Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Has Mapped the Entire Human Population of Earth (cnbc.com)
Facebook doesn't only know what its 2 billion users "Like." It now knows where 7.5 billion humans live, everywhere on earth, to within 15 feet. From a report: The company has created a data map of the planet's entire human population by combining government census numbers with information it's obtained from space satellites, according to Janna Lewis, Facebook's head of strategic innovation partnerships and sourcing. The mapping technology, which Facebook says it developed itself, can pinpoint any man-made structures in any country on earth to a resolution of five meters. Facebook is using the data to understand the precise distribution of humans around the planet.
This is honestly next-level supervillain shit. I'm impressed.
Total BS. But it makes a good story.
(US Citizen) "Hey guys, check this out. I combined information and I know where every single human on the planet is."
(US Government) "Seize the terrorists assets immediately and throw him in prison indefinitely."
[Meanwhile, over in the land of Too Valuable To Fail...]
(Facebook) "Hey guys, check this out. We combined information and we know where every single human on the planet is."
(US Government) "Oh wow, hey cool. Mind if we get a piece of that? Sweet, thx."
Not hardly. Knowing where each individual person lives is creepy, but that data pretty much already exists. This isn't even personalized to that level, so it's just a set of data saying "people live in these places".
Slashdot is a schizophrenic's dream hangout, though.
"Entire Human Population"
Perhaps "entire" doesn't mean what you think it does?