Thread by @doctorow

Big Data's primary utility isn't brainwashing, it's targeting - surveillance lets advertisers locate people with hard-to-find traits, which solves a lot of real business problems for merchants filling narrow and obscure niches.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1282688401863401473

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In particular, ad-targeting is really useful for con artists and scammers, because the correlates of vulnerability to scams are easy to identify, but hard to turn into targeted ad campaigns without mass surveillance.

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Which is why, when Anne Borden King of @BadScienceWatch posted about her breast cancer diagnosis on Facebook, she was inundated with quack remedy ads from people willing to commit murder-by-fraud for their personal enrichment.

nytimes.com/2020/07/10/opi…

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The pseudoscience scammers offered her cumin seeds, colloidal silver treatments, "cell quickening" and luxury Mexican beach "nontoxic treatments."

No legitimate cancer therapies were advertised to her.

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King: "Pseudoscience companies leverage Facebook’s social and supportive environment to connect their products with identities and to build communities around their products. They use influencers and patient testimonials.

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"Some companies also recruit members through Facebook 'support groups' to sell their products in pyramid schemes."

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Targeting solves a key business need for unscrupulous merchants.

King again: "Pseudoscience companies tap directly into our fears and isolation, offering us a sense of control, while claiming their products can end our pain."

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Like me, King concludes that FB can't solve this problem, and that we should stop using it. I've been a zuckervegan for more than a decade.

King's advice: "suspend, delete or even just spend less time on Facebook (and on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook)."

eof/