Think a Little Deeper about the Khashoggi Affair Response

Today, President Trump put out an official statement that the King of Saudi Arabia and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) have both denied approving or being involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the U.S, will not sanction them or the country generally for the depraved act (although the Magninsky Act, in fact, require such sanctions and they may eventually apply). Think what you will of the public position and statement by Trump, perhaps we should think about this on a deeper level.  Instead of Trump being "loyal" or beholden to the Saudis, how about the idea that Trump got something valuable in return for not publicly concluding that MBS ordered the killing of Khashoggi?  Perhaps the Saudis will now need to tow the U.S. line on Middle East matters, including the war in Yemen and a potential Middle East peace plan between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  It's even possible that Trump authorized the release of the CIA report concluding that MBS had authorized the Khashoggi killing so that he could then extort MBS to support his Middle East plans in return for not publicly siding with the CIA.  None of this type of thing is as simple as it seems on the surface.

The Problem is the Business Model

So, for quite some time now Facebook, Google and the other FANGS and similar companies have been setting forth earnest statements that they were SHOCKED that bad actors were using their "planet-saving" online tools for evil.  It all reminds me of the regular line from the old TV show Get Smart when Maxwell Smart would proclaim "If only he used his genius for good instead of evil".  Given all of the investigations, hearings, hacking of data, scandals, etc., we are now at least seeing some public lip service and even some action to close fake accounts of Russians, etc. who have been using Facebook and other tools for evil instead of good, which they could easily do because those tools were, in fact, made to influence the opinion of the users. That is, Facebook's and others' entire business model is to use the huge amount of even the most minute data to influence its users to purchase goods and services from the companies' advertisers.  This point seems be mostly lost in the current conversation.  That is, it is not just the "bad actors" who use these websites for such purposes, it is the actual business model of all of these businesses.  So, even if Facebook and others actually do what is possible and necessary to shut down all the election meddlers, etc. (whether voluntarily or by regulatory enforcement), we are all still left with a fundamentally evil business model by which these huge companies get, keep, digest, manipulate and then use that data to control how you are thinking and what you want to purchase.  I consent that advertising's purpose is to influence users to purchase a product or a service and historically really good advertising could occasionally be extremely effective with that.  However, the increasingly optimization of massive data aggregation and manipulation takes the advertising business and the consequences to a different and unacceptable level.  Facebook and others will try to tell you that it is all for the good because they are sending only "targeted advertising" and "relevant ads" to you because your data says that you are likely to respond to such advertising, but all this is very Owellian and effectively amounts to a level of mind control over consumers and promotes excessive consumerism.  There is no doubt that the government has to get involved and pass smart and strong regulation to effectively eliminate this type of data usage and advertising generally and not just because of certain groups are using those platforms for evil.  The companies will never regulate themselves on this front, precisely because it is their entire business model.