Facebookis public now . And that means you ’re going public too . Facebook has to make you share more . It has to make you expose more of yourself . It has to do all those deeply creepy-crawly thing it ’s already doing , but more more more . It is run short to sell you to advertisers , to shareholders , to anyone it can .
https://gizmodo.com/reminder-the-facebook-ipo-wont-make-you-rich-5911275
To be worth the enormous quite a little of cash it ’s farm in its IPO , Facebook require to earn a lot more money . And that mean bleeding its users privateness even more than it already does . Facebook made a simple $ 1.21 per user last stern . Sure . It has a gross ton of users , but that ’s a low routine , not the kind of thing it ’s making up on volume . By comparison , Google earned $ 7.14 . Both Google and Facebook are in the business of selling you to adman . And Facebook is going to need to get path good at it . And that means doing more things to nettle you , pickle with your privateness , and generally be wicked in all the way of life it already is , but more so .
If you follow Facebook ’s appalling and disturbingly weird Roadshow video — you know , the one where Mark Zuckerberg wear way too much white eyeliner — you understand Facebook ’s business sector model . It ’s all about work out out what its users like , where they are , and who they are connected to , and then selling that information to advertizer . And if you opine some of the things Facebook is doing are already shifty like a gearknob , get quick . Because it ’s nothing compare to what will occur once shareowner bug out demanding that it maximize net profit .
https://gizmodo.com/why-is-mark-zuckerberg-wearing-so-much-white-eye-shadow-5907542
An apart : I originally wanted to write a post arguing that for moral and honorable reasons , you should n’t buy Facebook stock , no matter how much money it earns , because doing so is the equivalent of adorn in Big Tobacco , or Monsanto , or Dow Chemical , or Exxon . That was slap aside , and I was essentially told to shut my hipster backtalk and that I am a liverish old curmudgeon who ought to slink back to whatever lousy all - age Fugazi show I came from . But in my opinion , there is no large ship’s company doing more to erode our valid expectation of privacy , or doing things that take advantage of its users unconscious actions than Facebook .
to keep more advertiserslike GM from jump ship , Facebook is going to have to calculate out a means to make its ads work better . And on the face of it , at least , what it is finding that works is word of mouth marketing — using champion to publicise to other friends by their actions . ( It makes a immense deal about this in its inhuman sphinx - like sales pitch to investor . )
That means ads are going to have increase in prominence and effectiveness . Facebook has already show a willingness to do some truly shitty matter in its advertising — like using your semblance or actions to sell crap to your friends without your knowledge . I intend , perhaps you get off on your friends determine your moving-picture show and being told that you like a certain brand name of hemorrhoid creme . ( Or maybe you just do n’t know it ’s being done . ) But that ’s how it works — you are its pitchman . That ’s what Facebook insure as valuable . That ’s where it ’s give out to make more money per drug user .
And whileyou can opt out of that kind of thing today , Facebook has shows an extreme willingness to castrate its privacy policy . And moreover , opting out is not the kind of matter unsophisticated exploiter do .
Then there ’s frictionless sharing . Facebook is going to have to amp up the tattletaling it does . Despite evidence that social reader are annoying user and readership is collapsing , when Facebook know what you read , what you listen to — and how what others read and listen to affect your taste and what you like — that stuff is extremely valuable to advertiser . It ’s the kind of matter they are dying to fuck . After all , if you ’re reading a lot of stories in Runner ’s World , you plausibly are more prone to buy some sneakers .
Given that Facebook tracks you all over the Web , and is progressively cognisant of where you are in the existent mankind thanks to its growing mobile presence , it ’s going to probably expend more and more of that cognition in its ads as well . It has to . So get quick , as you walk past aisle 5 Walgreens , to learn that your papa likesDurex Tropical Flavors . I ’m sure you ’ll enjoy that .
And maybe that ’s okay . mayhap it ’s the Mary Leontyne Price we pay for being capable to relate with everyone we ’ve ever know , smack their breathing spell and check out the color of their poo , frictionlessly and in literal metre . For the so - call Facebook generation , I ’m sure it all just seems really normal . And of course I ’m just a dottering old phony ( follow me on Facebook ! ) .
But I ’m pretty sure that we ’ll look back on the privately held Facebook as the practiced - honest-to-god day , when it respected our privacy and did n’t go too far into chase everything we did , everywhere we drop dead . And that makes me kind of sad . And really frightened .
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