Has it ever occurred to you that you don't know your friends as well as you think? Well, now the internet has the answer. A website called spokeo can now with a simple search fill you in on what you're missing. Here check me out. And by things that you might be missing I mean address, household, facebook pics, approximate credit score, home value, income, age etc. Ok, so that might not be the most valuable thing for improving friendships. But it might be really valuable for people who wanna sell me shit.
Meanwhile Facebook is pulling another one of it's patented "We've changed our privacy policies and you have no clue what's going on" moves. Frankly, I don't trust them and I'm not exactly sure why.
Am I being silly here? Is this all part of the natural and desirable spread of information? Or is the complete commodification of self and society? Who actually stands to gain from all of this?
you're absolutely not being silly, i don't trust facebook as a company either.
ReplyDeletehowever given that before facebook the well-connected organizations who wanted to sell you that shit most likely already had your exact credit score, home value, income, etc., it's not accurate that this information was not available before, it was just only available to those entities that you are most likely afraid of in the first place.
i think the important thing to remember is that the magical world where i had full knowledge and control of who knew what about me never existed. and if my choice is between just banks, insurance companies, governments, and large corporations knowing this information (like it used to be) and everyone knowing this information - well, yeah...might as well. i would venture to say that the average facebook user has a more accurate perception of who (everyone) knows what (whatever is on facebook) about them then we did before.