Jon Snow’s Real Beef With Facebook

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• "We are lefties, so, when we do it, it really is good for you. If someone else does it, who is not under our control, they are evil racist, fascists who just want to kill you, so therefore they must pay us money."

• "Most readers of the Guardian and the New York Times read online. We all depended on terrestrial advertising to support what we do. That source of funding is evaporating."

  Is that suserration I hear the distant sound of the world outside of Islington cheering?

• Democracies have a super-human job to do to preserve the glories of the internet while preserving us from the abuse, filth and criminality that we now know is all too easy to conjure through it.

  Sounds like the Guardian is having some real competition. At least when it comes to spreading abuse, filth, and criminality. Let us remember that this is the paper that reported on George H W Bush's father helping a refugee from Nazi Germany who ended up in Auschwitz by accusing him of supporting the Nazis and their War machine.

• I would like to point out that images of John Snow singing "Fuck the Tories" was fake news. Mr Snow would never resort to abuse. You can tell it's fake because it was never shown on Channel 4.

• 'We all depended on terrestrial advertising to support what we do. That source of funding is evaporating'

  Is that the sound of the world's smallest violin playing a sonata in sympathy? As far as I am concerned the end of C4 News, The Guardian and New York Times cannot come too soon...

• Lying leftist cockrot of the week.

  Were I PM there would be a weekly "Fireside Chat" during which that weeks pack of leftist lies would be denounced followed by a segment near the end of the broadcast where I announced what counter-measures would be taken.

• Mr Snow says, in effect, "I wanted billions of readers worldwide to read me pouring my heart out through my blog. But I am aghast that a Trump-affiliated organization would use it to figure out what I am like."

  I really feel for you, man. It is tough being a product of government schools and thinking that individuals don't really need privacy and autonomy and that they are no one unless they Change The World, which implies that the world knows it is they. But you accepted the terms, in which a giant corporation either gives away a good or lets you buy it for less than they think is its fair value, then collects personal gossip for the express purpose of selling it. More information Inspectors is not the answer.

• And, according to an article in Mother Jones, Cambridge Analytica were a bunch of moneygrabbing snake oil salesthings:

  https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/03/the-real-story-behind-the-rise-and-fall-of-cambridge-analytica/

  In other words, they ripped off Trump Inc masterfully.

• I represent the Moral High Ground Coffee Pot Company. It is terribly unfair that the makers of instant coffee don't give us a fairer share. I demand that we get 10p from the sale of every tin of instant. While I'm at it, my brother-in-law from the Shiny Leather Formal Shoe Company would like a fairer share from the makers of trainers too. Ditto my mum from the Manly Cuff Link Company, only she can't find anyone to pass the blame onto.

• according to an article in Mother Jones, Cambridge Analytica were a bunch of moneygrabbing snake oil salesthings

  Probably. They are/were internet marketers after all.

  Remember, the Narrative goes like this: the electorate is a collection of gormless, gullible, pants-on-the-head wibbling maroons who are very easily tricked by stuff posted on Facebook by the Russians Cambridge Analytica into voting for Brexit Trump.

  Now, it's certainly true that half the voting population is of below average intelligence, which is why Diane Abbott is still an MP. But the supposed ability of Facebook likes and shares to swing election results is unproven at best. Especially when you consider how social media actually works in practice - it's a series of echo chambers.

  It's much more likely that the same boring old factors continue to decide elections: overall satisfaction with the status quo, the perceived relative merits of the candidates, and turnout. It seems unlikely a statistically significant percentage of people suddenly changed their minds on a matter of significant public debate based on some spicy memes or what-have-you on the internet.

  (NB, Cambridge Analytica were so good that Trump's campaign seems to have dropped them before the election.)

  But why, then, the Narrative? Bungo is right and Tim is right. But I think there's something deeper at play as well.

  An American critic once famously expressed amazement when Richard Nixon won the 1972 election, saying "but nobody I know voted for him!" - or words to that effect.

  In 2016, nobody the media knew voted for Brexit or Trump. They were - sincerely, I think - baffled and blindsided by the results. Very quickly, that turned to pain and anger.

  Conspiracy theories are one way by which anxious people try to explain the world without going through the additional pain of reexamining their own beliefs. So no, no... it couldn't be that Trump was a better candidate than they thought, or that the EU was far less popular than they'd assumed.

  No, it was a conspiracy of some sort. A stab in the back, as folks used to say in Germany. Fake News, the Russians, Cambridge Analytica, they stole it from us, precious.

  • The all-time winner for when the American people reject something that is self-evident to you: Peter Jennings stating on ABC's World News Tonight that Bill Clinton's loss of the Congress in 1994 was an American "temper tantrum."

    PS - Tim isn't right or wrong; his only move here was to introduce the article's author, Wessex Man.

  • "Conspiracy theories are one way by which anxious people try to explain the world without going through the additional pain of reexamining their own beliefs"

    Spot on.

    The "liberal establishment" for want of a better expression have been in the driving seat for around 30 years. I think Band Aid may be the start in the UK. They've grown so accustomed to their current state that they can't process what's going on. But it is nothing short of the death of the liberal establishment.

  • Exactly so Steve.

    The womiccumalobus trash were and (pardon the pun) remain absolutly OUTRAGED that the plebs told them to fuck off.