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by gruez 40 days ago
Okay, what concrete harms has Meta done with this information? At best you have some creeps using it to stalk their exes, which is bad, but a far cry from the AI takeover scenario implied by OP.
3 comments

I haven't implied an AI takeover, this data will be repackaged into a product for military/intelligence, political applications, insurance companies that can charge you more because they know you're willing to pay, and many more.

These things already exist and happen, it's about the data getting better and not having to build tools to query it and make projections, since you can just type a query into a box even if you're not a data scientist.

>I haven't implied an AI takeover, this data will be repackaged into a product for military/intelligence, political applications, insurance companies that can charge you more because they know you're willing to pay, and many more.

Any evidence google or meta actually sells customer data like that?

They target toxic ads at people with poor mental health who are especially vulnerable. They do this intentionally because it's profitable.

There's plenty of reporting on this if you care to look it up. It "works" too. Spending more time on Meta products results in having more body issues, poor self esteem, and suicidal ideations.

But if I remember right you work for a big ad tech company and have previously gone to the mat to defend such practices, so I suspect you aren't genuinely asking.

They have done shit like target weight loss drugs at teenage girls who have posted and then quickly deleted selfies (i.e. using that as one analogue for "self-confidence issues").

Meta has also decided "functionality needs to be provided though we have explicit confirmation from the (Burmese) government that they're going to use it against dissidents" which has historically included imprisonment and torture, so...

Plenty of concrete harms.