{"id":1944,"date":"2021-10-12T17:37:23","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T18:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malvinartley.com\/blog.malvinartley.com\/?p=1944"},"modified":"2021-10-12T17:37:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T18:37:23","slug":"big-tech-and-frances-haugenots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malvinartley.com\/blog.malvinartley.com\/2021\/10\/12\/big-tech-and-frances-haugenots\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Tech and Frances’ Haugenots"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 5 Oct 2021 testimony was given before Congress by one Frances Haugen, a supposed whistleblower from Facebook, about the need for certain regulations to be placed upon the media giant. That was the day after Facebook went \u2018dark\u2019 for over six hours and lost significant stock value. Was it a warning shot? Who knows? But as to why Frances Haugen is a \u2018supposed\u2019 whistleblower, that will be outlined as we go along in this post. Her testimony comes a day after the release of the Pandora Papers, which have been outed by commentators in independent media as a US government psy-op, though it did serve some positive purposes. Just who is Frances Haugen, though, and what is the agenda the Beltway is seeking to force upon social media? And is Haugen a part of that agenda? There is more to this social media story than we are told.<\/span><\/p>\n

To recap the story thus far, and continuing from the post on the Pandora Papers<\/a><\/span>, the Facebook saga in its current incarnation began in September, when Frances Haugen, then an ex-employee of Facebook, leaked a tranche of tens of thousands of internal documents from Facebook to The Wall Street Journal<\/em>. Those documents and subsequent reporting on them have come to be known as the Facebook Files<\/a><\/span>. After the release of those documents, Haugen appeared on 3 Oct on Sixty Minutes<\/em><\/a><\/span> and revealed herself to be the source of the leak. She had left Facebook in May of this year. We\u2019ll pause here and have a look at Facebook\u2019s chart, below (bigger<\/a><\/span>):<\/span><\/p>\n

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Any internet entity is \u2018born\u2019 when it registers its DNS address online. For Facebook (FB), that was 11 Jan 2004, at 9:53 am, Menlo Park, CA, USA. For Facebook, it was first registered as \u2018thefacebook.com\u2019 and later changed the DNS. The initial registration gives a better working chart for FB than the 4 Feb 2004 chart that one often finds on the net. The public face of FB is the 4 Feb 2004 chart, whereas the first registration gives the nuts and bolts of the organization. We could say that FB is two-faced.<\/span><\/p>\n

The immediate standout in the chart with transits and directions is the transiting Pluto semisquare to the FB Ascendant, showing a radical change in one\u2019s circumstances. This is one of the \u2018life\u2019s milestone\u2019 transits or directions, as both the transit and direction last about the same amount of time for Pluto.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next standout is the combined Mercury\/Pandora transit opposite Eris and squaring the FB Sun, showing the shakeup and alarm at Facebook HQ, as described in Part I, the Pandora Papers. Pluto and Eris had been slowly hammering away at Facebook\u2019s reputation for the past year or two as they did the dance if their squares, affecting the FB Sun, in fact, since early 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

Further from the Pluto\/Eris square, FB was founded with its Sun square to Eris<\/a><\/span>, which is quite interesting regarding the mythology of Eris. One of the features of FB is the \u2018like\u2019 button, which goes across many social media platforms<\/a><\/span> and is one of Facebook\u2019s signature logos. So, whose posts are the fairest? This goes to the golden apple of Eris, which bore the inscription, \u201cTo the fairest\u201d. It is a source of angst to users of the FB platform when they do not receive \u2018Likes\u2019 for their posts, and a source of endorphin rush when they receive copious \u2018Likes\u2019. But it is also used by FB to mine user data and to tweak its algorithms, as well as being used to distort proper user metrics for advertisers. In other words, the Sun\/Eris square has been problematic for FB as well as divisive in many cases for the users of the platform. And this also goes to why FB has come under scrutiny for its practices.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since its inception, social media has been a wonderful medium for staying in touch with family and friends scattered across the globe. It has also been a boon for businesses to connect with people and for business transactions. These businesses must engage in those media platforms in order to survive these days, and the platforms derive their income from advertising. But that also brings in a darker side to the main platforms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Social media has been used by various groups for more nefarious and coercive purposes, too. The July protests in Cuba were enabled and promoted via a private local Facebook group<\/a><\/span>, but with many of the group members living outside Cuba, as in Miami. The group started as a kind of local marketplace. We have a similar local group here in Rovereto<\/a><\/span> used for local news. But the Cuban version was quickly taken over by right wing groups and began concerted anti-government posting. They have promised larger protests for this month and the next. A Twitter group funded by the NED has also played a hand in Cuban unrest recently, but had to abruptly shut down once it became too obvious who was funding it<\/a><\/span>. The US hand in Cuban protests<\/a><\/span> is well known to the Cuban government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Social media was also prominent in the Arab Spring uprisings. Activists in Arab Spring nations actively used social media platforms<\/a><\/span> to promote protests and spout anti-government propaganda. Some comment dubbed the Arab Spring uprisings as \u201cthe Facebook Revolutions<\/a><\/span>\u201d. Of course, that has also worked in the opposite direction, with governments de-platforming people and organizations that spread content against the state. This latter consideration is what brings us to the subject of this post, because what we observe in \u2018repressive governments\u2019 (some of which are) in the use of social media against dissidents and anti-government forces is precisely what is being proposed and brought to us via \u2018mission-creep\u2019 on social media platforms across the West, like Facebook and Twitter. Cue Frances Haugen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Continuing with the astrology for FB on the 5th<\/sup>, the losses which FB and Zuckerberg by extension experienced on the 4th<\/sup> and the Haugen testimony the day after are shown by the directed midpoints to Venus, shown in the red box in the 8th<\/sup> house. Venus rules the FB 8th<\/sup> house (losses) and the transiting Mercury\/Pandora conjunction was on the cusp of that house on the day, with the main direction being the directed Mars\/Saturn midpoint, which speaks of loss, sorrow and separation, this time induced by a female\u2019s (Venus) testimony. That will soon be followed by the directed Neptune\/Ascendant midpoint to Venus, paraphrasing:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAn antagonistic or cold emotional environment, the longing for acceptance, an impressionable person with regard to the feeling of popularity. – Painful experiences in popularity, to show dislike<\/strong><\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s woes are due to a variety of factors, and those only look set to increase. Even though FB is still the king of social media platforms, that status is changing, particularly among younger users<\/a><\/span>. It is no longer \u2018cool\u2019 to be on FB to many younger users, especially when their parents are on there, too. But even older users, concerned about privacy issues and annoyed by irritating ads, are searching for alternatives. Instagram and Snapchat are more preferred among younger users, even though FB owns Instagram. The directions to Venus in Facebook\u2019s chart show a rocky road ahead and a loss of status, increasing over the next few years, along with increasing oversight, shown by directed Pluto to the natal Saturn, followed a couple of years later by the directed MC to the natal Saturn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Haugen is a bit of an unknown quantity<\/span><\/a>. We don\u2019t know her family background or much of anything about her personal life. For more conspiratorial types this would be enough to start the alarm bells chiming. What we do know is that she has a MBA in business admin and her undergrad degree in computer and electrical engineering, specializing in algorithms. She has worked as project manager<\/a><\/span> for Yelp, Google, Pinterest and finally Facebook and cofounded a dating site called Hinge. She has made the rounds of Big Tech, and she knows how they market themselves. She also has\/had a six-figure salary and a net worth of a million+ dollars. Why is any of this important?<\/span><\/p>\n

Buried in one of her most extensive online bios<\/a><\/span> is a statement to the effect that Haugen has or had an interest of possibly becoming a lawyer and going into politics. She has long had an interest in civic\/social issues and politics. This is where her testimony before Congress becomes somewhat problematic, in that she has been touted as a whistleblower, yet her testimony and the company at which it is directed point to other factors at work. Keep in mind that now she has come out as a whistleblower at one of the biggest tech firms, her future for employment at such firms will hereafter come under intense scrutiny by potential employers. Where will that leave her? Perhaps she might enter a government department overseeing tech companies at some point, maybe? Who can say? The issue here is not about Haugen, but what she represents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her testimony before Congress was carefully scripted, with all the right catch-words for Congress and the media \u2013 FB policies representing a \u201cnational security issue\u201d, the threat of \u201cundermining our democracy\u201d and of \u201cundermining other democracies\u201d, \u201cmaking young girls and women feel bad about their bodies\u201d (What about boys and the effects upon or by them?), mentioning Ethiopia, Myanmar, China, Iran and Russia (Why?) and so on. For instance, no one outside of DC really cares about or even knows what is going on in Ethiopia. Why bring it up to Congress on national television? Her talking points, at least some of them, come straight out of national security-speak, as if her presentation had been groomed by national security organizations. And other talking points have clear emotional hooks in them.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a video worth watching where much of the preceding paragraph is laid out. But this sort of thing is not unique to Facebook. The sorts of activities Haugen mentions go on with other tech oriented organizations. The Canadian military, in the early days of the pandemic, took it upon themselves<\/a><\/span>, without government oversight and without telling anyone, to test their propaganda and information warfare techniques on an unsuspecting public:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for \u201cshaping\u201d and \u201cexploiting\u201d information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians<\/em> during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic<\/strong>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Does the bolded bit sound a little familiar in terms of social media censorship during the pandemic across Western societies, or about Trump and the 6 January Capitol fracas? It should, because the national security state within each nation uses such techniques. And in corporate social media, which they all are in the West, the temptation is strong to censor information that does not gibe with the particular leanings of the platform. And in the US, those platforms are heavily influenced by the Democratic Party and corporate interests. (I don\u2019t align myself with any political party in the US or elsewhere, for the record.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming back to Haugen, then, she did say some positive things in her testimony and brought up some changes that need to be made, such as that Facebook\u2019s algorithms that push certain toxic sites and conversations is wrong and needs to be stopped and that Instagram encourages toxic self-image messages to young women. Where her messaging becomes unclear and more evidently leaning to more government control is when she talks about giving oversight of platforms like FB to Congress and creating a government regulatory body to oversee content. Well, Facebook is already partnered with the Atlantic Council<\/a><\/span> \u2013 the primary think tank in Washington that molds government foreign policy \u2013 and was partnered with the now defunct neocon rag, The Weekly Standard<\/em><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Keep in mind, the \u2018fact checkers\u2019 like the Atlantic Council are only interested in their version of what they call the facts. Those facts would be the ones that further Atlanticist aims, i.e. Washington\u2019s agendas, like weeding out \u2018Russian trolls\u2019, making certain we see only the data from American\/Western-backed medical sources and making certain Trump stays de-platformed, even though the Biden administration continues many of Trump\u2019s policies<\/a><\/span>. These are just a few examples. You don\u2019t, for instance, see much in the way of pro-Russian, pro-Iranian, pro-Chinese, pro-Venezuelan content on Facebook, do you? And that brings us back to Haugen, again.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Q&A after Haugen\u2019s testimony about FB, she was repeatedly asked what her recommendations would be in order to fix the problems at the tech giant. Her answers to Congress have been described as \u2018some incredibly weak tea<\/a><\/span>\u2019:<\/span><\/p>\n