The facebook conspiracy

Good to see that a good conspiracy never dies, merely grows turbocharged wings. Today's is the one that facebook is a tool funded by the CIA to control us all and monetize our friendships. Admittedly is expanded more elegantly than that, but Tom Hodgkinson does let himself down with this:

After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which "identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions".

"Look! Look! The CIA knew that 9/11 was going to happen, and had set up a venture fund to benefit!" I assume this, or words like it, will be used on some of the wilder fringes of t'interweb today.

Meanwhile, gibbr has a more scabrous take on it.