On claptrap

The inestimable (a word with a suitable ambiguity) former Deputy Prime Minister ‘Sir’ Nick Clegg, who now serves as Zuckerberg’s office boy in Europe has been spouting off about how Facebook is going to tackle various problems associated with its abuse of privacy. It’s so SAD to see somebody with Clegg’s reputation helping Zuckerberg with his BAD corporate-wash, but what else is the poor man to do? Anyway, I’ve been wondering. Perhaps one way to piss on their little adventure – if you are a Facebook user – is to send all the wrong signals to their advertisers. Create your own fake personage! This approach might also apply to Google searches and all the other forms of mass harvesting of information. So, if you repeatedly (guerilla style) search for prosthetic limbs, cures for cabbage itch, nostril enhancement aids, lax stool remedies, foot acne, attendance at obscure conferences on bricklaying and the like, you will so devalue their algorithms as to make them worthless, and their whole system of ‘information surveillance capitalism’ would collapse under the weight of its own blind devotion to falsehood. Naturally, all these searches and connections, ‘likes’ or whatever would have to be launched from a false account. You might want to use another account for your actual real stuff. If everybody did this then half of all Facebook accounts would be false and should such news leak out then Facebook’s shares would collapse. Then we would really see how serious ‘Sir’ Nick was with his claptrap about cleaning up their act.