SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:56PM (1 child)
Everyone expects a social media persona, so supply one. I do. I post something innocuous every couple of years, designed to reflect a happy member of the herd.
Decades before the advent of the medium Robert Heinlein wrote a lot of books, and bits and pieces of what he wrote stuck with me. In one of his books, perhaps "The Number of the Beast" or "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" he strongly recommended blending in where you live, to "Do As the Romans Do." If everyone goes to church, go to church, sing loud, even if you don't believe. If the mores of the community are staid, keep a chaste demeanor. Et cetera. In this case, if everyone else has a social media presence, do you likewise.
Then, in another book, "Friday," his character maintained social camouflage by creating data patterns through credit chip usage that conformed to what people would expect from a normal member of society; when she had missions to perform, she used cash, ie. she stepped outside the dominant paradigm entirely and acted in ways they could not trace and would not look for.
Synthesizing all that, I approach social media. I only post things that are true, because disprovable data are a red flag. But the elements I publish conform to a persona I want to project, and nothing else. Maybe it's silly and completely unnecessary, but my horror would be greater if the future proved such a thing indispensible, and I hadn't done so.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @02:04PM
The only real downside I see to this approach is now the marketing drones can truthfully say they hold yet another warm body. This is classic prisoner's dilemma, everybody acting in the way that's likely saving their bacon leads to worst outcome for the society as whole.