Take My Data...Please

The outrage over Facebook supplying personal user data to Cambridge Analytica, when you put it all into perspective, is about nothing that new. Facebook is a media company dedicated to delivering eyeballs to other entities that seek to persuade us to buy something or believe something.

Broadcast media have long targeted demographics. When I worked in radio programmers at my station went after the cherished 25-54-year-old demo, the group said to have the biggest buying power. TV and radio stations pursued ratings to show advertisers they could deliver those eyeballs or eardrums. Advertisers use greed, fear, and of course, sex, to convert users into buyers. For years,  the target – the demo – has been the broad side of a barn. The only thing different is the accuracy of the targeting, thanks to the information at hand. As for the barn, well, the privacy horse left it long ago.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is not opposed to regulation, but the issue is the kind of regulation. Keeping our personal information away from advertisers or political entities is a non-starter, though, as it’s the basic media business model. Facebook doesn’t charge us as individuals for using its service. That said, these social media platforms should be required to educate users about what’s happening with their data – and that means going way beyond a fine-print user agreement that nobody reads. And Facebook does have to keep track of who gets this data and how it is used, what apps are doing with it…and by the way, keep those clients out of our Friends lists. Just as an aside: if we want our data kept from prying eyes, would we be willing to pay for belonging to Facebook?

It may be in fashion now to hate Facebook, but most of us like keeping up with friends and family, and social media have allowed us to reconnect with people long since forgotten. I work from home and have no co-workers, so Facebook allows me to maintain ties with former colleagues. True, these contacts are no substitute for actual human interaction, but I still think they’re better than nothing. At its best, Facebook offers a reminder in our low points in life that whatever the situation, we are not alone.

We users are not victims, unless we allow ourselves to be.  If we want privacy, we have control of the switch or the plug and can always turn it off or pull it out. But if we do want to use these media, we have choices, and it’s our responsibility to choose those that best serve and inform us, and for which we are willing to sacrifice some level of privacy.  We can also teach our kids how to make the best choices, and impress upon them that in the end, we are our own editors, in control of our eyeballs, eardrums…and brains.

Daylight Shifting Time

That’s what they should call it, because it really doesn’t save anything. There are the same number of hours of daylight and darkness, however you slice it. But the debate over DST’s benefits has had a long history – a century of it, in fact.

The U.S. did not invent it. Apparently, it was the Germans who did so on the grounds of conserving fuel during World War I. In this country, President Roosevelt made it a year-round thing during World War II – it was called War Time, but it didn’t last. Congress has fussed with it on and off since then. It used to run only from April to October. More recently, it was extended from March to November. Unfortunately, some of my older electronic devices did not get the message. They automatically switch under the original schedule. So, I have to reset timers four times a year instead of two.

As to the benefits, I love the long twilit evenings, but would it work as a year-long thing? Proponents, mostly business people, say year-round DST would be better for the economy because it would promote more shopping, recreation and entertainment. Would it save energy? That record is much spottier. Opponents have long argued that children would die because of accidents related to their having to get up in the dark in winter to go to school. And there are those who argue that we should just pick one time scheme and stick to it, due to the bad health effects of “instant summer and instant winter,” and traffic accidents related to it.

The federal government has largely taken control of this issue, but the dumbest thing, IMHO, is that the law still allows states to decide whether to observe DST or not. We are now down to only two states that don’t: Arizona and Hawaii.  In Arizona, by the way, the state doesn’t recognize daylight saving, but the Navajo nation does on its tribal lands. Puerto Rico and other US territories don’t. But now, here comes Florida, planning to observe it all year.

I think the time should be the time, and that we should pick one nationwide scheme and be done with it. Now, I live in a latitude where if Standard Time were in effect year-round, the 4:45 am birds that wake me up in late spring and high summer would be doing so at 3:45 a.m. At least with one scheme, though, the jarring effects of time-shifting and the inconvenience of clock-setting would go away, and we might appreciate the seasons more. My vote is to keep Standard Time all year. I’ll live with the birds if it keeps the school kids safe. However, as a fallback position, so to speak, how about DST from the first day of spring to the first day of autumn? OK, OK, it was just a thought.

Revolution by Hashtag

Genuine national movements – those that involve a major part of the population, used to be pretty rare. I am old enough to remember the last ones, which really got going some 50 years ago. The civil rights movement swept the South, and anger over injustice and assassination swept north and west, and cities burned. Then the whole country seemed to turn against the Vietnam War, forcing President Johnson to give up the idea of running for a new term. There were revolutions in sexual mores, and clothing. Men’s hair got longer and women’s skirts shorter. Culturally, we would never be the same again.

Half a century on, the #metoo movement is one of those revolutionary culture-changers. And now there is #neveragain, teens leading the charge for gun control. Though the subterranean forces of change have been at work all along, these movements have erupted like wildfires racing through dry brush, thanks to ubiquitous connectivity and that previously little-used thing on our keypads, the hashtag.

More people are hitting the streets for more reasons than ever before. Certainly, more are running for office than ever before. It seems like history is being made constantly now. We don’t have to wait for the future judgment of historians as to whether any of it was important enough to make it into their books.

As is often pointed out, one big modern challenge is dealing with the compression of events in time. Things that took decades gradually only took years, then only months, then only weeks. Today, even the so-called 24-hour news cycle seems too long. And, of course, another challenge is that the hashtag is a tool available to anyone, including those who may not have what we might think of as benign intentions. They could start their own revolutions.

For the moment, though, the most dangerous place to stand is on the wrong side of one of these hashtags. We will only get run over.

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