So, I've been keeping a tentative ear to the ground on this whole bid for the Govt to spy on web users and its latest incarnation CISPA. Its a scary list of supporters in terms of combined monetary power, something in the billions. Now Facebook has jumped on the bandwagon, and, ironically enough, there's been a Facebook wide protest against Facebook. Now, I know that this is a blog usually dedicated to real life outside the web, but I think that its important for a society as dependent (either literally or more in the way an addict is dependent on a substance) on forms of social media as ours is to figure out a way to push back.
Because, lets face it.
Nobody's quitting Facebook cold-turkey.
The only way to make a stand against Facebook without removing yourself from it is to make yourself an invalid statistic.
Its simple. Facebook is the greatest data mining engine in the WORLD!! You've signed your privacy away, one user agreement at a time, and now they own the rights to your likes, your friend's likes, any opinions/comments/updates/facts/etc that you've put within their reach - aka posted on Facebook. Just click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwnTWZ1-UWY to find a really scary video on all the possibilities that are quite probably true (not saying that they are, but when was the last time you read any sort of online agreement, let alone pondered the possible legal interpretations of the language?). The reason Facebook would take the trouble to Bogart all this information is just as simple: to sell it. I mean, how else does a company worth millions its first day public with billions of subscribers worldwide make money when it doesn't charge its members?
Facebook's bread and butter is the user's ego. We see our online image as an extension of ourselves, and our ego fights tooth and nail to make sure our image is in line with our perception of it. This is how Facebook can get such accurate profiles of us without even asking, and this is how companies can design algorithms that turn this data into ads so well crafted that we're likely to click on them.
But, if we make ourselves a walking contradiction, we're useless. Facebook can't sell anyone a tea party communist who loves everything under the sun, including everything that hates everything we love. Without dichotomies and distinctions in our personal information, we don't make sense, and no program - or human - can accurately guess what our true values and desires are, which means they can't sell you anything.
So, wanna stick it to Facebook? Wanna stop CISPA? Make yourself unmarketable.
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