The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I remember the first grocery store card I ever got, something I resisted at first, until they made it clear those sale items I had in my cart would cost me full price. What are you guyz tracking? I asked. They said my buying habits. How come? I asked. To help bring you better service. Tailor our product to your needs, they said.

You got to love these folks, worried about my needs and all. They’re like the companies on the phone that are recording our conversation. For my protection. From what? I asked. They didn’t know. If they don’t know, who does? I asked.

The nice lady who monetized Facebook is making the talking head rounds the last couple of days. Sheryl Sandberg says she and Mark — she calls Zuckerberg Mark — she and Mark understand the Seriousness of these latest revelations that Facebook has allowed the privacy of their people to be harvested to folks with fairly questionable intent. Sheryl — I guess it’s okay to use her first name, friends and all — was the brains behind the monetization. Facebook users got free access to what Sheryl repeatedly refers to as ‘our products’. In return, like TV, they get ads.

Sheryl Sheryl Sheryl, let me explain a small difference: my TV, at least not yet, doesn’t keep track of my viewing habits, my dietary preferences, my social networks, the movies I watch, my bowel movements, my reading inclinations, my everything in the world preferences and sell them to your advertisers so they can offer me mood lifters when the TV camera senses I’m a bit depressed or laxatives if I haven’t taken a dump in 24 hours. But Facebook does. And worse, they sold that information to political operatives. This isn’t just capitalism run amok, it’s creepy and it’s destabilizing and it’s just plain wrong. That, Sheryl, is what is really ‘Serious’. Not to mention, but I will, the fact that you and Zuck knew this was going on for a few years and didn’t do one damn thing to stop it, not if it meant cutting into your profits. Now that the government is dropping the hammer on you, yeah, you can see the Seriousness and you’ll probably make some cosmetic corrections. And hire plenty of powerhouse lobbyists….

Sheryl, I’m sure you were a whipsmart Harvard bizness grad and all. You certainly helped Mark figure out the money end of the product line. You both may be swell people, bringing the world closer together, shining a light on those dark corners some of us prefer. But I hafta tell ya, friend to friend, you treated us like a dumb bunny addict customers. You sold us lock stock and barrel to the highest bidder. You handed crooks and creeps the keys to our house and said go on in. I’m afraid we have to unfriend you, Sheryl cause you ain’t no friend of mine.

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Well, Mark Zuckerberg has told us for years that privacy is a thing of the past. In fact, he thinks we should embrace a completely public existence and just to help us out, Facebook opened up its vaults of your personal information to a political team called Cambridge Analytica working for Donald Trump. Cambridge Analytica harvested –I love that word — harvested data from 50 million Facebook users to use in the 2016 presidential campaign. Thanks, Mark!

Facebook attorneys point to the disclosure clauses all Facebook suckers agreed to in defense of their lack of security. You signed up, you gave up your rights, read the fine print, boys and girls. Somehow, though, I don’t think a legalistic defense is going to help these folks whose vision of the company apparently never included a premonition of what was coming. Russian bots, faux news stories, data mining, alt-right hoaxes, phony baloney trollers, political operatives and shady ‘friends’.

I have my own problem with the idea of Facebook as a public forum, but why air that opinion one more time? If folks want to sex-text, if the neighbors want to reveal to any and all what their favorite pizza topping is, if this is the way families and friends communicate in the 21st century, be my guest. Mark’s your guy. Me, I didn’t move lock stock and crackerbarrel down to the South End of a little known island so I could tell you my secrets. It’s why we call em secrets. And no, I don’t think it’s a crime against society to keep my privacy. Even if, as we all know, the security cameras, the GPS cellphone tracking, the Google algorithms, the entire tilt of the future is toward eliminating the individual and celebrating the public. Big Brother is definitely here, he just turned out to be a corporation, not the government, not the Deep State. And all he asked, in return for instant communication and information, was that you ‘friend’ him. Trust him. Serve him. Obey him. Read the fine print, it’s right there between the lines….

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