On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court issues a ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that equates corporate money to freedom of speech. The ruling allows--for the first time in American history--corporations and unions to donate unlimited money to Super PACs (political action committees) which can then campaign for or against a candidate or issue. Corporations with business or regulatory interests before government officials quickly invest millions to make sure politicians favorable to their causes are elected. Working class voters donations are dwarfed by comparison. By 2016, corporations are spending approximately $1 billion dollars to influence the presidential and congressional elections.
The Alex Jones Show, which traffics in conspiracies that 9/11 and other events are US government plots against the American people, surpasses 2 million listeners each week. According to Rolling Stone, Jones has a larger audience than Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh combined. Jones distributes the program largely for free, then makes millions of dollars a year selling products to listeners.
Facebook launches their "Voter" button.
Twenty children between 6 and 7-years-old are killed along with six adults on Dec. 14, 2012 at The Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman has significant mental health issues and kills himself at the school. For the next six years, Facebook and YouTube direct millions of viewers to the theory that the massacre is a US government hoax as the sites’ algorithms push viewers repeatedly to Alex Jones’ Infowars pages. Jones’ YouTube channel amasses 2.4 million subscribers and more than 1.6 billion views of nearly 36,000 videos, many of which spread false information about the Sandy Hook killings. The main Facebook pages for Mr. Jones and Infowars, meanwhile, draw 668 million views of their videos in just three years, according to Tubular Labs. “Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view, manufactured,” Jones says. Jones and his supporters stalk or harass the families of the dead children--Jones reads the home address of one Sandy Hook family on his show. The harassment grows so severe that some families are forced into hiding. The incident remains the deadliest mass shooting at either a primary or secondary school in U.S. history, the second-deadliest U.S. school shooting overall, and the fourth-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Edward Snowden copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
Amazon founder, and centi-billionare, Jeff Bezos buys The Washington Post for $250 million in cash. Since beginning his run for president, Donald J. Trump has accused Bezos of using the Post to get tax breaks for Amazon and sending reporters after him. Bezos denied the allegations and there is no evidence they are true. Bezos has not involved himself in the day to day running of the newspaper. The world’s richest man, Bezos is able to expand the Post’s newsroom at a time other American newspapers are closing down almost daily as their advertisers leave them and move their ad dollars to Google and other internet advertisers.
Facebook users can now “Like” media pages on Facebook videos. The algorithms within the program alter and filter content in the user’s timeline. The viewer is now offered more media that is similar to what they “liked.” Increasingly, Americans on Facebook are being shown vastly different versions of the news.
Cambridge Analytica steals the personal data and profiles of 87 million Facebook users without their permission. Facebook freely gives the data, without verifying any information, to Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian-American academic and researcher working undercover for Cambridge Analytica. The data theft may prove crucial in the 2016 US presidential election. According to The New York Times, “The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.”
Republican operative Steve Bannon signs on as vice president and secretary of Cambridge Analytica from June 2014 to August 2016. Bannon, who also ran Breitbart News, a far right news site, later becomes Chief Executive Officer of Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
Sales of products on Alex Jones’ InfoWars show reach $14 million per year. Infowars is considered one of the largest platforms for conspiracies in the US. Jones sells products that listeners will need for the coming Armageddon that he preaches: Super Male Vitality supplements, gun making tools, bullet proof vests and other products.
