Somebody Is Watching You!

That does not surprise me at all that some brainiacs are actually using that data.

We probably would too for our 'marketing researches' if we could...

The thing I find fascinating is that if governments tried to extract all this data from its citizens there would be uproar about oppression and big brother state etc. yet on Facebook people WILLINGLY provide very personal information about themselves, not just to Facebook themselves but in the public domain itself.

"many people won't give away secrets,
but they will share them" - who knows

Eventually the politicians will realise it can hurt them more than help them

it's only then they will do something about it

Can you imagine the President of the US being elected by how many likes he gets on FB

That data is worth a lot of money, so I could see why they would be predicting the traits of their users (selling it to other companies). I'm pretty sure a Facebook data analyst could figure out I was autistic just by reading a few of my posts and looking at my information, and then tailor the advertisements to what they think would interest me. :18:

There is a lot of money to be made from raw data if you know what to look for in that data and how to use the information - and that can be done without invading anyone's privacy.

The bigger the network of people using a platform, the bigger, the more robust and the more useful the data is.

Take the recent Scottish referendum for example:

Now that we know the result, I guarantee you could mine the historical Twitter data over the last 2 or 3 months and find patterns in that data that exactly match the results of the numerous polls being taken over the same period. Patterns that were there before the surveys were taken

That may not be useful now, but once you have worked out what information in that data matched the survey data, you can then use that knowledge to predict results in future elections - or to help you work out where you need to go to have the most influence on people's views.

And that information suddenly becomes a very valuable commodity.

People are starting to figure out ways of mining this avalanche of data to predict revolutions, stock prices, currency fluctuations, shopping preferences - all very lucrative endeavours...

... there's money in them there datasets!

I guess in Online Marketing big data always equals big money

what better way than for the authorities to categorize us all through facial recognition, our likes - etc all through social media. You can know anything about that person just by looking at their profile, im sure its all on a list somewhere ya kno?