{"id":269405,"date":"2018-03-30T15:59:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-30T19:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=269405"},"modified":"2021-10-12T08:29:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T12:29:08","slug":"facebooks-problem-youe-re-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/03\/30\/facebooks-problem-youe-re-product\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook\u2019s Problem: You\u2019re the Product"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: The Facebook memo, ladies and gentlemen, this kind of faded from the news rather quickly, but it is out there. “2016 Facebook Memo Defends ‘Ugly\u2019 Growth Strategy, Even if it Gets People Killed<\/a> — A Facebook Inc. executive wrote a memo in 2016 that said the company\u2019s strategy of growth at any cost could have disastrous consequences — even cause deaths — yet still be ‘justified.\u2019 In the leaked memo, published Thursday by Buzzfeed –” It\u2019s the same outfit that published the Trump dossier. And the Facebook executive, Vice President Andrew “The Boz” Bosworth “talked about the “ugly” side of the social network\u2019s impact on the world.”<\/p>\n

\"\"Quote: “So we connect more people. … That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. 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. We connect people. Period. That\u2019s why all the work we do in growth is justified.”<\/p>\n

Now, it came time for Bosworth to say (imitating Bosworth), “No, no, no, I didn\u2019t mean any of that, and I apologize to anybody who might have been offended by it.” Apology 101. “My statement on the recent Buzzfeed story containing a post I wrote in 2016.” I didn\u2019t agree with what I wrote. I was only playing devil\u2019s advocate in a memo be circulated only within the company. It was a devil\u2019s advocacy memo. It was not meant to express policy or anything like that.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re trying to walk this back. “‘Having a debate around hard topics like these is a critical part of our process, and to do that effectively we have to be able to consider even bad ideas, if only to eliminate them,\u2019 he said Thursday. The memo shows some insight into how Facebook executives recognized — or ultimately failed to recognize — the unintended consequences of its platform. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Buzzfeed that at the time he disagreed strongly with the memo, and that ‘We\u2019ve never believed the ends justify the means.'”<\/p>\n

So they\u2019re in trouble. The memo\u2019s interesting, and some people claiming that it\u2019s being reported out of context and so forth, fake news, don\u2019t know. But I haven\u2019t yet heard or seen Mrs. “Lean In” Sheryl Sandberg weigh in on this, but it does appear that Facebook has got a problem. And you know, any company, folks, any company that offers its services free, it means only one thing. It means you are the customer. You\u2019re the product, actually, and you are the one being bought and sold. And that\u2019s exactly how Facebook is structured.<\/p>\n

Under Armour. You hear about this? Under Armour, massive data breach from its fitness app, 150 million people use that app. Another big data breach. Not sure exactly when it happened, but once again, this is forcing people to deal with the fact that their data is not totally secure and private no matter where they put it.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Grand Rapids, Michigan. Doug, Open Line Friday. You\u2019re next. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Just an honor to speak with you on this Good Friday. Right to my point. I\u2019d really like to talk Zuckerberg or —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Sure. Have at it. Whatever you want. It\u2019s Open Line Friday. Go anywhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"CALLER: Yeah. I mean, he did that meet-and-greet tour around the country, so he\u2019s out there talking to people for, what was that, last year, the year before?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, the years run together, but I think it was shortly after the Trump — Trump had \u2019em turned upside down, so, yeah, probably the last year.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah. He\u2019s definitely a far-left liberal. He\u2019s always been giving his data to the Obama White House. I mean, it\u2019s well known that he\u2019s definitely on that side. So now on the surface they\u2019ve painted him as a victim. And so as now a victim, he\u2019s —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, who\u2019s painting him as a victim?<\/p>\n

CALLER: I think this whole thing could be a setup because —<\/p>\n

RUSH: By who?<\/p>\n

CALLER: By the Democratic side and the liberals, to bring Zuckerberg in to run for office.<\/p>\n

RUSH: They\u2019re destroying him. How could he run for office after this? The guy\u2019s a thief. He steals everybody\u2019s identity and sells it to everybody else.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, on that side of it, I\u2019ve heard rumors that he\u2019s using this to create artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, okay, I see your line of thinking on this. And I know what you\u2019re basing it on, and you\u2019re basing it on something that did happen. Folks, Google and Facebook were in bed with the Obama campaigns and presidency! Google more so than Facebook. Google, you could look at White House logs. The number of times the CEO, Eric Schmidt, was in the West Wing meeting with Obama, it\u2019d blow your mind. They practically had an office.<\/p>\n

Google was, for all intents and purposes, the data and IT weaponizing aspect of the Obama campaign and presidency. And Facebook is right there with \u2019em. And when it comes to Facebook, we\u2019ve had the sound bites here where Obama campaign people brag about sucking up, hoovering up all of the Facebook data for Obama\u2019s reelection campaign in 2012. And we\u2019ve had the New York Times stories talking about the geniuses in the Obama campaign that maximized the usage of all this Facebook data.<\/p>\n

Cambridge Analytica comes along and gets a measly 50 million people worth of data, and all of a sudden it\u2019s a crime, whereas Zuckerberg openly, willingly worked with Obama to provide all of the user data for all of Facebook\u2019s users to the Obama campaign, and there was no thought of it being criminal, there was no thought of it violating federal election law, campaign finance, none of that. It was pure genius.<\/p>\n

So on one hand you could see that Facebook\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg could be being groomed for further use in the Democrat Party because he has at his disposal everything there is to know about everybody in America who is a Facebook member. Facebook\u2019s got two billion users worldwide. Our population\u2019s 300 plus million. He\u2019s got all kinds of things. But now, all was fine when nobody knew this was going on. But now, now Zuckerberg is persona non grata.<\/p>\n

To be grooming this guy to run for office, I can see where some in the Democrat Party might want him to because he\u2019s young and when you strip away all the bad PR here, the real great benefit to Zuckerberg and he\u2019s figured out a way to get every American to tell him everything there is about them, even if they don\u2019t want to. Did you see that Facebook, with some of their apps, has even found a way to listen to you in your home?<\/p>\n

\"\"I\u2019ve had people tell me — I don\u2019t know if this is true — I\u2019ve had people tell me they\u2019ve been on the phone talking with a friend and in the conversation they talked about a place they might want to go to vacation, and within hours on their phone there\u2019s an ad for that place, and they were talking on the phone. They were not emailing or texting. And they didn\u2019t think anything about it until they heard that Facebook might have been able to listen to people through Facebook apps<\/a>. Your phone has a microphone, obviously, and your computer has a microphone.<\/p>\n

Now, Facebook, the customers are the product. Facebook would sell everything they learned about you to advertisers. Now, in politics, that is a gold mine. There\u2019s no question. But here. Let me ask this question again. I know Zuckerberg is… is he 30 years old yet? I\u2019m sorry to burden you here with the way I think about things, but here\u2019s a kid — a kid!<\/p>\n

You have to understand, when I grew up, when I was a kid, I was a kid! I was not an adult. I was not brilliant. I was not prescient. I was a kid. You had to go through being a kid before being treated like an adult. You would not be treated like an adult until you were one. (interruption) Thirty-three. Okay. When I was growing up, you weren\u2019t going to be given a lot of responsibility and a large salary just because you demanded it or wanted it. You had to have some experience. It had to be positive. You had to have a decent kind of resume.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s this kid, goes to Harvard and creates, as an avocation, Facebook. He\u2019s trying to meet girls. The age-old quest of every guy: meet girls. So he creates something called The Facebook. And he\u2019s putting it together while he\u2019s a student, and it grows and grows. Long before he hit 30, he figured out that the real gold mine he had was collecting every bit of information on every user he could. He was himself hoovering up information.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t providing anything other than an opportunity for other people to connect with each other. Did he have this idea on his own, or did one of his early investors, or did one of his friends — but to me it\u2019s amazing. I know we have prodigies and special people and people that are advanced way beyond their years, but what Facebook has become, just take away the politics of it for a moment and the momentary controversies; it\u2019s a massively successful, out-of-this-world successful thing, creating an audience of two billion?<\/p>\n

Look at it that way. An audience of two billion. Nobody has done that. Nobody has that. CNN doesn\u2019t even have a million. And if you take away the monopoly they have in the airports, take away the pornographic star interviews, you practically have nothing over there, and they\u2019re seasoned experts!<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019ve always thought that it was Sean Parker, one of Zuckerberg\u2019s earliest confidants and partners, that told him what he had there, a gold mine that he could mine if he wanted to, the guy that founded Napster, so forth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Any company that offers its services free, it means only one thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":269446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nFacebook\u2019s Problem: You're the Product - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/03\/30\/facebooks-problem-youe-re-product\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Facebook\u2019s Problem: You're the Product - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Any company that offers its services free, it means only one thing.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/APP-033018-Facebook-Zucker.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"George Prayias\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/\",\"name\":\"The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"description\":\"Excellence In Broadcasting\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/03\/30\/facebooks-problem-youe-re-product\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/APP-033018-Facebook-Zucker.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/APP-033018-Facebook-Zucker.jpg\",\"width\":640,\"height\":360},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/03\/30\/facebooks-problem-youe-re-product\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/03\/30\/facebooks-problem-youe-re-product\/\",\"name\":\"Facebook\\u2019s Problem: You're the Product - 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