Ever been scrolling through Facebook, like one does, and see a link one of your “Friends” has posted saying, “Can you spare a moment to help___?” or, “Help ____ Get More Signatures!” While there may be many go-getter sites with similar catch phrases on the web, the one I’ve been seeing more and more of in my newsfeed is from change.org. Change.org is a private corporation whose mission statement is, “to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see. We believe the best way to achieve that mission is to be a technology company using the power of business for social good” (change.org). Sounds good, right? Using the power of social media to enact change across the world for “social good.” Also sounds familiar. Didn’t Mae and Bailey and the rest of the Circlers think that through the power of technology they could complete the Circle and use their tools for social good? What’s even more frightening about change.org is the information they are subtly taking, using, and distributing from their users, which includes over 100 million people. There’s the usual information: name, address, phone number, picture, and other social media sites you link up to. Then there’s the information collected “through cookies, pixel tags, and other technologies,” zip code, geographic information, browser information, as well as “information about you that we collect from third party providers” (change.org). They assure users that the information collected from these third party providers was already consented by you to be collected and shared. Remember the terms and conditions agreements that everyone definitely reads before clicking the box? If we learned anything from The Circle, it’s how easily powerful corporations can collect significant amounts of information on you and use it to their advantage. Search information, political views, and the random fun-facts about yourself that you put on your social media sites are all being collected and fed into algorithms. Small pieces of your information can make up more than we think, slowly fitting pieces of the circle together until it is complete. Even further, change.org collects this wide array of information every time you log into your profile. All of your activities are tracked on their platform, and other platforms that your account is linked to. Suppose you share that great petition on Facebook, spread it on Twitter, and post the link in your Instagram bio. Now, change.org has the right to access all the information associated with those accounts that you shared the link to. Sign this petition, it’s for the social good. Sign this one too, and this one, and this one. I’ve watched as my friends sign their names on petition after petition. Change.org makes it easy for you to find the right issues for you. Simply click on the “featured,” “popular,” or “browse, tab at the top of the website and be directed to pages of petitions. Sign them with feverish ambition, and make sure to share the link on your social media platforms so your friends know how to really elicit change, and so these for-profit corporations, like change.org, know you on an even deeper level.
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Dr. PolakWrangler of the attendant ne'er-do-wells. Archives
May 2018
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