Facebook… and data privacy

Facebook is the kind of cocktail you’d never drink if you knew what was actually in it. And why would you ask, really? It’s so delicious! Asking for a list of ingredients when you’re getting all these emotional highs for free seem almost rude. So willful ignorance was a price most people paid gladly.

But now easy oblivion is out. Just in time for the massive hangover Facebook has wrecked upon the collective brain of society.

Dr. Doom couldn’t have concocted a better mix of addiction, self-loathing, envy, and misery if he wanted to. The stupor that Facebook brought upon the world made its afflicted user base ripe for exploitation. And exploit Facebook did.

There’s a reason Facebook (along with Google) is soaking up almost all new advertising dollars. It’s deadly effective! The growth-hacking army from Facebook found their softest target in our weak, mushy, fallible brains. And as if people were lab rats, Facebook experimented their way through trick and inducements until billions of people ran the maze it designed.

If you would have told anyone a decade ago that the average person would be checking their smartphones 46 times per day, and that many, if not most, of those checks would be with Facebook, you’d been laughed out of the room.

It truly is hard to comprehend just how deviously effective the digital addiction that Facebook is peddling has been. The process goes something like this: First Facebook gets you hooked. Then it relentlessly exploits your privacy until it knows more about you than your friends or family. And just in your most vulnerable state, it shows you advertising designed to exploit that state to the fullest.

And all of this happens without much objection, because it’s not a conscious process for most people. While it’s starting to dawn on some people that they might be addicted, most are oblivious to the fact. What’s really insidious is that Facebook is economically disposed to make this process as terrifyingly effective as possible. To find the most vulnerable times, so it can present you with ads for the most tempting ointments.

There’ll always be a flower seller ready to offer the most beautiful bouquet when a loved one dies. Or a pharmacy eager to get your prescription business when your medicine needs a refill. Or a junk food restaurant ready to send you comfort food. These are undeniably excellent advertisement moments.

And that’s just on the individual level. Until the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook was actually bragging on their site about how they could influence voters. And of course they can! With a contraption this powerful at knowing what message to send to whom at what time for maximum commercial effect, of course it can be weaponized to strike at a democratic level.

I think Facebook knows all of this, deep down. They plundered society for attention, exploited privacy on a scale that’s hard to comprehend, and tried to get away with it for as long as possible. They knew about Cambridge Analytica for years. The only surprise is how long it took to program a barely passing contrite set of facial expressions for the robot in chief.

We’re just waking up to this Facebook hangover. The first impulse will be for quick fixes, and I’m sure some of those will be helpful. But the real work to getting sober means reimagining the entire privacy-exploiting advertisement industry. It’s our job to keep up the pressure so that actually happens.

It never looks like one person can make a meaningful difference in the face of such towering, dominant, and monopolistic force. But that’s how all movements start. One person, then another, then another, and all of the sudden the world is different from what it was!

The Facebook /Cambridge Analytica disaster is just emphasizing how seriously we all have to take data privacy and understand the power we have over our personal data. As I have mentioned many times, companies have to realize in the Philippines and in the rest of the world that data privacy protection has to be implemented and exercised. A data breach will be very expensive in terms of fins and loss of reputation.

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