Facebook Addiction

Maria Arpa

Wednesday Whisper

8 May 2018

This week

Facebook Addiction

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Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness

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the Wednesday Whisper

Anyone else want to give up Facebook?

Last month I bought a newer smartphone and the apps work much better. Happy with my purchase I started fiddling with it and lo and behold, I find myself looking at Facebook more often. I have managed to turn off notifications so I choose when I see it and it doesn’t prompt me but truthfully, I wonder if looking at FB has become an unwelcome habit.

We all know that FB keeps our information and does things with it but a little digging revealed something that really bothered me.

Facebook collects data before you press “POST”. As you are crafting your message, Facebook collects your keystrokes. This means that if you type something and then think better of it before positing, FB has kept it. It uses this data to study self-censorship.

Of course it uses everything you volunteer about yourself but did you know they use you as a guinea pig in academic research? Furthermore, if you don’t provide as much information as FB would like, it creates a shadow profile based on information it has collected that you didn’t provide. Facebook may have an alternate email address, your phone numbers, and your home address helpfully supplied by friends who are trying to find you and connect. Even worse, Facebook collects your face.

There’s what Facebook does with this data over and above its own research and marketing and then there is what it provides to Governments who demand information.

Of course, many people argue that if they are leading a law abiding life then there is nothing to worry about. Not so, it only takes one lunatic leader to come into possession of this information and he/she could target people based on a profile of choice. Then what? Of course it will never happen….

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness

I’m now working on mindfully noticing when I go to look at FB and asking myself whether I really need to and breathing slowly instead.

The Wednesday Whisper

How’s your social media habit?

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4 Comments

Tamzie Hollands
Posted 6 years ago Reply

There have been many notable films focusing on what governments can do with personal data, Mel Gibson’s Conspiracy Theory and Will Smith’s Enemy of the State are two notable examples (I love these films and can list many more!). FB is indicative of the latest level of technological development and of course, there have been abuses. As a marketer, I was talking about the activities of Cambridge Analytica several years ago, which demonstrated some of the abuse of our data that was going on. The problem now is not social media alone – personally I love it – I have reconnected with people from my past and have met some wonderful new friends through personal interest groups and I enjoy these engagements. I have resisted the need to provide FB with my phone number and face for recognition purposes but using it as a communications tool has been life changing! I also don’t mind targeted advertisements – I have bought some original interesting products, that I might not have discovered was it not for this, so there are some positives. The issue for me is not social media (FB etc.) but technology per se. For example, if you own a loyalty card (Tescos/Nectar) they have been giving the data to government for the past two decades. If you are on benefits and are spending more than your benefits give you, a swipe of your loyalty card can tell the government this and they can use this to monitor your behaviour; use it as part of their case against you as a fraudulent benefits receiver! We are linked to government through the documents we hold, the cars we drive, even the way we vote – yep they can check this – when you vote, your voting paper number is recorded by your voter number! In the future, they are talking about micro chipping us from birth (some companies are already doing this with their staff, supposedly for security reasons but what if you bunk off to the seaside for the day, when you have called in sick (believe me I did this once when I was much younger and got engaged to my now husband!!), the employer would now know!)… Unless all technology fails (the results of nanodes taking out all our sources of electricity – Science Fiction currently but who know) and we return to the dark ages, I am afraid the situation can only get worse and may well lead to the next stage of genocide within the human race. Cheery thought for a Friday!
- Maria Arpa
  Posted 6 years ago Reply
  
  Thanks for this comprehensive reply. We are selling ourselves wholesale and there are a growing number of young people who are looking forward to having technology inserted into their bodies and enhancing themselves by become part machine. My prediction is that as human beings of compassion, empathy and love we are well on the way to extinction in favour of a highly efficient, focused, job-done-at-all-costs army of beings that look like humans. Sociopaths 1 : Empaths 0
Bev Porrino
Posted 6 years ago Reply

This is fabulous… I’ve been an avid fb fan for years. It’s helped me to stay connected with family when I’ve lived abroad and I use it for advertising my work a lot, but the underbelly of this platform is dark indeed. I don’t have it on my phone. I have also reduced my posts greatly recently, I just got fed up with the endless streams of images and posts it sends me from smart algorithms. B x
- Maria Arpa
  Posted 6 years ago Reply
  
  Yes, it definitely has some good factors and although free in monetary terms, I think we’re paying a very high price.