(John Block attended the Insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021)
The world of politics is often dark and secretive. Deals are made in backrooms among politicians who claim to know the needs of their constituents while, truly, only concerned with their quest for more power. Republican Candidate for House District 51 John Block is one of these political trolls.
John Block is the owner, editor, and, apparently, the sole author of the Pinon Post.
In his corporate filings, Block claims that The Pinon Post was created to "bring New Mexicans true conservative news, covering politics and current events." We question such a lofty ideal given Block's penchant for "interesting" headlines: "Woke local TV Station Devotes an Entire Segment to 'Proper Pronoun Usage," and "Despite MLG Doubling Down on Abortion Support, Archbishop Won't Deny Eucharist" in response to New Mexico's governor's pledge to keep a woman's choice to abortion safe and legal. Interestingly, Block did this knowing that he is a sinner worthy of ex-communication from the Catholic Church and many branches of Christianity. John Block is gay. In the mission statement for the Pinon Post, Block states that the name was created by his boyfriend, Karl P. Melton (pictured above). Further, this deleted post shows Block and Melton enjoying their fourth anniversary painting the exposed wood on the porch of the Alamogordo home.
The excellent writers at The Paper published a great piece, After Helping Launch Jan. 7, Republican Insurrectionist Plant Trump-Styled Run for New Mexico State House. Rather than rehashing their research, we'd prefer to honor their work and will continue our discussion of Block's work with Pro Acta, LLC.
John Block and Pro Acta Data Brokerage
A paragraph in The Paper caught our researchers' attention.
The paragraph states that Block is a "content editor for the conservative digital publishing website Pop Acta." On its website, Pop Acta claims to "Publish news from a conservative perspective so that you can get the news free from liberal bias."
More interestingly, Pop Acta also specializes in Data Marketing. 
The world of Data Marketing is twofold. The first is data collection (mining), and the second is marketing. In other words, mining drives marketing. In the political world, this is nothing new, however the digital age has made data collection an unregulated venture. Prior to the explosion of the internet, recognized political and non-partisan groups could request voter data from the New Mexico Secretary of State's office (NMSC Section 1.10.3010B) for a fee. 
With the explosion of the internet in the digital age, the data mining field has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. According to getlatka.com, data mining company RapidMiner earned over $7.5 million through the first half of 2022. 
Many websites, like PinonPost.com, place a small program, called a cookie, on your internet browser (both mobile and static, like your laptop or computer) when you access the site. Visitors consent to the placement of the cookie simply by visiting the website. The cookie tracks your activities on a specific website like PinonPost.com (pages you visit, articles you read, etc.). This helps speed the loading time of the page each time you visit. 
However, some of these cookies can also track your browsing history. Once a cookie has been installed on your browser, it can see all of the websites you visit even after leaving the site that installed it. For example, if you visit PinonPost.com and a cookie is installed, it will collect the data of your visit to the page, but after you leave the page to visit FoxNews.com, then CNN.com, then Amazon.com, the cookie will collect that data as well. The idea is to gather as much data about you as possible to be sold to data marketers so that advertisements, political materials, etc., can be targeted at a single individual. This explains why you see advertisements for car insurance and dealerships on your Facebook or Twitter feeds after searching for new cars on the internet. Your data can add up. According to the New York Times, data mining/marketing firm Acxion claims to know 1,500 points of data on any individual using the internet. Acxion knows where you live, where you shop, what you buy, what websites you visit, and your political and religious leaning. They know if you have a spouse or children, their age ranges, and their political and religious beliefs.
John Block is no different. Our researchers first completed an "inspection" of PinonPost.com to determine what cookies were present. There are 5 different sets of cookies embedded into the website. To find this, we used the Google Inspection Tool built into Chrome.
To see what specific cookies were used by PinonPost.com, we used SiteChecker.pro/cookie-checker/
We then used CookieBot to determine the nature of the cookies on the PinonPost.com website.
Of the 63 cookies used on PinonPost.com, only 15 are considered necessary to aid the essential functions of the website (remembering your visit, allowing changes to be seen, the ability to see how far into the website you are scrolling, etc.). Seven cookies deal with site statistics; how often someone visits versus unique (first-time) visitors, what articles are being read, how long people remain on the website, etc. The remaining 38 cookies are for marketing purposes. These are the cookies that track every website you visit.
Remember, John Block told The Paper he is a content editor for Pop Acta Media, LLC. In Florida, Pop Acta Media, LLC is registered as a media company. 
In the end, questions must be answered. If Block works for Pop Acta Media, LLC, which of the 38 cookies on PinonPost.com are from them? How many cookies belong to other advertisers? What specific data is Block collecting? How much is your browsing history worth to other data marketing firms? 
However, Pop Acta Media, LLC is registered as a Data Marketing firm in California. 
When our researchers attempted to locate the offices of Pop Acta Media, LLC, we learned that the address is a "virtual" office. 
Given our visit to the Fairway Suites virtual office website, it should be no surprise that the Fairway Suites virtual offices are heavily advertised on PinonPost.com.
We did try to reach out to Pinon Post for comment; however, we are blocked.
