There’s nothing called a free lunch. That’s the first point every user of social media platforms—from the micro-blogging site Twitter to quick messaging system WhatsApp—needs to be keeping in mind. If you are not paying upfront as a user, then you are being made to pay in very many insidious, nontransparent ways, behind your back, quite literally. As a techie in the US said, “If you are not paying, you are yourself the product.” Particularly with Facebook, a forum where you are thrilled to meet your longlost friend, where you make long-lasting friends, share your thoughts, debate your views, talk about your holidays, put up your albums—personal, intimate memories.
Well, Big Brother is not just watching, he’s analysing, tabulating you—your friends, families, preferences, choices, personality traits and mindscape—and storing it in a data bank up in the air. Not just to send advertisements of products right up your alley. Nothing is private in this outing into cyberspace. Not just FB and Mark Zuckerberg, unknown third parties out to make a fast buck—like Alexander Nix— can mine you inside out, and sell you to a fourth party. Zuckerberg, who had looked the other way while all this was happening, has now apologised. He assures us that he will put a security system in place so that the coming Indian and Brazilian elections do not get compromised.
Does that inspire confidence? What has already been written with our data—a tale of double-crossing and murder (real murder, not just a digital assassination of your and my privacy) across three continents, America (US), Africa (Kenya) and Asia (India)—is jaw-dropping to say the least. The very basis of our democratic right to vote has been compromised through caste, economic, social and racial profiling. Our Election Commission, in its great urgency to become social media-savvy, has used FB for voter connect! It’s as if we are sitting on an information bomb which can burst on our face, while we cutely press the like button on the next photo of a friend.