The other day I wrote the first part of the "Leaving Facebook Series" where I talked about the chilling potential that Facebook has over defining an entire generation beliefs and assumptions.
Now today, I want to tackle the evidences that we have that the leadership of Facebook is corrupted and that it does everything in it's power to mine as much information as possible without regards to users privacy. We'll also look at what it does with State entity to control public opinion.
Facebook Isn't a Social Media Company, It's a Data Mining Company
There is no such thing as "free" in the marketplace...everything has a cost. When we watch television, channels don't make money with making entertaining shows, they make money by selling our attention to advertisers.
Same thing for Facebook. Facebook sells us a service on Facebook.com that allow you to do wonderful things "for free"...but really, their business is to gather as much data as possible on us to be sold to the highest bidder (companies, secret services, etc.) That means everything from geolocation, to who you called and when, to buying habits, credit scores, psychological profile, etc.
What did Zuck think of this practice of giving away our information for free to him and his company?
The following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Brutal...
Proof
If you download all of your data from Facebook, you would see that it as your entire call history, with who, when and for how long. It's as if there is no limit to what kind of data likes to gather from us.
Facebook - A Tool To Control Public Opinion...by Force if Necessary
After the massive increase of migrants coming from everywhere after the German Chancelor Angela Merkel created an open-door policies, people were not happy on social media. The crime rate rose quickly with the influx of young, unmarried, unaccompanied males who aren't necessarily fleeing war zones. (most, in fact, were not from war torn countries)
According to official counts, a disproportionate number of these migrants are young, unmarried, unaccompanied males. In fact, the sex ratios among migrants are so one-sided—we’re talking worse than those in China, in some cases—that they could radically change the gender balance in European countries in certain age cohorts. - Politico
After Ms. Merkel asked Mr. Zuckerberg about offensive posts on the refugee crisis, the Facebook CEO said “we need to do some work” on the issue.
“Are you working on this?” Ms. Merkel asked in English,
“Yeah,” Mr. Zuckerberg reportedly responded, before the transmission was disrupted.
And here we have it:
The tricky thing about hate speech is who defines it? What if telling the truth becomes subject to hate speech laws? What if "hate speech laws" becomes no different than was theocratic state calls "blasphemy laws"?
I'm Leaving Facebook...
...and I will cover in my next post how I am going about doing so. It is not easy to pull the plug...there are so many services and data Facebook provide in one place for me that it is hard to pull the plug.
I'm probably not alone in that situation and this is why I'm going to cover the process of weaning off, scraping my personal data and delete my Facebook account for good.