Making Orwell look weak by comparison.

Today I am more gladder than ever that I has Deleted the Facebook account… Those you still hanging out there – may God bless you. And protect you. The thing and associated matters get worse daily and they have been worse than we have known from the start.

Zuck and Co. monkeyed with the algorithm. Information was distorted and redirected. Sales, traffic, etc. went down. I and other writers I know took substantial hits. Many small businesses were affected and have accordingly jumped ship.

“One of the Facebook policy changes that kind of went under the radar and it went into effect in February was the branded content policy. And it decreased my income from Facebook by 60 percent, overnight. No explanation.” said Holly Homer, an entrepreneur from Texas who owns the Facebook pages for “Quirky Mama” and “Kids Activities.”

I’m grateful for the AI shunning as it made the decision to leave the collective so much easier. Thanks, Zucker!

But the loss of clicks isn’t the bad part. This is:

“Q.” I have no doubts that this is true.

The companies are the government and the government is the companies. They, all of them – for whatever reasons, want total control. The Gubmits gonna get it too:

A pact of five nation states dedicated to a global “collect it all” surveillance mission has issued a memo calling on their governments to demand tech companies build backdoor access to their users’ encrypted data — or face measures to force companies to comply.

The international pact — the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, known as the so-called “Five Eyes” group of nations — quietly issued the memo last week demanding that providers “create customized solutions, tailored to their individual system architectures that are capable of meeting lawful access requirements.”

This kind of backdoor access would allow each government access to encrypted call and message data on their citizens. If the companies don’t voluntarily allow access, the nations threatened to push through new legislation that would compel their help.

It’s more like one, all-seeing eye, really. And these five criminal states … we have heard of them and their activities before. They’ve been in the all-access spy business for decades. We, some of us, have known about it for at least 20 years. (I know, in retrospect, feel somewhat foolish for every trusting these interwebs). (You’re safe here though – keep clicking!).

And there are more stories than these. Track. Control. Profit. Repeat. Surely the cat videos are worth it.

Maybe this explains away part of the perplexing drop in productivity these past few years.

The only possible output of this system is extortion as a way of life.

As the accompanying chart shows, productivity in the U.S. has been declining since the early 2000s. This trend mystifies economists, as the tremendous investments in software, robotics, networks and mobile computing would be expected to boost productivity, as these tools enable every individual who knows how to use them to produce more value.

Extortion with cat videos. And dinner pics.

Following the money (fiat), with all these distractions and controls it’s easy for many to miss history repeating itself.

Like, share, and type “Amen!”