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How Facebook Could Profit From Zuckerberg's So-Called 'Privacy' Push (washingtonpost.com)
Saturday the Associated Press analyzed Mark Zuckerberg's new vision for Facebook as an encrypted "privacy-focused communications platform."
[C]ritics say the announcement obscures Facebook's deeper motivations: To expand lucrative new commercial services, continue monopolizing the attention of users, develop new data sources to track people and frustrate regulators who might be eyeing a breakup of the social-media behemoth. Facebook "wants to be the operating system of our lives," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of media studies at the University of Virginia... Vaidhyanathan said Zuckerberg wants people to abandon competing, person-to-person forms of communication such as email, texting and Apple's iMessage in order to "do everything through a Facebook product."
The end goal could be transform Facebook into a service like the Chinese app WeChat , which has 1.1 billion users and includes the world's most popular person-to-person online payment system... But Zuckerberg said nothing in the Wednesday blog post about reforming privacy practices in its core business, which remains hungry for data. A recent Wall Street Journal report found that Facebook was still collecting personal information from apps such as user heart rates and when women ovulate ... Facebook also has trackers that harvest data on people's online behavior on about 30 percent of the world's websites , said Jeremy Tillman of Ghostery, a popular ad-blocker and anti-tracking software.
"When they say they are building a private messaging platform there is nothing in there that suggests they are going to stop their data collection and ad-targeting business model," he said.
The end goal could be transform Facebook into a service like the Chinese app WeChat , which has 1.1 billion users and includes the world's most popular person-to-person online payment system... But Zuckerberg said nothing in the Wednesday blog post about reforming privacy practices in its core business, which remains hungry for data. A recent Wall Street Journal report found that Facebook was still collecting personal information from apps such as user heart rates and when women ovulate ... Facebook also has trackers that harvest data on people's online behavior on about 30 percent of the world's websites , said Jeremy Tillman of Ghostery, a popular ad-blocker and anti-tracking software.
"When they say they are building a private messaging platform there is nothing in there that suggests they are going to stop their data collection and ad-targeting business model," he said.
Good. Now that we have that cleared up, I'm sure you'll have no hesitations about posting your social security number, mailing address, bank account number(s) and credit card number(s) along with any relevant PIN numbers or whatnot.
Information must be free, right comrade?
Too bad Diaspora imploded, eh?
"Possession is 9 points of the law." If Facebook has possession of the data, YOUR data, then the 9 points is on their side. Actually you're lucky if you can claim one point on your side. If you want to take back possession of YOUR own data, you have to prove that the possession should change, and the basic operation of the law is to presume the possessor is in the right.
"Follow the money." Now about the abuse of YOUR personal information. That follows from where the money moves. Facebook wanted to become a valuable company, and the only valuable thing they had was YOUR personal information. Of course they are going to sell it. The only questions are trivial, such as how to repackage YOUR personal information for maximum value and how to disguise the abuse.
I would actually go a bit farther and say that the companies that failed to follow the money hard enough were the same companies that Facebook crushed. The reward for not sufficiently and aggressively abusing YOUR personal information was death. The only real threat to Facebook is some company that figures out better ways to do it. Amazon, that's your cue?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
And it is worse than the original.
Remember what Marx said about the ruling principle of the Communist society? "To everyone according to their needs, from everyone according to their ability". Consider what that means in the terminology of modern economic science.
It means that when you're on the "supply side", you will be squeezed off to the last drop, and paid at the marginal, competitive rate that is set on the oligopsonic labor market by the several large players who mostly determine the price. You will have the rest of the working people around world against you. It also means that when you're on the "demand side", as a consumer, you will again be charged at the margin for every purchase you make.
If you studied some economic theory, you should immediately recognize that means "monetizing" - that is, taking away from you your producer and consumer surplus , the difference between what you would have paid if you could have been provided an only offer you can't refuse, and what a competitive market without differentiation (and advertising) can charge you.
This is the game that Facebooks, googles, amazons, and the rest of the "marketing" bunch is playing with the huge collection of consumer data. It is a game of selling you the cheapest piece of shit in the lot for the most money you would be willing to pay for it, and charging your employer their (and your) producer surplus for the "service". You buying shit from your online profile because of "incentives" is playing their game for them.
And when all your surplus is gone, then what? Will it stop? Hardly, the game is already set for the next stage - modifying your preferences so that you buy even shittier stuff for even more.
The only way to win is not to play.
If you can afford it ;)
I'm also remembering a recent story where FB wanted everyone to send them their nudes.
It's a real weird end-game for Zuckerberg, I'm not going to pretend I understand what his childhood bullies put him through.
Note the Facebook icon on the bottom of Slashdot's pages. This site is part of the Zuckerborg collective that degrades your privacy. I'm a little surprised to see that on Slashdot.