I’m in no means an expert here, but over the last 10 years or so, I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can. I am still in the boat of trying to find meaningful, impactful ways of explaining to people around me, why they should care about privacy.

Here’s what I would challenge anyone who takes the time to read this to do. Choose a random user in this thread. Any one of them. Go to their profile page, and see what you can learn about that person based on comment/post history.

Did you get an idea of where in the world they live? The problems they’re facing? The things they like? Now. Think like you were someone trying to harm/exploit them. Think of some products you could put in front of them that they could not live without.

Now we take that information, and start to put it together, we think, okay how do we manipulate this person into purchasing this thing.

Maybe we target a fake news article, stating “(target user’s generation) choosing between paying rent and purchasing (target product)”

Now that person starts to think “whoa, in not the only one that’s struggling with this decision, and others are choosing the purchase”

Now, maybe we target an influencer video to them, about how much better their lives are with that product.

Pretty soon, we put together a picture of how quickly and easily we could create an algorithm to manipulate someone into buying something that they would not have made the informed decision to buy. Now they value the product even if they can’t afford it…

I’m literally realizing this as I’m typing it… And it kind of terrifies me.

All of this is completely ignoring the concern of government entities, with I’ll intention, using the information against you…