller companies. They pick a test group of machines/networks, and roll out the update on those. After the bugs/kinks are worked out, only then do they do the full rollout. All of this is so mechanical and routine in modern IT that it's no more eventful than a corporate fleet manager sending their vehicles to the mechanic for an odometer checkup. Too many "just so" explanations in the news headlines these days, it's getting downright annoying...

[Brian4Liberty]

The official explanation:



... they go on to explain that automated BGP updates spread the non-presence of facebook's DNS info throughout the global DNS, bringing down DNS resolution of facebook (which technically doesn't take Facebook offline, but also practically blocks most non-technical users). I would like to emphasize that this is an awfully convenient cover story, like, if you were to explain a DNS cyber-attack without calling it a cyber-attack, this is exactly what the explanation would go like. So, who knows what really happened, but nearly 6 hours of global DNS blackout over a "whoopsie-daisy" just... isn't believable to me. Tech companies at Facebook's scale have on-site UPS + diesel backup generators ready to spool up on a moment's notice (I know this firsthand), 24x7 support staff who deal with local outages all over the world on a daily basis, and regularly perform fire-drills for emergencies just like this.

The least believable explanation to me is a software update or update of any kind. Again, at tech companies of this scale (and even much smaller, local companies) before IT performs an update/rollout of any kind, they make backup images of everything, so they can do an instant revert in case the update causes an unforeseen crash/incident. The last thing you want to be doing is troubleshooting the cause of an outage while everything is down. In addition, big rollout/updates are always piloted, even at smaller companies. They pick a test group of machines/networks, and roll out the update on those. After the bugs/kinks are worked out, only then do they do the full rollout. All of this is so mechanical and routine in modern IT that it's no more eventful than a corporate fleet manager sending their vehicles to the mechanic for an odometer checkup. Too many "just so" explanations in the news headlines these days, it's getting downright annoying...

Of course.

I’m not an expert on internet set-ups or DNS, but I’m very familiar with standard software testing, and I’ve seen plenty of screw-ups, bugs and unforeseen events after moving to production. As I first said, cyber attack also is a distinct possibility.

Needless to say, something happened. My real question is whether DNS could be used as part of a method of censorship based on nation or region. Could they route a person to a different (censored) version or configuration of Facebook based upon location? Could users in China, Russia and the US all see customized censorship based on their location?

Facebook is a global company, that likes to partner with governments on censorship. One size would not fit all. It would have to be customized for different nations or regions.

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/goodblackdude/st...73257509371910

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1445926875243630593

[ClaytonB]

Of course.

I’m not an expert on internet set-ups or DNS, but I’m very familiar with standard software testing, and I’ve seen plenty of screw-ups, bugs and unforeseen events after moving to production. As I first said, cyber attack also is a distinct possibility.

Needless to say, something happened. My real question is whether DNS could be used as part of a method of censorship based on nation or region. Could they route a person to a different (censored) version or configuration of Facebook based upon location? Could users in China, Russia and the US all see customized censorship based on their location?

Facebook is a global company, that likes to partner with governments on censorship. One size would not fit all. It would have to be customized for different nations or regions.

They already do -- Facebook is not reachable from China (regardless of DNS).

[devil21]

Of course.

I’m not an expert on internet set-ups or DNS, but I’m very familiar with standard software testing, and I’ve seen plenty of screw-ups, bugs and unforeseen events after moving to production. As I first said, cyber attack also is a distinct possibility.

Needless to say, something happened. My real question is whether DNS could be used as part of a method of censorship based on nation or region. Could they route a person to a different (censored) version or configuration of Facebook based upon location? Could users in China, Russia and the US all see customized censorship based on their location?

Facebook is a global company, that likes to partner with governments on censorship. One size would not fit all. It would have to be customized for different nations or regions.

Something like that is already being implemented, where someone's social media interactions basically present the user a curated version of reality based on what the user is known to like, comment on, read, etc and just further reinforces it by presenting more of same. Same with Google search results. I'm sure the expansion of that method to something like what you're wondering about is in the works. Since they want to push "internet IDs", a future version of the entire web would be tailored to the specific user, globally. I don't see why DNS routing wouldn't be incorporated as part of routing people to their curated internet experience.

[devil21]

More coming out about "whistleblower". She's not merely a political hack. Her CIA....errr 60 Minutes springboarding into mass consumption is becoming clear. She worked in a FB department filed with intel agency operatives.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/536872-back...blower-haugen/

[A. Havnes]

More coming out about "whistleblower". She's not merely a political hack. Her CIA....errr 60 Minutes springboarding into mass consumption is becoming clear. She worked in a FB department filed with intel agency operatives.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/536872-back...blower-haugen/

She's also backed by a lot of Democrats. Whistleblowers don't get the red carpet, they get silenced, fired, and, depending on whom they're exposing, arrested/killed. This is 100% political, a bid to control online discourse and stop the spread of "dangerous" information. Very Orwellian, I think.

[Occam's Banana]

Republicans/conservatives/rightists: Regulate Big Tech!

Democrats/liberals/leftists: We agree to your demand.

Republicans/conservatives/rightists:



(h/t @MRSpinkston85)

[Occam's Banana]

[dannno]

4:38 - 8:20

[Anti Globalist]

Considering I've spent the past 4 months off of Facebook, I was not even aware that this happened.

[cjm]

Considering I've spent the past 4 months off of Facebook, I was not even aware that this happened.

That's better than chlorella for detox.

[Occam's Banana]

The Fakest "Whistleblower" Ever
https://mtracey.substack.com/p/the-f...tleblower-ever
Michael Tracey (12 October 2021)

In a lesser-noticed but revealing portion of Frances Haugen’s stage-managed PR tour last week, the vaunted “Facebook Whistleblower” took a moment to show off her “national security” credentials for Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska. After the two had finished rehearsing all the reasons why American children are at such grave risk from a dangerously unregulated internet, they pivoted to another topic — that being Haugen’s previous experience at Facebook working in what she describes as “counter-espionage” operations. Yes, you read that right: Haugen was apparently a “project manager” at something called the “threat intelligence org,” located deep in the bowels of Facebook, at which she claims to have presided over a team carrying out “counter-espionage” ops on behalf of Mark Zuckerberg.

“I believe Facebook’s consistent understaffing of the counter-espionage information operations, and counter-terrorism teams, is a national security issue,” Haugen warned, agreeing with Sullivan about the Facebook-based threat posed by state actors such as China and Iran. (What kind of Facebook-related espionage is she referring to exactly? Unclear. Perhaps sardonic Ayatollah memes.)

“I believe the fact that Congress doesn’t get a report of exactly how many people are working on these things internally is unacceptable,” Haugen continued. “Because you have a right to keep the American people safe.”

And there Haugen revealed a major reason why she has been treated to such effusive “bipartisan” praise ever since she burst onto the scene last week with a superbly choreographed 60 Minutes special. On top of her argument that Facebook must more aggressively regulate political speech — and her calls for the Federal Government to more aggressively involve itself in these speech regulation activities — Haugen is also fluent in the BS-infused jargon of “natsec,” thus making her appear Extremely Serious. This is quite crucial. She’s naturally adept at rattling off impressive-sounding terms like “threat intelligence org,” the mere mention of which elicits nods of solemn affirmation from lawmakers, think tankers, and other similarly Serious individuals who gather to be imparted with her incredible wisdom.

“I have strong national security concerns about how Facebook operates today,” Haugen told Sen. Dick Blumenthal (D-CT), who then pledged to hold additional hearings exploring this other facet of Haugen’s alleged “whistleblowing.”

The title of “whistleblower” was bestowed so swiftly onto Haugen because it’s intended to confer virtue and selflessness, and by dint of being unanimously labeled a “whistleblower,” Haugen attains a kind of saintly moral status. But notice that “whistleblowers” only seem to receive this kind of coordinated official endorsement if they are telling powerful factions exactly what they want to hear, and Haugen has done just that. Once the saintly status is attained, questioning her motives or political prescriptions is deemed sacreligious. Try to find a single establishment orthodoxy as regards “Big Tech” and speech regulation that Haugen’s statements have undercut rather than strengthened, and you will come away empty-handed. Nevertheless, her trailblazing nobility has been extolled throughout the media and in Congress, with hardly a critical word even whispered.

“You are a 21st century American hero,” effused Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). “She is courageous, authoritative, and utterly convincing,” gushed Johana Bhuiyan, the Guardian’s chief tech reporter. (How much “courage” does it really take to waltz into the spotlight with a guarantee of mandatory adulation? Does anyone think that Haugen hasn’t already been deluged with further lucrative employment opportunities? What great sacrifices has she made, exactly? She’s even been invited back to address Facebook itself, notwithstanding the mortal danger one would have thought she faces as a “whistleblower.”)

“A lot of the coverage has been really, really positive,” Haugen reported at a Zoom event hosted by Yale Law School last week, and boy is she ever right. You’d almost think Haugen is an angelic figure who descended from the heavens, and not someone whose image has been finely-crafted by a professional PR operation, which just so happened to perfectly orchestrate her primetime TV debut as a lead-in for her hotly anticipated Senate testimony. She even touts herself explicitly as a “whistleblower,” which is kind of strange — usually “whistleblowers” just kind of humbly and even reservedly accept that title, rather than turning it into a multi-platform branding exercise. Then again, it’s also strange that Twitter had a coveted “blue check” waiting for her right as her 60 Minutes segment aired:

She also participated in a meeting with the European Commission last week and will soon be called to testify before the UK Parliament. Has any other “whistleblower” ever gotten such over-the-top Red Carpet treatment? If a “whistleblower” is immediately feted and glorified by the world’s most powerful institutions, perhaps “whistleblower” is not the most apt term.

“Functionary” might work better. Indeed, Haugen has conceded that she doesn’t even have an inherent problem with the massive power wielded by Facebook, she just thinks that power ought to be wielded more judiciously — in accordance with her political and cultural priorities — with the help of government regulators. “As an algorithmic specialist... I’m actually against the breaking up of Facebook,” she said at the Senate hearing last week. What she wants instead is a government jobs program for revolving-door functionaries such as herself. “There needs to be a regulatory home where someone like me could do a tour of duty after working at a place like [Facebook], and have a place to work on things like regulation,” Haugen implored. Creating a new regulatory agency where amateur Philosopher Kings like Haugen can comfortably ponder how to define “the common good,” a phrase she constantly uses as though she’s one of history’s great ethicists? And contemplate what speech should and should not be allowed on the internet? Don’t worry, Haugen would like you to know that the creation of this new Federal body is not, in fact, a “political” recommendation.

Because like any effective campaigner seeking to achieve a political outcome, Haugen insists that she is stridently non-political. “I don’t view this as a political issue,” Haugen has insisted in regards to her “whistleblowing.” Of course, that’s also music to the ears of the powerful actors she’s ingratiating herself to, because if she had a straightforwardly partisan motive, she’d be much easier to criticize and wouldn’t attract such an outpouring of compulsory veneration.

Clues about Haugen’s political orientation and objectives are not hard to come by, however. At the Yale event, Haugen went out of her way to clarify that achieving virality on Facebook is not always bad, notwithstanding all the horrors of “misinformation” and “divisive” content which she says gets algorithmically promoted to the masses, who by her lights are too stupid to deploy critical thinking skills in assessing the veracity of what they’re consuming online. Even with the adjustments to Facebook’s architecture that she proposes, Haugen maintains it would still be possible for “ideas whose time has come” — as she put it — to gain viral momentum. One such example of a Facebook-enabled “social movement” worth preserving according to Haugen is “Pantsuit Nation,” an anti-Trump group that she said “got something like 12 million members in two weeks” after the 2016 election. Why Haugen chose that particular group as an example of the good that can still come from Facebook, we can only speculate.

Haugen also claims that she wants to ensure that Facebook is able to “promote the good on the civic side.” But of course, what is “good” from the standpoint of “civics” is an inherently political question, however aggressively one chooses to disavow any partisan affiliation. Can you name anything more obviously political than rival notions about what constitutes the “civic good”? The thing with Haugen and other people who hold themselves out as unsullied, non-political actors is that their conception of “political” tends to be narrowly defined as Democrat vs. Republican, and because they’re not overtly declaring themselves to be partisan activists, they therefore lay claim to somehow not being “political” — even when they’re engaging in the most nakedly political activity imaginable. “Counter-espionage” against officially-designated adversaries of the US Government has nothing to do with “politics”? What a joke.

Haugen was previously a member of the “Civic Integrity Unit” at Facebook, which infamously lapped up US Intelligence Community propaganda and censored news coverage of Hunter Biden’s email archive on the (false) grounds that it was “Russian disinformation.” As shockingly discrediting as that episode was, Haugen has nonetheless expressed satisfaction with her work on the project: “We didn’t see a repeat of 2016,” she said of the 2020 election, “where you had nation-state actors distributing all sorts of things on the platform.” What things, exactly? Doesn’t matter! None of this is “political” anyway because Haugen has the minimal restraint required to refrain from explicitly festooning her Pantsuit with a collage of “Kamala in 2024” bumper stickers.

“If we want to live in a society where we treat each other with respect,” Haugen told her Yale admirers, “if we don’t want a cancel culture, we need to not have systems of information that choose for us what to focus on, and choose based on anger and extreme positions.” Well, what even constitutes an “extreme” position these days? I’ve been personally labeled some sort of dangerous extremist for reporting on nonsensical COVID policies, so I’m not sure why Haugen — or anyone she imagines will occupy the new government regulatory body she’s advocating — should be trusted to fashion themselves as the rightful adjudicators of “extremism.” But perhaps we’ll get more details soon, because Dana Bash of CNN excitedly announced that Haugen is “poised to meet with the January 6th committee.” An entity which we’re also supposed to believe is entirely divorced from “politics.”

For the record: Sure, excessive use of Facebook (or more commonly, Instagram) by children and teenagers can be a problem for their self-esteem, and may subject them to teasing, ridicule, and other social ostracization tactics common among kids both online and off. It can be especially bad for teen girls. However, “think of the children!” mantras tend to generate support for censorship precisely because they appeal to the natural instinct adults have to shield children from danger — including, in this instance, Republican Senators, many of whom would be wary of giving Big Tech additional censorship powers if not for the “child safety” angle shrewdly emphasized by Haugen.

I don’t even like or use Facebook, but the melodramatic scapegoating of the company for everything from girls’ body issues, to “stoking division” in society, to “destabilizing democracies” has gotten completely over-the-top — to the point that it’s become an excuse for power factions to neglect doing any introspection about their own culpability in social problems. What’s next, Facebook ate your homework?

It’s also notable that the capitulations Facebook made to elite pressure after the 2016 election — when they were accused of allowing “misinformation” and “Russian interference” to install Donald Trump in the White House — are now being decried as not having gone nearly far enough. They may have hired Haugen and a whole crew of like-minded functionaries to oversee speech-regulation efforts during the 2020 election, but that only resulted Haugen becoming an official “whistleblower” on the grounds that she didn’t have enough free rein to impose her preferred censorship dictates. Lesson: nothing will ever suffice for pro-censorship zealots, because they’ll always find another “content” area that they lack the ability to regulate to their liking.

Haugen attempts to skirt the idea that she’s promoting censorship by arguing that her suggested interventions are not “content-based,” but this doesn’t make any sense, because what she’s arguing for is that malevolent “content” be obscured to users based on subjective determinations (such as her own) about the supposed undesirability of that content. How else could one conclude that content being promoted on Facebook or any other social media platform is unduly “divisive” if not on the basis of an expressly “content-based” determination? It’s a clever little end-run that certainly has beguiled many of the public officials she’s attempting to convince, including censorship-wary Republicans, and also helps her create the impression that she’s not advocating for any sort of “political issue.” But the ultimate result of what she’s advocating is ever-more control over the content of political speech online. How that control gets exerted is a “political issue” regardless of how assiduously Haugen avoids expressing a personal partisan preference.

Mouthing platitudes about “National Security” along with the need to “Protect Children” is a perfect little pairing to generate maximum deference from powerful institutions, and deference is not what genuine “whistleblowers” are typically accorded. You have to admit, her PR handlers — whoever they are, exactly — have done a fantastic job.

[devil21]

It’s also notable that the capitulations Facebook made to elite pressure after the 2016 election — when they were accused of allowing “misinformation” and “Russian interference” to install Donald Trump in the White House — are now being decried as not having gone nearly far enough. They may have hired Haugen and a whole crew of like-minded functionaries to oversee speech-regulation efforts during the 2020 election, but that only resulted Haugen becoming an official “whistleblower” on the grounds that she didn’t have enough free rein to impose her preferred censorship dictates. Lesson: nothing will ever suffice for pro-censorship zealots, because they’ll always find another “content” area that they lack the ability to regulate to their liking.

Isn't it interesting how the Russian collusion story was endless "news" yet Biden dines out at expensive DC restaurants with obvious Chinese handlers yet not a peep is heard about it? I never doubted that Russians were in Donald's circle (his connections to Russian oligarchs are well documented) and played a part in his installation but the obvious hypocrisy here is mind-bending. Gee, it's almost like Russia and China are close allies or somethin' and taking turns handling our fake Presidents while implementing their own familiar brand of authoritarian rule over Americans under false pretenses. Maybe, just maybe "our" intel agencies and big tech doesn't work for Americans? Naaaa thats crazy talk....nm.

[oyarde]

Considering I've spent the past 4 months off of Facebook, I was not even aware that this happened.

You probably missed a lot of pretty young ladies looking for you .