The thing about technology is, the genie doesn't go back into the bottle.

We've been living with the nuclear bomb since the 1940's. People have tried everything to get rid of it. Gorbachev offered Reagan a deal where the US and the USSR would both get rid of every single nuke in their arsenals (this was at a peace talk in Reykjavík in 1986- Reagan rejected the offer). Most of the films Hollywood produced from On the Beach right up to 1992 reflected some degree of the persistent nightmares the bomb created in everyone's minds.

And the bomb did not go away.

Facebook is not a good thing, but for reasons other than what you discussed. FB is controlled by a single company. So, what you have is a discussion platform with global reach that can be censored when FB's board determines this to be profitable- as it will be in China- or it can serve as an outlet for fake news, when one of the larger shareholders (Peter Thiel) throws his support behind a major political candidate.

The darkest implications of FB however have to do with the casual manner in which it and Twitter are used. People give away all manner of personal details, and broadcast them widely. That information can be aggregated and used for a variety of purposes- whether it's marketing, identity theft, or stalking. People living under oppressive governments can find those personal details used against them. And FB owns that information-not the person making the post. They fought very hard in the courts in Canada to not allow people to delete their accounts or their posts. And even if you do, its still on a server somewhere, able to be retrieved by anyone with a high level of access.

If you get creeped out by the idea of spyware, why aren't you creeped out by FaceBook? If Snowden pissed you off when he told you the NSA was looking at the dick pics you sent somebody when you were sexting, how is it that you so willingly pretty intimate details abut your life on social media? People use checkins on Yelp and Foursquare, which I could aggregate to find our who on a given street is not presently in their house- and thus ripe for burglary. I can log onto any dating site and find stuff I don't even need to hack, which people will tell me directly- that I could use to blackmail them.

But, like the nuclear bomb, it doesn't really matter if these things are bad. Even the absolute leader of one of only two global superpowers couldn't get rid of the bomb. And neither you nor I nor anyone else can topple Zuckerberg's empire. The genie does not go back into the bottle.

@1
Good
That's why I no longer use FB

As to bloood in streets, will happen no matter what happens.

Good post #1: No doubt those living under tyrants need to be far more careful about what they post, to any site, than the vast majority of us in this country ever need be. And I would be long gone before our government ever got to the point of hunting down and arresting people for sedition or treason for what they'd posted on social media. But I still think we're a very long way from that.

That said. I'm not on FB, or ever post anything personal on-line. Me, and others like me, don't particularly like the idea 'sharing' details about our personal lives with anyone other than close friends, family and allies. And even then, we don't tell each one every detail of what's going on with us, but focus on the things that are important in each individual relationship, which are always different. We also find much of it embarrassingly inane and pointlessly. And after a few visits come away thinking, gee, we really are a lot smarter and more accomplished than most of the schleps on FB, for example, but not taking any joy in the new knowledge of their vast numbers. And agreed, the toothpaste is out of the tube for good on that one.

@2 and @3,

Most people use passwords based on the names of their kids or their dog. They then post the names of their kids and their dog on FB.

If I really wanted to hack someone's email, or their online bank account, or just about any other website you're likely to use that has a login, I don't need to use the brute force technique, where I write a program that just dials up random letters and numbers until I crack it like a safe.

No, its much easier than that. I just friend them on FB, and then make a note of the names of their kids and their dog.

And you're right, most FB posts are about belly button lint and some funny looking skin tag the poster noticed on their butt.

As for the government, remember the story of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Mao said, "Let a thousand flowers bloom", when he encouraged people to speak freely about his government. Then he cit the heads of those flowers off, when he rounded up everyone who had something bad to say about his regime and shot them.

Sydney's paranoia isn't entirely unjustified. However, I think the object of her terror is misplaced.

If the US had an archetype, it would be the cowboy, the man who is a law unto himself. So many people see themselves this way. They stockpile guns and ammo, and they really do think they can take on the US federal government all by themselves. Of course, they can't, and when they try it, we have Waco or the Oklahoma City bomber. Everyone involved dies, either in an electric chair or under a hail of bullets. It doesn't matter what kind of basass you think you are, the US Marine Corps is far, far badder than thou.

So its not the lone gun nuts that worry me. At most, those guys kill maybe 1,000 people, tops.

What freaks me out is what happens when a government does that.

Garry Kasparov is one wily sonofabitch. I say that because he still lives in Russia, and is a constant critic of Putin. Most people living in Russia who go after Putin don't last long- look at Politkovskaya, Khordokovsky, or even the ones who flee the country like Litvenienko. Or Pussy Riot, for that matter. And sometimes, you do't even need to be a critic of Putin for him to kill you. She times, you just have to happen to live in an apartment block in Moscow that can be used politically to defame the Chechens if it happens to explode in a fireball.

And Trump really likes Putin a lot.

Trump will never look as good as Vlad if he ever gets naked on a horse (why do I have flashbacks of Charles' movie in my mind, all of a sudden?). But he does have a rather casual view of the value of human life. He wants to rule the country like a strongman, like Duterte. And we've seen how Duterte handles journalists in the Philippines.

That's what I fear. I fear finding a dead reporter next to an elevator in heir apartment building on Trump's birthday, and then seeing the assassin elected to Congress.

Cowboys give Sydney nightmares. Masha Gessen's books give me mine.

Oh, and Sydney, on the topic of power vacuums,

I recommend Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's "The Dictator's Handbook". The system itself creates or prevents authoritarian rule. A lot depends on the number of people who can choose the next leader. If that number is very small - say, a military junta where all power is controlled by a few generals- to achieve power the leader-to-be has t know where the money is, and then divide it up between the kingmakers. Because ether aren't many kingmakers you'd need to bribe, the total amount of money in the treasury divided by a small denominator equals a substantial bribe.

However, if that denominator is very large, the per-person bribe is very small. If I wanted to buy your vote in an election where I needed 50% + 1 votes, even if my cash on hand is a ton of money, I'm only going to be able to give each individual voter maybe $20, which isnt enough to persuade anyone.

Now, the way revolutions usually go is you have a reformer (Obama) that loosens the degree of oppression on the majority of the population. Then you have a hardliner (Trump) that cracks down and not only undoes the predecessor's liberalization efforts, he makes matters worse for the affected populations. Then you have an incompetent bungler (Whoever's next). The restless see their opportunity, and gain the support of the military, whom the incompetent bungler alienates. Once a leader loses the military, we have a revolt.

And its during times of revolts such as this that constitutions get rewritten. If the government that replaces this one has few kingmakers, we're screwed- corruption, dictatorship and repression will be hard baked into the system. If there are even more kingmakers than there are now- like you have in the Westminster system, where you not only need the majority of votes for your party, you need a free vote within the party to gain control, and then you can lose everything just by failing a no confidence vote at any time even when it's not an election year- the system will make rule-by-bribery more difficult.

Which is another reason why Dan should thank Jill Stein. Her whole argument is based on the idea of increasing the number of kingmakers by opening the discussion to more political parties who could appeal to more voters and convince more people to vote.

So...wow.

I didn't think one of my comments would get read on the air. Even though I'm a guy, Ms. Groover can read my comments any time.

For those who would be interested in learning more about what I'm talking about, here are some good resources.

"Everybody wins, except for most of us" by Josh Bivens
This book goes into great detail(just the summary on the EPI web page is really helpful) on how globalization is actually a mixed blessing.

"The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies" by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee: This is a really good book that will give you a basic idea about the problems we are dealing with.

Now, if you aren't interested in reading, there is a podcast called "Team Human" that's really good. In particular, the latest episode is called the “Future of Work” with Natalie Foster really has a lot of interesting stuff on the topic.

If you didn't take Jill Stein down, it's not a "takedown". It's just bleating. Stein is still standing, the Greens are still standing, and they're stronger, and more relevant. The only way to push them out of the spotlight is for Democrats to actually do what they keep saying they wish they could do.

@8- I think anyone with sense would realize they meant "no other press".

I originally thought the Foster comment was a quip about the ridiculous Clintons as ninja assassins theory, dismissing it as not even worth of remembering, let alone rehashing, but then Dan's reaction made it obvious that Sydney really didn't understand the reference, and that she'd just experienced her own Aleppo moment, on a widely listened to podcast, with her boss sitting next to her.

I hope Dan appreciates that from a time management perspective, it's a positive that she doesn't spend a lot time watching and hatin' on Fox News and calling it research. And she's not a national politic pundit anyway, but more of a social justice reporter, which she can be quite good at...'Note to self; At next performance evaluation tell Sydney to study history of 1990's scandals mania, a pivotal event in creating a false portrait of HRC, one she never did shake, and how that helped paved the golden way for a Trump to bully and lie his way into the WH. Talk about compensation AFTER the Foster thing. Be nice.'

Like there won't be any blood in the streets once the Justice Department civil rights division is run by a Trump crony. At least if the election is thrown over to Clinton the government will be fighting on the right side.

#12: Agreed. I only hope that those who 'voted their conscious', as opposed to those of us with no conscience who voted for one of the two major candidates, or those who protested by not voting at all, now realize that they accomplished nothing with their personal moral choices other than create even more misery for those most vulnerable to the awful thing that just happened. Nice work.

@ 13,

Spellcheck got the better of you, there. You hope those who voted their conscious... as opposed to subconscious? Either that, or your Freudian Slip is showing.

Those who did vote subconsciously, as opposed to voting while fully awake, may have pulled the lever for a corporate shill so stuck in the 1990's, she couldn't even force the need for decent cybersecurity. Why were John Podesta's emails hackable to begin with? What dumbass made their communications system so insecure, and what idiots spoke so freely without thinking about how the public wild react when they read the rather frank talk about rigging the primary?

Were they asleep too?

Dreaming a dream about the good old days in the 1990's...... not at all aware that it's 2016, and shit has changed.

But this is what happens when your org chart is a gerontocracy. Nobody in a position to implement better security was young enough to know what a blackhat is.

@7 The only way to push them [the Greens] out of the spotlight is for Democrats to actually do what they keep saying they wish they could do

It is rare that they have a chance, though. Six years ago we had a shot, but blew it. The Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House. This was a golden opportunity to move the country strongly to the left, but Obama decided not to. Part of the reason is that Obama is a centrist, and while he differs considerably from mainstream Republicans, I think he would love it if they respected him, and worked with him. Unfortunately, they don't feel that way, and had no interest in doing anything that could help him politically. The other thing he did was focus on health care, which is arguably the most important long term domestic need in the country. He also felt that the ACA would be extremely popular. Unfortunately it isn't. It is like a lot of complex government programs, it is better than nothing, but to work effectively it has to be tweaked. But again, many Republicans (especially House Republicans) have no interest in improving government (let alone the ACA) they just want to kill it. So a government mandated private insurance program would have been just fine when it was proposed (by Nixon) in an era of bipartisan reasonableness, but these days, with the Republican party having largely gone bat shit crazy, it simply didn't work (politically). While Obamacare has some pieces that are popular, overall it is not that popular -- or at least not popular enough to carry the party in power to victory eight years later (unlike, say, Social Security). Finally, Obama was a rookie when he was elected. This is great politically, as we seem to be electing people that are less and less experienced as time goes by (it has been a very long time since we've had an open election won by the more experienced candidate). Unfortunately, it means that once the person is in charge, very little happens, as they learn the ropes. By the time they figure it out, it is too late, and very little gets done.

In my opinion, one of the big mistakes (among many) that Hillary Clinton made in the campaign was her failure to attack the House Republicans. This would have been fairly easy. They are the party that cut food stamp funding, for example; or failed to spend more money during a recession (which every economist will tell you is stupid). Such an approach would be similar to Harry Truman's approach, and given the dynamics (a party in power since a great economic downturn, with a new candidate that is less popular) it would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, it isn't her style. Even if it was, it would likely fail, because this country is misogynistic as fuck.

Doesn't it strike you as cognitive dissonance to suggest that people voting for Jill Stein (a woman) did so out of misogyny?

Also, if that were true, would that imply that Hillary Clinton's 2008 primary campaign was racist, since she sought to prevent a Black man from becoming President?

In that same vein, if Hillary Cliton's defeat wads entirely because she was female, and you wanted a woman, any woman, to be the Chief Executive, did you vote for Sarah Palin? She would have been VP to an old man with a heart condition, and (as far as anyone could tell at the time) more likely to become President sooner than Clinton if she had won.

Oh? What's that? You didn't vote for Palin? Are you a sexist? No? But you just said anyone not voting for Clinton was sexist, simply because she too (like Palin) was female. So if your logic is at all consistent, then being anti-Palin is as misogynistic as voting anti-Clinton.

AND, voting anti-Stein.

Is Dan Savage, the most angry anti-Stein pundit on the Stranger staff a misogynist because Jill Stein happens to be female?

No?

Then your logic does not follow. You throw the words misogynist and sexist around as if they had no meaning at all, and might as well just be generic insults to be thrown at anyone who dislikes the candidate you favor.

At a little after 11:00 in, Dan Savage states:

"If we can’t stop voter suppression because there’s no corrective in Congress or from the courts, then we need to get in the fucking mud and engage in it too - to level the field."

@16 -- Doesn't it strike you as cognitive dissonance to suggest that people voting for Jill Stein (a woman) did so out of misogyny?

Nobody voted for Stein. I'm sorry you misinterpreted my comment (assuming you were responding to me).

I meant that America is misogynistic as fuck because they voted for Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. The fact that a handful of people voted for Johnson, Stein, McMullin, Castle, Mickey or Minnie Mouse doesn't change the fact that if Hillary Clinton were a dude, he would have won easily.

@ 18,

That comment wasn't directed at you.

If nobody voted for Stein, since we're on that subject, why are Democrats blaming her for Clinton's loss?

And if Clinton could have won so easily, does that mean Palin could have too if she was a guy? And if that's so, did you vote for Sarah Palin?

Since Truman, a party has held the White House for three terms one time - its a very hard thing to do. It *almost* happened a second time with Clinton but Trump threaded a series of needles and blundered into a freak win - the weirdest presidential vote in history.

Then everybody goes rushing back to construct a bunch of just so stories that explain why this outcome was inevitable - "this thing that I've been saying for years the Democrats should do, if only they'd done it they'd have won! Its obvious!". And then people quarrel about who's counterfactual, alternate history, parallel universe is the best. Its such a crock.

This just in- Jill Stein has had to end the PA recount after the Trump campaign sued to increase then cost of the recount in PA. The Democrats- lead by Hillary "I Give Up" Quittin, have failed to support the recount effort that could have won her the Presidency, materially or otherwise.

Lets here the chorus of whining from the Clintonistas, that vast conspiracy thats out to get her, and how its never her fault that she has no fight in her and just gives up without even trying, its everyone else who's to blame!

#16 Drat, foiled again by spellcheck. One correction to your post; the emails you refer to are from late April and May, long after it was mathematically impossible for Senator Crankypants to secure enough delegates to win the nomination. The emails had nothing to do with rigging the election, but were discussions about how to deal with a dead man walking, who continued to tell his followers that victory was at hand, and continued to ask for donations, despite knowing the utter nonsense of those claims. And how to do it without totally crushing the hearts and minds of those naive and gullible enough to believe that crap without sending them into crazy land and losing their support in the general election. And as you demonstrated, they failed miserably. Thanks a lot.

22,

If it hadn't been for the Superdelegates, that would have been President-elect Crankypants to you. And quite possibly VP-elect Clinton.

BUT, the DNC decided the Superdelegates knew better than the American public. They even pointed at the GOP, and shoo their heads, as Donald Trump could not possibly win the general. The DNC system was so much better, because you see, with the Superdelegates, the Democrats wouldnt get stuck with an unelectable candidate like Trump.

Except... he did get elected. The GOP primary, lacking superdelegates, was reflective of the popular will. The DNC primary was not. It only reflected the will of the party elites.

That didn't work too well did it?

@23: The role of superdelegates is to prevent demented populists from achieving the nomination; it's too bad that RNC got rid of them awhile back.

@ 24,

The Superdelegtes are why we lost.

Them, and the faction so determined to force Mrs Clinton into the nominating circle that it refused to listen to the electorate that ultimately picks the President.

Your Superdelegates do not decide the winner of the general election, as I think should be clear to you by now.

Clinton won enough elected delegates without the supers. She won the popular vote against Sanders and Trump as well. The "will of the people" argument is as inane as the poorly thought out ideas that Comrade Sanders, as he would have been branded, proposed. And the adults in the room weren't about to support some guy who comically thought, for example, that stalking the Pope was a smart campaign strategy, or who stood grinning on the stage with tyrants and dictators as they called for the destruction of the US. The list goes on and on and on. In any case, it's probably safe to assumed that Wandering Stars, in a name that says it all, didn't vote for Clinton. Enjoy.

Those folks who didn't vote for Hillary have a compromised moral standing when complaining about Trump, as she was the most viable way to defeat him despite her shortcomings.

Apparently Hillary's shortcomings are of greater detriment to America than a Trump presidency - which they didn't actually believe of course but they relaxed in their delusions, thinking their rebellious 3rd party vote would be cushioned by everyone else whom would never vote for Donald.

So they thought.