Facebook’s long had some privacy issues, and now that they’re broadening their reach on the web, who knows what’ll happen next? Here are the Top Stories then, now, and beyond:
2007 – Facebook Beacon links your purchases at online stores to your Facebook account so your friends (and marketers) can see what you’re buying.
2010 – Facebook makes it impossible for you to hide certain information, such as your interests and location, from everybody.
2011 – Facebook History Tracker makes your web surfing history publicly viewable on your feed (and to marketers). After a brief uproar, Facebook enables an “incognito mode” for when you want your private surfing kept private, but it’s buried deep within the settings and automatically shuts off after each session.
2012 – Facebook Life Recorder is a small camera apparatus that’s worn on your head, automatically tagging the friends you interact with via facial recognition and posting to your wall. Information such as where you shop and what you buy is put into a database (for marketers).
2014 – Facebook Implant combines a chemical scanner with a GPS chip. Everything you eat and everywhere you go are automatically posted to your News Feed in minute detail. This setting can be deactivated through outpatient surgery.
2015 – Facebook Guy Who Moves Into Your House With You and Is Always On the Phone With Potential Advertisers Telling Them What You’re Doing meets initial resistance, but once the site starts publicizing its “Watcher Marriages”—instances where a follower and followee have fallen in love—public opposition melts away.
2016 – Mark Zuckerberg is elected president in the first election that allows voting via Liking candidates on Facebook.
2017 – Facebook User Relocation to Facebook’s Headquarters ensures Facebook’s ability to track every single thing you do to post to your Feed. Considered necessary after “Watcher Marriages” resulted in too many compromised Facebook Guys Who Move Into Your House With You.
2018 – Facebook Pods provide remote 24 hour contact with Facebook, as well as all bodily needs, including food delivery and waste removal (which is then provided to marketers for analysis).
2020 – Facebook Genital Pictures takes pictures of everyone’s junk, which was real easy what with everyone in those Pods. Finally, Facebook fulfills its ultimate destiny: showing you (and marketers) everyone you’ve ever met with no clothes on.
Footnote: We really do like Facebook, and the powerful tool that it is – and we enjoy poking fun, too. Next on our agenda is recruiting the Security Squirrel away from Facebook and onto the SafeHouse Web team.
Our thanks to Adam Frucci at Gizmodo for his insight into this subject.
