Facebook Is a Monopoly and Should be Broken Up: Mark Zuckerberg Is Not Guilty of Anything, Just Older, Maybe a Bit Out of Touch but Probably Obsolete to the Broader Facebook Utility

Facebook's success seems to have forced it to outgrow and evolve from its original, limited, business boundaries and model to where it is now not just a social-media 'gimmick' (even though a social-media market dominator) but it has also become a major piece on the global political chessboard...a chessboard where apparently no one in Facebook's executive ranks has the experience, training or skills to play.

(And Facebook's leadership shouldn't be expected to play this new game where instead of leading a colt around in a fenced paddock, the original Facebook world, they are now expected to ride a full-grown warhorse into a wilderness among the big cats, hostiles, and outlaw gangs...without much of a clue. Facebook appears in shock. Mark Zuckerberg's appearance before the American Congress after the revelation of Russian co-option of simplistic Facebook advertising policies to influence the 2016, American presidential election was the door-opener to kick Facebook out into the global political jungle...and Facebook was not prepared for that to happen - neither to encounter the Russians nor to be dragged into a strange and unfriendly world.

Facebook's problem is not its humongous corporate profits (nor even Mark Zuckerberg's legally and ethically acquired personal wealth).

Facebook's problem is it's newly recognized, unexpected, and newly utilized, super-power potential as a major force multiplier in unorthodox warfare. Facebook is now a pawn in a global game where it's market success and global reach hugely magnify even the most subtle mind-suggestions in Facebook ads...ads taken out, at bargain prices, by nefarious subscribers to effect nation-change and influence voters.

In today's global politics, Facebook has morphed into a powerful, but still subtle, geo-political weapon to wage unorthodox war.

Who could have predicted or even dreamed that Facebook could eventually be a determining factor influencing global social-political events and even nation-change? From all information, no one expected Facebook's role in influencing American voters in 2016.

Pericles21 thinks any competent political scientist or 'futurist' (who undoubtedly must have read the works of the 5th century Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu and more recently the unorthodox 'war' thinking of Chairman Mao), could have foreseen Facebook's evolution into something bigger-than-Zuckerberg (not such a rare growth pattern with concepts that start out simple but mushroom into 'hugeness', e.g., 'Cornflakes' breakfast cereal)...with correlating potential effectiveness in shaping user preferences; but it would have required the social-political scientist world to look at Facebook seriously as more than just a techy-wrinkle to make money off of kids and young adults (thus not worthy of scholarly attention).

IMHO, Facebook's execs still think of their 'charge' as a toy (although as a grown-up toy because of its very, very adult profits).

For the reasons above, IMHO, Facebook's community let Facebook down because the community did not mature as people with real lives and real care for life outside Facebook. They basically continued to live in the past and hold onto a passed-by, prior Facebook life and out-of-date market model.that came

Facebook's apparent lack of savvy about the shaded reality of big world politics made Facebook vulnerable to misuse, by Russia and China and Iran and others, in America's 2016 election, and continuing. That is what apparently happened with Russian interference in the American 2016 election - subtle manipulation of Facebook's simplistic, still-in-Kansas advertisement model to spread misinformation and subtle preference-shaping.

The first problem with Facebook's success was that its leaders did not recognize that Facebook's ad business could be effective at doing more than just generating product-ad revenue. Nothing wrong with that but it was a limited and unsophisticated perspective showing that Facebook's leaders did not understand what animal it was they thought they had in the cage.

But other folks, including Russia, China and most other major cyber players globally, took a look at Facebook and saw what Zuckerberg and colleagues apparently did not see - the opportunity to leverage Facebook to achieve other ends, adult ends, criminal ends in a world where ends justified means and where there are real victors.

Those other folks (the Russians et al) did not broadcast or publish their insight about Facebook's other uses, sad for us.

Those 'others' (Russians et al) broke open the old Facebook mold and dragged out the new Facebook...with its new powers and strengths... which they were able to keep hidden for a few years....and which now require new regulators and limiting boundaries.



FACEBOOK NOW AND IT'S FUTURE:
FACEBOOK has grown up and dominates the social media market it helped to create.

FACEBOOK IS A NEAR-MONOPOLY!

FACEBOOK is no longer just a kids' toy or even merely a social 'hook-up' gimmick.
FACEBOOK is a WAR TOOL, and Bad Actors want to use FACEBOOK for bad purposes (and apparently already have)
FACEBOOK dominates by a huge degree a strategically critical war-tool weapons sector.
FACEBOOK under Zuckerberg, it's originator, undoubtedly did not envision this end-use for Facebook.
But Mark Zuckerberg still acts and sounds like an unlicensed kid holding a 9mm.
FACEBOOK as a monopoly and with its importance as a weapon should be broken up.

Mark Zuckerberg, though of integrity, should not have a role in a future Facebook weapons-spinoff. (Except as a
need-to-know systems advisor)

The Rigging of the 2016 Election: Was American Intelligence Just Flummoxed by the Audacity of Trump and Russian Hacking, and Paralyzed by Jurisdictional Compartmentalizing (Self-Interest ), And/ Or Has American Democracy Operated Successfully But Against Itself

PREFACE:
Pericles21 believes that in the 2016 election process, America was attacked and conquered by a known, long term and actively detrimental declared enemy state, Russia, in a modernized, non-shooting, non-bombing war largely without America knowing of the war going on or how to respond (e.g., FBI Director Comey's seeming indecision about what to do about Apparent Russian interference and relationship with the Trump campaign the spring and summer 2016).

Pericles21 also believes that since losing that 2016 war, the American public remains confused, overwhelmed by the sophistication that requires a new vocabulary in attendance to the digital world of networks, cryptology, cyber-intelligence, second and third degree crowd-behavior influencing (cyber-social networking nudging), 'cutouts' and good old fake proxies. What a fine world we Americans have naively lived and loved in for at least 40 years. But, 'Hey' if there is one good thing we Americans do well is to continue a good thing and 'naivete' feels so good (and 'Roseanne' is on tonight so don't bother us), so we will try our best to continue to exist in a fine state of denial assisted with a little OxyContin and Beer. We will do our best to maintain behind the wall of ignorance of the sophisticated, non-traditional ways our own culture was attacked, penetrated, taken over and then weaponized against us. What a 'thing'!

BLOG PRIMARY (A little late maturing in a daily amazed and increasingly scared blogger's mind):
The above 'Preface' is a point of view reflected in John Schindler's thorough and sobering article in the 'Observer' ('Here’s How the FBI Investigation Into Russia and Trump Campaign Actually Started', May 28, 2018)
America was outclassed and outfought on a battlefield that had no soil, no water no air. America's educational priorities, or rather, 'de-emphases' away from real science, science rationality, mathematics and cyber education all combined to help defeat us. (America's commodified, comercial-prioritized culture also played a key role in 'plumping', desensitizing our national awareness to being attacked as Russian agents posing as business players walked freely in plain sight along America's streets.)

Also, that 2016 war we just lost, was an asymmetric war - America was attacked but did not (could not?) respond.
Instead of shooting bullets, America's enemy saw and used vulnerable leverage-points in America's own culture - our hugely popular (and influencing) social websites and our mostly right-wing, loud and inciting, emotionally histrionic 'news' venues that claim 'entertainment' status when confronted with factual challenges to their 'news'. In this regard, Russia's weapons of choice were signally, Facebook and Fox News (especially in the latter, the loud, emotionally strident views of Sean Hannity who has been outed as having a discarded mistress, a hook into Tump's dark shade Fixer 'Lawyer' and perhaps even a nipple at. he belly of the ever nurturing )of greedy piglets) Grand Sow, the collective group of Russian oligarchs munching and slurping on the rich far East provinces of the former USSR, all under the watchful eye of the Great Boar himself, Grand Uncle Vladimir.

In that 2016 war America just lost, our huge military budget ($700 Billion asked this year) and advanced war machines were useless. Our 'advanced', decadently expensive, evolved but still essentially traditional weapons we are so proud of sat idle and irrelevant.

COMMENTARY:
Pericles21 believes that American intelligence agencies and politicians, and a large portion of America's general population, who are still scratching their heads about the surprising 2016 election of Donald Trump (aka 'RICO Dedito'), were and remain naive about the re-shaping of warfare and the increasingly clear alliance between Russia (along with other other national interests) and Donald Trump. Americans are also in denial of how Russia used non-traditional warfare to take control of and 'guide' that election through sophisticated cyber-invasion techniques ('hacking') and equally sophisticated manipulation of American voting predispositions. And we are recently become aware of the compromising of America's right wing (Trump supporters)'entertainment' icons, e.g., Sean Hannity.

But not only America's general population were caught unaware of or frozen in the headlights of the Russian attack. America's intelligence defenders seem equally naive not to have expected that America would one day be 'attacked' with the same indirect, non-exposive 'weapons we have been using to accomplish regime change in critical foreign areas for the past 100 years (the sinking of the battleship 'Maine', the many interferences in the mid-East, Indo China, Africa, South America, etc).

When the compromising relationship between Trump and Russia apparently became clear by early 2016, it appears the FBI and the NSA were restricted or delayed in non-interfering (read 'noon-cooperative') stasis by, in retrospect, our Congress's somewhat naive imposition onto the FBI and NSA of jurisdictional hegemony and a administratively old school (Prussian?) perspective that prioritizes non-interfence if not competitive relationships between these intelligence realms.

It is not surprising, therefore, that this intelligence infrastructure of easily administrated (by un-informed elected officers), clean boundaried and separate jurisdictions should fail America in the face of not only increased vulnerabilities of electronic digital communications and networks but the accelerating expertise in penetrating (cyber-hacking) inadequately protected systems.

Opinion. America's inattention to, and/or lack of committed (loyal), deeply trained, expertise to develop cyber defenses and protect America's potential, 'Multi-Front vulnerabilities in our culture as well as our digital systems, has led to a gross vulnerability of American social and cyber systems to penetration, take over and psychological manipulations. We saw that happen in the 2016 election.

-------
Work in progress but the above had to come out or be next week (July 10, 2018)irrelevant

that outcome, were and remain naive about world political realities and the non-traditional forms of warfare that have been written on for centuries (e.g., Lao Tsu's and Mao's 'Little Red Book')

A clear, if not concise article by John Schindler in the Observer [May 28, 2018,'Here’s How the FBI Investigation Into Russia and Trump Campaign Actually Started', May 28, 2018]
https://observer.com/2018/05/what-did-the-fbi-do-in-2016-about-russian-connections-to-donald-trump/

[Personal: Comey (FBI Director) and NSA couldn’t grasp how Trump, a candidate for President, could do such a thing?]

SUMMY: (NSA & FBI: ““ By mid-July 2016 We knew we had a Russian agent on our hands,”

The FBI-NSA investigation of Donald Trump was kicked off by …routine SIGINT reports..from America’s foreign friends before 2016.

2015: Britain’s NSA’s routine surveillance detected suspicious ‘interactions’ between Trump associates and Russian agents.
Britain passed this info to the U.S. as part of their routine exchange of information.”
Late 2015 and into 2016: NSA’s other intell friends ( Australia, Germany, Estonia, and Poland) all reported interactions between Trump and Moscow.
So, too, did the French and the Dutch—the latter being an especially savvy SIGINT partner of NSA’s.
2016: different foreign agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were given to U.S. FBI
2016: In response to FBI urgency, NSA rose to the occasion, and
by mid-July 2016, “We knew we had a Russian agent on our hands,”

America and the Globe in Transformation - Update

America is tranforming. Six weeks! In only six weeks, Obama has brought Congress to the world of Twitter and Facebook. Makeover is here. It's happening. It's now! Your ticket for this ride comes with citizenship, so don't get left behind. There is a new President, and a new Congress. There are new infrastructure programs that are not just dreams; they are real and for once, funded. There is a new capitalism; note that capitalism is not dead, it is being repaired and readied to proceed with new freshness and vigor in a better, more coherent, global economic context with an updated American insfrastructure and new industries.

Despite what anyone might say against President Obama, he is very much on the job. Obama is taking care of business no matter what kind of off-the-wall cant comes from the GOP. New Financial Rules are on the way. There has been a heavy investment of energy and time and it is already brnging benefits.

Six weeks! Even Sen. McCain, who last November could not press the buttons on a Blackberry, is now tweating. The weatherization of America is underway. Green Energy programs are starting. The country is changed and emerging from a long tunnel of complacency, self-neglect, lack of innovation and paralysis to a new era.