Facebook says it will remove news from its US site if a new law is passed giving newsrooms collective bargaining rights.
As they and Google did in Australia, then backed down.
Similar in France; not up-to-date but I recall some deal is in progress.
The idea of Google paying news sites to list them in search results is among the looniest things Iâve heard in a while.
âŚthey didnât actually do that, right? As an Australian, I know this situation was eventually compromised on, but Google isnât paying news sites to list them in resultsâŚright?
1 Like
âremove newsâ
Dinosaurs do a lot of thrashing about as they die.
1 Like
Thought the same, but apparently not. A success allegedly too, but theyâd say that regardless:
Google director of government affairs and public policy in Australia Lucinda Longcroft said the company had âfurthered our significant contribution to the Australian news industryâ by signing deals representing 200 mastheads across the country and âthe majority of these outlets are regional or localâ.
On searching it looks like the US (cited up top), NZ, UK, all looking at this as a possible thing to emulate.
1 Like
letâs see if this makes senseâŚ
- Facebook was founded with CIA seed money through itâs investment firm In-Q-Tel (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here)
- DARPA cancels LifeLog the same day Facebook was launched (see here, here, here, here and, once again, here)
- CIA has been embedded in mainstream media (and not just the US) since approximately forever (see here, here, here and here)
- now the CIA is just going to throw the towel in because itâs too expensive to advertise on the platform it âhelpedâ found
conclusion: this story is probably FAKE NEWS (probably=is)
carry on 
The US state certainly has vey close links with Google frm the start, but I am not aware that this was the case with Facebook. Where in those hyperlinks @itsMe is there evidence of CIA seed money in Facebook? Maybe I missed something.
On Australia, as I remember it, the deal was for usage of longer form content in the Google News Showcase product rather than for standard search (URL, Title, short snippet). Iâd expect the same in other countries, though I know that France were pushing very agressively for a deal over even these minimal search results data; at least when I spoke to the guy leading this in a webinar two years ago.
hi Colin
you have to dig through the links in the articles to get to the meat, and some only provide context rather than direct evidence of CIA seed money being used to kick off Facebook, but the meat is there - here is some of itâŚ
from In-Q-Tel - The Corbett ReportâŚ
The cancellation of LifeLog was reported by Wired.com on February 4, 2004. That very same day, a Harvard undergrad named Mark Zuckerberg officially launched âTheFacebook.com,â the first incarnation of Facebook, which collects vast amounts of data on its users, offering them the promise of âa powerful automated multimedia diary and scrapbook,â but, as has become more and more evident in recent years, using and selling that data for ulterior motives.
But it is not just this interesting coincidence that connects Facebook to DARPA. Once again, the money that helped âTheFacebookâ go from a Harvard âstudent projectâ to a multi-billion user internet giant involved a relocation to Silicon Valley and copious injections of venture capital from intelligence-connected insiders. Facebook moved to Palo Alto, California, in 2004 and received its first investment of $500,000 from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. But the real money, and the real interest in Facebook, arrived in 2005, in the form of a $12.7 million investment from Accel Partners and an additional $1 million from Accelâs Jim Breyer. Breyer, it turns out, had some interesting connections of his own.
NARRATOR: First venture capital money totaling $500,000 came to The Facebook from venture capitalist Peter Thiel, founder and former CEO of PayPal. He also serves on the board of radical conservative group Vanguard DAC. Further funding came in the form of $12.7 million dollars from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accelâs manager, James Breyer, was former chair of the National Venture Capital Association. Breyer served on the National Venture Capital Associationâs board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. This firm works in various aspects of information technology and intelligence, including, most notably, nurturing data mining technologies. Breyer has also served on the board of BBN Technologies, a research and development firm known for spearheading the ARPANET, or what we know today as the internet.
In October of 2004, Dr. Anita Jones climbed on board BBN along with Gilman Louie, but what is most interesting is Dr. Jonesâ experience prior to joining BBN. Jones herself served on the board of directors for In-Q-Tel and was previously the director of defense research and engineering for the US Department of Defense. Her responsibilities included serving as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense and overseeing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
This goes farther than just the initial appearances. DARPA shot to national fme in 2002, when knowledge of the existence of the Information Awareness Office (IAO) came to light. The IAO stated its mission was to gather as much information as possible about everyone in a centralized location for easy perusal by the United States government, including but not limited to: internet activity; credit card purchase history; airline ticket purchases; car rentals; medical records; educational transcripts; driverâs licenses; utility bills; tax returns; and any other available data.
SOURCE: Facebook CIA connection
It should come as no surprise, then, that the ex-director of DARPA, Regina Dugan, was hired by Google in 2012 to head its Advanced Technology and Projects group, and that she was then hired by Facebook in 2016 to head their âBuilding 8â research group focusing on experimental technologies like brain sensors and artificial intelligence. Nor is it a surprise to learn that DARPA is already working to weaponize Facebookâs Oculus virtual reality technology for fighting cyberwar.
Nor is it a surprise that Facebook seed money investor Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, developed Palantirâa data-mining and analysis tool used by the NSA, FBI, CIA and other intelligence, counterterrorism and military agenciesâfrom PayPalâs own fraud-detection algorithm. Or that In-Q-Tel was one of the first outside investors in the Palantir technology, which has gained notoriety in recent years for âusing War on Terror tools to track American citizens.â
Nor is it a surprise to learn that Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and current technical advisor to Google parent company Alphabet, is now the chairman of the Pentagonâs âDefense Innovation Board,â which seeks to bring the efficiency and vision of Silicon Valley to the Defense Departmentâs high-tech innovation initiatives.
Nor is it surprising that Schmidt, in addition to being a member of the elitist Trilateral Commission, is on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, a cabal of financiers, industrialists, high-ranking public officials, military brass and royalty that has been meeting annually in nearly total secrecy since 1954. Nor is it surprising that the Bilderberg Group now counts a number of Silicon Valley stalwarts among its ranks, from Schmidt and Thiel to Palantir CEO Alex Karp and former Electronic Frontiers Foundation chair Esther Dyson.
In fact, it would be more surprising to find a major Silicon Valley company that was not connected to the US military or to the US intelligence agencies one way or another.
from Meet In-Q-Tel, the CIAâs Venture Capital Firm (Preview) - The Corbett ReportâŚ
Two of the names that come up most often in connection with In-Q-Tel, however, need no introduction: Google and Facebook.
The publicly available record on the Facebook/In-Q-Tel connection is tenuous. Facebook received $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel, whose manager, James Breyer, now sits on their board. He was formerly the chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, whose board included Gilman Louie, then the CEO of In-Q-Tel. The connection is indirect, but the suggestion of CIA involvement with Facebook, however tangential, is disturbing in the light of Facebookâs history of violating the privacy of its users.
from How Palantir Conquered the World - The Corbett ReportâŚ
Imagine a company that knows everything about everyone. A company that is equally at ease helping banks identify fraud as it is helping intelligence agencies track down enemies of the state. A company that can combine pictures of you with your cell phone location data, emails youâve written, your health records and credit card purchases and thousands of other pieces of electronic data to paint an intimate portrait of your lifeâa portrait that any would-be investigator can pull up with a few keystrokes. A company that can target you anywhere in the world at any time.
Now stop imagining that company, because it already exists. Itâs called Palantir Technologies.
Founded by billionaire PayPal co-founder and Facebook early investor Peter Thiel, this plucky little Silicon Valley startup has long been the darling of the US military and the intelligence community, and itâs increasingly the darling of the corporate world. And-given Palantirâs ability to surveil, track and, ultimately, control every aspect of your daily life-it isnât hard to see why.
from Episode 358 - The 5G Dragnet - The Corbett ReportâŚ
One answer to this question lies in the fact that intelligence agenciesâwhether Chinese or Russian, CIA or MI6, Mossad or CSISâwill make use of the vast amounts of data flowing through these networks to spy on the public. In fact, the members of the so-called âintelligence communityâ do not even hide this fact; they openly gloat about it.
In 2012, then-CIA Director David Petraeus admitted at a summit hosted by In-Q-Tel, the CIAâs venture capital firm, that the CIA was not just able to but actually eager to use these smart devices as a tool for spying:
ââTransformationalâ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,â Petraeus was quoted as saying, âparticularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. [. . .] Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters â all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.â
from Episode 325 - The Information-Industrial Complex - The Corbett ReportâŚ
But how many people know the flip side of this coin, the one that demonstrates the pervasive government influence in shaping and directing these companiesâ rise to success, and the companiesâ efforts to aid the government in collecting data on its own citizens? How many know, for instance, that Google has a publicly acknowledged relationship with the NSA? Or that a federal judge has ruled that the public does not have the right to know the details of that relationship? Or that Google Earth was originally the brainchild of Keyhole Inc., a company that was set up by the CIAâs own venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, using satellite data harvested from government Keyhole-class reconnaissance satellites? Or that the former CEO of In-Q-Tel, Gilman Louie, sat on the board of the National Venture Capital Association with Jim Breyer, head of Accel Partners, who provided $12 million of seed money for Facebook?
from How Big Brother Seeded the Tech Revolution - The Corbett ReportâŚ
A mere degree of separation from In-Q-Tel itself, however, are the venture capitalists who funded, amongst other ventures, PayPal, Facebook and Google. Former In-Q-Tel CEO Gilman Louie sat on the board of the National Venture Capital Association with Jim Breyer, head of Accel Partners, who provided 12 million dollars of seed money for Facebook. Another early investor in Facebook was Peter Thiel, former co-founder and CEO of PayPal, and Bilderberg Group steering committee member.> A mere degree of separation from In-Q-Tel itself, however, are the venture capitalists who funded, amongst other ventures, PayPal, Facebook and Google. Former In-Q-Tel CEO Gilman Louie sat on the board of the National Venture Capital Association with Jim Breyer, head of Accel Partners, who provided 12 million dollars of seed money for Facebook. Another early investor in Facebook was Peter Thiel, former co-founder and CEO of PayPal, and Bilderberg Group steering committee member.
from Is the CIA behind FACEBOOK? | Intel TodayâŚ
Palantir Technologies, Inc. is a private American software and services company, specializing in big data analysis. Founded in 2004, Palantirâs original clients were federal agencies of the United States Intelligence Community (USIC). In-Q-tel, the venture arm of the CIA, funded the projet right from the start with 2 US$ million.
Palantir developed its technology by computer scientists and analysts from intelligence agencies over three years, through pilots facilitated by In-Q-Tel. The software concept grew out of technology developed at PayPal to detect fraudulent activity, much of it conducted by Russian organized crime syndicates. The company said computers alone using artificial intelligence could not defeat an adaptive adversary. Palantir proposed using human analysts to explore data from many sources, called intelligence augmentation. [WIKIPEDIA]
Now, a CIA officer claims the Agency developed FACEBOOK too! CIA Agent Tom Booker said so in a recent interview.
"I mean come on, Iâve got shoes older than him and he thinks he invented this incredibly huge communication system and spying tool.
This all began when he âaccidentallyâ overhead some sexy girls talking about it at college, then was introduced to some computer experts at a frat party who just happened to be 10 years older than everyone else and wearing suits.
We only chose him because he seemed astonishingly gullible."
Virtually all of this detail is not new to me at least, but yes much unknown to most.
You would expect Peter Thiel to have know VCs at Accel and In-Q-Tel. Itâs a small world so those links prove nothing new about early funding of Facebook.
The bit I had never seen before is about this Tom Brooker. However the statement has no further information or citation. And frankly doesnât come across as very plausible.
i would posit that thereâs a much simpler path toward proving that the intel community (not just CIA) built facebook and thatâs simply the value in it ⌠how could they not have been largely responsible for what a CIA director admitted publicly is the greatest surveillance tool they have ever known (which of course is a lie (hmmm AT&T anyone?), but still)
For anyone interested in this general topic and the role of Google (but not Facebook so much) Iâd recommend this book: Surveillance Valley - The Secret Military History of the Internet https://surveillancevalley.com/.
@itsMe I mentioned it this podcast: Challenging the Monopolist - by Jeffrey Peel - The New Era as Iâd just read it and so included it in the podcast comments, with other references from our blog and @Seirdy.
Itâs well researched and from an experienced and connected investigative journalist. Not sure I can/should believe all of it, and am always sceptical of author motivations. Still it all makes sense, and facts that I know of first hand all match. He includes copious citations and sources. Google is the main thread of the book but he brings in all sorts of other projects and people, and includes interesting stories on the origins and development of software like Signal and Tor.
found a video where he talks about the book - in it, Levine states that the turmoil in Syria was a direct result of Assadâs government
to put it bluntly, he doesnât know what the hell heâs talking about
his closing comment before taking questions in which implies that Snowden helped promote privacy tools that are useful to governments was interesting
the talk wasnât long enough for me to get a handle on the dude, but it didnât leave a good impression either
1 Like
Yes thatâs a major part of the book. As I mentioned he writes about Tor, and other tools, as honeypots. As he points out âthe dark web is usefulâ to them.
for those interested here is the point in the video mentioned - itâs worth listening through to at least the first part of his answer to the first question.
Also âare you more likely to be watched when using Torâ question here.