Is Facebook a threat to a free society?
I recently read an article that made a lasting impression on me. Much of what was described below was not a surprise, but I learned about something for the first time. The first desire was to urgently delete your profile on Facebook, the second - to translate and tell about the read as many people as possible. Below you can read my translation of this article, where the author reasonably explains how Mark Zuckerberg practically became the most powerful person on Earth.
Facebook in terms of market capitalization is the sixth company in the world . The number of registered users is approaching two billion and the growth of the user base remains stable. Facebook collects an unprecedented amount of data on billions of users.
Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg’s company will soon become the largest in the world, and he himself will be the richest person, since the structure of Facebook’s shares is structured in such a way that the founder has a uniquely unique right to vote and control.
As Facebook grows, its ownership of our social graph and our digital selves will grow. As is known, systemic risk is highest in centralized systems. Extrapolating trends, I believe that Facebook will become the center of risk for a free society. The following are my arguments:
')
Facebook already knows about its users more than they know about themselves, and the speed of data collection is growing. Comprehensive volumes of Facebook's individual data are its current product and form the basis of its future ambitions.
Facebook receives very valuable personal data that is voluntarily transferred during registration. Users willingly reveal:
All this forms the core of a personal profile on Facebook.
The prevalence of Facebook allows it to collect an unsurpassed amount of behavioral data to fill out a personal profile. It tracks or theoretically can track:
Every site visited . The "like" button on Facebook is on almost every page. Even this one. If you are logged in to Facebook as most users, your data will be collected.
Every purchase you make. Facebook works with third-party data providers to know your purchase history. And to compare the data set with real names is no longer a problem. Facebook also tracks sales made through its own platform, and purchases that are selected but not purchased. You may also have noticed that the “Share Your Shopping with Friends” widget is becoming more common on the order confirmation pages — this can also be tracked.
Places you visit. In addition to the locations you independently mark, Facebook expands and complements the data using geolocation tracking in various mobile applications.
Facebook collects data about you constantly, even if you do not maintain your profile or it does not exist. But if you actively interact in the system, it collects even more data than you can imagine, and where you can not even imagine.
"Shadow" profiles . Facebook creates shadow profiles for non-users, saving their names, addresses, contact information, etc. This is achieved by searching for existing users of these people through the system “Find my friends” and can be supplemented by scanning on the Internet.
Your image. Facebook scans the billions of downloads of images it receives to create facial and body profiles for all users, offering to mark their friends or acquaintances in the photo. It also uses this data to expand shadow profiles. Thus, Facebook knows personal information and biometric templates for users who have not even registered . Facebook can track photos of public places, for example, tourists, and identify users and "shadow" users in the background. The photos contain geolocation information, so the location of these people is monitored without their consent . Neural networks (such as powerful Google image recognition software) can also determine the location of a photo, even if there is no location metadata.
Your emotions. Natural language processing allows Facebook to understand your emotions. He does this by analyzing how and what you type in statuses, as well as in messages through Messenger ( author's note : WhatsApp is coded). He also knows the mood of your opponent, with whom you interact using the same algorithms as in determining emotions in your statuses and messages. Therefore, Facebook knows whether you are participating in a more positive or negative dialogue, as well as how each type of content makes you feel based on your answer. The “Like” button has been upgraded as “reactions” . By giving you more opportunities to express your emotions, Facebook has created more resources to track them. The same neural networks that identify your face in each photo can determine your emotional state at the time of photographing.
More. I do not want to load you with information and scare, but it is important to understand how much data Facebook receives. The important point is that Facebook has access to such large amounts of data about people that it goes beyond human understanding and concepts of personal space . As artificial intelligence technology improves, the ability to extract this information will only increase.
Having access to such a large set of data, Facebook has a unique opportunity to manipulate its users and their reality, increasing their power and influence on real life. You remember, Facebook feed is not chronological. Facebook decides which posts you see and who sees your posts .
I would like you to seriously consider the idea that Facebook has a greater ability to understand human psychology than every psychologist, philosopher, cognitive scientist and behavioral economist in the history of mankind put together. If this shocks you, let me explain.
For academic and practical work in human psychology, samples are usually used, calculated in hundreds of respondents. I read a lot of research and saw units of work that had samples of several thousand in size; unique in terms of work - a maximum of ten thousand. Additionally, the problem is the choice of the sample - the respondent, the subject of study. As a rule, these are two categories - either students attracted to universities, or people participating for money. Most ordinary people are not the subject of study and never will be.
Facebook has the data of various people around the world, rich and influential as well. And the size of 2 billion is literally an order of magnitude larger than any other psychological research ever conducted.
Facebook knows this, so it has Facebook Research . This unit is the most powerful center of psychological experiments in the history of mankind. He has 2 billion study items and more data to understand. Most researchers and scientists can only dream about it.
Facebook does its best for users to interact with the news feed (News Feed), selling advertisements worth billions of dollars. He manipulates the psyche of his users to keep them involved, while making a profit.
Here's how it works: the news feed is designed to be addictive, like slot machines . Facebook (and other social media platforms) use Machine Zone .
What is a machine zone? This is a rhythm. This is the answer to a finely tuned feedback loop. This is a powerful space-time distortion. You press a button. Something is happening. You click again. Something like that, but not quite the same thing happens again. Maybe you win, maybe not. Reiteration. Reiteration. Reiteration. Reiteration. Reiteration. It is the pleasure of repetition, cycle security.
Scrolling through the news feed you experience the same feelings as an avid player constantly pressing the gaming machine handle in search of pleasure: what's next, what's next, etc. Facebook does this through manipulation.
Take the hypothetical Facebook user Jimmy. Jimmy usually scrolls Facebook on his phone for 5 minutes, then closes the application. Facebook knows that Jimmy loves posts from his friend Steve, because he usually leaves positive comments on them. The next time Jimmy reaches the 5-minute mark, Facebook will show him the post from Steve. Jimmy leaves a comment, scrolling a little longer, and then exits the application with an 8-minute mark. Facebook also knows that Jimmy is interested in Jenny - he lingers whenever she puts a new post on Instagram, even if he is not familiar with her or does not comment on her photos. The next time Jimmy reaches the 8-minute mark, Facebook will show him a post from Jenny. This pattern continues, and Jimmy’s Facebook usage grows from 5 minutes a day to 15.
A Facebook study found that you can't keep people in the Machine Zone for a long time with positive content. Thus, from time to time, the algorithm begins to use negative content. Jimmy hates Chad, and Facebook knows this because Jimmy wrote about this in conversations with other users in Messenger. So now, when Jimmy reaches the 15-minute mark, Facebook shows him a picture of Chad doing something fun. Rage forces Jimmy to continue scrolling the tape until the dopamine level reaches the level from viewing Steve or Jenny's posts.
Now Facebook is increasing the time Jimmy spends every day, and his ad dollars are growing with him. This is how the manipulation of the psyche of Jimmy.
Manipulations on Facebook are not only for increasing system time and profits. The study showed that Facebook is also able to manipulate people, namely, manage the news feed of users in order to influence the emotional states of these users. The researchers found:
When positive news posts were cut, people produced less positive news and more negative ones. When negative posts were reduced, the opposite was true. These results show that emotions expressed by other people on Facebook affect our own emotions, being experimental evidence of mass infection through social networks.
I remind you that Facebook chooses what to show you. He knows the emotional content of the messages in your feed, and how your emotions react to them. It can and manipulates users accordingly.
How can Facebook manipulate you for research? Let's take a look at our hypothetical Facebook users: Jimmy, his friend Steve, and Jimmy-Jenny's secret interest. Is there anything that Jimmy and Steve can show Facebook that will cause a split between them? Perhaps the tape will stop showing the records of Jimmy and Steve to each other. Or display only negative ones. Can Facebook do anything to bring Jimmy and Jenny to a relationship? Perhaps the tape will show only Jimmy’s positive images for Jenny, certain social signs and statuses.
Even if Facebook does not intervene directly to produce such results, they have all the data needed to find templates from other friends who really converge, diverge, find themselves in a relationship. You will quickly find connections with 2 billion people to observe.
Facebook can not only manipulate your emotions, but also your actions. I do not claim that they use it (so far), but the possibility and probability exist.
We are social animals and need the approval and love of others. Every “like” and commentary causes the production of the hormone dopamine in the cerebral cortex. Interactions in social networks form a feedback mechanism in our neurological connections: we are more likely to continue posting materials that help us actively participate in social life, and less likely to send those that do not.
Facebook selects who sees your posts. If you publish something that someone does not like, he can hide it from other users. If you post something that someone likes, he will spread it on many channels and you will get more likes and retweets than before. When choosing who sees what you are posting, Facebook chooses what you will post in the long term .
For example, let's say, if Facebook wants you to consume more alcohol, it can place your photos from the bars among a larger audience to get more positive reactions, namely likes. Your brain will unconsciously push you to go to bars more often in the long term.
By controlling how you feel, what you think is socially acceptable, and how you act, Facebook can manipulate your reality. I do not know whether they are doing this or planning it, but there is such an opportunity, and they have shown that they are ready to use it in certain circumstances.
The combination of a large amount of personal data and experimental capabilities gives Facebook the opportunity to create an almost complete model of your psyche . Facebook knows more about you than you know about yourself, and it can predict your reactions to anything. After testing for you, he can combine the results with the results of other people, combining respondents into the necessary demographic groups to see how larger target audiences react to certain things.
For example, Facebook might know the following:
All this data and research helps you understand how Facebook can use the information to build a psychological profile of you and predict how you will respond to various stimuli. These stimuli can then be used at will, pushing you towards your chosen emotions, actions, and results.
You need to understand that Facebook has all the tools necessary for human modeling more than anyone else has ever done. Aral Balkan claims that this is their current business model and strategy:
Facebook is not a social network; This is a scanner that digitizes people. This, in all senses and purposes, is a camera that captures your soul. Facebook's business is to control your modeling, through which it will control you .
The manipulation of users, described in detail above, is both ethically unacceptable and questionable, and terrible PR for Facebook. What if you could get the same results without actually testing on users?
Pay attention to the department of Facebook AI Research (FAIR). In their mission it is written: “the main goal is the understanding of intelligence and the construction of intelligent machines” by “extracting knowledge from data”.
Below you can read a number of quotes from this insightful and / or terrifying FAIR article :
They recreate the virtual memory of reality and group it in the context of other places and events. They may even “actually represent the person” based on their previous likes, interests, and digital experience . This is somewhat experimental, but is of great importance for the Facebook news feed ...
“If we have a working idea, then within a month it can be implemented by 1.5 billion people ,” said LeKun (Jan LeKun is a pioneer of artificial intelligence and director of FAIR.)
Facebook openly builds capacity to model the human psyche and proudly reports this . When their technology becomes powerful enough and advanced, the need for testing on real users will disappear. These users can only be used to validate simulation results.
In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus , the leading consumer brand of virtual reality for $ 2 billion. In his post on the acquisition, Zuckerberg stated:
The most incredible thing about this technology is that you feel that you are really in a different place with other people ... We believe that one day this exciting augmented reality will become part of everyday life for billions of people.
Zuckerberg wants billions of people to use his virtual reality technology every day.
It is not difficult to see the increased connection between artificial intelligence and human modeling. The simulated people, created from a huge array of data, will immediately connect to the virtual realities of Oculus.
Using virtual reality will create even more opportunities for Facebook to stimulate, manipulate and track users. Here are some possibilities:
Tracking eye and pupil movement . Tracking the movement of the eyes and pupil is a necessary component of the successful implementation of virtual reality and will solve many of the problems that users currently face. Facebook and Oculus are currently working on entering eye movement tracking . Now imagine: the movement of your eyes and the pupil show how you think, and they can be manipulated to influence how you think ( source ). By the movement of the eyes and the pupil, one can understand how confident you are in your decisions, regardless of whether you lie or not, whether you think more or less about your desires. There is evidence that manipulating what your eyes focus on affects your moral judgment. Facebook is able to manipulate what users see and capture their reaction. Using pupil-tracking technology, Oculus is able to control what users experience and guess their thoughts.
Biometric tracking . There are already virtual reality games that measure and use biometric data, including an electroencephalogram - EEG (brain waves), galvanic skin response - GSR (stress levels), heart rate, and breathing.
Although there is no evidence that Oculus is currently developing applications to track these variables, I think this is just a matter of time and biometric data collection may be included in future versions of controllers or headsets. Completing the overall picture of reactions to external stimuli, biometric tracking will allow Facebook to collect data on the stimulus responses of your physical body. The volumes of behavioral data and eye tracking will model and track your mind, while biometrics will model and track your physical body.
In summary: Facebook has all the necessary tools not only to simulate your psyche, but also the ability to manipulate and simulate your whole being, since their platform merges with Oculus VR.
We have already told above that Zuckerberg has exclusive control over Facebook due to its share in promotions. In fact, he single-handedly manages Facebook without any checks and balances.
What are the motives of Zuckerberg? Can we entrust to him that power which he will possess? Can we trust anyone with such power alone?
In February, Mark Zuckerberg published the manifesto “Building a Global Community”. I will not criticize Zuckerberg’s policies, but I cannot help but note that he accepts his own political preferences as obvious goals for the entire planet.
Regardless of whether Zuckerberg plans to run for president of the United States, it’s pretty clear that he has political ambitions. He recently spoke with Angela Merkel at the UN. He has toured all 50 US states in 2017 to understand why there is “more separation than I feel in my life.”
This is the action of a man who is not going to sit on the sidelines, earning his billions. Zuckerberg is making concerted efforts to become the political center of the United States.
Imagine a policy that has:
Now imagine that this is the same person - the richest person in the world. Whether money, beliefs, “fake news” or anything else, Zuckerberg will have access to all of this.
The presence of power to influence politicians creates power to influence politics in one way or another.
Are we ready to trust a person with:
Zuckerberg is just a man. As the saying goes: "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Remember, this is the same person who wrote the words that have already become a meme:
Zuck: Yes, if you ever need information about someone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 letters, pictures, addresses, SNS
{Edited Friend Name} What? How did you handle this?
Zuck: People just introduced it .
Zuck: I don't know why .
Zuk: They "trust me"
Zuck: Assholes (original: Dumb fucks)
Let's take a step back and get Zuckerberg out of the equation. As we have seen, Facebook is the largest personal data collector in history. He is openly working on modeling human behavior for research. He has all the tools necessary to manipulate people's realities, emotions, thoughts, and political preferences. And he continues to create these opportunities, especially in virtual reality.
In itself, this is already a risk center for the freedoms of our society. This centralization of private data, power and influence is dangerous.
Now add Zuckerberg. He has political ambitions and a controversial track record.
Is it reasonable to leave exclusive control in the hands of one person? Personally, I do not trust Tsuku. But this is my opinion and intuition, so ...
In the near future, Facebook will become the most powerful tool of political power and manipulation in history. Somehow, someone else will take control of it.
I hope I'm wrong. Time will tell.
Introduction
Facebook in terms of market capitalization is the sixth company in the world . The number of registered users is approaching two billion and the growth of the user base remains stable. Facebook collects an unprecedented amount of data on billions of users.
Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg’s company will soon become the largest in the world, and he himself will be the richest person, since the structure of Facebook’s shares is structured in such a way that the founder has a uniquely unique right to vote and control.
As Facebook grows, its ownership of our social graph and our digital selves will grow. As is known, systemic risk is highest in centralized systems. Extrapolating trends, I believe that Facebook will become the center of risk for a free society. The following are my arguments:
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- Facebook is involved in a comprehensive and ever-growing collection of data on billions of its users;
- These data allow exponentially manipulate people and their realities ;
- Facebook is expanding through human modeling ;
- Facebook is accumulating unprecedented centralization of power and influence in the hands of the individual .
Data collection
Facebook already knows about its users more than they know about themselves, and the speed of data collection is growing. Comprehensive volumes of Facebook's individual data are its current product and form the basis of its future ambitions.
Personal data
Facebook receives very valuable personal data that is voluntarily transferred during registration. Users willingly reveal:
- Real name
- Education
- Employment (and income) data
- Place of residence and current location
- Travel locations
- Social relations (family, partners, friends, acquaintances)
- Hobbies
- “Likes” for brands, products, political parties, food, entertainment, etc.
All this forms the core of a personal profile on Facebook.
Behavioral data
The prevalence of Facebook allows it to collect an unsurpassed amount of behavioral data to fill out a personal profile. It tracks or theoretically can track:
Every site visited . The "like" button on Facebook is on almost every page. Even this one. If you are logged in to Facebook as most users, your data will be collected.
Every purchase you make. Facebook works with third-party data providers to know your purchase history. And to compare the data set with real names is no longer a problem. Facebook also tracks sales made through its own platform, and purchases that are selected but not purchased. You may also have noticed that the “Share Your Shopping with Friends” widget is becoming more common on the order confirmation pages — this can also be tracked.
Places you visit. In addition to the locations you independently mark, Facebook expands and complements the data using geolocation tracking in various mobile applications.
Forecast data
Facebook collects data about you constantly, even if you do not maintain your profile or it does not exist. But if you actively interact in the system, it collects even more data than you can imagine, and where you can not even imagine.
"Shadow" profiles . Facebook creates shadow profiles for non-users, saving their names, addresses, contact information, etc. This is achieved by searching for existing users of these people through the system “Find my friends” and can be supplemented by scanning on the Internet.
Your image. Facebook scans the billions of downloads of images it receives to create facial and body profiles for all users, offering to mark their friends or acquaintances in the photo. It also uses this data to expand shadow profiles. Thus, Facebook knows personal information and biometric templates for users who have not even registered . Facebook can track photos of public places, for example, tourists, and identify users and "shadow" users in the background. The photos contain geolocation information, so the location of these people is monitored without their consent . Neural networks (such as powerful Google image recognition software) can also determine the location of a photo, even if there is no location metadata.
Your emotions. Natural language processing allows Facebook to understand your emotions. He does this by analyzing how and what you type in statuses, as well as in messages through Messenger ( author's note : WhatsApp is coded). He also knows the mood of your opponent, with whom you interact using the same algorithms as in determining emotions in your statuses and messages. Therefore, Facebook knows whether you are participating in a more positive or negative dialogue, as well as how each type of content makes you feel based on your answer. The “Like” button has been upgraded as “reactions” . By giving you more opportunities to express your emotions, Facebook has created more resources to track them. The same neural networks that identify your face in each photo can determine your emotional state at the time of photographing.
More. I do not want to load you with information and scare, but it is important to understand how much data Facebook receives. The important point is that Facebook has access to such large amounts of data about people that it goes beyond human understanding and concepts of personal space . As artificial intelligence technology improves, the ability to extract this information will only increase.
Manipulation of people and their reality
Having access to such a large set of data, Facebook has a unique opportunity to manipulate its users and their reality, increasing their power and influence on real life. You remember, Facebook feed is not chronological. Facebook decides which posts you see and who sees your posts .
Human psychology research
I would like you to seriously consider the idea that Facebook has a greater ability to understand human psychology than every psychologist, philosopher, cognitive scientist and behavioral economist in the history of mankind put together. If this shocks you, let me explain.
For academic and practical work in human psychology, samples are usually used, calculated in hundreds of respondents. I read a lot of research and saw units of work that had samples of several thousand in size; unique in terms of work - a maximum of ten thousand. Additionally, the problem is the choice of the sample - the respondent, the subject of study. As a rule, these are two categories - either students attracted to universities, or people participating for money. Most ordinary people are not the subject of study and never will be.
Facebook has the data of various people around the world, rich and influential as well. And the size of 2 billion is literally an order of magnitude larger than any other psychological research ever conducted.
Facebook knows this, so it has Facebook Research . This unit is the most powerful center of psychological experiments in the history of mankind. He has 2 billion study items and more data to understand. Most researchers and scientists can only dream about it.
Manipulating people for profit
Facebook does its best for users to interact with the news feed (News Feed), selling advertisements worth billions of dollars. He manipulates the psyche of his users to keep them involved, while making a profit.
Here's how it works: the news feed is designed to be addictive, like slot machines . Facebook (and other social media platforms) use Machine Zone .
What is a machine zone? This is a rhythm. This is the answer to a finely tuned feedback loop. This is a powerful space-time distortion. You press a button. Something is happening. You click again. Something like that, but not quite the same thing happens again. Maybe you win, maybe not. Reiteration. Reiteration. Reiteration. Reiteration. Reiteration. It is the pleasure of repetition, cycle security.
Scrolling through the news feed you experience the same feelings as an avid player constantly pressing the gaming machine handle in search of pleasure: what's next, what's next, etc. Facebook does this through manipulation.
Take the hypothetical Facebook user Jimmy. Jimmy usually scrolls Facebook on his phone for 5 minutes, then closes the application. Facebook knows that Jimmy loves posts from his friend Steve, because he usually leaves positive comments on them. The next time Jimmy reaches the 5-minute mark, Facebook will show him the post from Steve. Jimmy leaves a comment, scrolling a little longer, and then exits the application with an 8-minute mark. Facebook also knows that Jimmy is interested in Jenny - he lingers whenever she puts a new post on Instagram, even if he is not familiar with her or does not comment on her photos. The next time Jimmy reaches the 8-minute mark, Facebook will show him a post from Jenny. This pattern continues, and Jimmy’s Facebook usage grows from 5 minutes a day to 15.
A Facebook study found that you can't keep people in the Machine Zone for a long time with positive content. Thus, from time to time, the algorithm begins to use negative content. Jimmy hates Chad, and Facebook knows this because Jimmy wrote about this in conversations with other users in Messenger. So now, when Jimmy reaches the 15-minute mark, Facebook shows him a picture of Chad doing something fun. Rage forces Jimmy to continue scrolling the tape until the dopamine level reaches the level from viewing Steve or Jenny's posts.
Now Facebook is increasing the time Jimmy spends every day, and his ad dollars are growing with him. This is how the manipulation of the psyche of Jimmy.
Manipulation of people for research
Manipulations on Facebook are not only for increasing system time and profits. The study showed that Facebook is also able to manipulate people, namely, manage the news feed of users in order to influence the emotional states of these users. The researchers found:
When positive news posts were cut, people produced less positive news and more negative ones. When negative posts were reduced, the opposite was true. These results show that emotions expressed by other people on Facebook affect our own emotions, being experimental evidence of mass infection through social networks.
I remind you that Facebook chooses what to show you. He knows the emotional content of the messages in your feed, and how your emotions react to them. It can and manipulates users accordingly.
How can Facebook manipulate you for research? Let's take a look at our hypothetical Facebook users: Jimmy, his friend Steve, and Jimmy-Jenny's secret interest. Is there anything that Jimmy and Steve can show Facebook that will cause a split between them? Perhaps the tape will stop showing the records of Jimmy and Steve to each other. Or display only negative ones. Can Facebook do anything to bring Jimmy and Jenny to a relationship? Perhaps the tape will show only Jimmy’s positive images for Jenny, certain social signs and statuses.
Even if Facebook does not intervene directly to produce such results, they have all the data needed to find templates from other friends who really converge, diverge, find themselves in a relationship. You will quickly find connections with 2 billion people to observe.
Manipulating the actions of people
Facebook can not only manipulate your emotions, but also your actions. I do not claim that they use it (so far), but the possibility and probability exist.
We are social animals and need the approval and love of others. Every “like” and commentary causes the production of the hormone dopamine in the cerebral cortex. Interactions in social networks form a feedback mechanism in our neurological connections: we are more likely to continue posting materials that help us actively participate in social life, and less likely to send those that do not.
Facebook selects who sees your posts. If you publish something that someone does not like, he can hide it from other users. If you post something that someone likes, he will spread it on many channels and you will get more likes and retweets than before. When choosing who sees what you are posting, Facebook chooses what you will post in the long term .
For example, let's say, if Facebook wants you to consume more alcohol, it can place your photos from the bars among a larger audience to get more positive reactions, namely likes. Your brain will unconsciously push you to go to bars more often in the long term.
By controlling how you feel, what you think is socially acceptable, and how you act, Facebook can manipulate your reality. I do not know whether they are doing this or planning it, but there is such an opportunity, and they have shown that they are ready to use it in certain circumstances.
Studies fill out a profile
The combination of a large amount of personal data and experimental capabilities gives Facebook the opportunity to create an almost complete model of your psyche . Facebook knows more about you than you know about yourself, and it can predict your reactions to anything. After testing for you, he can combine the results with the results of other people, combining respondents into the necessary demographic groups to see how larger target audiences react to certain things.
For example, Facebook might know the following:
- Married people in Iowa more lustful than in other states?
- Are you more likely to buy beer after watching a patriotic video?
- Are Pakistani Americans more interested in rap music than Pakistanis in Pakistan?
- Are Japanese men more attracted to people or priests?
- What content in the news feed is likely to make you go to the post office?
- Are conservatives (or liberals) more outspoken in their private conversations than in public statements?
All this data and research helps you understand how Facebook can use the information to build a psychological profile of you and predict how you will respond to various stimuli. These stimuli can then be used at will, pushing you towards your chosen emotions, actions, and results.
Human Modeling and Virtual Reality
You need to understand that Facebook has all the tools necessary for human modeling more than anyone else has ever done. Aral Balkan claims that this is their current business model and strategy:
Facebook is not a social network; This is a scanner that digitizes people. This, in all senses and purposes, is a camera that captures your soul. Facebook's business is to control your modeling, through which it will control you .
Transition from Manipulation to Modeling
The manipulation of users, described in detail above, is both ethically unacceptable and questionable, and terrible PR for Facebook. What if you could get the same results without actually testing on users?
Pay attention to the department of Facebook AI Research (FAIR). In their mission it is written: “the main goal is the understanding of intelligence and the construction of intelligent machines” by “extracting knowledge from data”.
Below you can read a number of quotes from this insightful and / or terrifying FAIR article :
They recreate the virtual memory of reality and group it in the context of other places and events. They may even “actually represent the person” based on their previous likes, interests, and digital experience . This is somewhat experimental, but is of great importance for the Facebook news feed ...
“If we have a working idea, then within a month it can be implemented by 1.5 billion people ,” said LeKun (Jan LeKun is a pioneer of artificial intelligence and director of FAIR.)
Facebook openly builds capacity to model the human psyche and proudly reports this . When their technology becomes powerful enough and advanced, the need for testing on real users will disappear. These users can only be used to validate simulation results.
Oculus and Virtual Reality
In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus , the leading consumer brand of virtual reality for $ 2 billion. In his post on the acquisition, Zuckerberg stated:
The most incredible thing about this technology is that you feel that you are really in a different place with other people ... We believe that one day this exciting augmented reality will become part of everyday life for billions of people.
Zuckerberg wants billions of people to use his virtual reality technology every day.
It is not difficult to see the increased connection between artificial intelligence and human modeling. The simulated people, created from a huge array of data, will immediately connect to the virtual realities of Oculus.
Using virtual reality will create even more opportunities for Facebook to stimulate, manipulate and track users. Here are some possibilities:
Tracking eye and pupil movement . Tracking the movement of the eyes and pupil is a necessary component of the successful implementation of virtual reality and will solve many of the problems that users currently face. Facebook and Oculus are currently working on entering eye movement tracking . Now imagine: the movement of your eyes and the pupil show how you think, and they can be manipulated to influence how you think ( source ). By the movement of the eyes and the pupil, one can understand how confident you are in your decisions, regardless of whether you lie or not, whether you think more or less about your desires. There is evidence that manipulating what your eyes focus on affects your moral judgment. Facebook is able to manipulate what users see and capture their reaction. Using pupil-tracking technology, Oculus is able to control what users experience and guess their thoughts.
Biometric tracking . There are already virtual reality games that measure and use biometric data, including an electroencephalogram - EEG (brain waves), galvanic skin response - GSR (stress levels), heart rate, and breathing.
Although there is no evidence that Oculus is currently developing applications to track these variables, I think this is just a matter of time and biometric data collection may be included in future versions of controllers or headsets. Completing the overall picture of reactions to external stimuli, biometric tracking will allow Facebook to collect data on the stimulus responses of your physical body. The volumes of behavioral data and eye tracking will model and track your mind, while biometrics will model and track your physical body.
In summary: Facebook has all the necessary tools not only to simulate your psyche, but also the ability to manipulate and simulate your whole being, since their platform merges with Oculus VR.
Highlord Zuckerberg
We have already told above that Zuckerberg has exclusive control over Facebook due to its share in promotions. In fact, he single-handedly manages Facebook without any checks and balances.
What are the motives of Zuckerberg? Can we entrust to him that power which he will possess? Can we trust anyone with such power alone?
Political ambitions
In February, Mark Zuckerberg published the manifesto “Building a Global Community”. I will not criticize Zuckerberg’s policies, but I cannot help but note that he accepts his own political preferences as obvious goals for the entire planet.
Regardless of whether Zuckerberg plans to run for president of the United States, it’s pretty clear that he has political ambitions. He recently spoke with Angela Merkel at the UN. He has toured all 50 US states in 2017 to understand why there is “more separation than I feel in my life.”
This is the action of a man who is not going to sit on the sidelines, earning his billions. Zuckerberg is making concerted efforts to become the political center of the United States.
Imagine a policy that has:
- The tools to influence focus groups are not for small groups of 100 residents of the state of Pennsylvania or Iowa, but for 2 billion global users;
- Tools to directly influence the information available to voters;
- Tools for measuring and manipulating the political preferences of the electorate.
Now imagine that this is the same person - the richest person in the world. Whether money, beliefs, “fake news” or anything else, Zuckerberg will have access to all of this.
The presence of power to influence politicians creates power to influence politics in one way or another.
Zuckerberg man
Are we ready to trust a person with:
- The largest proportion of wealth on the planet?
- The largest amount of personal data?
- Maximum control over information flow?
- The biggest psychological research center in history?
- The most powerful intellectual machine?
Zuckerberg is just a man. As the saying goes: "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Remember, this is the same person who wrote the words that have already become a meme:
Zuck: Yes, if you ever need information about someone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 letters, pictures, addresses, SNS
{Edited Friend Name} What? How did you handle this?
Zuck: People just introduced it .
Zuck: I don't know why .
Zuk: They "trust me"
Zuck: Assholes (original: Dumb fucks)
Threat to a free society
Let's take a step back and get Zuckerberg out of the equation. As we have seen, Facebook is the largest personal data collector in history. He is openly working on modeling human behavior for research. He has all the tools necessary to manipulate people's realities, emotions, thoughts, and political preferences. And he continues to create these opportunities, especially in virtual reality.
In itself, this is already a risk center for the freedoms of our society. This centralization of private data, power and influence is dangerous.
Now add Zuckerberg. He has political ambitions and a controversial track record.
Is it reasonable to leave exclusive control in the hands of one person? Personally, I do not trust Tsuku. But this is my opinion and intuition, so ...
In the near future, Facebook will become the most powerful tool of political power and manipulation in history. Somehow, someone else will take control of it.
I hope I'm wrong. Time will tell.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/402773/
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