RUSH: Let\u2019s move on to this Facebook business here. And let\u2019s remember why this is happening. By the way, I need you to have audio sound bites 1, 2, and 3 standing by.<\/p>\n
Let me first ask, why is Zuckerberg in Washington today testifying before a bunch of different congressional committees? Why is he there? Cambridge Analytica. What happened with Cambridge Analytica? What\u2019s Cambridge Analytica got to do with anything? What is that about? Okay. So Cambridge Analytica is a research organization related to the evil Mercer family second only in evilness to the Koch brothers.<\/p>\n
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The Mercers liked Steve Bannon and they supported Ted Cruz. They support right wing causes like Carl\u2019s, Jr. They\u2019re not to be trusted. And it turns out that Cambridge Analytica used Facebook to help gather some information about people that might have helped them target advertising during the 2016 election. And the way Cambridge Analytica did it was a professor from somewhere decided to put together a little psychological test as a game for Facebook users to take.<\/p>\n
It was entirely optional, you could take the quiz, take the test if you wanted to, people did, and that data was harvested and ostensibly it was used to help Trump, which means Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for. And that\u2019s why he\u2019s in Washington. He is in Washington and he\u2019s in the dock, and he\u2019s under the spotlight, under the klieg lights because he allowed his company, up to now exclusively used by the Democrats, to be used maybe to help Trump.<\/p>\n
So Zuckerberg has some explaining to do. Zuckerberg\u2019s gonna be asked, why the hell should we not punish you? What are you doing helping Trump? Why the hell should we not regulate you?<\/p>\n
What you should know is Zuckerberg is not gonna be under oath. Did you know that? Mark Zuckerberg is not going to be under oath. And I\u2019m gonna tell you what this is today. It is political theater. It is political theater designed to service a lie and a myth. The lie and the myth is that Donald Trump, after colluding with the Russians, figured that wasn\u2019t enough. Trump then had to steal your data from Facebook via Cambridge Analytica in order to have a chance to beat the only woman who should be president ever, Hillary Clinton. And that\u2019s why this is going on. This is the sole purpose.<\/p>\n
The sole purpose of the theater is to make it look like Zuckerberg might have his company taken away from him, make it look like Zuckerberg might have to face dire federal regulations, to make it look like Facebook agrees that it screwed up. Zuckerberg is here to apologize. He is here to beg forgiveness. He is here hoping that the United States government will give him another chance to screw the Republicans and not let \u2019em in again like it happened here.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s hoping that the federal government, the Democrats, will make it look like he\u2019s being punished but really isn\u2019t so that all of his buddies in the media can write about how Zuckerberg has grown and learned his lesson and is now going to make sure that your data is only available to Democrats. Uh, they won\u2019t say that, of course, but that\u2019s gonna be the upshot of this.<\/p>\n
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Let me ask you a question, folks. Who made any of you join Facebook? Your kids. That\u2019s a legitimate answer. She\u2019s saying she wouldn\u2019t be a Facebook member if it weren\u2019t for her kids. She wanted to stay in touch with her kids, that\u2019s where her kids were, so she joined Facebook. Makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n
Okay. Who made your kids join Facebook? Who is this mysterious avatar that forced your kids and everybody else to join Facebook and give up their personal data? Who forced every one of you to select the news feed that you use? Who forced any of you to sign up for Facebook and start sharing every bit of personal information about yourself because you want to be famous, you want to have likes, you want to have people get to know who you are, who made you do that? I\u2019m waiting.<\/p>\n
Because everybody wants to be a victim of Facebook, right? Everybody wants to be a victim. Facebook stole my data. Facebook used my data. Facebook is using my data for advertising. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. The NSA steals your data. You gave it to Facebook. And I would dare say, my friends, that Facebook has more personal information on you than the NSA could ever hope to have.<\/p>\n
Facebook, run by that guy Zuckerberg that you see on TV. He looks like a kid when he\u2019s got the T-shirt on. This guy knows more about every American than the NSA does. And you gave it to him. The NSA steals it from you. Why isn\u2019t the NSA up there being asked to justify what they do when Zuckerberg, all he did was open business, say, “Hi. Sign up for my” whatever it is “Facebook, and you can meet girls and learn about friends and so forth and share pictures and what have you, and then I\u2019m gonna know everything about you,” and people did it.<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg now has to be punished. Except he\u2019s not gonna be punished. It has to look like Zuckerberg is being called on the carpet. It\u2019s gonna look like the adults of which there are none anymore in Washington I don\u2019t think, are going to spank Zuckerberg and make him promise never to do it again. Meaning never allow another Republican group to do what you\u2019ve helped the Democrats do.<\/p>\n
A series of stories. Daily Beast: “Zuckerberg Gaslights Congress Before The Hearings Even Start.<\/a>” By the way, what does that mean? When they say Zuckerberg gaslights Congress, what does that mean? I looked it up in a vernacular dictionary. It\u2019s not there. A gaslight is a gaslight. It\u2019s a pole with a lamp on it that\u2019s lit by gas. When you gaslight Congress, do you lie to \u2019em?<\/p>\n “Mark Zuckerberg swears he found out just two weeks ago that bad actors were harvesting users\u2019 private info by the millions.” Zuckerberg says he only found out two weeks ago that Cambridge Analytica was doing what it was doing. He didn\u2019t know. He knew, just like Obama when he found out half the things he knew when he watched the news. Zuckerberg found out about it in the media.<\/p>\n But the Daily Beast says here that Facebook was alerted long, long before that. Facebook wasn\u2019t alerted to anything! Facebook is set up to Hoover your data! Even this story. “Facebook was alerted long ago to the fact that bad actors were harvesting users\u2019 private information.” Facebook hadn\u2019t been alerted to that. It\u2019s how it\u2019s set up.<\/p>\n “In prepared testimony to Congress released Monday, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that malefactors had used the reverse-lookup ‘to link people\u2019s public Facebook information to a phone number,\u2019 he wrote (PDF). ‘When we found out about the abuse, we shut this feature down.'”<\/p>\n By the way, Zuckerberg snuck into the Senate building today, the Capitol building. Well, it\u2019s not the Capitol. Wherever the hearing is. He managed to get into the building through back ways and a freight elevator. So there are no photo-ops of Zuckerberg going in to testify. Now, I\u2019m told that a lot of media people think Zuckerberg\u2019s gonna get raked over the coals, that he\u2019s gonna face a lot of tough questions, and he might, but it isn\u2019t gonna mean anything because I\u2019m telling you right now there isn\u2019t gonna be any legislation forthcoming.<\/p>\n There isn\u2019t gonna be, at least not in the immediate aftermath. There will be no legislation regulating Facebook. Too many politicians want access to what\u2019s there. They\u2019re not gonna regulate it. They\u2019re not gonna make it harder to get. Zuckerberg will suffer what appears to be a public spanking but that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n On the tech blogs that I read today, there is a story on every one of them, on every one of the tech blogs with almost the exact headline, which is, “Here\u2019s how to check whether your Facebook data was shared with Cambridge Analytica.” What this means is that the sponges, the so-called journalists at tech media have no idea that the Obama administration had virtual access to everybody\u2019s user data on Facebook!<\/p>\n No, we\u2019re carrying forward the narrative that Cambridge Analytica\u2019s a bunch of sneaky SOBs, and Cambridge Analytica, a bunch of conservative Republicans, they came in and they fooled you and they tricked you, and they unscrupulously Hoovered up all of your data to run ads to make you vote for Trump. And so all the tech blogs writing to all the Millennials advising them how to check whether their Facebook data was shared with Cambridge Analytica.<\/p>\n And it goes on to explain how you can click on a certain link and then follow a couple steps and find out if Cambridge Analytica knows who you are, if they\u2019ve got your data and if they tried to trick you into voting for that reprobate, Donald Trump. The tech blogs, useful idiots for the left, dutifully following any narrative they are given. It is funny to watch.<\/p>\n By the way, I read Zuckerberg, some of his testimony. Zuckerberg\u2019s testimony was prewritten. It was released and it makes scant reference to the fact that the Obama campaign used all users\u2019 data, all of it. It\u2019s amazing, everybody\u2019s focusing on Cambridge Analytica, as though some great crime has occurred in social media. Eight-seven million people potentially had their data used. Potentially? Eight-seven million out of at least a billion Facebook users.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s go to the audio sound bites. And let\u2019s actually revisit something we played for you at the time and two weeks ago. We\u2019re going back here to June 7th of 2015, nearly three years ago, New York City, at the Personal Democracy Forum. Carol Davidsen is the vice president of political technology at Rentrak. She worked on the Obama campaign in 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n The New York Times, after learning of what you\u2019ll hear in this sound bite, wrote a couple of stories in the New York Times Magazine how Obama\u2019s tech team were a bunch of geniuses, geniuses because they figured out how to access the data of every Facebook user. They were geniuses. But now with Cambridge Analytica, 87 million, they\u2019re criminals, and you who fell for it are victims. Here is Carol Davidsen. We have two sound bites. Number one.<\/p>\n DAVIDSEN: Facebook 2012 Election had the ability for people to opt in. The Obama campaign, like, rocked this, right? We got people to opt in. And the privacy policies at that time on Facebook were that if they opted in, they could tell us who all their friends were, okay? So they told us who all their friends were. This is very much how local campaigns work, right? People sit in a room. It\u2019s a really small thing. All of their biggest supporters surround the table, and they, like, circle the names of the people that they know and that they\u2019re gonna outreach to. And they figure out how to fill in the gaps of the people that they don\u2019t know. The Obama campaign just did this on a digital \u2014 in a digital level, on a much larger level. But we were actually able to ingest the entire social network, social network of the U.S. that\u2019s on Facebook, which is most\u2026 That\u2019s most people.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/facebook.jpg\")
“Facebook was warned five years ago that the ‘reverse-lookup\u2019 feature in its search engine could be used to harvest names, profiles, and phone numbers for virtually all its users. But the company ignored the red flags until last week, after it happened.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/FacebookZuckerberg-1912823-239x300.jpg\")
One typical story. “The biggest controversy over the way Facebook data ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica was how it got there. The company not only got access to the data of anyone naive enough to give permission to a third-party \u2018personality quiz,\u2019 but Facebook allowed the app some access to the data of their friends also.”<\/p>\n