An Insider’s View Regarding the Monopolies of Facebook, Google, and much more. This is the real deal and hot off the press in the year 2019, by Roger McNamee.
Roger had been an insider starting in the early ’80s when his first job in the securities world had him analyzing technology stocks. With time, he became an investor and consultant to the tech world. Having been a part of Silicon Valley, about the time the iconic name was coined in the late ’60s, I loved his presentation of the rich history of the Valley from the ’60s to the present.
McNamee first met Zuckerberg in 2006 and became famous for a company that was two years old; and, he became an investor early on through the present. At the beginning of their relationship, McNamee was very impressed with Zuck’s purity of motive. Then, about three years ago, he noticed degradation and tried to alter the course Zuck was taking to no avail.
“Metadata” has become a new buzzword as he quotes a line from the advertising world, “in the advertising business, users are not the customer; they are the product.” Thus, is the start of him providing insight into what is happening to us. I’ve become suspicious many times over the last few years with the endless coincidences whereby I search for something like a wallet and then receive unsolicited opportunities to buy a wallet. And then again when my car seems to be a spy monitoring too much.
So, how valuable is this metadata? He points out that Facebook has about two billion active users and that their profit for 2017 was about $40 billion. My math says that’s about $20 per person even if, like me, I rarely use it.
McNamee’s journey over the last three years reads like a thriller novel. He talks about how the Social Media world hires magicians to help create illusions, how we are playing multidimensional chess with Artificial Intelligence (AI), dopamine from clicks, lizard brain stimuli, how they can tune News Feed to create emotional responses. And then, there are no viable alternatives to Facebook and Google; very Scary Movie.
“We allow these people to have a profound influence on the course of our country and the world with no input from the outside,” says Roger who was/is an insider to the tech world. For the last few years, he has made inroads to Congressional Oversite Committees which is investigating the breaches that had occurred in our election and advised them accordingly.
Rich Meyer, Author, Blogger
