It's scary because the system learned something about you automatically from an innocuous photo and told others about it, all without a human in the loop. Ads are pretty harmless, but you can imagine what might happen in a surveillance system or if a more malicious actor was behind the system.

Its scary because its intrusive. I didn't post the picture so that I would get better ads - rather, to inform my friends that we were having a jam session. But now, we're all going to be bombarded with ads for instruments we don't need to buy (because we already have them).

The most uncomfortable angle is just how quickly Facebook tuned into what we were doing and then changed its ad-delivery algorithm to match. I have one friend who had his picture taken in front of a headshop - he now gets regular ads for bongs and smoke accessories, even though he's not a user. So, that's also quite discomfiting ..

I understand the responses to this, but my take is we're so far past the Rubicon we might as well be in the Atlantic.

For example, I have a friend who has never been on any social media. If he wanted to opt out of the surveillance apparatus, he still would have to address: collection of phone metadata, browsing history, traffic cams, other CCTV, financial paper trail, probably more I'm missing.

That's my wife's position, and IMHO it's a wrong one. It's the same argument about letting them store your search history: everything about you ends up in a database that someone can look up whenever s/he wants. Where you shop, where you eat, where you go on holiday, all about your family and friends, what you like, your health... it's a treasure trove for all sort of nefarious activities that could target you, from ID theft to fraud, framing, entrapment, you name it. But of course it will never happen to you, right?

> "aren't well targeted ads better"

When you're the advertiser, sure. When you're the target, not so much. Do you really want billboards speaking to you as you walk down the street? Making suggestions based on your recent purchase history or activities and personal associations?

Just because advertising technology can achieve greater powers of reaching people, doesn't mean we need or want advertising woven into the fabric of our existence more than it already is. You can opt in to that if you want, I'm staying well clear.

Realizing that the sentence «big brother is watching you» accurately describes the world de live in ils kind of scary…

It's something to rationaly know it, it's totally different to experience it in real life !

This is probably the most important question to be able to answer effectively, though I (and it appears many others) have trouble coming up with a compelling reason why people should be worried. Most of the people I try to convince remain unworried, thinking along the same lines -- why is it bad if they know more about me? I inevitably try to explain that 1) it's not beneficial to you, and 2) more importantly, bad actors could use the information unscrupulously. However, they believe that if this information is helpful in any way in protecting them, and otherwise doesn't really bother them, then it's a positive trend.

I would like to come up with some powerful (frightening) examples of why the data collection going on is so dangerous, and why people should be worried and careful.

>aren't well targeted ads better than irrelevant ones?

Depends on whether you're a fan other other people making your choices for you, I guess.

Because he also looks terrible on the photo and he immediately received ads for MacDonalds jobs within minutes of posting this picture. His insurance also resigned his health policy after a system recognized him as a drunkard.