| I believe that Doctorow is missing the most important issue here. The elephant in the room is the privatization of your social space and that Facebook is a private spy agency. That is what makes FB extremely dangerous. The fact that FB is private, efficient and full of technically brilliant people is not good for the rest of society, because the society can not imagine what those brilliant guys could do with their data. For example, I go to a party with friends. I don't have facebook, but one of my friends have it. He takes a picture of the group and posts it on FB. Now the fact that I went to the party, the place of the party, the time, the people that went to the party, the private opinions of some friends about other friends, girl-boyfriends or lovers(if they used FB channels like wassap to communicate) has been recorded for the rest of my life and can be accessed by American spy agencies like the NSA. Society expects FB will forget because they as humans do forget, but machines never forget. People talk about a crush on someone else with a friend and expects nobody listening(on wassap), but a bug is always on, recording everything they write or say. FB is like Stasi, only way more efficient and that applies to the entire world population instead of just one country. And they are constantly pushing the boundaries of privacy like using "smart glasses" so espionage is full in your life. And they are constantly improving their AI techniques so even when they could technically not do something today does not mean they could not do in five years with the data that they already collected about you. |