SOCIAL MEDIA IS BIG BROTHER
 |
| register some information with the government |
 |
| we provide personal information voluntarily |
On social media, we provide this information (and more) voluntarily—and with virtually no thought as to what the social media company might do with this information.
The amount of information that Facebook has about its users is truly shocking—García Martínez refers to Facebook as “the regulator of the biggest accumulation of personal data since DNA.” What most of us don’t realize is that Facebook doesn’t just know everything you do and share on Facebook. Thanks to Facebook buttons and cookies (small files left behind on your computer that make it possible for companies to track your activities across sites), Facebook also knows many of the websites you’ve visited, apps you’ve used, and links you’ve clicked on. And thanks to partnerships with external data-collection companies such as Equifax, it knows countless details about your offline life, too, including (but not limited to!) your income and basically every purchase you’ve ever made with a card.
Finally, there’s one more important reason to be aware of the motivations behind social media: the effects all this targeting and personalization is having on society as a whole.
For as horrible as it might be to think of a company controlling this much data about such a large number of people, the only purpose, from Facebook’s perspective, is to make Facebook money. On the positive side, this means that Facebook is very protective of its data because it’s valuable. But the negative side is that Facebook does not have any intrinsic reason to care about whether the content that it’s helping its advertisers share with us is factually accurate. Instead, the goal is to click. And when it comes to garnering clicks, the more sensational a post is, the better.
 |
| we no longer have a shared definition of the “truth.” |
When you put this together with Facebook’s ability to target ads to the people who are the most likely to click on and share them, we end up in a situation where the stories that show up in my newsfeed might be completely different from those that show up in your newsfeed—and where none of them has been vetted (to investigate thoroughly to see if they should be approved) to make sure they reflect any version of reality. The more this happens, the more we risk creating a society in which we no longer have a shared definition of the “truth.”
Thanks for reading, As Always,
ANKURJIT KALITA
ANKURJIT KALITA
YOU CAN READ THIS BLOG ON MY FREE ANDROID APPLICATION
CLICK BELOW TO DOWNLOAD
don't forgot to comment