Say No to Social Media

The revelation regarding Facebook, reported here and elsewhere, and a collection of bad actors consisting of Cambridge Analytica, Strategic Communication Laboratories aka SCL Elections and third party apps that use Facebook’s own API developed to collect and use your personal data has, hopefully, brought to light that you are the product that is being sold for their profit. Ad revenue alone for mostly Facebook and Twitter was estimated at $41 billion worldwide in 2017 and this does not include the lucrative repeated sales of your personal data through the so-called dark web, as reported here. The ad revenue alone amounts to some $6 per year for each of the 7 billion people on this planet.

Targeted Divisiveness

Targeted divisiveness primarily refers to the use of social media by an individual or organization, especially through the use of bots, to search through user posts and profiles looking for characteristics that can be used to target that individual with multiple messages to amplify a cause that would pit one group against another. This could correctly be called propaganda. The difference nowadays with social media is the ability to target specific individuals based on self revealed preferences. Ads on social media work in much the same way except they are focused on selling a product or service.