Posted on 01/14/2021 4:31:26 PM PST by GardenerForLife
I used to visit this forum years ago and I recently felt impressed that I should come back and share some info.
I am a software engineer by trade. I write code. I've worked for many big tech companies over the years. Last year I worked for a well known big tech company on a year long contract. I worked on the software that searches all social media platforms and collects the data on you.
Facebook, Twitter, et all, have back doors called APIs that allow authorized entities to request data. And that data is then packed up and sent to the requestor. This is done using the Elastic Search technology. And I don't mean a little data, I mean all of it, terabytes worth.
If you post a message about your dream vacation to Detroit, it's scanned. If words in your post match the criteria they are looking for, all your info is packed and passed to the requestor.It gets worse. The technology is now available to scan photos and pick out images that match as well. If you post a picture that has some where in the image, let's say a logo on your shirt, the software can find it. I haven't been on Facebook in a year and I deleted my account. I asked my boss if he was "ok" with what we were doing. He said to me, "Look, I just keep my head down, it's a job."
This is not hear-say. I was a SDET or Software Developer in Test. It was my job to write automation code that tested the search algorithm. In other words, if 50k people "Liked" a video or an image, that we would get back all that data as expected.
Part of that testing was posting images FB, Twitter, etc, that contained an item. Then making sure the code found that item, the image was flagged and the data on it was returned to me as expected. So if you have a picture that contains a Christian cross some where in the image and they want to put you on a list, they can find it that quick. Or anything else they want to find.
Stay off social media platforms. I deleted all my accounts, you should too.
-Gardener
The CCP style Social Score is coming folks and the Social Media is in on it.
Don’t post on facebook and Twitter. Don’t buy stuff at Amazon.
I totally agree. I clicked on FB a few days ago and immediately clicked off. Those on the left feel justified in locking up all Trump supporters. It’s insane.
I have to figure out how to download my photos from years past that are on FB. I hope I can do it in some way it doesn’t take me all day.
I am not any. Thank you for giving me another reason.
I suspect that there are lists of peeps, like me, who have been anti-social online.
Advice bump. A FRee Republic is a Fun Republic. I do know about social media used for nefarious purposes.
http://www.spiritualbee.com/media/tagore-love-poems.pdf
The Gardener - Tagore
It’s easy. You can go into your FB account and click on Settings & Privacy, then Facebook Information and then Download Your Information. It will create a zip file that has all of your info in folders.
How do you think that they gave you that “free” service?
What exact data are you stating is collected?
I VPN from a new non-five-eyes country each day.
I have no social media accounts.
I’m doing this via googlephone.
How vulnerable is that?
I have never had a Facebook account or a Twitter account. There were obvious downsides to not playing their game, but I decided that they would probably misuse my personal info if I gave it to them.
No regrets.
Let them go.
Not much choice for me currently on particular items. The seed mix my parrot has been on his entire life isn't sold anywhere in OK, and the company that makes it doesn't sell to the public.
are there any social media platforms that are safe?
Good advice. A lot of the social media hosts names are well known and easily redirected to localhost in the /etc/hosts file. I think my host file is about 18.5k of such redirects.
Algorithms to put you and I in thought-prisons.
Not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any of those, so at least that’s one thing in my favor. Never even got around to creating an account on Parler.
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