Don’t mind what I think on Facebook
IN news that will keep tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists busy for years, social media giant Facebook have announced they want to control our brains.
Or rather, they’re developing a “silent speech interface” – a sci-fi system that will let us type five times faster, using only our thoughts. What they’ve failed to grasp is that I would never want my thoughts to appear on Facebook – broadcasting my actual thoughts would see my number of ‘friends’ hurtle to zero faster than Trump’s approval rating.
“I don’t care what your food looks like, pal” would appear a lot. “Stop doing that thing with your lips”.
“Your newborn baby looks exactly the same as everyone else’s – like
an ugly goblin who’s been rolling around in pizza sauce”. “I’m glad how fat you’ve become since we stopped dating”. What’s more, I have no interest in others being able to share their tedious bilge any faster than they already do. I can barely remember these people, so why would I possibly want their Reading Age Seven status updates to be even more interminable than they already are? But, of course, it’s not about what we want – it’s about what Facebook wants: if they know what we’re thinking, they know what they can try to sell us. I bought a dishwasher nearly three years ago, and not a day has gone by since where Facebook hasn’t served me an advert for a dishwasher.
Who buys more than one dishwasher? Are they worried the first one will get lonely? Do they think my purchase was just the start of a bizarre dishwasher-collecting hobby?
I wouldn’t ever claim Mark Zuckerberg is evil – well not publicly anyway.
Having said that, the rise of fake news on Facebook was thought to be one of the major factors in Trumpy’s romp to victory in the White House, so you can probably make your own mind up.
But assuming his main aim is to make profits and there’s a bit of room to manoeuvre in his moral code, then there’s a more efficient way to do it than spending a billion dollars on space-age methods to target trinkets at us.
Facebook has a billion users. He should contact every single one of them and ask for a tenner. If you say no, then he’ll publish the entire contents of your Messenger inbox. A Pandora’s box of he-said-she-saids, illicit sexts and hard-hitting truths about the size of friends’ noses would be revealed to the world.
Think how much trouble you got into when you made a throwaway comment under a wedding photo about Auntie Barbara’s dress looking like Laura Ashley curtains – that, but a thousand times worse. We’d all pay up immediately. Knowledge is power, Mark, and you’ve got loads of it. I’ll accept payment for my idea in Facebook shares. Or a new dishwasher – this
one’s starting to make funny noises.
Broadcasting my thoughts would see my ‘friends’ hurtle to zero
In the immortal words of John F Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what the hell Theresa May is doing to our country.” Still, there’s no need to completely despair. I live in the hope we’ll all get obliterated by an agonising thermonuclear explosion before the election on June 8.