They Have, Right Now, Another You
Sue Halpern
December 22, 2016 Issue
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases
Inequality and Threatens Democracy
by Cathy O’Neil
Crown, 259 pp., $26.00
Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the
Algorithm-Driven Economy
by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke
Harvard University Press, 356 pp., $29.95
A few months ago The Washington Post reported that Facebook collects
ninety-eight data points on each of its nearly two billion users.
Among this ninety-eight are ethnicity, income, net worth, home
value, if you are a mom, if you are a soccer mom, if you are
married, the number of lines of credit you have, if you are
interested in Ramadan, when you bought your car, and on and on and
on.
How and where does Facebook acquire these bits and pieces of one’s
personal life and identity? First, from information users volunteer,
like relationship status, age, and university affiliation. They also
come from Facebook posts of vacation pictures and baby pictures and
graduation pictures. These do not have to be photos one posts
oneself: Facebook’s facial recognition software can pick you out of
a crowd. Facebook also follows users across the Internet,
disregarding their “do not track” settings as it stalks them. It
knows every time a user visits a website that has a Facebook “like”
button, for example, which most websites do.
The company also buys personal information from some of the five
thousand data brokers worldwide, who collect information from store
loyalty cards, warranties, pharmacy records, pay stubs, and some of
the ten million public data sets available for harvest.
Municipalities also sell data—voter registrations and motor vehicle
information, for example, and death notices, foreclosure
declarations, and business registrations, to name a few. In theory,
all these data points are being collected by Facebook in order to
tailor ads to sell us stuff we want, but in fact they are being sold
by Facebook to advertisers for the simple reason that the company
can make a lot of money doing so.
[…]
Continua qui:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/they-have-right-now-another-you/