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April 8, 2021 - Epoch Times

17:54

MLB Expands Their China Deal, Leaves Georgia; Trump Calls for Boycott | Facts Matter

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	Good evening.
	Now might be a good time for me to recommend to you to change your Facebook password, because it was just reported yesterday that the personal details of more than 500 million Facebook users were found to be available online, on a website for hackers.
	Meanwhile, a new report, which was just released four days ago, found that employees at big tech companies overwhelmingly donated more money to Democrats over Republicans by a factor of at least 12 to 1, which probably confirmed what you already suspected all along.
	Now, over in Georgia, Major League Baseball decided to move their all-star game out of Cobb County in order to protest Georgia's new election law.
	However, ironically, this came just a day after they expanded their business in China.
	And lastly, down in Florida, the governor over there has just declared a state of emergency over the possibility that a pond, which is filled with toxic radioactive wastewater, could collapse at any moment.
	Let's go through these stories together.
	This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from The Epoch Times.
	Now let's start today's discussion by talking a bit about online security.
	And this might be a good time for me to recommend to you again to change your Facebook password if you have an account.
	That's because it was just reported yesterday that the personal details of more than 500 million Facebook users were found to be available online on a website that's frequented by hackers.
	What kind of information exactly?
	Well, according to Business Insider, who initially broke this story, the information that's there comes from 106 different countries, and it includes people's phone numbers, their full names, their locations, their birthdates, their email addresses, as well as their Facebook IDs.
	Now, while the user information that was found on this hacker website does appear to be several years old, it still clearly presents another example of the vast amounts of information that's collected by Facebook, as well as these other social media sites, and the limits of how secure that data actually is.
	And this also is not the first time that a major database, at least the Facebook users, was found to be available online.
	You might remember that back in 2019, so two years ago, a security researcher over in Ukraine reported finding a database with the names, phone numbers, and Facebook user IDs of more than 260 million Facebook users, nearly all of them here in America.
	And by the way, it's not exactly clear How this database, which was reported on just yesterday, relates to this other one that was found two years ago.
	It's not exactly clear how much overlap there is between the two.
	Now, Facebook released a statement about this database, saying in part that this is old data that was previously reported on in 2019.
	We found and fixed this issue in August 2019.
	Now, I don't know about you, but that statement by Facebook definitely made me feel very reassured.
	Now, whether this database is in fact several years old or not, it does tie into this broader issue of privacy surrounding user data, particularly the data surrounding our personal information that is bought and sold by tech companies that use advertising as their business model.
	And along that line, four days ago, a group of senators officially made a request to eight major U.S. companies for them to reveal the details surrounding who buys their user data, particularly if the buyer is foreign, meaning that they're not in the United States.
	Those eight companies, by the way, are AT&T, Google, Twitter, Verizon, Index Exchange, Magnite, OpenX, and Pubmatic.
	And the names of those last four companies, you might have never heard of them before, but they are very, very big companies in the digital advertising space.
	Now, in terms of what the senators are requesting from these companies, here's an excerpt from a letter that these senators sent to these companies.
	We write to seek information about your company's sharing of Americans' personal data in order to understand how that information may be obtained and exploited by foreign governments to the detriment of our national security.
	Now, specifically, the senators wanted to know about the real-time bidding process, which, if you've never heard of it before, that refers to the extremely fast, it usually just takes a few milliseconds before the ads are actually shown to you, and in those few milliseconds, hundreds of different companies participate in an auction to get their advertisements to be displayed in front of you.
	Here's how those senators described it in the letter.
	Few Americans realize that some auction participants are siphoning off and storing Bidstream data to compile exhaustive dossiers about them.
	In turn, these dossiers are being openly sold to anyone with a credit card, including hedge funds, political campaigns, and even to governments.
	Now, they mentioned governments in that letter, and we here at the Epoch Times, we reported a few years ago about a large database that the Chinese Communist Party is building on all Americans.
	If you want to read more about that database, by the way, I'll throw a link to it in the description box below.
	Now, in that letter, the senators asked four very specific questions of these companies.
	What specific data is provided to the auction participants?
	Which domestic and foreign companies have been provided Bidstream data in the last three years?
	What efforts has your company taken to put restrictions around this data?
	And, once again, which foreign company has been provided with your Bidstream data in the past three years?
	In that letter, the Senators gave these companies a deadline of May 4th to answer these questions.
	And we here at the Epoch Times, we will be keeping an eye on this request, and when these companies respond, or rather, if these companies respond, we'll let you know what they said.
	However, while we are on the topic of big tech companies, I'd like to mention this new report, which just came out four days ago, which probably confirmed something that you already suspected.
	Employees at big tech companies overwhelmingly donated more money to Democrats over Republicans, by a factor of 12 to 1.
	This report, by the way, came from the Internet Accountability Project, which is a nonprofit with a stated mission to lend a conservative voice to the calls for federal and state governments to rein in big tech before it is too late.
	Now, besides that report, we here at the Epoch Times, we looked at the data from Open Secrets, which is another nonprofit that tracks money in politics, and by doing so, we found that tech companies were some of the biggest major financial backers of the Biden campaign.
	In fact, when you look at the list of top contributors to Joe Biden's candidate committee, you'll find that among the top five, Alphabet, which is Google's parent company, Microsoft, and Amazon are there.
	So three of the top five were some of these big tech companies.
	And this type of support seems to have continued well past the election.
	For instance, according to data which was compiled and posted online by a researcher, YouTube has deleted about 2.5 million dislikes from videos on the official White House channel after Joe Biden took office.
	That averages out to YouTube deleting about 8,000 dislikes per video on average.
	Now, when we reached out to YouTube to ask them what was going on, here's what they wrote to us.
	We have policies and systems in place to ensure that the engagement on YouTube is authentic and remove any fraudulent metrics.
	However, what's interesting to note there is when you look at the data, not a single like was removed, only dislikes were removed.
	If you'd like to read more about this report, or about the Facebook user data being found online, those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
	And by the way, that is that same little description box that is right below that like button that I hope you take a moment to smash.
	We here at the Epoch Times, we don't have any algorithmic partners that help us decrease dislikes and increase likes.
	And so we rely on you.
	The viewer to take your finger and smash that like button because you already know that videos that are like this talking honestly about what is happening in this world are routinely censored, throttled, or sometimes outright removed by big tech giants like YouTube.
	However, when you smash that like button that's below this video, you are forcing the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
	And now, before we move on over and talk about Georgia and discuss what's happening there with their new election laws, I would like to take a quick moment and introduce our sponsor for today's episode, and I will do so from the sound booth.
	Sponsor for today's episode is AMAC, which stands for the Association of Mature American Citizens.
	Now, I do consider myself a mature American citizen.
	However, I'm about 20 years too young to join AMAC. However, if you or somebody else in your family is 50 years old or over, I would consider joining them because there are three main benefits to joining AMAC. The first one is the money-saving benefit.
	Basically, if you're a member, they give you a ton of perks to restaurants across the country, to retail shops, on insurance plans, on vitamins.
	It's a pretty long list, actually.
	It'll be in the link in the description box below this video.
	You can check out the full list.
	It's pretty long.
	The second benefit is that they have an awesome magazine that they send to your door.
	And even though I'm not a member, I have read their magazine, and it's really good.
	It It's filled with a lot of thought-provoking articles.
	The third benefit, which a lot of people cite as their favorite benefit, is that they actually fight for conservative values on Capitol Hill.
	Basically, they're fighting against what they're calling a socialist storm that is brewing in America.
	I mean, they're basically the conservative alternative to the AARP, and you should consider joining.
	I mean, it's only about $16 every year, but you get a ton of benefits.
	So you can click on the link in the description box below this video, or you can go to amac.us forward slash facts matter.
	again that's amac.us forward slash facts matter and check them out amac thank you so much for sponsoring this episode and now roman in the studio back to you and now let's talk a bit about baseball We already discussed in a previous episode about how Georgia recently passed a voter integrity bill, which, among other things, includes a provision for voter ID requirements.
	Now, even though the legacy media in this country make it seem like a divisive issue, requiring ID for voting actually has very broad approval, at least according to this poll from the Associated Press, which was just conducted last week.
	That poll found that 72% of Americans are in favor of requiring all voters to provide a photo ID when voting.
	72%.
	And in that same poll, 14% said that they were ambivalent, that they neither support nor oppose voter ID, and only 13% of people said that they actually oppose voter ID. And so with numbers like that, Georgia's new law, in theory, should not seem so controversial.
	Now, Democrat politicians, at least at the federal and state levels, have come out and said that the new law would make it harder for African Americans to vote.
	But as far as I've seen, they have not provided any evidence for why that actually is.
	However, if you've been following the news, you know that major corporations like Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, as well as Major League Baseball, they came out and went along with that sentiment, slamming Georgia for passing their voter integrity measures.
	And out of those organizations, I want us to focus specifically on MLB, Major League Baseball.
	Not only did they criticize Georgia's new law, but the commissioner of the MLB, he went further in his protest, and he actually moved both the All-Star Game and the draft out of Georgia.
	Here's what he wrote on Twitter.
	Over the last week, we have engaged in thoughtful conversations with clubs, former and current players, the Players Association, and the Players Alliance, among others, to listen to their views.
	I've decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year's All-Star Game and MLB draft.
	Now, just for your reference, by the way, both the All-Star Game and the MLB draft was supposed to be in Georgia.
	Now, Joe Biden was supportive of this move.
	Two days before MLB issued this tweet, here's what Joe Biden said.
	I think that today's professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly.
	I would strongly support them doing that.
	People look to them.
	They're leaders.
	Look at what's happened with the NBA as well.
	Look at what's happened across the board.
	The people who've been victimized the most are the people who are the leaders in these various sports, and it's just not right.
	Now, there are a few things that I want to unpack here.
	First of all, even though Joe Biden endorsed this move, and even though this move generally aligns with the Democrat agenda, the county in Georgia which will suffer the most is a Democrat stronghold.
	Cobb County is where the All-Star Game was scheduled to be held, and it is a deep blue county.
	In fact, Joe Biden won that county in 2020 by 14 points.
	And they just released a report predicting that they will lose $100 million in revenue from tourism alone.
	And secondly, the very day before announcing this move, The MLB had actually expanded their deal in China by both extending and expanding their contract with Tencent, which is a big Chinese company that has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
	And you might remember Tencent because it was one of the companies which dropped the NBA after one of their general managers criticized Chinese human rights abuses over in Hong Kong.
	Now, really consider that for a moment.
	On Thursday, the MLB expanded their deal in China.
	And likely, they did not even dare to bring up human rights, voting rights, women's rights, or the fact that there is literal genocide going on in Xinjiang.
	And then, on the very next day, on Friday, the MLB protested Georgia's voter ID law, a law that would require people to show their IDs when they vote, by boycotting the state altogether.
	Now, Senator Marco Rubio, he saw the irony in this situation, and this is what he wrote on Twitter.
	The MLB caves to pressure.
	Moves draft the all-star game out of Georgia on the same week they announce a deal with a company backed by the genocidal Communist Party of China.
	Why are we still listening to these woke corporate hypocrites on taxes, regulations, and antitrust?
	And notice that in that tweet he mentioned the word antitrust.
	Well, it's worth noting that the MLB enjoys a federal antitrust exemption, meaning that they are officially exempt from federal antitrust laws.
	However, that might be soon coming to an end.
	Right after the MLB decided to move their game, a congressman by the name of Jeff Duncan began to draft a bill which would strip them of that exemption.
	Here's what he wrote on Twitter.
	In light of MLB's stance to undermine election integrity laws, I have instructed my staff to begin drafting legislation to remove Major League Baseball's federal antitrust exemption.
	Now, while Jeff Duncan is a congressman in the House of Representatives, this sentiment was also followed up by several senators, such as Senator Mike Lee, who wrote that, Why does the MLB still have antitrust immunity?
	It's time for the federal government to stop granting special privileges to specific favored corporations, especially those that punish their political opponents.
	And then Senator Ted Cruz, he added that, And so it looks like there will be action happening both in the House as well as the Senate to remove the MLB's antitrust exemptions.
	Meanwhile, President Trump came out and urged the people, the American people, to actually boycott the MLB, Coca-Cola, Delta, as well as other companies which are opposing Georgia's election reforms.
	Here's what President Trump released in a statement.
	Baseball is already losing tremendous numbers of fans, and now they leave Atlanta with their all-star game because they are afraid of the radical left Democrats who do not want voter ID, which is desperately needed, to have anything to do with our elections.
	Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with free and fair elections.
	Now, if you would like to read more about what is happening with the MLB, or if you would like to read more about the details of this new law out in Georgia, those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
	And now let's move on over to Florida.
	Yesterday, the governor of Florida declared a state of emergency over the possibility that a pond, which is filled with toxic radioactive wastewater, could collapse at any moment.
	Now, this retention pond is located in Manatee County, which is fortunately a pretty sparsely populated county near Tampa.
	And what happened there was that a leak developed at a phosphate processing plant, which was not able to be repaired over the weekend.
	According to the county administrator, over the weekend they tried to unsuccessfully repair the leak, and he described it as trying to plug a hole in a dam using rock and earth.
	But it apparently did not work.
	And at that point, the governor declared a state of emergency in that area due to a possible breach of mixed salt water from the South Reservoir at the Piney Point facility.
	And then separately, the county's public safety department, they urged people who were near the plant to evacuate, if they were within a half-mile radius of Piney Point.
	Now, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, the main concern in this pond is the amount of a chemical known as phosphogypsum, which you can also call radioactive waste, and it comes as a byproduct of processing phosphate into a state that can be used as a commercial fertilizer.
	Here's what they said in a statement.
	In addition to high concentrations of radioactive materials, phosphogypsum and processed wastewater can also contain carcinogens and heavy toxic metals.
	For every ton of phosphoric acid produced, the fertilizer industry creates five tons of radioactive phosphogypsum waste, which is stored in mountainous stacks hundreds of acres wide and hundreds of feet tall.
	And besides phosphogypsum, this pond also contains radium, uranium, and those large stacks that they mentioned contain radon gas, which causes lung cancer.
	And at this moment, this retention pond is actually leaking radioactive water into the nearby community, with the possibility of the entire thing collapsing at any moment.
	If you'd like to read more about the steps that are being taken to contain this area or just about what's going on in this pond down in Florida, those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
	And now lastly, as I had mentioned in a previous episode, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, YouTube made the unilateral decision to demonetize our program.
	We can now no longer run any ads before, during, or after our episodes, and the Super Chat feature has just been disabled.
	They basically are trying to snuff out our independent journalism by demonetizing us.
	However, I will throw a link into the description box below this video to a page where you can subscribe to The Epoch Times.
	By subscribing, you will not only be supporting independent journalism, but you will have unfettered access to all of our investigations, all of our reports, all of our interviews, our video documentaries, our opinion content, and everything else, including, if anything ever happens here on YouTube, you will have continuous access to all of our video content, such as Facts Matter, Crossroads, you will have continuous access to all of our video content, such as Facts Matter, Crossroads, American Thought Again, that link will be in the description box below this video.
	I hope you click on it, I hope you subscribe, and I hope that you continue with us on this journey of exploring this world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
	And now lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, subscribe to this YouTube channel in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while you still can.
	Until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.

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