the.com/social data
the exhaust fumes of every like, scroll, and 3am message, sold as insight.
means information generated by people's behavior and interactions on social platforms, harvested to model who you are and what you will buy next.
from emerged as a term in the mid 2000s alongside facebook and twitter, when companies realized the real product was never the platform but the trail of clicks, follows, and shares users left behind.
cambridge analytica87 million profiles turned into political ammunition.
facebook's origin sinbegan as a hot-or-not ranking of harvard students.
data brokersresell your likes to advertisers you never met.
gdpr's targeteurope wrote a whole law just to slow this down.
for instance
cambridge analytica scandal — 2018 breach that reshaped elections in the us and uk.
facebook like button — introduced 2009, quietly became a personality x-ray.
tiktok's for you feed — reads watch time in milliseconds to predict your mood.
strava heatmaps — 2018 accidentally revealed secret military base locations.