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 I’ve heard in a while.
…they didn’t actually do that, right? As an Australian, I know this situation was eventually compromised on, but Google isn’t paying news sites to list them in results…right?
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“remove news”
Dinosaurs do a lot of thrashing about as they die.
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Thought the same, but apparently not. A success allegedly too, but they’d say that regardless:
Google director of government affairs and public policy in Australia Lucinda Longcroft said the company had “furthered our significant contribution to the Australian news industry” by signing deals representing 200 mastheads across the country and “the majority of these outlets are regional or local”.
On searching it looks like the US (cited up top), NZ, UK, all looking at this as a possible thing to emulate.
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let’s see if this makes sense…
- Facebook was founded with CIA seed money through it’s 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 it’s too expensive to advertise on the platform it “helped” 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). I’d 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 it…
from In-Q-Tel - The Corbett Report…
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 “TheFacebook.com,” the first incarnation of Facebook, which collects vast amounts of data on its users, offering them the promise of “a powerful automated multimedia diary and scrapbook,” 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 “TheFacebook” go from a Harvard “student project” 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 Accel’s 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. Accel’s manager, James Breyer, was former chair of the National Venture Capital Association. Breyer served on the National Venture Capital Association’s 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. Jones’ 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; driver’s 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 “Building 8” 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 Facebook’s Oculus virtual reality technology for fighting cyberwar.
Nor is it a surprise that Facebook seed money investor Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, developed Palantir—a data-mining and analysis tool used by the NSA, FBI, CIA and other intelligence, counterterrorism and military agencies—from PayPal’s 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 “using War on Terror tools to track American citizens.”
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 Pentagon’s “Defense Innovation Board,” which seeks to bring the efficiency and vision of Silicon Valley to the Defense Department’s 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 CIA’s Venture Capital Firm (Preview) - The Corbett Report…
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 Facebook’s history of violating the privacy of its users.
from How Palantir Conquered the World - The Corbett Report…
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 you’ve written, your health records and credit card purchases and thousands of other pieces of electronic data to paint an intimate portrait of your life—a 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. It’s 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 it’s increasingly the darling of the corporate world. And-given Palantir’s ability to surveil, track and, ultimately, control every aspect of your daily life-it isn’t hard to see why.
from Episode 358 - The 5G Dragnet - The Corbett Report…
One answer to this question lies in the fact that intelligence agencies—whether Chinese or Russian, CIA or MI6, Mossad or CSIS—will 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 “intelligence community” 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 CIA’s venture capital firm, that the CIA was not just able to but actually eager to use these smart devices as a tool for spying:
“‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus was quoted as saying, “particularly 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 – all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.”
from Episode 325 - The Information-Industrial Complex - The Corbett Report…
But how many people know the flip side of this coin, the one that demonstrates the pervasive government influence in shaping and directing these companies’ rise to success, and the companies’ 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 CIA’s 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 $12 million of seed money for Facebook?
from How Big Brother Seeded the Tech Revolution - The Corbett Report…
A mere degree of separation from In-Q-Tel itself, however, are the venture capitalists who funded, amongst other ventures, PayPal, Facebook and Google. Former In-Q-Tel CEO Gilman Louie sat on the board of the National Venture Capital Association with Jim Breyer, head of Accel Partners, who provided 12 million dollars of seed money for Facebook. Another early investor in Facebook was Peter Thiel, former co-founder and CEO of PayPal, and Bilderberg Group steering committee member.> A mere degree of separation from In-Q-Tel itself, however, are the venture capitalists who funded, amongst other ventures, PayPal, Facebook and Google. Former In-Q-Tel CEO Gilman Louie sat on the board of the National Venture Capital Association with Jim Breyer, head of Accel Partners, who provided 12 million dollars of seed money for Facebook. Another early investor in Facebook was Peter Thiel, former co-founder and CEO of PayPal, and Bilderberg Group steering committee member.
from Is the CIA behind FACEBOOK? | Intel Today…
Palantir Technologies, Inc. is a private American software and services company, specializing in big data analysis. Founded in 2004, Palantir’s original clients were federal agencies of the United States Intelligence Community (USIC). In-Q-tel, the venture arm of the CIA, funded the projet right from the start with 2 US$ 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, I’ve got shoes older than him and he thinks he invented this incredibly huge communication system and spying tool.
This all began when he ‘accidentally’ 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. It’s 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 doesn’t come across as very plausible.
i would posit that there’s a much simpler path toward proving that the intel community (not just CIA) built facebook and that’s 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) I’d 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 I’d just read it and so included it in the podcast comments, with other references from our blog and @Seirdy.
It’s 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 Assad’s government
to put it bluntly, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s 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 wasn’t long enough for me to get a handle on the dude, but it didn’t leave a good impression either
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Yes that’s a major part of the book. As I mentioned he writes about Tor, and other tools, as honeypots. As he points out “the dark web is useful” to them.
for those interested here is the point in the video mentioned - it’s worth listening through to at least the first part of his answer to the first question.
Also “are you more likely to be watched when using Tor” question here.
hey @Colin - if you recall, earlier in this thread i stated as fact that Facebook was started with CIA seed money - that knowledge came from an article(s) i read long ago and have no reference for, therefore i should not have stated that as a fact
that has bothered me ever since and so i have started digging into the early history of FB in earnest and there is a TON of trails to follow - i don’t have anything concrete yet, but i did come across a very interesting article - whether it’s genuine or not, i’ve no idea, but it is an interesting read nonetheless…
Facebook Insider Confesses All - American Intelligence Media
the comment left by visitor@aim4truth.org is also interesting
i never heard of American Intelligence Media, but you can readily see that these guys are serious and seem to be capable researchers - looks like a majority of their work – and there’s a lot of it – is focused around Facebook, Palantir, etc, …
well, that didn’t take long - i found yet another smoking gun in statements made by Michael McKibben who founded Leader Technologies™ (take a look at the home page)
McKibben claims, and provides evidence to support, that Leader Technologies invented the scalable tech that was needed to power large-scale social media and that this tech was stolen from them, first by Zuckerberg apparently, then by the U.S. government (patents) through corrupt judges, and is in use by all of mainstream social media today
he states that Facebook was created by weaponizing this tech for the specific purpose of building “a world-wide mass surveillance program for the intelligence community” and that Zuckerberg was a “cut-out”, “one of many” (cut-out is a CIA term)
McKibben took the case all the way to the Supreme Court and lost, then later learned that some of the judges had a vested interest in Facebook or were appointed potentially specifically to throw the case shortly before court - AFI docs confirms this
McKibben’s statements are only a part of the smoking gun - the rest is how unbelievably far the U.S. government has gone to protect Facebook in this case (those that think the gov is punishing FB by regulating or breaking it up FB have no clue - this is exactly what they did with Standard Oil which made made a lot of people very rich)
i think this evidence, in addition to what i’ve already provided here, and what i have gathered recently which i’ll be publishing on my site, is collective proof that the the intel community, at the very least, assisted in the construction of Facebook very early on, but the whole story is actually much bigger (the CIA operating domestically for starters)
this meme has teeth to it - the LifeLog data was scheduled to be transferred to Facebook
Facebook Insider Confesses All - American Intelligence Media
Any person well-educated on the continuing scandals surrounding the creation of Facebook might have been able to piece together the many divergent claimants to the authorship of the source programming code used to make social media “scalable” – which was the universal problem of all of the major tech companies at the time, including the NSA’s “LifeLog” project. Somehow, genius Mark Zuckerberg “solved” the problem that no one else in the world could. Oh yes, and Mark did it “between a week and two weeks or so” while studying for finals and hosting a beer “kegger” for his friends.
McKibben seems like a very ethical man and though the video of him is crappy, i’m not seeing any signs of deception in his body language - his voice and movements seem to speak the truth
this video was deleted by YouTube…
Michael McKibben EXPOSES the swamp - Original from February 2019
also see…
I suggest you follow the money and who Zuck raised it from. And those who risked it to support the early growth: Sean Parker, Ron Conway and Peter Thiel. Facebook wasn’t the first and the technology was basic, but their money and connections, and Zuck’s ambition were what mattered.
Some of these comments sound like the plot of a movie, but are just HOKUM and coincidence.
As much as I would like to see Facebook evolve (or maybe devolve) into something else, the idea of removing news from the platform is a little frightening.
For example, most of my in-laws are deep down the rabbit hole of wackadoodle theories, and part of that is due to Facebook. How crazy are these theories? There are the classic “vaccines bad” that has been going on since Jenny McCarthy sat across from Oprah Winfrey, but also things like…
- Signal is owned by Zuckerberg—and Zuckerberg is owned by (Russia|Freemasons|Illuminati)
- Bread is made using insects
- McDonald’s puts anti-vomit drugs and nicotine in their food
- Great replacement theories
- Secret Space Program
- Sovereign Citizens
The list goes on, and this is not in the US: it is in Europe.
Some time ago, the whole family decided that WhatsApp was bad, and they decided that Telegram was the new way to go because Signal is owned by Facebook (???). Now their family news channel is an echo-chamber of WTF, climate denial, xenophobia, racism, fearmongering, and general populism.
Removing the news from Facebook will push people into these closed groups which are just Alternative Influencer Networks. I am a little worried for the boomers and older millennials that still use Facebook.
Edit: added emphasis
i’m already there - there’s a lot more i haven’t posted here
you should research the relationships between the following people and orgs…
Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, In-Q-Tel (Gilman Louie), PATHAR (Dunami), Palantir, Larry Summers, The Highlands Group (Dick O’Neil, James Baker), James Chandler, Andrew Marshall (head of the Naval Intelligence Net Assessment Office), Accel (James Breyer, Gilman Louie)
the vaccine argument is another matter, suffice to say germ theory won out over terrain theory, which is infinitely more plausible and scientifically provable, due in part to the political connections and fraudulent work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch - the argument regarding vaccines began long before Jenny McCarthy was born - i suggest reading the following books if you want to get up to speed regarding the science of virology:
“Germ theory is essentially a hypothesis put forth over a hundred years ago which all the empirical evidence that was conducted since that time has disproven” – Andrew Kaufman M.D., during an interview by Tammy Cuthbert Garcia , ‘Transcending The Plandemic Narrative’, 2023
“[…] no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available […]” – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 13-Jul-2020
“[The PCR test is] as good as that Scientology test that detects your personality and then tells you need to give all your money to Scientology.” – Dr. David Rasnick, Ph.D., Biochemist, Protease Inhibitor developer, University of California
“Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported” – Electronic Support for Public Health–Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS)
“All myths of the prevailing corona narrative are made up out of a fact-free vacuum.” – Dr. Thomas Binder, immunologist, cardiologist
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” – Dr. Richard Horton, Editor in Chief of The Lancet, one of the worlds most respected, peer-reviewed medical journals, 2015
“Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts.” – Kamran Abbasi, Executive Editor, British Medical Journal, 13 Nov. 2020
“There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false.” – John P. A. Ioannidis, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, 30 Aug. 2005
etc., etc., etc…
my gal Whitney Webb was on the case years before i was - for those that don’t know her, she is an excellent independent investigative journalist and researcher
The Military Origins of Facebook
Part 1 of this two-part series on Facebook and the US national-security state explores the social media network’s origins and the timing and nature of its rise as it relates to a controversial military program that was shut down the same day that Facebook launched. The program, known as LifeLog, was one of several controversial post-9/11 surveillance programs pursued by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that threatened to destroy privacy and civil liberties in the United States while also seeking to harvest data for producing “humanized” artificial intelligence (AI).
As this report will show, Facebook is not the only Silicon Valley giant whose origins coincide closely with this same series of DARPA initiatives and whose current activities are providing both the engine and the fuel for a hi-tech war on domestic dissent.