Facebook Under Fire Again: Are Your Messages Being Monitored? 🔍

<p dir="ltr">So...Facebook’s being sued. Again. This time, it’s under the pretense of violating user privacy.</p><p dir="ltr">Anyone else feel like we’ve been down this road before? I feel like it was just yesterday we were talking about the invasion of privacy in digital life! We were? Hm.</p><p dir="ltr">Apparently, Facebook has been monitoring your “private” messages - though I guess that’s a misnomer, really - and mining the data to sell to advertisers. Basically, what you say and what you talk about are compiled in such a way that lets companies figure out how to sell stuff to you better. In case you’ve missed the ads on Facebook - yeah, they’re targeted. But that’s been obvious for a while; the uproar is that users’ supposedly private messages have been watched.</p><p dir="ltr">Well, at least this time Facebook didn’t do anything wrong! No, seriously. You agreed to let them use whatever information they wanted for pretty much any purpose when you signed up.</p><p dir="ltr">From their privacy page: “For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your <a class="link" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.facebook.com/privacy/">privacy</a> and <a class="link" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications">application settings</a>. You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License).”</p><p dir="ltr">What that means is, yeah, they pretty much own you. And you consented; it was all right there in the “Terms of Agreement” letter that no one ever reads.</p><p dir="ltr">So, you have to decide - is the appropriation of your messages and thoughts too high of a price to pay for Facebook? “Why should Zuckerberg make money off me?” you say?</p><p dir="ltr">Consider that you don’t pay to be a member. Advertising is the main generator of revenue for Facebook and sites like it - yeah, Google does the same thing with your Gmail account by the way, it’s another part of Google Analytics - and since the attitude of the Internet boils down to “We don’t want to pay for anything!” is it a shock that Internet companies make money off us in subversive ways?</p><p dir="ltr">Sure, you could say that reading emails and private messages are “morally” wrong - but they’re not legally protected like physical mail. Although snail mail isn’t, well...fast.</p><p>Maybe this is the price we have to pay for the instant gratification we’ve come to expect.</p>