Entities like Facebook and others make money by selling the data feed generated by your use of the product in conjunction with “partners”.
As a basic phone account with nothing enabled their root product is just what you as an identified individual provide with your posts, likes/dislikes, friends and such.
If you step up your technology bedazzled consumerism though, your feed goes through the roof in terms of value and volume. Partnered via Amazon, google, etc... you can generate a quantity of lifestyle minutiae that will allow and ever precise prediction of your routines right down to when you use the bathroom and whether it’s to take a dump or shower.
Say they partner with the local smart metered electric utility. Based on load spikes through day it would be possible to generate a good prediction of when and how much laundry you do in a week, and target an add to specific corresponding times you’d be on a social media. What about a big spike on weekends that’s greater than your average appliance, oh, that’s the arc welder your spouse bought, correlated to X degree probability by your Home Depot rewards card and either the phone GPS, an onstar type system or the phone syncing up with Home Depot WiFi.
Humans like ritual and repetition. For the vast majority of them it’s for the most part same daily activity pattern, same stores, same wake/sleep times. All of these entities are trying their damnedest to sync up an individual person “unified field theory”, and they essentially have that part figured out. Now it’s just time to sell them all convienience and security and make all their end user agreements to their toys adhesion contract them into a servitude many don’t even know they are participants in.
That description makes me want to go even further into the woods, go solar/propane etc. But I won’t... The smart meter issue is big here, many people refusing to get one, and big suit against the OR PUC for allowing Pacific Power to ram it down peoples’ throats or pay a lot of extra money every month.
I’m thankful ( do no social media except a couple of webistes (is FR “social media”?), just regular phone, etc.