I continue to track and post about Epstein and Silicon Valley and Russia in large part because #metoo helped me feel less alone about the harassment I experienced in SV and I have been *horrified* about the rape and scaling of it and *silence* among folks who were my friends. https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1297185773007978498

Also: because the 2016 election made clear to me what a threat to democracy FB and an amoral SV culture are and how little the press has been paying attention to the Silicon Valley / autocracy / Epstein connection.

I still remember things I experienced and do my best to share.

...and to look for things based on what I remember and know.

I am grateful that @xeni and @dearsarah and a few other folks with time in the Valley do the same.

The public silence of almost everyone in Edge, or took investment or career help from Joi Ito has been *stunning.*

I do not see how Russia and whatever other foreign powers or mobsters with a desire to see l’il dupe in the White House could have pulled this off without Facebook and other Valley companies and “norms.” I just don’t.

Of course they couldn’t have without US racism, GOP etc but I see those covered at least somewhat.

So I keep paying attention to this thing. As @fraying (another old web friend who is disgusted by this stuff) posted I keep seeing who people are....though for me it happened even before 2016 for me but the last election accelerated the behaviour.

If you were part of an organization that really helped your career and that you enjoyed and then it was reported that it was PAID FOR BY A NETWORK SCALING CHILD RAPIST would you never make a public comment about that? Would you be fine with the silence and what it implies?

If you were a major journalist and you went to this organizations’ events as a journalist, don’t you think you’d want to disclose this and express your horror at finding out about this element of the organization? These things are known and proved. Not up in the air.

And Facebook: look at Facebook’s behaviour BEFORE 2016.

Look at the MANY times this co said “oops we’ll try to do better” for breaking a norm, enabling harm, throwing notions like consent to the wind, running an *emotional manipulation study* (of course without consent).

Here’s a disclosure of mine: was one of two artists who were part of the first SV lobbying trips to Capitol Hill along w lobbyists (and reimbursed by Google for the travel) to stop SOPA/PIPA. FB was part of it too.

I despair at where FB is now and regret it.

I am still DISTURBED beyond belief that even a feminist news org like @19thnews can in its early launch cite Sheryl Sandberg and Lean In *with no mention of what FB inc she have done.*

This is SO common in the press that the company has better public cover than t*ump.

When is someone going to ask Sandberg how many WoC she personally hired? How she squares creating and running an ad model that has enabled racism in hiring and so much else! How she squares Holocaust denialism! A genocide in Myanmar!

Where was the tech press?

Have any of them gone back and looked at through Facebook’s behaviour over time?

How can you have been close to this stuff and been 100% surprised by the company in 2016?