Journal Entry - article/

The everlasting need to connect with people, talk, share and live makes humans invent new technologies. I felt the need for friendship and love just like everybody else. When I was in college, I felt the need for social networking. I chose to use Facebook for connecting with friends, follow celebrities, sports, movies and games. I thought Facebook could solve my problem of friendship and love. I started using FB for every other need of mine. To follow news about my favorite football club, follow the developments of a game to be released, debate with people on controversial topics, stalk hot girls, check out new music videos and movie trailers. Every college trip memory was captured through photos shared on FB. I still couldn't figure out what was FB getting out of this by providing gratis service to users like me. I never understood how the advertisements of FB were targeted towards me and how they made me buy things that perhaps I never wanted in the first place. FB secretly craved for my attention. The more time I spent on it, the more FB gained. The notifications were the distraction that kept me away from what I was otherwise supposed to do. The deep abuse of my psychology for material gain was what FB was instrumental in doing. The clever design of UI and notifications made me hook up to the features of FB. "Somebody likes your post", "Two people liked your post", "You have a new friend request", and so on. These emails used pop-up in my inbox or even as notifications on my phone (if I had the Facebook app installed). Notifications only give hints, they'll create this secret urge to go and unravel the mystery. It's like a rabbit-hole. The more you keep looking, the deeper you go. In fact every other app tries to achieve the same thing. All they care about is the attention span of the user. Users themselves are the products. Think about this - "If you want ad-free service: pay us". Facebook should do the same. I will pay for a subscription for using FB, please don't burden with your ads. It isn't just about ads, it also has do with the immense data mining that happens with user's profile. The facial recognition used by FB to uniquely identify users in their photos and link it with their appearances in other('s) photos could be dangerous. It's an ethical issue, do people need to be identified in such an elaborate way? Why is identity such a big thing? With identity comes identity politics, is that what FB has been instrumental in? The answer seems to be a strong 'Yes'. Companies such as Cambridge Analytica are built on FB's data. They use it to manipulate elections, rig them, and so on. No one has a clue what happened. It is just out there - people get conditioned and biases are manufactured.