I was talking to my daughter about that yesterday. Suppose Facebook knows your interests, taste in music, where you live, what good you like, etc. A political campaign could use that information to tell you that their local candidate shares your interests, lived in the same town, loves the same music, supports the same charity or whatever overlaps with your profile, while knowingly avoiding telling you about things you like or are in favour of for which they hold opposing views. So you get a personally tailored, custom ad for the candidate pushing all the right buttons and concealing anything that doesn’t match or it knows you would dislike. Meanwhile it could also show you targeted attack ads on a rival customised to highlight things they know you dislike.

All the information might be true (or might not), but IMHO I don’t like the idea of people intrusively trying to manipulate me like that. We all have biases and preconceptions. We’re all open to manipulation and the last thing I want is my online world to become an echo chamber, turning me into a parody of myself. In the wider context, it’s also a threat to civil society, driving a wedge between us as citizens by magnifying our differences and promoting divisiveness. That’s what the Russian interference campaign was all about.

The thing is, if a candidate seems interesting, you should teach her to look up their website and read their full agenda. If they've held positions before, also to google them to find out what they've actually said and done in the past, and to think carefully about what kinds of implications those deeds may have had. You most certainly shouldn't base your election choices on paid ads - or, really, any kind of information only from a single outlet.

That's also the general recipe for avoiding echo chambers: don't be lazy, and go a little out of your way to find things out.

Of course, but are we really ok living in a world where the vast majority of the electorate are completely unprepared to protect themselves from this sort of manipulation?

It’s not that I’m against advertising, or capitalism, or that I’m some sort of over-regulating socialist. I just think that we need basic, fair rights over and protections for our personal information, and that this isn’t just good for us it’s good for our democracies.

Thing is, it’s not dangerous on an individual level - no different to a friend telling you about a particular candidate and why you should like them.

And personalised ads sound great at the individual level - relevant, interesting products and services that I’m likely to interact with instead of irrelevant crap clogging up my screen. We’ve always had targeting and echo chambers.

But, like the algorithmic kids videos a few months ago or the deluge of fake news, we and our society are totally unprepared for the speed and scale that technology now allows. It’s the sheer quantity and pervasiveness - and the fact that it’s not obvious what’s going on - that makes it dangerous.

To (poorly) quote Charlie Stross, we’ve ripped out the mechanisms for how things work and replaced them with something alien, without anyone noticing.

I don't vote, I don't care. Couldn't care less about politics to be quite honest. They have a very marginal influence on my life, aspirations and happiness.

If that's true, that's a pretty handy description of what many US leftists call "privilege." There are many marginalized people, including in developed western nations, for whom the politics you're able to ignore can have decisive impact on their day to day lives. Many of these people, like many people in general, will not have the knowledge of internet technology and policy they need to protect themselves.

That's not a compelling argument.

> I am not interesting enough that anyone will come for me specifically anyways.

No single raindrop believes it's responsible for the storm.

They don't care about you specifically, if you can profile people accurately they have a much easier time of adjusting perspectives for your own aims. You've likely already seen the results of this with the latest American election.

It's gone far beyond getting you to buy more music and they're just warming up.

And ? Did the world crash, the USA's GDP sink, did people starve and die by thousands ? No, nothing happened.

This may be okay for you individually. But Facebook will treat someone with bipolar or serious impulse control issues just the same way... Assuming some level of accuracy, an algorithm could predict when someone is having a manic episode, susceptible. Its predatory and dangerous. The vast majority of people are not aware of how to protect themselves from out-of-hand tech giants and their customers. Getting ahead is becoming about how well you can unplug so that you are not being puppeteered. We all need some counter-intelligence know-how.

I suggest, use rational means to work out for yourself what products are best for you and your budget, or on the other hand what political affiliations actualy represent your interests. Figuring out what's real in the world is a big task and only the most vigilant will be okay, or blow the whistle so the average person might be.

>But Facebook will treat someone with bipolar or serious impulse control issues just the same way... Assuming some level of accuracy, an algorithm could predict when someone is having a manic episode, susceptible. Its predatory and dangerous.

And what would they do out of that ? People with poor mental health don't need facebook to be triggered, it seems even less harmful because it's through an interface and not a direct human interaction.

>use rational means to work out for yourself what products are best for you and your budget, or on the other hand what political affiliations actualy represent your interests.

I don't buy stuff mostly, it's an easy solution. And no political affiliations represent the rare interest I have that I think would undoubtedly be good.

Anecdotal but definitely illustrative: a close friend of my mother had serious trouble managing her bipolar states, she would start manic and it got out of control within hours or sometimes minutes. Bye bye meds, and on more than one occasion, she would spend thousands of dollars in days, vacation scams, grocery shopping for things unneeded that sat and spoiled, you name it. She made comprehensive arrangements with friends and the companies she dealt with repeatedly so she couldn't get more than a few dollars pocket money when off cycle. In this regard, my mom was an angel, saved this friend multiple bankruptcies.

Anyone not so fortunate could be so easily scammed its scary. And heart wrenching.

Is state guardianship not possible then ? Or arrangement with the bank ? No credit card, get cash at the bank counter when needed... I really have a hard time seeing this as an unsolvable problem, let alone scary or heart breaking.

I'm sure it might have been, but her kids took the "bail and never have to deal with it again" option, and she honestly had trouble just staying focused enough to have something of a day job, let alone remember to make appointments and keep them.

Not so much heart breaking, but hard to watch from the outside, she meant to live well and tried but her brain chemistry gave her random minuses to intelligence wisdom and charisma.

You're saying you don't mind being profiled and don't see the harm in it, but in several places downthread you describe in detail how little you use the platform, how poorly it understands you, and how little exposure you get to it. If these things are true, you're not a good example of how harmless their profiling is for other people.

Then isn't it that a reasonable, unprofiling, harmless use is possible?

All kinds of edge cases are possible. That doesn't in any way address, let alone refute, the widespread concerns.