Be careful what you “do” on social media…

Here’s an interesting Times article that boils down to what was done with the data obtained via a Facebook quiz app. Note that Facebook did not create this app, but a third party consultant. The intent? To distill enough information about a given voting segment to create political messaging designed to influence those voters.

Although the title is quite misleading, it does capture the fact that people willingly gave clues regarding their political-psychological leanings while “taking the quiz”. Seems harmless, right?

Yeah.

However, they didn’t know that the author was also scraping their profile to gather more information about them and that of their friends. The app author was paid more than $800,000 to create the app… so I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they weren’t simply trying to figure out your hair color.

Unfortunately, this article is behind the Times pay wall so you’ll have to use one of your 5 monthly free reads if you don’t have a subscription.

How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions

Full Article: nyti.ms/2GB9dK4

Be careful what you “do” on social media…

Today’s PSA: Understand the word “arrogant” before you use it

I find that people are so quick to label someone “arrogant”.

Bing and Google both define arrogant as “having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.

Even Urban Dictionary (God forbid, and, NSFW) defines it as “When a person is led to believe that they are in some way more superior to everybody else.” [note: the rest of the definition wasn’t PG enough for me to quote it here.]

Arrogance is something that must be demonstrated over time. If the desire to label a person is a snap judgement then the most you can accurately call that person is “smug“. Don’t besmirch people just because you don’t agree on how things should be, or because they won’t accept your point of view. In that situation you should first agree to disagree and then ask yourself, “Who am I, anyway?”

And no, this isn’t me venting because someone calling me arrogant or implied that I am. It came up in my morning meditations and simply bothered me enough to say something about it.

 

Today’s PSA: Understand the word “arrogant” before you use it

The Coolest Social Bio I’ve Seen In A While

Coolest Short Bio
This is the coolest short bio I've seen in a while.
The Coolest Social Bio I’ve Seen In A While