Privacy options are the least of our problems with Facebook
Facebook has applied for a patent, filed as “Predicting household demographics based on image data”, that analyzes the photographs that we or other household members post to the social network and aims to figure out how rich or poor we are, in order to sell that information to companies that want to get us to buy stuff.
The patent, whose title leaves little to the imagination, indicates that Facebook does not see any problem in analyzing the photographs we upload as a way of classifying us according to our purchasing power. In other words, Facebook’s problem is not its negligent security, use by foreign governments to manipulate elections or its privacy options, but is instead its very own business model: a set of guidelines that normalize intensive espionage of its users as a fundamental part of the company’s mission.
That conclusion is hardly a surprise, nevertheless, it goes beyond using information such as our age or where we live to spying on us. Allow me to spell it out: Facebook was created with the sole intention of selling data it collects without our permission. In which case, who in their right mind would use devices such as the recently launched Facebook Portal, equipped with cameras and microphones inside our homes, exposing our lives to a company that will not hesitate to sell the information, regardless of what its terms of use say? Privacy options cease to mean anything. Where are we headed? Will all our devices end up being part of mass surveillance networks?
Let’s be clear: this is not about us failing to understand our privacy options or abuse by malicious third parties, but is instead a comprehensively designed spying system, a machine to squeeze everything out of what we upload to Facebook and then distill as much information as possible from it. So next time you upload a photograph or write anything, think first, because it will be used to categorize and classify you using algorithms on an unimaginable scale. There is no point in talking about Facebook changing: it cannot change, because if it did, it would cease to exist. Facebook is what it seems, what it announces it is going to do and what the evidence shows and is willing to take its business model to a limit very few could have imagined. I repeat, this is not about how we use Facebook: the company is what it is. How much longer are we going to tolerate these kinds of business models?
(En español, aquí)
