Former manager: ‘Facebook could throw an election…it’s scary’

Joe NewbyJuly 7, 2016

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Does Facebook have so much power it can throw an election? lilac tree emojis emoticons

How much control does Facebook have in America? According to Antonio Garcia Martinez, a former product manager with the “world’s most dangerous censor,” apparently enough to throw an election, the UK Telegraph reported on Monday.

“At the end of the day, there’s nothing restraining Zuck’s vision,” he said of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “One of the jokes we had was that Facebook could throw an election by showing reminders to go vote in certain districts but not others. That’s the level of control it has. It’s scary.”

That’s putting it mildly.

Martinez recently published a book about the social media giant the Telegraph calls “his sweet revenge.” According to Martinez, “everyone freaked out when they found out I’d written this.”

The Telegraph adds:

You can see why, too. Martínez’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg’s empire and the rest of Silicon Valley is pretty damning. The tech hub is described as akin to a cult – with the day employees join dubbed their ‘Faceversary’ (complete with baptism-style levels of celebrations), the day they leave classed as their ‘death’ and a dress code to stop female employees ‘distracting’ male co-workers. Beneath the Frat House-esque atmosphere, the company’s elite are painted as sociopaths in hoodies, with an internal security division called ‘The Sec’ monitoring staff members’ movements. Forget the dog-eat-dog capitalism of Wall Street – these guys make Gordon Gekko look like Ghandi.

“Wall Street is the open ruthlessness of gladiatorial combat,” says Martínez. “You’re tossed in there, a lot of blood flows and one man triumphs. In Silicon Valley, it’s more like this mafioso drama with a lot of aggressive behaviour and back-room dealing. Behind the manicured exterior of being an entrepreneur or an investor, there are all these knives in the back which are never discussed publicly.”

The book, “Chaos Monkeys: Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine,” Amazon says, “lays bare the secrets, power plays and lifestyle excesses of the visionaries, grunts, sociopaths, opportunists and money cowboys who are revolutionising our world.”

“…This is Liar’s Poker meets The Social Network,” Amazon adds.

[Note: This fall, another book about the social media giant is coming out. Written by myself and Adina Kutnicki, an investigative journalist based in Israel, the book, “BANNED: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad,” has been endorsed by Pam Geller and promises to be explosive…]