“I thought we were gonna get television. The truth is… television is gonna get us.”
—Dick Goodwin, Quiz Show
When Mark Zuckerberg went to Capitol Hill earlier in the year I knew Facebook was in serious trouble.
Ostensibly, he was there to apologize to us about how Facebook used customer data so cavalierly.
But, really he was there to explain how everything had gone so wrong.
Facebook was designed to be the enforcer of social norms pushed by the political and corporate establishment.
It was built with Wall Street’s decade-long access to cost-free money to invest in the technologies to create a voluntary layer of social control.
The Fed is pulling back the punchbowl and Wall St. already cashed out most if its chips, leaving the retail “muppets” holding the bag.
Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, were outsourced by the real power brokers to erect a web of censorship platforms which circumvent the 1st amendment, because they are ‘private’ companies.
Like Alex Jones or hate him, he brings a lot of traffic to Facebook. Traffic the company doesn’t want, apparently.
It doesn’t need people who like Alex Jones…
But they still want your data.
Just like the payment processors Stripe, PayPal and VISA are all private companies which can kick you off their platform and deny you a business and a livelihood because you’re not ‘woke’ enough.
The blockchain will fix this in the future, but right now things are dicey at best. People like me are very vulnerable to running afoul of these people.
But, like I told my subscribers last fall, the moment of Peak Facebook would arrive soon enough.
Why?
Because it’s all fake interactions by increasingly fake personas we have to erect lest we get shouted at by someone looking for a dragon to slay to bring meaning to their otherwise pointless lives.
And sometimes those people are our very best friends.
Facebook was built on the false premise that we want to be in contact with all of the people we ever met ALL THE TIME. But no, we really don’t. We all, as T.S. Eliot put it, “prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
And once the bloom is off the digital rose, once the social environment becomes toxic, what’s left to do on Facebook?
Cat videos, Huskies arguing with their owners (my personal favorite) and food porn.
So, it came as no shock to me that Facebook finally hit the earnings wall in Q2.
And the shock was immense.
And it gutted the stock 20% to hit short-term support.
But, the big damage was done back in Q1, with the blow to Facebook’s credibility.
Most people don’t want to believe in ‘conspiracy theories.’ Their default position is to put themselves in the shoes of the person or group and project their behavior onto them.
And, that’s why when Zuckerberg spoke to Congress and came off like a stiffer version of Data from Star Trek, millions of people finally figured out what was happening.
You can’t fake body language for very long. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t a psychopath, he’s a just a creepy, stalker kid, way out of his depth with an over-inflated sense of his importance.
In short, he’s a bad liar.
And that’s why Facebook is where it is.
And why, in my mind, the stock will drop further this week as it targets medium-term support near $150.
The pump and dump on Facebook by Wall Street began at the beginning of the year.
They could see the numbers then, the chart spells it out candle by candle.
I’d almost go so far to say that once Cambridge Analytica’s malfeasance got out, Zuckerberg was thrown to the wolves.
So far, he got himself a $3.5 billion golden parachute, selling that much stock after those hearings.
And to give you an idea of how much he cares about his company he had Facebook buy back $3.2 of his stock at now 20% over the market price.
This is the essence of insider-trading. Publicly selling billions in stock while operating a stock buyback program with company money at prices you know will be lower once earnings come out?
It’s the essence of dishonest. I told you Zuckerberg was a bad liar.
It only makes the case against Facebook that much stronger.
And don’t get me started on what’s wrong with Twitter!
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I go over Facebook’s chart, along with Gold and Bitcoin in this week’s Market Report for subscribers. 15 Minutes of news and technical analysis every Wednesday and Sunday. Click here to join Patreon and get this Market Report for just $4/month.
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