AboutFace Book
Imagine, all you bazillion readers of this incredibly viral blog on your screen right now, that I start asking you for all your preferences, your inner secrets, your friends’ as well, that I need to gather up your nationalities, your gender, your buying history, that I keep track via GPS on your mobile device all the places you go, who you see, where you work, that I have a database that has every e-mail, phone call, credit card purchase you ever made. All that for free so that you don’t have to subscribe to this addictive and incredibly entertaining blog I post every day of your lives!!
And I promise that your information is protected. Ha ha. You and I both know it’s not protected. I’m not a bank. Not at all, but I would sure like to take your personal information and sell it to folks who could help me get to the bank. Folks who could sell you commodities they figure out from that data you want. Or politicians who could sell you Senators and Presidents based on your preferences. Or unscrupulous actors who could convince you to think democracy and liberty are fictions that need to be tossed on the scrap heap of history.
A guy named Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, decided to ask Facebook for an accounting of what they had for information on him. He received 1000 pages!! That’s a lot of data collecting by any standard you can think of. Today my boy Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress, apologetic as a killer on death row, claiming innocence but contrite while he awaits a pardon from the Governor. He’ll probably get that pardon, along with a slap on the hand.
Most of us in this Future Shocked world don’t care if Mark has collected all that information about us. We want that ‘platform’ he’s offered us for free. We want Google and Amazon and instantaneous algorithmic information and we don’t want to pay for it. What’s the harm if those pop-up ads target us? What have I got to hide? Maybe I wanted those hotel rooms in the country I just googled. Big deal. I can take it or leave it. So what if that item I just checked out on Amazon is now offering me a bargain over on the right of my computer screen? I don’t have to buy it.
So when I start dropping news feeds my Russian bot pals want to ‘share’ with you because they got the info that you prefer Fox to MSNBC or you got hot and bothered about pulling down those Confederate Statues or that you bought a subscription to Ammo Guns and Anarchy, you wouldn’t mind, would you? Course not, you’d rather read faux news than news that upsets your worldview. Life is hard enough without complicating things with facts. Naturally, I’m not talking about you and me — I’m worried about those folks who vote different than us, who think different than us, who are gullible and stupid and deplorable. Lock em up if we could. Lock em up!
No, I’m not talking about us.
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Tags: Facebook About Face, Max Schrems, Zuckerberg Senate Hearings