THE PURGE: Clark Fickerberg, Former Social Media Company Founder & Camp David Conference Attendee

Excerpt from "COVIDsteria: An Oral History of America's Great Reset" - see https://covidsteria.substack.com/p/covidsteria-table-of-contents (NOTE: This post may be too long for some email providers).

As with Wall Street and corporate America, big tech and Silicon Valley were devastated by the Great Die-Off. Most of the rank-and-file and middle management got pressured to take the nDNA vaccine. And yet, as with Wall Street and corporate America, many big tech and Silicon Valley executives or moguls had somehow managed to survive unscathed and in perfect health. 

After the tech mass exodus from the San Francisco Bay area, many surviving techies have chosen to set up shop and create new mini-Silicon Valleys around the country in cities not so associated with big tech. Or they work from home and have never set foot in an office again.  

Meanwhile, most Americans have mostly stopped using social media altogether - opting only to use messaging apps that leave no record behind. Or they have rediscovered the joys of face-to-face communication and real rather than online friendships. 

The Great Die-Off also seemed to hit millennials, the heaviest users of social media, the hardest. Many traumatized millennials and especially vaccinated survivors have become even more reliant on surviving social media platforms as their frail health confines them at home for the remaining few years of their lives. However, as this advertising pool continues to shrink as they pass on, how long social media platforms can survive remains much debated. So far, none have found a way to regain the lost trust of now-former users, and online advertising rates are in a freefall.      

I had to exchange many emails with the lawyers of the mild-mannered and now former social media mogul Clark Fickerberg before sitting down for a chat with him at his opulent estate overlooking the San Francisco Bay where he has remained based. Clark's lawyers had warned me to stay clear of asking any questions concerning any direct role he or his social media company may have played during the violent purges conducted by the Federal Investigation Bureau (FIB). Nevertheless, that did not stop him from being open with me about other matters, as the COVID amnesty is now firmly in place. 

And as with Will Doors, I thought it was rather odd how all of Clark's burly security people seemed to be watching him more closely than his estate. They, also rather oddly, all wore black uniforms and fur hats...

My college buddies and I started our social media site back when we were still undergraduates. At first, it was not clear to any of us just what we were creating because it did not replace anything already in existence. But we knew that we had an information network that could be extremely valuable to the right people. We just needed to find the right people or have them find us. That was what ended up happening. The right people found us. [He smiles.] 

First, we were approached by Madison Avenue together with their friends on Wall Street. They said our platform was perfect for advertising to a targeted audience. All we needed to do was add an algorithm. Then we could target our users with ads tailored-made for them based on their usage of our platform. That would be what they wrote, clicked on, read, liked, and forwarded. We already captured all of this activity as raw personal data. We just needed to create some tools to mine and sell this gold mine of personal data that our users gave us for free.  

After we gave Madison Avenue and Wall Street what they wanted, we got approached by political consultants. They wanted targeted voter data and new ways to identify and reach hidden voters. The latter were unreachable because they lacked landlines, never answered their phones, or were never at home when they canvassed for votes. We provided the political consultants with access and tools to help them find and reach these unreachable voters – naturally for a price.

Once the politicians, through their political consultants, got a taste of what we could offer them, we senior people in the government approached us…

Senior people in the government?

Yes. Senior people in the government… [He smiles.]

But politicians and senior people in the government are the same people…

No, they are not… [He smiles again.] Politicians mainly made speeches, attended fundraisers, and showed up on Capitol Hill to make more speeches or vote. They would come and go from Washington DC as they had to run for reelection, and sometimes they lost. When they lost elections or got too old to be politicians and wanted to cash out, they would rotate into big business, Wall Street, or Silicon Valley in more recent times.

The careerist public servants who worked in the government in Washington DC ran the government in Washington DC. They never left the government or Washington DC… [He scratches his head for a moment.]

Well, I take that back… [He pauses in thought.] The most senior people who were the political appointees might rotate out of the government to do lobbying or work directly for big business, Wall Street, or Silicon Valley. They did this to feather their nests and retirement accounts. Some of these people were washed-up ex-politicians known to the public, while others were largely nameless and faceless to anyone outside the beltway. 

The people one-rung directly below the political appointees were the ones who ran the agencies and did the day-to-day managing or work. They were largely nameless and faceless career public servants who stayed in the shadows and their jobs until retirement when they became government contractors or lobbyists.  

All of the key people who ran the government had an interest in our platform and its data for reasons that were a little different from what Madison Avenue, Wall Street, and the political consultants wanted out of it. Most businesses and political consultants just wanted or needed large amounts of aggregate data or data sets. They wanted to look for patterns to target specific groups of individuals or place individuals into groups targeted for ads or votes. They were not interested individual user data beyond the aggregate and beyond selling them something or gaining their votes in elections. 

But we also had all of this largely unused granular data on individual individuals that someone could use for more than just advertising and marketing purposes. And since the government had very different needs or interests, this granular data interested them…

In what ways or for what purposes did it interest the government? 

Well, the global war on terror, for starters. ¹ Government intelligence agencies began to effectively use our platform to identify and monitor whoever might be terrorists or their sympathizers based on what they wrote, clicked on, read, liked, and forwarded. They could even pinpoint the location of these terrorists for elimination by drone strikes based on our location data for where they were accessing our platform. All of this, of course, required the use of supercomputers and artificial intelligence (AI). But the government already had access to or had created such tools on their own.

As time wore on and the global war on terror waned, our enemies at home grew. The government became very concerned about domestic terrorists and white supremacist groups, along with the possibility of a domestic insurrection as the electorate grew more polarized and angrier with Washington DC. ²

How did the COVIDsteria pandemic impact your social media platform?

We first got wind of something going around Bianfucheng in December before the start of the first full year of the pandemic. A few messages or posts got flagged for review on our social media platform from the foreign residents there. 

I immediately called Fun Fun, a friend of mine who was also the China News Bureau representative in Washington DC. She told me it was “absolutely nothing to worry about,” and everything was under control. However, she asked me to flag any mentions on our platform and to forward them to her for follow-up, which we did. 

By early January, we became aware that a large contingent of Global Health Organization (GHO) personnel had arrived in Bianfucheng based on where they were logging in from and the volume of messages they were sending from there. I once again called Fun Fun for comment, and she once again reassured me there was “absolutely nothing to worry about” in Bianfucheng. She also asked me to monitor anyone on our platform based there, and to forward any inappropriate content to the appropriate Chinese authorities to deal with, which we did. 

By now, though, I noticed how the American media had picked up on and were talking about a SARS-like virus in Bianfucheng on their private media discussion group. However, they wanted to publicly play up the virus to bait the President and his supporters into talking about it being a "Chinese virus" to frame them as racists. That led to some sleepless nights for me… [He frowns.]

Why? Were you afraid the Chinese might get angry with you or your social media company? 

[He laughs.] No! I kept getting lots of late-night calls from a very upset Fun Fun pleading with me that I needed to stop all talk on our platform about the virus being a "Chinese virus." She said this talk was causing China to lose face on the world stage. 

I promised her that we would do our best to contain such talk, but it got beyond our ability to control. I mean, we could not censor our racist President every time he said “China Flu” or “Kung Flu” nor censor the media every time they gleefully reported it.

Fortunately, Fun Fun eventually went back to China for a while. I finally got some sleep when she did – until the Chinese developed their nDNA vaccine. Then she was once again constantly calling me at all hours of the day and night demanding that I do something about posts and messages concerning bad coincidences and people dying from their vaccine! [He rolls his eyes.]