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A look inside the company and its astonishing reach into our daily lives through a series of studies conducted by Share Labs, first reported by the BBC but without linking directly to the material posted by Share Labs.
Share Lab is a research team based in Yugoslavia: "Where indie data punk, meets media theory pop to investigate digital rights blues"
For those of us born and raised before Facebook, life has many different aspects: work, family, hobbies. In each context we may behave differently and other people might have a different impression of our personality but Facebook, by mixing it all together, is causing a "context collapse", no longer partitioning our lives.
However, one of Zuckerberg's fears is "context restoration" whereas users become aware of the Panopticon and choose to "behave" in Facebook withholding essential data and thus ruining Facebook's algorithms. It may become a LinkedIn type of site, where everything posted is highly curated for professional purposes and the "social" migrates to other platforms, such as Instagram.
It is possible that in the near future Facebook and LinkedIn will be competing for the same market: professional or skilled traders and lose some of its potency. That is why Facebook is extending its reach to other websites, tracking both Facebook users and others to keep harvesting data about our daily activities and testing algorithms to influence every decision we make.
As Douglas Rushkoff puts it:
"Facebook will market you your future before you've even gotten there, they'll use predictive algorithms to figure out what's your likely future and then try to make that even more likely. They'll get better at programming you – they'll reduce your spontaneity. "
As we all know, your social media profile has become of interest to would-be employers, law-enforcement and of course, advertisers. Some have started to demand wages for using Facebook, as we are creating the "product" they sell.
Those afraid of Big Government should be very afraid of behemoths like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple and others which are not hindered by the constitution or human rights. It appears that we can run but no hide.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 29 2017, @06:15PM (4 children)
I would say you can but it's hard. Time for a reset of all personal information once in a while? like when moving to a new address it could be exploited by creating a new email address, phone number, website etc.. Blocking all tracker sites goes without saying of course. Any computerphone better be installed with a decently safe OS.
The main issue is likely to avoid sharing personal information with people that have poor information hygiene. And for those inclined to write bots that stuff facebook and all the others with fake data and keep it active. A program could stitch together photos and videos of random people to make the algorithms infer wrong connections.
Here's a useful list from 2011 slashgreen:
Take twitter and doubleclick etc too.
Don't visit the CrookHook. All their messages are deceitful and only serves to pull you in further.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @06:23PM (3 children)
That'd be "friends" and "family" :/
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 29 2017, @06:36PM (2 children)
Though choices..
But why not give your next girlfriend a fake name whenever she's at a family gathering? And no photos because some "old ex-boyfriend is stalking her". Be inventive..
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @06:51PM (1 child)
Yeah that will work. LOL.
What you meant to say was "Be single.."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @09:31PM
Well, if they're that shallow, good riddance.