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Notes -
How much detail do you think is in the data that governments and tech companies are keeping about us?
Are they keeping a log of every website you visit?
Are they keeping a log of your phone's 24/7 location data?
Are they keeping transcripts of all of your phone calls?
Are they keeping transcripts of every word you say in the vicinity of a smart device?
etc.?
This reminded me of something that is not quite on topic, but close enough.
Towards the end of summer 2018, I broke up with my girlfriend. Given my age and maturity at the time, I, of course, took care of the most important things first; I hid all of our photos that we had posted together on Facebook.
Well, not actually all of them. All of the one's that popped up on my "wall" at the time (I actually deleted Facebook for good about a year later, so my appreciation for both the terminology and function of the site is now out of date. Apologies if what I detail here isn't how it works anymore). These were typical couples photos; lots of couple-selfies of us eating things or being in places or even eating things in places.
As with any millennial breakup, however, I didn't actually unblock or unfriend my ex. No, no. You see, there is etiquette to the Facebook break-up. Although there can be a a period of mutual blocking, you never hard delete one another. But you also never interact with one another. You simply cyber-stalk one another to see who rebounds first.
Being a career technology dude, however, I noticed something interesting. Within just one or two days of my totally-not-crying deletion of the various wall photos, I became aware that my ex and her friends were no longer getting prioritized in my newsfeed. This was a stark contrast to just a month before where every damn day my newsfeed was filled with whatever new photos she had posted that day along, often, with the goings on of her friends (whom I had friended on facebook when we began dating). Quite the abrupt shift! I double checked to see if anyone hand blocked anyone else. Nope. Should I navigate to any of these profiles directly, I could still click on stuff without any new limitations (pro tip: don't get caught liking a photo from six years ago).
The realization didn't take long to formulate in my head. It seems to me that Facebook detected the pattern of "relationship status change followed by rapid hiding / deletion of photos only featuring two people ... those previously in a relationship" and then quickly, and easily, followed the random forest down to "breakup protocol." To help spare my feelings, it began to algorithmic shadow-censor the new things my ex and her friend's were doing (why the friends? Probably just in case my ex popped up in their photos. A likely outcome).
But then I realized something else that really gave me an "oh shit" moment (and, happily enough, made me forget about my ex). Facebook must have hundreds of these kind of behavioral decision trees. Breakups, divorces, graduations, new births, deaths in the family ..... deaths in the family .... wait, what kind of deaths? old age, cancer, car accident .... suicide.
It then became apparent to be that Facebook likely has a fairly reliable (though probabilistic) means of identifying social media posts that evidence suicidal ideation. Then, thinking back on my own situation, I wondered if there was some sort of correlation between breakups and suicidal ideation (it's my understanding that, yes, there generally is. I think job loss is the other big one.)
So, in 2018, instead of doing normal break up related stuff, I'm trying to piece together how accurately fascebook can predict suicide, or drug overdose, or alcoholism, or intent to harm others (I stumbled across a bunch of articles about how cops would try to find ways to infiltrate private instagram feeds because, apparently, gangs would literally announce their intended targets that way).
And this is the bigger conundrum to me than just the collection of data. If the data available to a company could be used to make these reliable behavioral profiles and, in fact, probably is. Then, to what extent do we want them to take preventative measures for all of these potentially horrible outcomes? But think about what that is -- it's corporate sponsored Minority Report. Hell-the-fuck-no! The level of dystopia that comes with "Hi, we're the cops, facebook told us to visit you" is off the charts.
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