Brown Floyd - Big tech tyrants: How Silicon Valleys stealth practices addict teens, silence speech, and steal your privacy

Advance Praise for
Big Tech Tyrants

Most Americans have no idea of how much information Google, Amazon, and Facebook have gathered on them. Big Tech Tyrants is your reference guide into the world of big data surveillance without the jargon. It will help you understand why privacy matters.

Wayne Allyn Root, Radio and TV Personality

Floyd Brown and Todd Cefaratti as digital publishers have had a front row seat to watch the changes in technology that have revolutionized: news, politics, and commerce. They will provide you insights into how Big Tech Tyrants use data to manipulate how and what you think. These companies make you dance to their tune.

Mike Huckabee, Former Governor and Host of Huckabee

I have spent my career in business, politics, and media. These three sectors of our economy have been whipsawed by technological changes. Big Tech Tyrants is the most comprehensive expos I have seen about the dark side of the forces of big data collection and the misuse of it by large tech firms.

Herman Cain, Former CEO and Media Commentator

Brown and Cefaratti provide brilliant insight as to how the collection of personal data is daily misused and exploited by the modern-day robber barons of Silicon Valley. Until you read Big Tech Tyrants , you wont understand how much data these firms collect and how they use it to manipulate your very reality.

David Bossie, Deputy Campaign Manager, Trump for President

A BOMBARDIER BOOKS BOOK

An Imprint of Post Hill Press

Big Tech Tyrants:

How Silicon Valleys Stealth Practices Addict Teens, Silence Speech, and Steal Your Privacy

2019 by Floyd Brown and Todd Cefaratti

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-64293-290-4

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-291-1

Cover Design by Cody Corcoran

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

Forewarning

Its early summer, 2020. The presidential campaign is heating up. Challengers to President Donald Trumpfrom both parties, as well as independentsblast social media boasts in bids to unseat a much-maligned chief executive. Google, Twitter, and Facebook have become the primary battlefields for all the bluster and brag, attack and counterattack. Words and imagesjpegs, MP3s, and streaming videosfill millions of computer screens of all sizes, and iPhones and Androids are bursting their memory limits with the incoming and outgoing tides of political information and imagery.

But all is not as it seems, even to skeptics who have been warning about those seeking to undermine the gold standard of American democracy: the vote. Now, with November 3 in the near future, voters can sense that something is not right with certain candidates. But they dont know why.

One candidateonce known as a friendly, home-loving, hard-working mother of threesomehow now elicits an unsettling impression on Facebook, one of infidelity and deceit.

The YouTube post of a rousing speech given by a beloved Iraq War veteran falls flat on otherwise excited crowds, and one-time supporters begin to have doubts without being able to put their fingers on just why.

Facebook feeds (user-generated content) have changed; they are not quite the same. Long-time friends arent liking each others comments as they once did. Newsfeeds are either far more intriguing or far more irritating than before.

Opinion polls begin to describe an electorate that is wandering, confused, uncertain. And the more some candidates work to overcome their sudden reversals in the polls, the less traction they seem to get. But other candidates are doing far better than anyone predicted. Key races are swinging Blue to Red, or Red to Blue. But why?

What is going on in 2020?

Is it possible that some unseen force is adulterating reality, using tools that didnt exist even a decade ago? Tools fashioned of silicon and lines of code, wielded by the darker angels of greed for whom national elections are not about raising up leaders, but about stifling, manipulating, rewriting, repurposing truth and facts, sounds and images, in order to gain financial and intellectual dominion over a troubled and vulnerable land?

Contents

All Was Well

Out from a place called Silicon Valley came the modern-day hit parade. Eye-popping new technologies, gadgets that inspired and delighted us, discoveries promising to raise us to levels of prosperity unlike anything the world has ever known.

Busloads of kids whod once journeyed to Hollywood in search of fortune and fame now found their way to San Jose, Cupertino, and Mountain View, California.

They came to companies named Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. Companies that were bringing the entire planet together in a virtual single town square, an agora of delights. All of mankinds knowledge made instantly accessible. Anything we wanted materialized on our doorstep overnight. Into each of our hands, a supercomputer.

For all of this amazingness, multiple trillions in new wealth was being generated. And all the world wanted to be along for the ride. We all wanted seats on that bus, to bask in the glory of these Mt. Olympus-poised companies, and to offer up sacrifices to their god-like talents. Or at least we were happy to revel in all the Yowza!

But Something Went Wrong

As if we had suddenly been cast out of a bright and promising dawn into a veiled dusk of suspicion, we discovered that one of these companies was running addiction algorithms on its users, stealthily modifying user behavior to soften them up for commercial pitches from advertisers.

Another company came to control what 90 percent of the world sees online and was using that competition-free dominance to punish enemies and push a political agenda on the country.

Then there was the company that refused to pay sales tax, treated employees like dirt, and flattened thousands of competitors, relegating millions of jobs to the dustbin of the unemployed.

And lets not forget the company that aided and abetted terrorism on our native soil by denying federal investigators access to possibly incriminating records, while loyal fans cheered on their new silicon deity.

Something had apparently gone very wrong in that meandering little valley south of San Francisco. We had allowed these tech wizards into the most intimate parts of our lives; we had trusted them. We, the peoplefrom federal, state, and local governments, to corporations, small businesses, and farms, to cities, towns, and hamlets, to mom and pop and even our childrenhad given them a long leash. But instead of delivering a better world like theyd promised, they reneged on their many public vows and got caught up in the pursuit of the T Algorithmthe silicon trophy for being the first company to be worth a trillion dollars.

And in that pursuit, the game changed drastically.

This Is the Story of Golden Boys Turned Tyrants

This true story shows how Facebook and Google, as well as Amazon and Apple, grew so large and oppressive that today they wield unchallenged power over a nation they themselves have impoverished, sitting pretty, high above it all as they systematically dismantle our most cherished freedoms and replace them with