"Deep State" is just a slogan meaning "unknown groups of people who seem to support Stuff I Don't Like". It is a variant of the Malevolent Outside Actors fallacy. We saw it in the UK in the late 1960s, recycled as "The Gnomes Of Zurich" after the Pound was devalued.
Facebook is positioned as a common carrier, in large part so that they can never be held liable for content that they host. That is a fundamental barrier to them becoming a media company. In order to be a credible media company, they would have to, you know, apply due diligence to content that they accept on their platform. That is unlikely to happen while their entire business model is based on being a free-to-consumers all-things-to-all-people platform where eyeball numbers equal advert revenue and data that can be sold to analysis companies.
"Deep State" is just a slogan meaning "unknown groups of people who seem to support Stuff I Don't Like". It is a variant of the Malevolent Outside Actors fallacy. We saw it in the UK in the late 1960s, recycled as "The Gnomes Of Zurich" after the Pound was devalued.
Facebook is positioned as a common carrier, in large part so that they can never be held liable for content that they host. That is a fundamental barrier to them becoming a media company. In order to be a credible media company, they would have to, you know, apply due diligence to content that they accept on their platform. That is unlikely to happen while their entire business model is based on being a free-to-consumers all-things-to-all-people platform where eyeball numbers equal advert revenue and data that can be sold to analysis companies.
So my takeaway from this is that a lot of Trump's supporters are mob members following a carnival barker?
All of your points are correct. However, point #8 needs to be added.
8. The credulity of We The People
We the people (in the broadest sense) are also culpable, because enough of us bought 1 through 7 to validate their apparent success.