Did Goldman Sachs Sell Our Social Media Psyche To Russia?
Coups don’t happen overnight, and I’m convinced social media’s role in Trump’s election is no fluke.
Let’s take a little journey through the history of Russian corporation Digital Sky Technologies who emerged from nothing in Jan of 2005, to become the first company to ever purchase Facebook stock in 2009.
Who is DST?
DST is a stockholder in Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, ICQ, and Spotify.
Who is Yuri Milner?
Yuri Milner is the public face of DST. He is also one of only 50 friends Mark Zuckerberg has on Facebook. He’s opportunistic, predatory, and US educated at the Wharton School of Business (Trump’s alma mater), ca. 1990. He worked three years in D.C. at the World Bank. This article from Forbes states, “Milner loses all reticence when he talks about the future of social media. He says we live in the “age of the mathematician,” in which inordinate power and riches will go to the people who create the algorithms that end up dictating who and what we know.”
Yuri Milner had two partners in DST at its inception, Alisher Usmanov and Gregory Finger.
Who is Alisher Usmanov? He is one of Russia’s three top oligarchs, and pro-Putin. He is a major stockholder in the London Arsenal, owner of the state sanctioned daily paper, Kommersant, a major shareholder in the Russia state run Gazprom, he is suing the man running against Vladimir Putin, was arrested in Russia in the 80’s and served 6 years of an 8yr sentence before being pardoned by Mikhail Gorbachev, and broke the rules of the London Stock exchange in 1997 by not declaring his conviction when he gained an appointment to the board of Dominion Energy. (This breach of the LSE rules didn’t much matter to the LSE in 2009 when DST obtained an IPO)
He is also known for stalking people he wishes to employ, has had business competitors disappear leaving behind a blood-soaked mess, and has been accused of rape. Usmanov’s official biography records that in 2013 Usmanov was awarded the ‘Order for Service to the Fatherland for his services to the (Russian) state’ and also the ‘Order of Alexander Nevsky’ and the ‘Order of Honour of the Russian Federation, for his professional achievements and contribution to business’ as well as the ‘Medal for Contribution to International Cooperation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.’ Usmanov has very deep connections to Putin’s state.
Who is Gregory Finger?
There’s not much to find on Mr. Finger. I’ve searched the websites of many of the corporations for which he is a board member, and his picture doesn’t even appear on them. This is what Bloomberg has on him. I found one lone blog that refers to him as Russian Mafiozi, and reads like a dossier. I also found one reference to him in a book on Amazon where it states he was a Financial Adviser for Russian Government, an employee of Goldman Sachs.
As far back as August 2010 there have been reports that Facebook had gotten itself tied to the Russian Mafia, and the KGB. That we in the US were actually interfacing with these entities via Facebook and other internet platforms.
Our Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin is also a shareholder in Facebook, along with the Russians. Pg 7:
Steve Mnuchin is a former employee of Goldman Sachs who left in 2002 amid fines by NASD, but has kept ties with the financial giant. Goldman Sachs was also instrumental in getting DST an IPO on the London Stock Exchange after Alisher Usmanov had previously violated the rules of the London Stock Exchange for not disclosing his conviction in Ukraine. Goldman Sachs has deep ties to DST. Three of its former employees bought into DST in 2011, becoming partners with Milner, Finger, and Usmanov. Mnuchin’s father, Robert, is named as a Senior Director for Goldman Sachs for the years 2011, 2012, 2013, which surrounds the Goldman Sachs acquisition of Facebook stock.
In 2009, DST paid $200M for 2% of preferred Facebook stock. In 2011, with Goldman Sachs help, they acquired an additional 8% of preferred stock for a $50M investment. I’m not sure how they mathed that, but DST got an extraordinary deal. Jon Stewart made commentary on the shady deal Goldman Sachs contrived, but all traces of that episode of The Daily Show seem to be dead links. Also in 2011, DST bought $400M of stock in Twitter.
It’s worth noting before I go on to the next part of this that Accel is another major shareholder in Facebook. If you’re not familiar with Accel, they are owners in many tech giants, including data collection companies. Especially when Facebook has figured out how to manipulate algorithms in such a manner that they can target their audience by excluding people based on race.
Data collection is important when targeting an audience. The Trump Campaign spent an estimated $70M on these targeted ads. Donald Trump’s posts were not removed from Facebook, at Mark Zuckerberg’s direction, even though they violated community standards. His speech was protected, while those speaking against it were summarily banned for up to 30 days at a time. This created an echo chamber. A well-honed, very lucrative, very influential, echo chamber that swayed our election.
Echo chambers happen in a vacuum, and vacuums are created. Echo chambers are created when certain segments of society are silenced, while others are promoted. How that happens on social media is through Community Standards guidelines, and targeted advertising.
At this point, I must note that all of these Russian purchases of US tech giants happened before 2012. If we all go back and remember, Trump made his first bid for president that election cycle, not 2016. He tested the waters, and dropped out early, but he made his intentions known to his base.
Back to Community Standards guidelines.
In May of this year, The Guardian was leaked internal Facebook documents revealing Facebook’s banning guidelines. What they revealed was stunning.
Here is a link to the actual documents.
Facebook’s policies keep voices standing against racism, sexism, and white nationalism banned, while racists and sexists are protected.
These bannings are similar on platforms such as Twitter, although Twitter is much better about banning both parties, victim and harasser, however unfair that appears.
While being protected on Russian owned platforms, US white supremacists were being hosted in Russia in 2015. This is the base that Steve Bannon has brought to the Trump organization. Putin’s Russia has become a model and beacon of light for the US alt-right, Steven Miller’s base. This all coinciding with Donald Trump’s second run for president in 2016. This is the core of his base, being courted by Russia, and protected by US social media giants. While Facebook was being infiltrated by fake accounts leaking stolen information that swayed our presidential election. Remember, this is the corporation that bought ICQ. If anyone remembers anything about ICQ, they remember bot attacks. Bot attacks were vicious fake accounts that would flood a chat room and make it unusable. Don’t let anyone at Facebook or Twitter fool you, bots have been around a long time, and this sort of targeted action being used for an election was only a matter of time.
They want us to believe that Russia’s involvement in, and ownership of, major US social media giants aren’t connected to our current political climate, or that Yuri Milner isn’t making his dream of He Who Owns The Algorithm Rules The World a reality.
“One of the companies that we’ve invested in is called Facebook. In only two years, between 2009 and 2011, the information exchanged between people increased 28 times. And that cannot be explained by new people joining Facebook.” ~Yuri Milner
I’ve given you the information, you decide.
