Great entry! I also think Facebook's creepiness comes from the "personalness" of it. If you're on Facebook, you've created a profile, ostensibly with photos and personal details, and links to other people. You have contributed to this and invested energy in it. It feels like YOURS. To be reminded that you are nothing but a product of data to be bought and sold (and sold to) feels more like an invasion, even though you've abetted the process.
Thanks, Leslie. I think you're right about the personalness... the Google Discover function on the iOS app is highly personalized but it surfaces things related to things I've already searched, so it's not sharing information that's directly about me. It's a huge time suck, though, which is why I finally deactivated it.
Excellent, original observation and hypothesis. I'd add that to the creepy factor in Facebook's control of our news feed. Google isn't deciding what conversations you or your friends hear, and while Amazon makes product recommendations--products are a lot different than, say, politics. Most of us have enough direct experience with the Facebook algorithm by now to see that it tends to present feed items that stir us toward anger and outrage. (I think there's a Star Trek episode reference in here somewhere but don't have time to Google it.)
Thanks, Bob. Yeah... somebody (Scott Galloway?) calls it the Outrage Industrial Complex, and it's not an accident that Frances Haugen talked about how FB deliberately tunes its algorithms towards heightened emotions despite the likely harm that does to adolescent girls in particular. I also note that even in a piece where the main conclusion is that Google is scarier than Facebook because of how inoffensively it culls so much information about us, the comments I'm getting are still all about Facebook. You're right that there's a Star Trekiness to that sentence... although it also has Biblical and Shakespearean tones.
Great entry! I also think Facebook's creepiness comes from the "personalness" of it. If you're on Facebook, you've created a profile, ostensibly with photos and personal details, and links to other people. You have contributed to this and invested energy in it. It feels like YOURS. To be reminded that you are nothing but a product of data to be bought and sold (and sold to) feels more like an invasion, even though you've abetted the process.
Thanks, Leslie. I think you're right about the personalness... the Google Discover function on the iOS app is highly personalized but it surfaces things related to things I've already searched, so it's not sharing information that's directly about me. It's a huge time suck, though, which is why I finally deactivated it.
Excellent, original observation and hypothesis. I'd add that to the creepy factor in Facebook's control of our news feed. Google isn't deciding what conversations you or your friends hear, and while Amazon makes product recommendations--products are a lot different than, say, politics. Most of us have enough direct experience with the Facebook algorithm by now to see that it tends to present feed items that stir us toward anger and outrage. (I think there's a Star Trek episode reference in here somewhere but don't have time to Google it.)
Thanks, Bob. Yeah... somebody (Scott Galloway?) calls it the Outrage Industrial Complex, and it's not an accident that Frances Haugen talked about how FB deliberately tunes its algorithms towards heightened emotions despite the likely harm that does to adolescent girls in particular. I also note that even in a piece where the main conclusion is that Google is scarier than Facebook because of how inoffensively it culls so much information about us, the comments I'm getting are still all about Facebook. You're right that there's a Star Trekiness to that sentence... although it also has Biblical and Shakespearean tones.