I often think about FB these days. 2 billion people, what an achievement. The engineering part stimulates my brain like crazy. It’s a feature to connect so many people seamlessly, even more so earlier when they didn’t have unlimited cash flow.
But then of course I think about the implications of such a giant network. I keep thinking about the fact that FB knows when we give up. It’s one thing to know where we’re going online, what we buy or secretly want and sell that data to advertisers but it’s another thing to know when we stop giving a shit. The breaking point when we collectively don’t protest anymore. FB knows more and more how and exactly when we become docile. Knowing that at the scale of countries and entire regions of the world, for every generation alive and being able to run tests and tweak things to see what happens? That’s ridiculously powerful and unprecedented. FB learns more everyday, and with people on the Facebook’s board who also are heavily involved in politics and AI development, I feel concerned.
I’m not feeling it.