Facebook recommended that this psychiatrist’s patients friend each other
Web Publication: Fusion, by Kashmir Hill
The spook in your pocket
I am an advocate for people to use social media without fear, but this requires an eyes wide-open realism. Facebook has developed an uncanny ability to see or to slightly miss-see details of our lives and project it into our feed and out to the public. Facebook has become the closest thing to ‘big brother’ for a lot of people. In the case raised in this article, Facebook searched out and attempted to connect psychiatric patients within a certain practice, likely based on cellphone data harvested from Facebook users. Surely, it’s a just wrinkle in the matrix, but be assured, for the wrinkle discovered, there are a hundred more yet to be discovered. Why then not delete your Facebook account? This is a topic for a much larger article, but in a nutshell it is this: for now, I believe the social advantages outweigh the risks. Second, if you own a smartphone and use anything above basic services, you are no safer with or without Facebook.