Originally published August 4 2015
Facebook seeks to sway 2016 election outcomes
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) It's no secret that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has an affinity for illegal aliens. He's donated millions to fund their college education (but not so much to fund the education of poor Americans), and has actively lobbied Congress to allow more legal immigration so he and his tech-industry colleagues can import more cheap labor to replace higher-paid American workers.
But the U.S. political system is messy, you see, and even a billionaire doesn't always get what he or she wants. So Zuckerberg has decided to try another approach. He will use his creation, the world's largest social media site, to influence the 2016 elections so he can hopefully help elect candidates that will be much more sympathetic to his "immigrant-first" business model.
As reported by AllGov.com, recent changes made at Facebook will make it easier for political campaigns to target any of the social sites 189 million monthly users in the U.S. using personal information provided to the site and taken from users' browsing habits and other clues, like shopping.
Shaping the outcomes
"We are guaranteeing you will reach the right person at the right time and eliminate the waste that you might find in email marketing, certainly in TV advertising," Eric Laurence, who is in charge of political advertising on Facebook, told National Journal. "That's really the power of Facebook targeting."
AllGov.com further reported that campaigns will be able to upload voter files and then Facebook will send those voters targeted ads (so much for your "privacy"). It would work something like this: For anyone who has donated to a political campaign, for example, the campaign may target the user to ask them to donate once more. Or, a campaign might just ask a user to click on a candidate's link, whereby the campaign would then ask for an email address.
"I think most users really have no idea how much information Facebook collects about them or how Facebook is able to infer from even a post to a friend what their political orientation might be," Marc Rotenberg, the president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told The New York Times, according to AllGov.com. "If you're a Facebook user, Facebook knows everything you've said, everything you've posted, everything you've clicked on."
And then some.
In order to attract attention and ad dollars for a campaign, Facebook has already adopted a number of changes. One is improved video capacity, which will allow campaigns to embed links as part of overall "call to action" directing users to give money or sign petitions. In addition to this user-driven campaign advertising, the company has hired experienced politicos so as to better market itself to campaigns.
Zuckerberg has political objectives
The Times noted that Facebook has also allowed candidates to hold question-and-answer sessions; so far only one, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, has done so (and to mark the occasion, you can see in this NYT photo someone has posted a "Che Guevara" type poster of Clinton in Facebook's Washington, D.C. office).
Find breaking stories on Hillary Clinton at www.clinton.news
What makes Zuckerberg's initiative suspicious is a) his personal progressive-Left-wing views; and b) his company's historic animosity toward conservatives and libertarians and others who don't share his worldview. The latter means Republican candidates likely won't get to share in all the perks that Hillary or the eventual Democratic candidate will get.
But Zuckerberg knows that tens of millions of Americans – adults, too – are addicted to Facebook, and he knows what kind of power his social site wields among the massive group of regular users. And many of those users believe the site is an accurate reflection of the real world because they are oblivious to the company's behind-the-scenes efforts to effect certain political and social outcomes through "targeted ads" and other manipulative tactics.
Zuckerberg has political objectives, as evidenced by his affinity for illegal aliens and his push to allow more foreign workers in so he can hire them at lower wages than American workers. And he will squeeze every ounce of influence he can out of his social media monster.
Sources:
www.money.cnn.com
www.capsweb.org
www.hngn.com
www.nytimes.com
www.allgov.com
static01.nyt.com
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