Difference between revisions of "The Paypal Mafia"

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{{group
 
{{group
 
|type=Deep state faction
 
|type=Deep state faction
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|wikipedia=
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|wikipedia=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
 
|nndb=
 
|nndb=
 
|sourcewatch=
 
|sourcewatch=
 
|logo=
 
|logo=
 
|logo_width=
 
|logo_width=
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|start=
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|start=2002
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|image_width=
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|image_width=450px
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|image=File:File Paypal Mafia 2014.jpg
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|interests=Twitter, Intelligence agencies, mass surveillance
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|image_caption=Members of the PayPal Mafia on Fortune magazine dressed in [[Mafia]]-style clothing, to simulate a ''The Soprano's'' like picture. From left to right, top to bottom: Jawed Karim, Jeremy Stoppelman, Andrew McCormack, Premal Shah, Luke Nosek, Ken Howery, David O. Sacks, [[Peter Thiel]], Keith Rabois, Reid Hoffman, [[Max Levchin]], Roelof Botha, Russel Simmons. [[Elon Musk]] was not on the original picture, due to a scheduling conflict, and was later individually photographed for this.
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|image=File Paypal Mafia 2014.jpg
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|headquarters=University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois
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|image_width=350px
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|description=IF you thought the [[consolidation of media]] wasn't bad enough, most [[big tech]] companies started in the [[2000s]] are mostly owned by the same group of friends. And, th connected to Intelligence services, the WEF and Bilderberg as well.
+
|image_caption=Members of the PayPal Mafia on ''[[Fortune]]'' magazine dressed in [[Mafia]]-style clothing, to simulate a ''The Sopranos'' like picture. From left to right, top to bottom: Jawed Karim, Jeremy Stoppelman, Andrew McCormack, Premal Shah, Luke Nosek, Ken Howery, David O. Sacks, [[Peter Thiel]], Keith Rabois, Reid Hoffman, [[Max Levchin]], [[Roelof Botha]], Russel Simmons. [[Elon Musk]] was not on the original picture, due to a scheduling conflict, and was later individually photographed for this.
−
|constitutes=Deep state faction?
+
|headquarters=Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois
 +
|description=“We all became each other’s social life. Because of that, we formed really deep connections.” The genesis of the biggest [[big tech|tech companies]] with spooky ties to organs of the [[Deep State]] such as the [[WEF]] and [[Bilderberg]].
 +
|constitutes=Deep state faction, big tech
 
|members=Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Elon Musk, David O. Sacks, Scott Banister, Roelof Botha, Steve Chen, Reid Hoffman, Ken Howery, Chad Hurley, Eric M. Jackson, Jawed Karim, Jared Kopf, Dave McClure, Andrew McCormack, Luke Nosek, Keith Rabois, Jack Selby, Premal Shah, Russel Simmons, Jeremy Stoppelman, Yishan Wong
 
|members=Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Elon Musk, David O. Sacks, Scott Banister, Roelof Botha, Steve Chen, Reid Hoffman, Ken Howery, Chad Hurley, Eric M. Jackson, Jawed Karim, Jared Kopf, Dave McClure, Andrew McCormack, Luke Nosek, Keith Rabois, Jack Selby, Premal Shah, Russel Simmons, Jeremy Stoppelman, Yishan Wong
 
}}
 
}}
 +
The '''PayPal Mafia''' is a suspected [[deep state faction]] of former [[PayPal]] employees and founders who have since founded and massively helped new tech companies achieve leading market shares. The large companies directed by the members have been linked to [[intelligence agencies]] and used for [[social engineering]].<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PyrrNJHrb0&pp=ygUMcGF5cGFsIG1hZmlh</ref><ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJpwAHs5sws&pp=ygUMcGF5cGFsIG1hZmlh</ref> The members all met at [[Stanford University]] or [[University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign]] at some point in their adolescence.
 +
Some dropped out and started [[companies]] together during the [[1990s]] [[Internet]] bubble. Some became [[WEF]] members or [[Bilderbergers]]. [[Peter Thiel]], nicknamed ''The Don'' of the group was invited to his first [[Bilderberg meeting]] in [[2007]] after a ''[[Fortune]]'' article naming the group a "[[mafia]]"<ref>https://fortune.com/2007/11/13/paypal-mafia/</ref>, and became head of the [[Bilderberg Steering Committee]] in quite<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20100608194252/http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/governance.html</ref> short time after.<ref>https://fourweekmba.com/paypal-mafia/</ref><ref>https://milliondollarminds.medium.com/the-incredible-story-of-paypal-mafia-49dd5e155792</ref><ref>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/30/peter-thiel-republican-midterms-trump-paypal-mafia</ref>
  
−
The "PayPal Mafia" is a suspected [[deep state faction]] of former [[PayPal]] employees and founders who have since founded and massively helped new tech companies achieve leading market shares. The members all met at [[Stanford University]] or [[University of Illinois]] at Urbana–Champaign at some point in their adolescence and some even dropped out and started [[companies]] together during the [[Internet]] bubble of the [[1990s]]. Some became [[WEF]] members of Bilderberg members, [[Peter Thiel]], nicknamed ''The Don'' of the group even became head of the [[Bilderberg Steering Committee]].
+
==Background==
 +
{{YouTubeVideo
 +
|code=nvQ4p82-D54
 +
|align=left
 +
|width=500px
 +
|caption=The Incredible Story of The PayPal Mafia, NeoScribe, June 2018
 +
|date=June 2018
 +
}}
 +
The [[NYT]] reports that Levchin said the pace at PayPal was so intense that employees had little time for much else. “We all became each other’s social life,” he said. “Because of that, we formed really deep connections.”
 +
Many of those bonds were already in place, and life at PayPal merely strengthened them. From the beginning, PayPal hired people whom its founders or other early employees already knew. Thiel tapped his network of friends from [[Stanford University|Stanford]], many of whom had worked at the Stanford Review, a libertarian magazine that Mr. Thiel co-founded in 1987. They populated PayPal’s business ranks. Levchin, for his part, hired engineers in large part from his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which had earlier been home to the team that developed the software that would be the basis for Netscape’s Web browser.<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/technology/17paypal.html</ref>
  
−
==Background==
+
According to a book ''The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley<ref>https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/books/reviews/business-economy/the-founders-the-story-of-paypal-and-the-entrepreneurs-who-shaped-silicon-valley/article65542520.ece</ref> ''[[PayPal]] was purchased by [[eBay]] in [[2002]] and the original PayPal employees had difficulty adjusting to [[eBay]]'s more traditional corporate culture and within four years all but 12 of the first 50 employees had left.
−
According to a book ''The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley.''[[PayPal]] was purchased by [[eBay]] in [[2002]] and the original PayPal employees had difficulty adjusting to [[eBay]]'s more traditional corporate culture and within four years all but 12 of the first 50 employees had left.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-1501197260</ref>
 
  
−
A number of them worked together to form new companies and venture firms in subsequent years. This group of PayPal alumni became so prolific that the term PayPal Mafia was coined, after which ''Fortune'' published the '' The Soprano's'' like picture and coined the term.  
+
A number of them worked together to form new companies and venture firms in subsequent years promising to keep supporting each-other politicly<ref>https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/11/16/paypal-mafia-group-misfits-became-kingpins-tech/</ref>. This group of PayPal alumni became so prolific that the term PayPal Mafia was coined, after which ''Fortune'' published the '' The Soprano's'' like picture and coined the term.  
  
−
The group started to invest small and very large sums in big tech companies in small markets that all seized market share.  
+
The group started to invest small and very large sums in big tech companies in small markets that all seized market share. Some companies, such as Thiel's and [[Alex Karp]]'s Palantir and [[Elon Musk]]'s [[SpaceX]], soon received [[CIA]] funding.<ref>https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/what-is-it-about-peter-thiel</ref><ref>https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiCp6iRrc_3AhVQgP0HHYcTD7IQwqsBegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dc2Kf-rXI_pk&usg=AOvVaw0twerYr1Qs_VJ-1T2iVo0i</ref>
 
The group was noted to be one of the few to survive the dot.com bubble of the [[1990s]].<ref>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/15/DDOH107DLG.DTL</ref>
 
The group was noted to be one of the few to survive the dot.com bubble of the [[1990s]].<ref>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/15/DDOH107DLG.DTL</ref>
  
 +
===Problems===
 +
As the [[consolidation of corporate media]] has shown, when the same group of people all become the main investors or investors of companies having a leading market share in big markets (like the [[media]]), the persons running them become mightier than governments and start to act like a hostile [[government]] itself, against ethical interests of the public.
  
 
==Examples of companies started or developed by the members==
 
==Examples of companies started or developed by the members==
 +
[[File:Screenshot 2022-05-08 at 04-31-59 PayPal Mafia - Wikipedia.png|400px|thumb|right|A list by Wikipedia as seen on May the 5th of 2022.]]
 
[[Tesla]], [[LinkedIn]], [[Palantir Technologies]], [[SpaceX]], [[Affirm]], [[Slide]], [[Kiva]], [[YouTube]], [[Yelp]], and [[Yammer]].<ref>http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_13617121</ref>
 
[[Tesla]], [[LinkedIn]], [[Palantir Technologies]], [[SpaceX]], [[Affirm]], [[Slide]], [[Kiva]], [[YouTube]], [[Yelp]], and [[Yammer]].<ref>http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_13617121</ref>
  
−
==Ownership of Big Tech==
+
==Methods==
−
{{YouTubeVideo
+
One of their key methods in growing their companies is the ''Hidden Revenue Model''. Although promoting their business as free, its source of revenue is through user monetization via adverts. Another key method is [[platformization]], or a ''Multi-Sided Platform Model'', like implemented by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and investors from the PayPal Mafia, like Peter Thiel and [[Keith Rabois]]. Many of the clan adopted this business model that serves as “invisible middlemen” in interactions among buyers and sellers, allowing more data of the users on these sites to be sold to companies harming privacy.<ref>https://businessmodelanalyst.com/the-paypal-mafia/</ref>
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|code=PyrrNJHrb0
 
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|align=right
 
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|width=500px
 
−
|caption=Why ex-PayPal Employees Run the Tech World - ''Newsthink''
 
−
|date=28 October 2021.
 
−
}}
 
−
[[File:Screenshot 2022-05-08 at 04-31-59 PayPal Mafia - Wikipedia.png|400px|thumb|left|A list by Wikipedia as seen on May the 5th of 2022.]]
 
  
 
==World Economic Forum==
 
==World Economic Forum==
−
Several members were made [[Young Global Leaders]] of the [[World Economic Forum]] members, even though they didn't finish their BA or masters degree. [[Peter Thiel]] even became a [[Bilderberg Steering Committee]] member.
+
Several members were made [[Young Global Leaders]] of the [[World Economic Forum]], even though they didn't finish their BA or masters degree. [[Peter Thiel]] even became a [[Bilderberg Steering Committee]] member.
  
 
==Connections==
 
==Connections==
−
The owners seem to all follow the same patterns; working with intelligence agencies after massively growing their companies to a market share. [[Reddit]] & [[Youtube]] (both partially owned by a member) their history is a perfect example for this.
+
[[File:Screenshot 2023-08-19 at 21-04-17 section-1.webp (WEBP-afbeelding 1000 × 1000 pixels).png|800px|thumb|left|https://fleximize.com/paypal-mafia/]]
 +
The group has had a hand in every emerging technology from the 1990s up to and including the [[2020s]], from videos on the [[internet]] with [[Youtube]], and the start of internet forums such as with Reddit and [[Quora]] to [[AI]]-startups and the "gig" and [[platformization]]-economy with [[Uber]], [[Lyft]] and [[AirBnB]].
 +
 
 +
The owners seem to all follow the same patterns; working with intelligence agencies after massively growing their companies to a market share. [[Reddit]] (experienced a massive growth with illegal or controversial content such as creating a subforum for sexually discussing underage children during the early [[2010s]] under CEO Yishan Wong's reign<ref>https://www.vox.com/2015/7/14/11614712/new-ceo-some-people-on-reddit-shouldnt-be-here-at-all</ref>) [[Facebook]] (invested in by Peter Thiel) & [[Youtube]] (founded by [[Chad Hurley]] & [[Steve Chan]]) and their history is a perfect example for this group. Ken Howery was made [[U.S Ambassador to Sweden]] in [[2019]]. Elon Musk acquired [[Twitter]] in 2022.
 +
 
 +
===Reddit===
 +
A 2012 blog post revealed the city with the most "Reddit-addicted" turned out to be [[US Air Force]] Base Eglin, in [[Florida]]. How a base with just 8,500 military personnel and approximately 4,500 civilians was the leading city in terms of page views of a site with 37 billion<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Reddit</ref> page views per year remains unanswered.<ref>https://archive.is/4xay9</ref>
 +
Eglin has worked on multiple studies in cooperation with the [[University of Florida]], one being called "Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity".<ref>https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf</ref>
 +
 
 +
===Youtube===
 +
{{FA|Elsagate}}
 +
Beginning in [[2014]], reaching a peak in [[2017]]/[[2018]], Youtube hosted videos geared towards very young children that depicted disturbing scenes and which became known as [[Elsagate]]. Youtube was forced to remove the content since there was common agreement that it is harmful. However, due to the massive distribution and monetization, Youtube must have been aware that their platform is used for this.
 +
In November [[2021]], YouTube removed "dislike" buttons from their site, after [[corporate media]] had been heavily disliked during [[COVID-19]].<ref>https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-to-youtube/</ref>
 +
 
 +
===Space X===
 +
Space X was founded with the help of [[Mike Griffin]], who worked for [[In-Q-Tel|CIA's venture capital arm]] and was later appointed as [[NASA]] administrator by [[George W. Bush]].<ref>https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/about/griffin_bio.html</ref><ref>https://m.economictimes.com/news/science/how-tesla-founder-elon-musk-tried-to-fund-a-grand-spectacle-in-space/articleshow/47292702.cms</ref>
 +
 
 +
===Starlink===
 +
Following the [[2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine]], Musk, in March, tweeted that he was deploying Starlink, his company [[SpaceX]]’s [[satellite]] [[internet]] venture, to help keep [[Ukraine]] online. Starlink promises high-speed internet to remote locations where access is anywhere from unreliable to entirely unavailable. Starlink's receivers have been set up on hospitals, energy plants and companies, and more.<ref>https://restofworld.org/2022/elon-musk-ukraine-and-starlink/</ref> Musk was ostracized by [[The Washington Post]] as falsely claiming he, as a gesture, paid for Starlink deployment himself. The [[Biden]] Administration actually paid for the deployment. The United States Agency for International Development or [[USAID]] (called the CIA's little sister and completely filled with their officers by former director [[John Gilligan]]<ref>https://www.google.com/books/edition/Cold_War_Anthropology/dn6tCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22infiltrated+from+top+to+bottom+with+cia+people%22+gilligan&pg=PT146&printsec=frontcover</ref>) omitted this after earlier publication from their report.<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietly-paying-millions-send-starlink-terminals-ukraine-contrary-spacexs-claims/</ref><ref>https://twitter.com/joroulette/status/1511781864356212737</ref>
  
 
===Bilderberg===
 
===Bilderberg===
−
Peter Thiel has attended all subsequent Bilderberg meetings (since 2012, together with together with co-founder of Palantir, Alex Karp), being one of the 181 since [[1956]] to become a Steering Committee-member.
+
Peter Thiel has attended all subsequent Bilderberg meetings after the Fortune article (since 2007, together with co-founder of Palantir who joined him in 2012, [[Alex Karp]]), being one of the 181 since [[1956]] to become a Steering Committee-member. [[Reid Hoffman]] has attended at least 9 Bilderbergs since 2011.
  
 
===GCHQ===
 
===GCHQ===
−
Thiel founded Palantir with [[Alex Karp]] and [[Joe Lonsdale]] in [[2004]], a company which at least by [[2008]] was collaborating with GCHQ & the [[NSA]].<ref>https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palantir-helped-the-nsa-spy-on-the-whole-world/</ref>.
+
Thiel founded Palantir with [[Alex Karp]] and [[Joe Lonsdale]] in [[2004]], a company which at least by [[2008]] was collaborating with [[GCHQ]] & the [[NSA]]<ref>https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palantir-helped-the-nsa-spy-on-the-whole-world/</ref>.
  
 
===LinkedIn===
 
===LinkedIn===
−
[[LinkedIn]] has been accused of poor privacy and security standards, silently programming their [[mobile]] apps to reroute<ref>http://www.darkreading.com/applications/researchers-flag-security-flaws-in-new-l/240163123/</ref> all the emails of their users [[mobile]] devices through their own private LinkedIn servers, for undisclosed purposes<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Security_incidents</ref><ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Malicious_behavior_on_LinkedIn</ref>. Given that LinkedIn has been the target of a dozens of hacks, by multiple [[intelligence agencies]], a choice that seemed not logical.
+
[[LinkedIn]] - founded by [[Reid Hoffman]] - has been accused of poor privacy and security standards, silently programming their [[mobile]] apps to reroute<ref>http://www.darkreading.com/applications/researchers-flag-security-flaws-in-new-l/240163123/</ref> all the emails of their users [[mobile]] devices through their own private LinkedIn servers, for undisclosed purposes<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Security_incidents</ref><ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Malicious_behavior_on_LinkedIn</ref>. Given that LinkedIn has been the target of a dozens of hacks, by multiple [[intelligence agencies]], a choice that seemed not logical.
  
 
===Palantir===
 
===Palantir===
−
[[Palantir]] had worked with [[Cambridge Analytica]], who was implicated in using [[big data]] of Facebook to instigate [[coups]] worldwide and influence [[elections]].<ref>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with-cambridge-analytica-on-the-facebook-data-whistleblower.html</ref>
+
{{YouTubeVideo
−
Palantir has been contreacted by the [[CIA]] (for aiding [[ICE]], [[NSA]][[creating illegal hacking software), and the [[CDC]] (for [[AI]]-predicting software and help with [[Operation Warp Speed]]).
+
|code=4LQCsPbA6rU
 +
|align=left
 +
|width=500px
 +
|caption=''How Palantir And Its Data-Mining Empire Became So Controversial'', [[CNBC]], September 2020
 +
|date=
 +
}}
  
−
Peter, Max, and I are not directly aligned philosophically,” he says. “Peter’s philosophy is pretty odd. It’s not normal. He’s a contrarian from an investing standpoint and thinks a lot about the singularity. I’m much less excited about that. I’m pro-human.”
+
[[Palantir]] worked with [[Cambridge Analytica]], who was implicated in using [[big data]] of Facebook to instigate [[coups]] worldwide and influence [[elections]].<ref>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with-cambridge-analytica-on-the-facebook-data-whistleblower.html</ref>
 +
Palantir has been contracted by the [[CIA]] for aiding [[ICE]] & the [[NSA]] creating illegal hacking software such as [[XKeyscore]], an [[NSA]] [[hacking]] tool that was disclosed by [[Edward Snowden]]<ref>https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/peter-thiels-palantir-allegedly-helped-nsa-spy-programme-xkeyscore-new-snowden-documents-reveal-1608147</ref>, and the [[CDC]] (for [[AI]]-predicting software and help with [[Operation Warp Speed]]).
 +
Palantir has been called "Silicon Valley's Most Secretive Company".<ref>https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silicon-valleys-most-secretive-company</ref> and the "[[War on Terror]]'s Secret Weapon".<ref>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-22/palantir-the-war-on-terrors-secret-weapon</ref> "Founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and some fellow PayPal alumni, Palantir cut its teeth working for the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company’s engineers and products don’t do any spying themselves; they’re more like a spy’s brain, collecting and analyzing information that’s fed in from the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. The software combs through disparate data sources—financial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postings—and searches for connections that human analysts might miss. It then presents the linkages in colorful, easy-to-interpret graphics that look like spider webs."<ref>https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/</ref>
  
 
{{SMWDocs}}
 
{{SMWDocs}}
 
==References==
 
==References==
 
{{reflist}}
 
{{reflist}}

Latest revision as of 00:45, 9 July 2024

Group.png The Paypal Mafia  
(Deep state faction, Big tech)Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png 5
File Paypal Mafia 2014.jpg
Members of the PayPal Mafia on Fortune magazine dressed in Mafia-style clothing, to simulate a The Sopranos like picture. From left to right, top to bottom: Jawed Karim, Jeremy Stoppelman, Andrew McCormack, Premal Shah, Luke Nosek, Ken Howery, David O. Sacks, Peter Thiel, Keith Rabois, Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, Roelof Botha, Russel Simmons. Elon Musk was not on the original picture, due to a scheduling conflict, and was later individually photographed for this.
Formation2002
HeadquartersStanford University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois
TypeDeep state.jpg Deep state faction
InterestsTwitter, Intelligence agencies, mass surveillance
Interest ofSam Altman, Barrett Brown, Kevin Harrington
Membership• Peter Thiel.jpg Peter Thiel
• Max Levchin (2013).jpg Max Levchin
• Elon Musk Twitter.webp Elon Musk
•  David O. Sacks
•  Scott Banister
• Roelof Botha.jpg Roelof Botha
•  Steve Chen
• Reid Hoffman in SF 2011.jpg Reid Hoffman
•  Ken Howery
•  Chad Hurley
•  Eric M. Jackson
•  Jawed Karim
•  Jared Kopf
•  Dave McClure
•  Andrew McCormack
•  Luke Nosek
•  Keith Rabois
•  Jack Selby
•  Premal Shah
•  Russel Simmons
•  Jeremy Stoppelman
•  Yishan Wong
“We all became each other’s social life. Because of that, we formed really deep connections.” The genesis of the biggest tech companies with spooky ties to organs of the Deep State such as the WEF and Bilderberg.

The PayPal Mafia is a suspected deep state faction of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and massively helped new tech companies achieve leading market shares. The large companies directed by the members have been linked to intelligence agencies and used for social engineering.[1][2] The members all met at Stanford University or University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign at some point in their adolescence. Some dropped out and started companies together during the 1990s Internet bubble. Some became WEF members or Bilderbergers. Peter Thiel, nicknamed The Don of the group was invited to his first Bilderberg meeting in 2007 after a Fortune article naming the group a "mafia"[3], and became head of the Bilderberg Steering Committee in quite[4] short time after.[5][6][7]

Background

The Incredible Story of The PayPal Mafia, NeoScribe, June 2018

The NYT reports that Levchin said the pace at PayPal was so intense that employees had little time for much else. “We all became each other’s social life,” he said. “Because of that, we formed really deep connections.” Many of those bonds were already in place, and life at PayPal merely strengthened them. From the beginning, PayPal hired people whom its founders or other early employees already knew. Thiel tapped his network of friends from Stanford, many of whom had worked at the Stanford Review, a libertarian magazine that Mr. Thiel co-founded in 1987. They populated PayPal’s business ranks. Levchin, for his part, hired engineers in large part from his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which had earlier been home to the team that developed the software that would be the basis for Netscape’s Web browser.[8]

According to a book The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley[9] PayPal was purchased by eBay in 2002 and the original PayPal employees had difficulty adjusting to eBay's more traditional corporate culture and within four years all but 12 of the first 50 employees had left.

A number of them worked together to form new companies and venture firms in subsequent years promising to keep supporting each-other politicly[10]. This group of PayPal alumni became so prolific that the term PayPal Mafia was coined, after which Fortune published the The Soprano's like picture and coined the term.

The group started to invest small and very large sums in big tech companies in small markets that all seized market share. Some companies, such as Thiel's and Alex Karp's Palantir and Elon Musk's SpaceX, soon received CIA funding.[11][12] The group was noted to be one of the few to survive the dot.com bubble of the 1990s.[13]

Problems

As the consolidation of corporate media has shown, when the same group of people all become the main investors or investors of companies having a leading market share in big markets (like the media), the persons running them become mightier than governments and start to act like a hostile government itself, against ethical interests of the public.

Examples of companies started or developed by the members

A list by Wikipedia as seen on May the 5th of 2022.

Tesla, LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer.[14]

Methods

One of their key methods in growing their companies is the Hidden Revenue Model. Although promoting their business as free, its source of revenue is through user monetization via adverts. Another key method is platformization, or a Multi-Sided Platform Model, like implemented by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and investors from the PayPal Mafia, like Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois. Many of the clan adopted this business model that serves as “invisible middlemen” in interactions among buyers and sellers, allowing more data of the users on these sites to be sold to companies harming privacy.[15]

World Economic Forum

Several members were made Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, even though they didn't finish their BA or masters degree. Peter Thiel even became a Bilderberg Steering Committee member.

Connections

https://fleximize.com/paypal-mafia/

The group has had a hand in every emerging technology from the 1990s up to and including the 2020s, from videos on the internet with Youtube, and the start of internet forums such as with Reddit and Quora to AI-startups and the "gig" and platformization-economy with Uber, Lyft and AirBnB.

The owners seem to all follow the same patterns; working with intelligence agencies after massively growing their companies to a market share. Reddit (experienced a massive growth with illegal or controversial content such as creating a subforum for sexually discussing underage children during the early 2010s under CEO Yishan Wong's reign[16]) Facebook (invested in by Peter Thiel) & Youtube (founded by Chad Hurley & Steve Chan) and their history is a perfect example for this group. Ken Howery was made U.S Ambassador to Sweden in 2019. Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022.

Reddit

A 2012 blog post revealed the city with the most "Reddit-addicted" turned out to be US Air Force Base Eglin, in Florida. How a base with just 8,500 military personnel and approximately 4,500 civilians was the leading city in terms of page views of a site with 37 billion[17] page views per year remains unanswered.[18] Eglin has worked on multiple studies in cooperation with the University of Florida, one being called "Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity".[19]

Youtube

Full article: Elsagate

Beginning in 2014, reaching a peak in 2017/2018, Youtube hosted videos geared towards very young children that depicted disturbing scenes and which became known as Elsagate. Youtube was forced to remove the content since there was common agreement that it is harmful. However, due to the massive distribution and monetization, Youtube must have been aware that their platform is used for this. In November 2021, YouTube removed "dislike" buttons from their site, after corporate media had been heavily disliked during COVID-19.[20]

Space X

Space X was founded with the help of Mike Griffin, who worked for CIA's venture capital arm and was later appointed as NASA administrator by George W. Bush.[21][22]

Starlink

Following the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Musk, in March, tweeted that he was deploying Starlink, his company SpaceX’s satellite internet venture, to help keep Ukraine online. Starlink promises high-speed internet to remote locations where access is anywhere from unreliable to entirely unavailable. Starlink's receivers have been set up on hospitals, energy plants and companies, and more.[23] Musk was ostracized by The Washington Post as falsely claiming he, as a gesture, paid for Starlink deployment himself. The Biden Administration actually paid for the deployment. The United States Agency for International Development or USAID (called the CIA's little sister and completely filled with their officers by former director John Gilligan[24]) omitted this after earlier publication from their report.[25][26]

Bilderberg

Peter Thiel has attended all subsequent Bilderberg meetings after the Fortune article (since 2007, together with co-founder of Palantir who joined him in 2012, Alex Karp), being one of the 181 since 1956 to become a Steering Committee-member. Reid Hoffman has attended at least 9 Bilderbergs since 2011.

GCHQ

Thiel founded Palantir with Alex Karp and Joe Lonsdale in 2004, a company which at least by 2008 was collaborating with GCHQ & the NSA[27].

LinkedIn

LinkedIn - founded by Reid Hoffman - has been accused of poor privacy and security standards, silently programming their mobile apps to reroute[28] all the emails of their users mobile devices through their own private LinkedIn servers, for undisclosed purposes[29][30]. Given that LinkedIn has been the target of a dozens of hacks, by multiple intelligence agencies, a choice that seemed not logical.

Palantir

How Palantir And Its Data-Mining Empire Became So Controversial, CNBC, September 2020

Palantir worked with Cambridge Analytica, who was implicated in using big data of Facebook to instigate coups worldwide and influence elections.[31] Palantir has been contracted by the CIA for aiding ICE & the NSA creating illegal hacking software such as XKeyscore, an NSA hacking tool that was disclosed by Edward Snowden[32], and the CDC (for AI-predicting software and help with Operation Warp Speed). Palantir has been called "Silicon Valley's Most Secretive Company".[33] and the "War on Terror's Secret Weapon".[34] "Founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and some fellow PayPal alumni, Palantir cut its teeth working for the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company’s engineers and products don’t do any spying themselves; they’re more like a spy’s brain, collecting and analyzing information that’s fed in from the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. The software combs through disparate data sources—financial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postings—and searches for connections that human analysts might miss. It then presents the linkages in colorful, easy-to-interpret graphics that look like spider webs."[35]


 

Related Quotation

PageQuoteAuthorDate
Elon Musk“Despite having perhaps the greatest entrepreneurial streak of all the PayPal Mafia, Musk was purged from PayPal like some kind of toxin. Soon after the merger, Thiel resigned.

Musk became CEO of the combined company and decided it was time for a technological overhaul. Specifically, he wanted to toss out Unix and put everything on a Microsoft (MSFT) platform.

That may sound innocent enough to laypeople but not to Unix zealots like Levchin and his team. A holy war ensued. Musk lost. The board fired him and brought back Thiel while Musk was on a flight to Australia for his first vacation in years. “That’s the problem with vacations,” Musk deadpans.

Musk still contends he didn’t deserve his fate, that his biggest flaw was being cut from different cloth. “Peter, Max, and I are not directly aligned philosophically,” he says. “Peter’s philosophy is pretty odd. It’s not normal. He’s a contrarian from an investing standpoint and thinks a lot about the singularity. I’m much less excited about that. I’m pro-human.””		Elon Musk
Fortune		2007

 

Known members

6 of the 22 of the members already have pages here:

MemberDescription
Roelof BothaSouth African actuary, PayPal CFO from 2000 to 2003
Reid HoffmanVenture capitalist, CEO of LinkedIn
Ken HoweryPaypal Mafia billionaire, Young Global Leaders/2012, turned US diplomat
Max LevchinFounded Paypal with Peter Thiel in 1998.
Elon MuskUS businessman, Paypal Mafia underboss, big tech kingpin, WEF YGL billionaire
Peter ThielBillionaire financier, Bilderberger


Rating

5star.png 8 August 2023 Jun  A group of obnoxious millennial kids not liking corporate structure all leave a big tech company and promise to take over tech and support each other no matter what. 20 years later they lead deep state factions, tech companies, intelligence agencies and mass surveillance companies. And they all got funded by the CIA when the left Ebay.
If your group of friends call themselves a mafia, gain stakes in tech companies forming cartels and working with intelligence agencies that fund and supply war crimes with big data, and actively help start civil wars and more ways to expand mass surveillance... aren't you a part of some mafia?
Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.


References

  1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PyrrNJHrb0&pp=ygUMcGF5cGFsIG1hZmlh
  2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJpwAHs5sws&pp=ygUMcGF5cGFsIG1hZmlh
  3. ↑ https://fortune.com/2007/11/13/paypal-mafia/
  4. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20100608194252/http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/governance.html
  5. ↑ https://fourweekmba.com/paypal-mafia/
  6. ↑ https://milliondollarminds.medium.com/the-incredible-story-of-paypal-mafia-49dd5e155792
  7. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/30/peter-thiel-republican-midterms-trump-paypal-mafia
  8. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/technology/17paypal.html
  9. ↑ https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/books/reviews/business-economy/the-founders-the-story-of-paypal-and-the-entrepreneurs-who-shaped-silicon-valley/article65542520.ece
  10. ↑ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/11/16/paypal-mafia-group-misfits-became-kingpins-tech/
  11. ↑ https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/what-is-it-about-peter-thiel
  12. ↑ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiCp6iRrc_3AhVQgP0HHYcTD7IQwqsBegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dc2Kf-rXI_pk&usg=AOvVaw0twerYr1Qs_VJ-1T2iVo0i
  13. ↑ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/15/DDOH107DLG.DTL
  14. ↑ http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_13617121
  15. ↑ https://businessmodelanalyst.com/the-paypal-mafia/
  16. ↑ https://www.vox.com/2015/7/14/11614712/new-ceo-some-people-on-reddit-shouldnt-be-here-at-all
  17. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Reddit
  18. ↑ https://archive.is/4xay9
  19. ↑ https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf
  20. ↑ https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-to-youtube/
  21. ↑ https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/about/griffin_bio.html
  22. ↑ https://m.economictimes.com/news/science/how-tesla-founder-elon-musk-tried-to-fund-a-grand-spectacle-in-space/articleshow/47292702.cms
  23. ↑ https://restofworld.org/2022/elon-musk-ukraine-and-starlink/
  24. ↑ https://www.google.com/books/edition/Cold_War_Anthropology/dn6tCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22infiltrated+from+top+to+bottom+with+cia+people%22+gilligan&pg=PT146&printsec=frontcover
  25. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietly-paying-millions-send-starlink-terminals-ukraine-contrary-spacexs-claims/
  26. ↑ https://twitter.com/joroulette/status/1511781864356212737
  27. ↑ https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palantir-helped-the-nsa-spy-on-the-whole-world/
  28. ↑ http://www.darkreading.com/applications/researchers-flag-security-flaws-in-new-l/240163123/
  29. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Security_incidents
  30. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Malicious_behavior_on_LinkedIn
  31. ↑ https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with-cambridge-analytica-on-the-facebook-data-whistleblower.html
  32. ↑ https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/peter-thiels-palantir-allegedly-helped-nsa-spy-programme-xkeyscore-new-snowden-documents-reveal-1608147
  33. ↑ https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silicon-valleys-most-secretive-company
  34. ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-22/palantir-the-war-on-terrors-secret-weapon
  35. ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/
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