Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads

You might have heard the famous maxim that "if something is free, you're the product." The freemium world of apps and social media have made it nearly indisputable, heralding a previously unimaginable tech panopticon known as "surveillance capitalism." Surveillance capitalism came about when some crafty software engineers realized that advertisers were willing to pay bigtime for our personal data, which builds up as we surf the web. That data helps advertising corporations "understand their audience" and "deliver highly relevant content," and has expanded into a global data trade as more and more people spend more time online. The data trade is how social media platforms like Google, YouTube, and TikTok make their bones. In 2022, the data industry raked in just north of $274 billion worth of revenue. By 2030, it's expected to explode to just under $700 trillion. And as the data trade expands, so too does the tech behind it. What were once chintzy if endearing tabloid-style popups — ... Read full article.