So, turns out Mark Zuckerberg—you know, the CEO of Facebook—in a suit and tie bears a startling resemblance to Data, a fictional alien on “Star Trek: The Final Boring Frontier.”
I’m no sci-fi fan—I fell asleep in the first “Star Wars”—but put their photos side-by-side and it’s twinsies. Although Mark’s photo was probably Photoshopped to look alien.
No, wait—if it’s on the internet it must be true, right?
People who believe that—in other words, those who think Wikipedia is a dandy research tool—probably also believe that Bill Gates wants to give them $5,000 for forwarding his photo, and Keanu Reeves actually did say, “Life is short. Eat the cake, buy the shoes.”
Zuckie was called before Congress to testify about how and why third parties were allowed to access Facebook users’ private info for shady reasons. To recap: Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm hired in 2016 by President Trump’s election campaign, helped itself to info on 50 million Facebook users. That data—identities, friend networks and “likes”—was used to blast newsfeeds with targeted digital ads.
Two things about the Grill on the Hill: 1) It appears that many of our elected leaders, the people we trust to guide us into the future, do not grasp the concept of social media. It was kind of embarrassing. 2) MARK ZUCKERBERG OWNS A TIE?!?
Maybe the real point is, how can we be outraged by this “data breach”? Are we really naïve enough to think Facebook is confidential?
No social media platform is private. None. I don’t care what settings you employ or how locked down you think your profile is, it’s not. Besides, nobody has to hack anything. We voluntarily put it all out there, and I’m just as guilty as you are.
We post about where we go, who we see, what we eat, where we live, where we vacay, what we buy, what we read and what movies we watch. We talk about our religious beliefs, who we like and who we don’t, who we love and who we miss. We share our political views, the candidates we love and hate, government programs we support and government programs we’d like to end.
We post about our favorite cars, running shoes, TV shows, bands, movies and authors. We discuss charities, recipes, dog breeds, college teams, doctors, restaurants and where we went to school. We mark deaths, births, weddings, tragedies, celebrations, illness, triumphs and milestones. We share details about our new house, our new job and our families’ latest photo shoots on the beach.
We, and no-one else, have made Facebook a mecca for mining data. Who needs polls and surveys when you can dip into a mother lode of demographics on one site? There’s an old advertising cliché: If you don’t know what the product is, you are the product. In other words, nothing is free except God’s grace and your mother’s love. Everything else has a price.
I actually believe that NOTHING you post online is private. To think otherwise is both foolhardy and naïve. That’s why firms like Lifelock pull down millions every year by “safeguarding” our identities. BTW, don’t waste your money: The co-founder of Lifelock has been sued several times for fraud-- and his own identity has been stolen a dozen times, because even a billionaire can’t buy privacy online.
(FYI, Widdle’s and my Facebook boundaries are simple: No posts about our jobs or finances. Nor do we use the location feature, which tells everyone where you are so bad guys can go rob your house. Seriously, people!)
