The AI in Your Pocket or WHY TO BAN TIKTOK

I’m on Facebook, whining to my friend about a fight with my husband through their IM.

In my typical “melodramatic,” (my husband claims, but I call “passionate”) fashion, I’m furiously typing how much of a jerk he is, how often we fight, basically questioning if the sanctity of marriage is sustainable.

My friend is empathetic. She reminds me that I am always welcome to visit her in Britain, especially if I decide to leave my husband. She’ll help me kick off my newly single life with a bang!

I have no intention of leaving my husband. I am sounding off, as women so often do to other women, about our marriages. And my friend knows this. She also knows her offer is giving me ground, a place to land. She is kind in the extreme, and I am honored to know her.

Unfortunately, Facebook is not so kind. They are collecting the IM exchange between me and my friend. Their data science team then runs Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning algorithms on our text exchange. They categorize and classify our exchange to ‘improve the engagement and response’ of their advertiser’s campaigns. In marketing speak we call it “Personalized Targeting.” They also sell our data to their advertisers, and you agree to let them do this when you download Facebook to your mobile, or sign up on your PC to engage with their platform.

In simple terms, personalized targeting means collecting as much data on an individual as possible, then correlating that data…