The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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….

I just e-mailed a friend who had gone up to Fairbanks, Alaska to see his grandkids and kids. Just said hello basically and how’s the weather? Within a few minutes I got a new feed on my Yahoo news advertising great deals on Fairbanks hotels. Now … I suppose this could just be a cosmic coincidence, a shot in a trillion that maybe I was hoping to take a vacation jaunt up into the north country in winter, catch a little of that minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit and enter the Iditarod with my husky sled dogs.

But … I’m betting my friends at Yahoo are monitoring my every word in hopes of monetizing one or more of them into sponsored ads. I’m growing accustomed to online shopping opening me up to every Amazon algorithmic advertisement based on my curiosities, but I like to think e-mail is more like sending a letter than it is posting on Facebook. Sure, they’re probably like the NSA, CIA and FBI, just collecting metadata, not really reading or listening to actual content. And like our friend Mark Zuckerberg sez, whaddaya got to hide anyway? We should all be open books, transparency is in society’s best interest.

Well, Mark’s best interest anyway. Love ya, Marky! You adorable rich rascal you. Mmmmwaah. You killed that lying press with a billion posts of faux news, you cute little bugger. And now we got a reality TV host as CEO of America, muchas gracias. I noticed, though, that you filed suit in Kauai to keep your estate there private, even built a rock wall to help you hide behind. What gives, little buddy? Whatcha hiding? Whatcha scared of from the peeping masses?

Well, if things get too hot in Kauai, I got some great deals in Fairbanks to help you chill out. Least I could do. Send me your e-mail and I’ll pass them on. Say hi to the mizzus, Mark. And keep yer head down.