Author: Borislav Krastev
Commenting on the recent Facebook scandal concerning “Analytica” Borislav Krastev provides his explanation of the conditions and factors that have led to it. He claims that we all fall victims of a long pursued advertizing strategy.
According to the author the biggest secret of the last 10 years is that all social networks do whatever they want with your data and your data security is not guaranteed at all. And you do not even know what data they have for you!
It’s not about your personal ID, address, or bank account number, though if you share these things on Facebook, you deserve all this personal stuff to be stolen. The real situation is far more scary – these companies know whom you like, whom you hate, when you wake up, when you spend more, when you save money, when you go to bed, even with whom you go to bed. And we do not know about it because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook sells this information to thousands of advertisers completely legally.
”How so! It’s mine! It’s protected by law!“ one may exclaim. Well no.Your ID and the three names are protected because they were the last to exist during the time when these laws were changed. But data that you have voluntarily provided to a private company and which do not directly affect your security? No problems.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, wrote Heinlein 60 years ago, and then Milton Friedman repeated it. What fee do you pay monthly to Facebook to benefit from its services? Not at all. Not a penny. “But Zuckerberg is a billionaire, so how is this job done?” logically asks Krastev.
Through advertising, of course is the answer of the expert. But how much does this ad cost? How do you advertise effectively to 2.2 billion people scattered across the planet? You do it by targeting. All advertisers want to shoot accurately – and that requires a lot of information. Which you give voluntarily.
And now someone thought he could lie to hundreds of millions of voters with the most effective fake news distributor after the printing press? No, it’s been a long time practice – it’s simply expanding the scale.
Facebook is a service, but not for us, argues Krastev. No matter how nice he smiles in his gray shirt, Mark, no matter how much he wishes to tell us he wants to unite and connect mankind, to create a digital social utopia, each one of his actions points to one thing only – we are not the consumers. We are the product.
There is no escape from social networks’ practices. “PP: And if you think #DeleteFacebook is the solution, dig and read the terms of use on Twitter. Or what alternative you like”, concludes the author pessimistically.
This material was created under the “Generation Z” project.
Искате Facebook да ви пази данните? А колко му плащате?
Няма такова нещо като безплатен обяд
https://kafeneto.wordpress.com/2018/03/page/3/
March 2018
