{"id":32794,"date":"2018-03-26T07:04:51","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T12:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32794"},"modified":"2018-03-26T07:05:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T12:05:04","slug":"facebook-is-killing-democracy-with-its-personality-profiling-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32794","title":{"rendered":"Facebook is killing democracy with its personality profiling\u00a0data"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Facebook is killing democracy with its personality profiling\u00a0data<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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What state should you move to based on your personality? What character on \u201cDownton Abbey\u201d would you be? What breed of dog is best for you? Some enormous percentage of Facebook\u2019s 2.13 billion users<\/a> must have seen Facebook friends sharing results of various online quizzes. They are sometimes annoying, senseless and a total waste of time. But they are irresistible<\/a>. Besides, you\u2019re only sharing the results with your family and friends. There\u2019s nothing more innocent, right?<\/p>\n

Wrong.<\/p>\n

Facebook is in the business of exploiting your data<\/a>. The company is worth billions of dollars because it harvests your data and sells it<\/a> to advertisers. Users are encouraged to like, share and comment their lives away in the name of staying connected to family and friends. However, as an ethical hacker, security researcher and data analyst<\/a>, I know that there is a lot more to the story. The bedrock of modern democracy is at stake<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You are being psychographically profiled<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most people have heard of demographics \u2013 the term used by advertisers to slice up a market by age, gender, ethnicity and other variables to help them understand customers. In contrast, psychographics measure people\u2019s personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. They help advertisers understand the way you act and who you are.<\/p>\n

Historically, psychographic data were much harder to collect and act on<\/a> than demographics. Today, Facebook is the world\u2019s largest treasure trove of this data. Every day billions of people give the company huge amounts of information about their lives and dreams.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a problem when the data are used ethically \u2013 like when a company shows you an ad for a pair of sunglasses you recently searched for.<\/p>\n

However, it matters a lot when the data are used maliciously \u2013 segmenting society into disconnected echo chambers, and custom-crafting misleading messages to manipulate individuals\u2019 opinions and actions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what Facebook allowed to happen.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook is killing democracy with its personality profiling\u00a0data What state should you move to based on your personality? What character on \u201cDownton Abbey\u201d would you be? What breed of dog is best for you? Some enormous percentage of Facebook\u2019s 2.13 billion users must have seen Facebook friends sharing results of various online quizzes. They are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1868,204,1493,19469,8487,19468],"class_list":["post-32794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-data-mining","tag-democracy","tag-facebook","tag-personality-profiling-data","tag-the-conversation","tag-timothy-summers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32795,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32794\/revisions\/32795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}