I was trying to explain Blockchain technology to somebody I met recently... What prompted the discussion was when I mentioned I was paranoid about privacy, they said that they were paranoid as well. It seems strange to me that it's so rare as to find such a person in today's world -- but there you are. Finding such a person with an awareness of the issue of the need for privacy is a remarkable enough event that it sort of rocked me back on my heels. It made me feel flustered. Usually when I try to explain Blockchain technology and why what's happening with it's development is so important, I have to start at a much much more basic level... I have to convince that person that they are in fact being spied upon (or could be), or that their use of the internet's social media applications means that they have no privacy. Nine times out of 10, they either don't believe me... OR, even if they do... they just don't care. So meeting somebody that actually has these concerns at the outset of a conversation kind of shocked me and made me more candid than I usually am on the subject.... or any subject. I'm a pretty shy person.
Anyways, we got to talking and shared out suspicions about where this whole lack of privacy situation in popular culture is going. He said something like "Imagine life where it's nothing but one long commercial". And indeed, that seems to be the shape of things to come. A little later in the week, I came across this article (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win ) about how "Big Data" sourced from facebook was used in the last election to likely give Donald Trump an edge over Hillary. The article discusses how the Trump election team were able to target highly effective advertisements, designed to cater not by demographics -- but on a case by case basis, determined by a highly accurate personality profile that was created by analyzing people's "likes" on Facebook.
In essence, with all the spying that can happen online from google, youtube, facebook, twitter, reddit etc... very specific information about you is harvested by these companies and search engines and then sold to companies who want to sell you stuff -- and not only that, but the advertising is specifically designed to appeal to you not just on the basis of being a product you may want or need, but also on the basis of your unique personality traits.
The more information that is collected about a person, the more easily and effectively the advertising can be designed to appeal to you. Maybe -- if that's the only thing this technology was being used for, it wouldn't be so scary... If it was just an issue of marketing products and services to people, it wouldn't seem so very sinister. But consider the implications of this kind of thing being used by Government to push various agendas, or with news organizations to "sell" journalism.
Forget the concept of objectivity in reporting... Imagine a future where the only news you see is the news that has been crafted, packaged and contrived to be catered to you, and you alone in order to keep you as a loyal consumer of that media outlet. The purpose of journalism/news is supposed to be to inform, educate and raise awareness of current events that are of public interest. We are however, fast approaching a world where the blend of Info-Tainment is replacing proper journalism... already we have a split reality world where 1/2 of the United States only believes in what they see on CNN, MSNBC, CBS or ABC, and the other half of the United States doesn't believe a word of what the media says unless it's being reported by FOX. With the advancement of these kind of technology where one's personal information can be mined and then sold to News Organizations looking to shore up viewership, imagine how that will look in a practical sense. Already, we have started to reach a point when it comes to the trust of Journalism as a practice that discerning people either have to spend a great deal of time paying attention to BOTH these false realities to try and figure out what the truth actually is on any given important situation, OR they give up on even trying that and instead turn to the likes of Alex Jones or David Ickes...
As the world becomes more and more engulfed in this sort of split-reality polarization, the ability of people to devote enough time to researching what's really going on grows less and less. And I fear that this situation is only going to get worse, before it has a chance to get better. See the following article... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/google-facebook-data-privacy-concerns-out-of-control-commentary.html - Headline says "Google and Facebook are watching our every move" --76 percent of websites now contain hidden Google trackers, and 24 percent have hidden Facebook trackers, according to one study.
Already, I have seen from experimenting with it, that when you search for things on Google, that the search results change depending on which computer you are logging in to do the search from.... and that you also get an entirely different result if you don't log in at all. We know from various reports on the metrics of various independent media sites that Google has in recent months reduced the visibility of a huge number of Journalists websites. So, already, because of the over-reliance of the world on the use of google, what every individual sees when they search for information online on any subject is entirely at the whim of a multi-billion dollar corporation with ties to the US Federal Government's domestic spying apparatus. This is one of the reasons I try to avoid using Google as much as possible. But once again, you try to explain to people the peril that exists by using Google, and you are met with blank looks, or worse, people expect that you are kind of nuts.
I had a weird experience just last week involving facebook google and my private banking information and targeted advertising. For the past 3 weeks I've been attending an employment program. This means I'm generally too tired to cook for myself when I get home from classes. I happened to notice a burger joint 6 blocks from where I live on the bus route home. So three times over the past month I went to this restaurant to pick up a burger after class. I used my debit card to purchase the food. I did not discuss this with anybody. I did not search for burger joints on google or facebook. In no way did I indicate with my online behavior that I am aware of that I was starting to go to this restaurant. I recently did sync my facebook with "skip the dishes" -- which also connects to my on-line banking to make payments when you order from them. So I was quite shocked the other day when I started to see advertisements in my facebook feed for this burger joint. Not just one advertisement either. It kept showing up in my feed, over and over again. I figure that what happened is that facebook and my bank have sold my private information about purchasing to target me for advertisements for this restaurant. Because I don't do a lot of eating out and I don't make a lot of purchases, I likely have been on the receiving end of this sort of targeted advertisement much less than most people, which is why it jumped out at me as strange. I don't often see advertisements for restaurants in my facebook feed unless it's for a place that I have actually "liked" or a page that I have followed.
IN any event -- I worry about where this is all going... and that's why I am so glad that BlockChain technology exists. I believe that with platforms like Steemit and the development of the BlockChain, this pernicious sort of spying and never-ending targeted marketing technology is going to have a shorter half life. Already, with Steemit we see that there is a huge benefit to being part of a social media site where nobody is making money by advertising. And we know that Youtube, Facebook, Google etc can only make money because people are sort of willing to put up with their advertising because of the perception that they are the best places to find content, connect with others and search for things online.
Imagine what a Search Engine could do and be if it was entirely incentivized by how good it was AND people were paid to make it better by curating the content and working to make it provide the very BEST search results and not just the results that some technocrats WANT you to find more easily than others.
Already, we are seeing a mass exodus from Facebook, Reddit, Youtube to Steemit where there is no possibility of shadow-banning, throttling or cutting off monetization due to censorship over content... I actually shudder to consider what kind of a future the internet would have if the Blockchain did not exist and options like Steemit were unavailable.
For now... it's enough to be here and enjoy making a little money from time to time by sharing my thoughts on various things... but it really feels cool to actually be part of disrupting the evil that Google, Facebook, Youtube and Reddit have evolved into.