Like several of software and mobile apps we download and use nowadays, Facebook is free. Or is it not? According to Episode 22 of Adam Conover’s Adam Ruins Everything series, we actually pay for it using our identity.
What Adam meant by it is that the social networking site Facebook lets people use it for free but utilizes it to record and document everything we do on their website, from photos we like and the words we enter.
From just that, Facebook can already then create your profile, which includes your interests, liked books, overall likes and dislikes, and even your sexual orientation. After gathering the information, they sell it to advertisers so they can then aim at users with the exact products they know they can’t resist.
It is disturbing to read and made even more disturbing as Facebook conspires with the advertisers to observe your behavior outside the virtual walls of the website. If you are an individual who appears to be an easy target for advertisers, they will show you more stuff. Adam says it is amongst the invasive advertising methods ever created. Even Google and Apple use the same advertising system.
Eventually, it won’t just be free software, Facebook will likely give out free mobile phones. To these companies, a phone is not as valuable as the information they can obtain from observing your movements online which can then be marketed to thousands of advertisers.
It does not end there. With the inter-networking of our physical devices, this brings the stalking offline and probably into our own homes. You can imagine the effects of augmented reality as the virtual world and the real world collides, our whole lives will be monitored by our governments, big corporations, and questionable government organizations.
