IS FB Creepy?

DaveO

Fractal Fanatic
When I use it to back up my FM3 the eyes blink and glow red, hmm, I'm thinking.. scary right? but seriously anyone ever know of a bot that's not out to get your personal info? How about a Fractal Dolphin update? or a Fractal Chicken? It could lay an egg and give us an update egg.. OK I'll go away now...
 
One of the creepiest things about modern social media apps is the ancillary apps that use its logins or provide plug-in like capabilities, even something as simple as "Share this on Facebook" or "Watch video on YouTube." The reason is that you have to give permissions to the apps to communicate. This typically happens during installation and a lot of people view it as "just more legalese; just hit Accept and move on." Folks thereby lose track of what can be achieved, not by one app on its own, but by many apps with permissions working in combination. Lots of those apps are from small companies in jurisdictions outside normal legal recourse.

Thinly-Disguised Example: Popular video blogger says something critical of the internal policies of a particular, highly-public-image-sensitive world power. In ensuing months, he checks his metrics and finds dropping viewership: He's suddenly lost 10% of his subscribers. Reaching out in a new video, he asks folks whether they were previously subscribed to his channel, and suddenly found themselves unsubscribed without themselves having taken any action. About a third of his regular followers report that, yes, somehow, they became unsubscribed from his channel. Further investigation reveals that they had installed various 3rd-party apps (a.) which commonly have permissions to embed/share videos through the video platform; (b.) made by firms headquartered in that world-power's territories; and, (c.) receiving funding from that world power's military. Did those apps use their intra-app permissions to unsubscribe followers from an opinion-maker saying inconvenient things? Hard to prove, after the fact.

How might that power be used to deliver commercial advantage to one product over a competitor? Or to push public awareness of the advantages of a particular political policy-change, and stifle communication about its disadvantages? Both the idea of the free-market and the idea of "government of the people, by the people, for the people" depend upon the starting premise that in the "marketplace of ideas" false information gradually loses out to truth as the result of a million free-thinking public debates and private decisions, allowing the public to make informed decisions from balanced, widely-disseminated sources of information. But can the "marketplace of ideas" even function if bad actors (or, good actors? or merely self-interested actors?) get to untraceably muffle certain voices at will?

The world is complicated.
 
I did away with FB years ago once they started doing away with the gun groups. I do not support anything that's against the constitution period.
 
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