The book beautifully illustrates the paradox of big data:

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But the algorithm does something else remarkable. In recent years, Facebook has increasingly limited the reach of companies . A company that wants to reach its audience is almost forced to buy ads from Facebook. Niche media are under pressure because of this. They don't have the budgets. Result? Their journalistic voice is silenced among the shouting of the big boys.

All these are worrying developments that have a direct and indirect impact on our democratic process.

You might be shrugging your shoulders now. After all, isn’t it nice to see messages and advertisements on your screen that match your personal interests? Besides, what do you have to hide? I’ve seen this last argument a lot in the past few days. But is it true? Do we have nothing to hide?

For example, let’s look at one of the first example of whatsapp number in philippines questions Facebook asks new users: “Are you interested in men or women?” It seems like an innocent question, until you realize that homosexuality is punishable by law in nearly half the world . In some countries, it’s even punishable by death. Then you realize how vulnerable this kind of seemingly insignificant information really is.

Therein lies part of the problem. Can we trust that our information is in good hands with Facebook now and always?



'Everybody lies'
Here’s another example. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz worked for a year and a half as a data scientist for Google and last year published a book about the search behavior of Americans on the internet with the apt title Everybody Lies (Economist Book of the Year). He examined a gigantic dataset of Google searches and discovered our deepest secrets.
it delivers unprecedentedly instructive science at a price we pay with our privacy. Let me give you an example.

Seth sees as many as 7 million searches a year that contain the downright racist word " nigger ." According to him, covert racism is a much bigger problem than we thought. It's just one of his many remarkable observations. Seth's conclusion is this: the side of ourselves that we don't dare show in anonymous surveys, we do entrust to Google. And therefore very likely to Facebook as well.

There are almost 10 million Dutch users on Facebook. That probably gives you the feeling that you will miss a lot if you leave. Yet Facebook has less business relevance compared to LinkedIn, for example. More and more people are therefore doing fine with telephone, mail, text messages and social media of a less questionable nature.