[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2, Scene 6 (Continued)

 [Image of Peter Thiel]

VO: This guy has a company that, I kid you not, is named Palantir.  

[Image of Palantir, Lord of the rings, Sauron etc

VO: For those of you not familiar, a Palantir is a crystal ball that got corrupted by Sauron in Lord of the Rings and used to psychologically manipulate the nations of the west for evil.  Peter Thiel sells data, anywhere he can, anyway he can, to advance an agenda for a small handful of billionares.

[Image of the 27 billionaires who fund the GOP]

VO: These guys fun a radical fascist party that wants to undermine democracy.  What does this have to do with facebook? Glad you asked.

[Image of Cambride Analytica members, images and polls]

VO: Remember when facebook used to be fun? Like Mafiawars and Farmtown? And another thing that was fun about it were those weird little polls like “What Power Ranger are you?” and the like.  Well, Cambridge Analytica used the API (a tool to let programs talk to each other) to trojan horse one of these little polls that then stripped huge amounts of your data onfacebook to the fascist ecosphere.  This is a big deal, and in Europe, where they have real data protections, Facebook was fined billions of dollars for this crap.

[Images of Brexit, Trump, Desnatis, psyops, propaganda, jingoism]

VO: But this breach help microtarget fascist influence for Brexit, Trump and Desantis.   You have to understand, this wasn’t just taking data and using it to find how people might vote; they used it for something called ‘psychological targeting’ where they found those who were the most vulnerable to psychological manipulation on issues like immigration, class warfare or conspiracy theories.  It isn't an accident that MAGA is filled with conspiracy laden Q followers or Pizzagate believers; it's by design and the man who helped all this happened was Peter Theil.

[Images of Jan 6 riots and Proud Boys]

VO: Make no mistake, there’s a direct link between Cambridge Analytica and the Jan 6 riots.  Without Facebook, Trump likely wouldn't have been elected.  Without Trump, the radical GOP would at least still be pro America even if they were still anti worker and anti middle class.    

[Images of Mark Zuckerberg and 2018 Testimony]

VO: In 2018 Mark Zuckerberg testified to congress apologizing for their actions; but any actions that Facebook has taken have been temporary.  A lot of the controls they put into place, including restricting trump after 1/6/2020 have been removed.  It's like it never even happened.   In the United States, a ton of companies investigated Facebook, but basically nothing even happened.  As more and more data breaches happened, Mark just changed the name of the company to Meta, spent billions of dollars chasing virtual reality and no one can do anything because he is the only person that controls the company.

[Images of Mark]

VO: Thats important to remember that Mark is the ONLY person who controls facebook, which means that he is ultimately responsible for everything it does.  And the slide of the United States towards Fascism, is DIRECTLY attributable to the lax policies and quiet efforts to help conservatives and the billionaire class.  Mark and Mark alone could change it and Mark and Mark alone does not.  Let’s remember that as we discuss the third great sin of Facebook.

[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2, Scene 6 (Continued)

 [Scenes of Massive Facebook size]

VO: Our scrappy little start up grew up.  Now it has 2.93 BILLION (that’s Billion with a B) users, or in a planet of 8 billion people, almost half have facebook.  Odds are, if you have an internet access; you have a facebook account or at least an account with Instagram, Whatsapp or one of Mark’s other companies.   In 2022, it earned over 140 BILLION and since it started in 2011, its earned over half a TRILLION dollars.  (Trillion with a T).   It is the most used source of news, the biggest source of advertisement, and the go to place to socialize for many people and groups in nearly every nation on Earth.  So what makes it so evil?

[Images of Mark in a Top Hat and Montebank Cape]

VO: Is it because they tied some poor lady and her dog to the railroad tracks? Is it because they made a volcano lair and wanted to hold the earth ransom with nuclear missiles? Maybe establish Orbital Supremecy so they could ransom the Earth to build a giant statue of him?  No.  Far far worse.

[Images of Random people]

VO: The crimes of Facebook are far too many to mention but we’re going to do three big ones.  We’ll start with little evil ‘e.’  If you use the logic of the show the Good Place, and assigned people good points for good things and bad points for bad things; nobody beats Mark.  The first crime is breaking up friends and family.  And it isnt deliberate, not really; but apathy can still be a form of evil, and in this case the worst evil.

[Image of a complex rube goldberg machine]

VO: The heart of Facebook is the Algorhythm.  That’s basically a complex mathematical formula to decide what it is you see.  All the big guys use them, but Facebook does it better.  Since it knows more about you than anyone else (except maybe Google), it takes all of the things you like, you want, you are or that you click or watch and feeds it back into the algorithm  Sounds harmless, right?  I mean, its ok if you know its addictive…right? Well…we’ll get back to that.  But the point is, it IS addictive.  And Facebook knows it is.  And advertisers do too.  The problem comes from the fact that, as a faceless amoral corporation, they act ammoral.  Which means, except for things they think will cost them prestige and money (porn, suicide, and sometimes violence), Facebook will show you what people watch and clicks.  Which means

[Image of Soviet Agents and Bad Bomb Throwing Bolshiviks]

VO: When bad guys figure that out and wanna lie and cheat and steal, they can put out lies specifically designed to get clicks.  And so those clicks get more clicks, and people believe their lies, and those lies are picked up by the bad guys and made worse, which feeds on itself.  And Facebook doesnt care.  And that makes people argue.  

[Images of Fighting, and cracks between friends and family]

VO: And that means real people argue about the lies.  So friendships and family are shattered.  The lies are bad enough (and we’ll get back to that) but the greatest crime Facebook ever committed was to break up families, break up friends and even whole communities as they argue about the lies while Facebook sits back and counts the money, laughing all the way to the bank.  Who doesnt have a facebook friend that they lost? A family member that doesnt talk to them anymore because of something they said or did on facebook? Even when those relationships are damaged, sometimes the wound is still there, festering.   

[Image of Mark shrugging]

VO: And all so Mark could make a buck.  And remember, he controls it utterly….so the blame is literally all on him.  He could change this, any time he wants, and he doesnt; except the minimum he can get away with.  

Swamp Castle - Closing Comments

I talk about my experience with the writing track at SFWA and World Con 2011.

Check out this episode!

[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2, Scene 6 - The Most Evil Company In The World

 Scene 6 - The Most Evil Company in the World

VO: We could talk a lot more about how Evil Amazon is….but we all know you’re here for the star of our show

[Elon Musk with a stupid smille comes sliding on to the stage]

VO: No, not you

[Gengis Khan slides on.]

VO: No.

[Stalin]

VO: No

[Rockfeller, Margaret Thatcher, Bush, Reagan, Trump, Henry the Eighth]

VO: No no no no no no, the most EVIL Person in the world who owns the most evil company in the world

[Mark Zuckerberg slides to the center of the stage]

Audience Side Effect: oooooooooooooooooooooh

[Screen shifts to a Facebook Logo]

VO: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence yes?  Well just why is Facebook the most evil company in the world? More evil than all these guys

[Screen shows East India Company, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Apple all come on to the screen]

VO: Put together

[Logos come together and forms Facebook Logo]

VO: Several years ago, there was a movie that did a better job than we ever could that told the origin of facebook

[Screen shows images of the Social Network]

VO: The Social Network by Aaron Sorkin.  (Read Quickly) TLDR, Once upon a time, there was an amoral but adorkable guy named Mark Zuckerberg who had a solid idea, you know, for kids, no wrong movie, to take MySpace and increase it to steroids because he couldnt get a data and saw people and friendships as commodities and so it started as the facebook for collage (to get dates) and it was really super successful and everyone started using it so you could friend your mom, your roommate, your sisters cousins former roommate and even people who were absolutely nothing and smart people told Mark to learn the lesson of Steve Jobs and lock the company stock up so no one could ever steal it from him and so he stole Facebook 1.0 from the bros who helped bring us Bitcoin and Cryptofascism and made Facebook 2.0 which is one of the largest most powerful companies in the world and Mark lived happily ever after and Mark won and yaaaay Mark and everyone loves Mark because they love the facebook right? YAAAAY MARK.

Screen Goes Dark.

VO: Ahem.  Anyway.

[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2 - Scene 5 - Jar Jar Bezos

 [Scene] Musical score starts, Images of warehouses and lemonaid interspersed with smiling employees and lemons and lemonade and if possible pouring lemonade.

VO: One upon a time

There was a man Bezos

And he started a company 

Called Amazon 

That made electronic books for pesos

It burned up 

Most of the good bookstores

And left us Barnes and Noble

And turned the publishing industry

Into a pile of rubble

But then Jeff slowly changed

It to an everything store

He saw what Walmart did

And knew he wanted more

So bit by bit 

He changed amazon

Into a mighty beast

And made his own workers

Finger who was valued least

Suicide prevention 

Then became a thing in tech

Token pretense to worker health

Was the least they could do Heck

They coordinated to their devs all down

To make sure their takehome pay

Was aligned across the industry

And the worker got no say

Then he built warehouses

All across the land

Where you had to work your most

And each break was timed

If you took to long you would be toast

So to ensure your alacrity

We quietly do recommend 

You use a jar for your -

Amazon.com

Swamp Castle - Unfood

Freight is trapped on a ship designed for weight loss and while he can eat illusionary food to pass the time, his body needs a minimum caloric intake to survive.  Body horror and definite trigger warning as he does what it takes to survive.  Author's commentary and series conclusion the week after this.

Check out this episode!

Considering

 That moment when you are 9000 words from finishing the first of a five book series (and it is your best to date) but you are still and 8 out of 10 writer vs 9 out of 10 poet...

And that every minute you write Armor of Stone you could be writing the Queen in Blue....