4 ms·

Isn't it kinda obvious the long game of facebook is to become the single globally mandated identity service? Governments will contract with them to maintain yo

by seiji 11y ago

Isn't it kinda obvious the long game of facebook is to become the single globally mandated identity service? Governments will contract with them to maintain your official citizen ID records. Game over.

artursapek 11y ago
I can't imagine the government mandating something like that. I haven't used Facebook in four years.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  I can't, either, but it's an interesting thought in a twisted dystopian kind of way...
junto 11y ago
You should read "The Circle". It is basically that and more.
- seiji 11y ago
  The book was awful in all the right ways. It was a perfect example of SV employees "going native" and surrendering their entire sense of self worth over to the desires of their employer. It tracked the ways startups indoctrinate naive employees into to their cults of personality pretty accurately. Company as Godhead. If the protagonist drank any more koolaid she would have become the koolaid man herself. After all, without that external sense of approval, you are worthless. One for all, and all for the billionaires. It's a case study in trojan horsing your way to the top though. Company offers shiny service X, but with nefarious capabilities (surveillance, tracking, blackmail) nobody considers, because, hey, shiny selfies!!! Sign up now for my 2016 course: Defense Against the Dark Software
- qznc 11y ago
  I found The Circle entertaining. As an argument against Facebook (or Google,Amazon,etc) it just sets up a strawman. Not realistic enough. That politicians can be pressured into 24/7 live streaming is ridiculous. The Circle has no serious opponents, while in reality there are more powers which would acquire or destroy Facebook if they attempted something like that.
  - seiji 11y ago
    You may be a little oblivious to how Facebook has "like" buttons, which are also javascript tracking beacons, on basically every site online. Well, "Facebook" doesn't have them there, the site owners include them willingly, serving up the privacy of their users in exchange for "engagement." Billions of tracking beacons spread around the Internet give Facebook a real time click-by-click bread-cumb trail of almost your entire thought process and Internet experiential reality (reminder: use uBlock Origin with everything enabled). Google has the email of probably over a billion people. Sure, there are safeguards to prevent employee naughtiness (supposedly there are now, after years of "lol, i'm a sysadmin and i'll read the email of my ex" abuse), but if they wanted, they could do a lot of damage and there's nobody capable of stopping them. Heck, let's not even include google analytics. Sure, they say there is a "corporate firewall" between the global analytic record of every web user alive and the rest of the company, but we just have to trust them. Trust Google. Trust Facebook. Trust VW. It's only software created by and data retained by for-profit corporations in constant competition who must meet growth targets or else the market will punish them. What could go wrong? (Amazon doesn't have a bird in this fight.) Old quote (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUXh-GPa5dI&t=36m00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUXh-GPa5dI&t=36m00): "In some respects, it's pretty clear that we are sleepwalking into nightmares. Absolutely. And the most distressing thing is how hard that is to explain to anybody. The way in which people will give away their personal details in much the way as in the child history books about colonialism. You had native chieftains who handed over mineral rights in return from some baubles from some canny imperialist. All that stuff is happening but it's very hard to explain to anybody."
  - ghaff 11y ago
    I was ready to stop reading The Circle after a bit because it was so over-the-top. However, as the book went on, I found that it kinda worked for me if read as a deliberately and wildly exaggerated cautionary tale parable of sorts--rather than as serious speculative fiction. Still wasn't enamored with it but possibly worth a read.
hellbanner 11y ago
One of the investors in FB held a previous position at the CIA's investment company. https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture-capital-firm-preview/ https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture...

by seiji 11y ago

artursapek 11y ago

I can't imagine the government mandating something like that. I haven't used Facebook in four years.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
I can't, either, but it's an interesting thought in a twisted dystopian kind of way...

junto 11y ago

You should read "The Circle". It is basically that and more.

seiji 11y ago
The book was awful in all the right ways. It was a perfect example of SV employees "going native" and surrendering their entire sense of self worth over to the desires of their employer. It tracked the ways startups indoctrinate naive employees into to their cults of personality pretty accurately. Company as Godhead. If the protagonist drank any more koolaid she would have become the koolaid man herself. After all, without that external sense of approval, you are worthless. One for all, and all for the billionaires. It's a case study in trojan horsing your way to the top though. Company offers shiny service X, but with nefarious capabilities (surveillance, tracking, blackmail) nobody considers, because, hey, shiny selfies!!! Sign up now for my 2016 course: Defense Against the Dark Software
qznc 11y ago
I found The Circle entertaining. As an argument against Facebook (or Google,Amazon,etc) it just sets up a strawman. Not realistic enough. That politicians can be pressured into 24/7 live streaming is ridiculous. The Circle has no serious opponents, while in reality there are more powers which would acquire or destroy Facebook if they attempted something like that.
- seiji 11y ago
  You may be a little oblivious to how Facebook has "like" buttons, which are also javascript tracking beacons, on basically every site online. Well, "Facebook" doesn't have them there, the site owners include them willingly, serving up the privacy of their users in exchange for "engagement." Billions of tracking beacons spread around the Internet give Facebook a real time click-by-click bread-cumb trail of almost your entire thought process and Internet experiential reality (reminder: use uBlock Origin with everything enabled). Google has the email of probably over a billion people. Sure, there are safeguards to prevent employee naughtiness (supposedly there are now, after years of "lol, i'm a sysadmin and i'll read the email of my ex" abuse), but if they wanted, they could do a lot of damage and there's nobody capable of stopping them. Heck, let's not even include google analytics. Sure, they say there is a "corporate firewall" between the global analytic record of every web user alive and the rest of the company, but we just have to trust them. Trust Google. Trust Facebook. Trust VW. It's only software created by and data retained by for-profit corporations in constant competition who must meet growth targets or else the market will punish them. What could go wrong? (Amazon doesn't have a bird in this fight.) Old quote (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUXh-GPa5dI&t=36m00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUXh-GPa5dI&t=36m00): "In some respects, it's pretty clear that we are sleepwalking into nightmares. Absolutely. And the most distressing thing is how hard that is to explain to anybody. The way in which people will give away their personal details in much the way as in the child history books about colonialism. You had native chieftains who handed over mineral rights in return from some baubles from some canny imperialist. All that stuff is happening but it's very hard to explain to anybody."
- ghaff 11y ago
  I was ready to stop reading The Circle after a bit because it was so over-the-top. However, as the book went on, I found that it kinda worked for me if read as a deliberately and wildly exaggerated cautionary tale parable of sorts--rather than as serious speculative fiction. Still wasn't enamored with it but possibly worth a read.

hellbanner 11y ago

One of the investors in FB held a previous position at the CIA's investment company. https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture-capital-firm-preview/ https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture...