RUSH: Oh! You know, we’ve played the sound bites here a couple or three times here, Carol — Carol — whatever. The Obama tech wizardette who claims that she succeeded in getting every Facebook user for the Obama campaign in 2012. And the New York Times wrote two or three stories about the geniuses in the Obama high-tech team that did this. And she is now adding to it. She said, “Yeah, not only did we get users, we got the entire social graph.” Do you know what the social graph is? (interruption)
You don’t. Okay, well, let me tell you what the social graph is, ’cause I guarantee you there isn’t a senator up there that knows what it is, either. When you say, as this Carol whatever her last name is… Robertson? That’s not what it is, but whenever you hear her say that they got the social graph, the whole social graph, that means they got every user and every user’s known friends. That’s what the social graph is.
The social graph is not just Hoovering up the data of every user. It’s also Hoovering up the data of every friend that every user has. And she’s out there bragging that they pulled this off. Well, yesterday I think Zuckerberg denied this. You know, she’s saying that Facebook found out about it, because, after the election, Facebook came to the Obama high-tech team and started recruiting. They wanted to find people they could hire, ’cause the Obama tech team was filled with a bunch of geniuses. The New York Times said so.
And the Facebook team shows up and this Obama high-tech babe, Carol, says, “Yeah, they came in and they tried to hire and they marveled at what we had done — and they didn’t stop us because they said they were ‘on our side,'” meaning Facebook was for Obama in 2012. Of course, no mystery about that. I think Zuckerberg tried to deny this yesterday. “Nah-nah-nah-nah. That didn’t happen. We’re not on anybody’s side,” and so forth and so on. I think it…
Maybe it was Steve Scalise had brought it up, but it took two days for this example to even be brought up and asked of Zuckerberg. To me, it’s question No. 1. You got the Obama tech team wizardette bragging that they were able to suck up every user’s data in the 2012 campaign and utilize it for targeted advertising and voter outreach and what have you. The New York Times is writing stories on what a bunch of geniuses these people are and what a genius Obama is for hiring them.
To me, that’s question No. 1. But we’re talking about user privacy and user agreements and so forth. And it’s rooted, I think, in a lack of understanding on the part of elected officials about the tech itself. I’m not talking about Facebook policy but rather just the technological things that make it all possible. For example, Zuckerberg was repeatedly asked why Facebook cannot prevent hate speech and why can’t Facebook identify and deny service to hate groups. Now, you want to talk about bizarre.
Purely politics. Hate crime? That’s nothing more than the left taking control of the language and trying to structure degrees of crime based on prejudice that they want to stamp out. Same with hate speech. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are somehow supposed to stop hate speech? And you have members of Congress asking why Facebook cannot prevent hate speech and hate groups?
There are billions of users on Facebook, and these senators want to know why Zuckerberg can’t prevent that kind of stuff? Okay. Turn it around. Why can’t the government prevent crime and hate in a country of a few hundred million people? I mean, why can’t you guys write laws that get rid of hate? If you want Zuckerberg or social media to get rid of it, why don’t you write laws yourselves and get rid of it? It can’t be done.
Because it’s a manufactured state of mind that is entirely subjective based on what a bunch of screwball liberals think. Hate crime, hate groups. It’s nothing more than a new form of censorship. Here come these members of Congress asking about it because they think that this is what the American people’s genuine concerns are, because they think that the Drive-By Media is representing a majority of people’s opinions in this country, which isn’t the case, as you know.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Steve Scalise yesterday talking to Zuckerberg about Carol Davidsen bragging about all the stuff they got from Facebook for Obama.
SCALISE: In 2008 and 2012, there was also a lot of this done. One of the lead digital — or heads of the Obama campaign said recently, “Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing. They came to office in the days following election recruiting and were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.” That’s a direct quote from one of the heads of the Obama digital team. What would she mean by “they,” Facebook, “were on our side”?
ZUCKERBERG: Congressman, we didn’t allow the Obama campaign to do anything that any developer on the platform wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do.
SCALISE: So she was making an inaccurate statement, in your point of view?
ZUCKERBERG: Yes.
RUSH: Special treatment’s not what this is! He obfuscated the answer there. Hang on.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, Steve Scalise is the member of Congress who just asked Zuckerberg the question about Carol Davidsen bragging that they were able to get everybody, everybody and their friends on the Obama campaign for data mining to pair up advertising and other manipulative suggestive things to get people to vote for Obama, just like the so-called Russians did for Trump. Everybody does. The Russians were pikers at it, by the way, but I don’t want to distract myself here.
Steve Scalise is the Republican who was shot by a deranged leftist during baseball practice for an upcoming game between Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives. The guy who pulled the trigger, the guy who was trying to kill Republican members of Congress had a long list of leftist hate groups on his Facebook page that he was recommending, that he was suggesting, that he was liking. And they are still there.
All of these hate groups that this clown that tried to kill Scalise and others, this deranged Democrat from Illinois, the hate groups, they’re still there. But we’re told there isn’t any hate on the left. No, no, no, no. The hate, the hate exists only on the right. The hate exists only in the Alt-Right. The hate only exists on Fox News. But on the left there is nothing more than utopian love.
I’m sorry here, but I’ve gotta contradict Zuckerberg. These guys doing the questioning, I don’t think they are sufficiently informed on all of this. ‘Cause here, ladies and gentlemen, is what happened. Zuckerberg said in this sound bite, “Congressman, we didn’t allow the Obama campaign to do anything that any developer on the platform wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do. No special treatment.”
Zuckerberg said, “The Obama campaign didn’t get anything that anybody else could get.” Well, that is the exact opposite of what Carol Davidsen said. She’s the Obama tech wizardette. She said the GOP did not have the access that Obama’s campaign did. And you know what else? She said that ultimately she didn’t think that was fair, but she did it anyway because all’s fair in love and politics.
But she pointed out — and we’ve played that aspect of her sound bite on previous programs — she says the GOP didn’t have the access that Obama’s campaign did. She said back in 2015 (paraphrasing), “The Republicans do not have that information and will not get that information. I’m a Democrat, so maybe I could argue that’s a great thing, but really it’s not in the overall process. That wasn’t thought all the way through and now there’s a disadvantage of information that to me seems unfair. But I’m not Facebook. And if the advantage extends to me in politics, I’m gonna take it.”
But Zuckerberg said (imitating Zuckerberg), “Oh, no, no, no. Congressman, we didn’t allow the Obama campaign to do anything.” The Obama campaign was heavily recruited. These wizards of smart in the Obama tech team were recruited. Facebook went and met with them at Obama campaign headquarters after the election.
So I thought that was probably one of the most important areas to explore with Zuckerberg. Rather than go at it generically with hate speech and fairness here and there, you’ve got an actual real world example where the Obama high-tech titan is bragging about the advantage they had because Facebook knew what they were doing and was on their side. And, by the way, why deny that? Because everybody knows Facebook’s a bunch of leftists. Because everybody knows that Silicon Valley is a bunch of leftists.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I need to get back to the phones here. We’ve got somebody who thinks that I was wrong. That’s so rare, we put these guys to the top of the call roster. This one is Greg. He’s in Newport Beach, California. I’m so glad you called. How are you?
CALLER: Good. Thank you, Rush. Mark Zuckerberg’s answer to Steve Scalise about the access that Facebook gave the Republicans versus the Democrats? He actually answered correctly because what he had done… In Mark Zuckerberg’s answer, he compared the access that they gave to the Democrats as access that they gave to not Republicans, but to developers. As we all know, if you know anything about this, the developers have a completely different access level than, say, a third party, as in the Republicans. So they did give the Democrats and developers the exact same access. So he didn’t answer correct… He didn’t answer untruthful, but he completely miscalculated or obfuscated and made it sound like they were giving exactly the same access, and his answer was, they did not. That’s all.
She’s admitting Facebook was freaked out by what the Obama campaign did, but they didn’t shut it down while they were doing it. After they finished, after the campaign Facebook shuts off the feature, and she says that. So they shut off the feature. “Well, the Republicans never built an app to do what we did,” meaning the Republican developers did not write an app like the Obama developers wrote an app to Hoover all the data.
And her point is, she goes on to say that it wasn’t… She at times didn’t think it was fair, but so what? The Republicans could have written an app, but they didn’t. The Obama team did, and she said, “The Republicans do not have that information, and they won’t get that information,” and she says, “Now that’s a disadvantage of information that to me seems unfair, but I’m not Facebook, so this is the reality.”
And Zuckerberg was asked by Scalise if Facebook had favored the Obama campaign in this, and Zuckerberg said no special treatment. “We didn’t allow the Obama campaign to do anything that any developer on the platform wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do.” And technically, that is correct. His answer still makes it look like that they were siding with the Democrats. But I guess here the bottom line here is that Democrats had developers that wrote the app that Hoovered the data.
Facebook found out about it and didn’t stop them while they were doing it, which is why Carol Davidsen said the Facebook people showed up and said, “We didn’t stop you because you’re on our side.” Zuckerberg is denying that. But Carol Davidsen says, “No, the Facebook people showed up to recruit some of us after the campaign and they told us they didn’t shut us down because they were on our side.” The Republicans didn’t develop an app to soak up that data, and they weren’t told that the Democrats were doing it.
Zuckerberg’s point is, had the Republicans written an app, they could have. If they had a developer who wanted to write the app, suck data out of Facebook, they could have done it too. So we’re left here with the idea that the Obama campaign was simply smarter and once the Facebook people found out about it, they didn’t stop it. They shut off this ability of developers to write apps to Hoover Facebook data after the election, which mean they found out about it and let the Obama team do it.
And of course they weren’t gonna tell the Republicans, “Hey, look what the Democrats are doing over here,” because they were on the Democrat side in all of it.
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