I Didn’t Tell Facebook I’m Engaged, So Why Is It Asking About My Fiancé?

I keep going back to the way Jaron Lanier puts it in You Are Not a Gadget: “Life is turned into a databasebased on [a] philosophical mistake, which is the belief that computers can presently represent human thought or human relationships. These are things computers cannot currently do.” I hesitate to sum up such a deeply personal and important fact into a data point in a profile field. Zadie Smith was similarly inspired by Lanier’s words, and described how personhood as represented online is somehow lacking: “When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears.”

I have no illusions about what Facebook has figured out about me from my activity, pictures, likes, and posts. Friends have speculated about how algorithms might effectively predict hook-ups or dating patterns based on bursts of “Facebook stalking” activity (you know you are guilty of clicking through hundreds of tagged pictures of your latest crush). David Kilpatrick uncovered that Facebook “could determine with about 33 percent accuracy who a user was going to be in a relationship with a week from now.” And based on extensive networks of gay friends, MIT’s Gaydar claims to be able to out those who refrain from listing their sexual orientation on the network. When I first turned on Timeline, I discovered Facebook had correctly singled out that becoming friends with Nick was a significant event of 2007 (that’s when we met and first started dating, and appropriately enough, part of why he joined Facebook).

 

Ref: I Didn’t Tell Facebook I’m Engaged, So Why Is It Asking About My Fiancé? – TheAtlantic