Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
Okay, bad news. Everything you do on the internet is tracked. Your information streams into massive databases that are then linked to one another. At least several companies have good models of your social networks, purchasing behavior, and, yes, your face. Your face 10 years ago and your face today.
Ten years ago, Facebook already had 15 billion photos in its database. As you uploaded pictures and tagged friends and added date and location data, the software got really, really good at recognizing people’s faces. This facial-recognition capability is mirrored at other companies—and some, such as Amazon, sell it to whoever wants it. They do all this to more effectively show you things you are likely to buy, in the form of advertisements in a feed or product recommendations. That’s literally how the internet works, and it goes to the very core of the new economy, as many smart people have been telling us for years, most recently Harvard Business School’s Shoshana Zuboff in her new book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
Conor Friedersdorf: The undemocratic spread of Big Brother
Whew, okay. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about the #10yearchallenge, which has swept through Facebook (and Instagram) users. The deal is: You post a photo from 10 years ago and one from now. It’s like viewing a painting of Cronus eating his children, but online.