Facebook And Netflix Just Traded Our DM's And Watch History With Each Other

This is all part of a Facebook/Meta class action discovery that was filed last week. On one hand, this is pretty chilling news that these companies that know so much about us can just sell or trade that information on a whim. On the other hand, should we really be surprised at all?

The cynical answer is that we should expect exactly this from private companies that are run on making a profit for shareholders. Feelings or doing the right thing isn't an option they care about. It's simply about making as much money as possible. So, then why do we take part in this game at all? It's wild that we are all basically OK with this. I am putting myself in this camp. It's just part of being alive in 2024 to some extent. In exchange for having all of this information at our fingertips, the trade we make is these companies have even more information on us.

I'm old enough to have grown up when the most public information out there was your phone number and address printed in the local phone book. But if you wanted to, you could pay a small fee to have it unlisted. Now, if you live a pretty normal life and are on a couple social media accounts and a streaming service or two, these companies know things about yourself that you don't even consciously know. They can track your spending habits, interests or dislikes, really how you feel about everything.

The fact that this affects so many of us makes us numb to all of this. It also feels small. Is it going to harm our daily lives if Facebook knows that we liked Bloodline on Netflix but stopped watching in the third season? Probably not. But that's not the point. It's that these companies are trading us like baseball cards which they then send to companies who want nothing more than to have unmitigated access to our wallets.

So we all know this happens. This is what George Orwell warned us about in 1984. But there are many Big Brothers and they are always watching. But what are you going to change about your life knowing this news? If you're like me, absolutely nothing. I'm still going to watch streaming services. I'm not on Facebook anymore but I am on Instagram and that's the same fucking company. There's a level of not giving a shit or blindly ignoring the truth. These companies we go on to communicate, shop and use to entertain us not only don't like us. They would sell everything they could on us if it meant making any sort of profit. It's like that friend in Jr. High that would blab any secret they would have to anyone if meant any upward social climbing at all.

We're in way too deep at this point. Unless there is some massive generational shift in priorities many years from now, I don't see how these companies ever get their talons out of us. Netflix knows what we say in our DM's, Facebook knows what we watch and we're all doomed.