FACEBOOK DATA BROKERS GET DIRTY WITH OUR MUD

image via newsweek.com

The numbers are too big to fathom. $42 billion loss in market value? 50 million users had their data harvested? All we want to do is post a nice cat picture, not get sucked into some weird vortex of data mining.

Don’t get me wrong, I like mining, but for the right thing, like Apache tears. I’m not taking my friend Dale’s rock hammer to social media. What would that do but crush a few screens. So that won’t happen.

If there’s a thorough investigation on how, why, and who directed the facebook operation, there’s only one man for the job: Robert Mueller.

And here’s why:

Some men carry themselves with a certain authority one day, a different attitude the next. Robert Mueller looks pretty steady day after day. And more importantly, he looks like he means it, the authority part.

If he told me I was guilty of something, I’d probably believe it. He’s got that sort of authority air, not authoritarian, but enough juice to make me consider his truth over mine. This is a man who graduated from Princeton with a B.A, NYU with a Masters, and Virginia with a law degree. I’m a little out-gunned here.

Let’s say he’s smart enough to know the difference between sh!t and shinola. I’m adding a little salt here to season up the former Marine O3 in Vietnam. Smart and war decorated, he’s a man of high measure.

Based on the job he’s currently doing for the nation, he’d have this facebook data breach figured out in no time, which would be a good thing considering the losses Mr. Zuckerberg’s brainchild is suffering.

If you think facebook needs reining in, or we need to edit our personal details, start by asking why anyone would include more info about themselves than a wikipedia page. I’m as guilty as anyone, probably more so because I write this blog and use facebook as an effective platform to post links to.

Do I have a solution beyond good sense? You’re asking the wrong blogger. I follow one of my facebook friends, though someone I met in real time, when she posted “More is more, less is a bore.”

As a result I’ve had to take a few things down on request when more was too much. That’s right, I got censured and lived to tell the tale. Somehow my Mom found a post on boomerpdx she didn’t like. I don’t need Mr. Mueller to point me in the direction of who helped my Mom find a post she wouldn’t like.

Write a family values post that disagrees with the values of some family members and you’ve got a nice pool of suspects without setting up an algorithm.

Put Mueller on the facebook case and the big hand of the former G-Man would start automatically slapping sense into people. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d do for the common good, like he’s doing on the job now.

The other side of the facebook deal? What if you had a court date that involved extended fact finding. Could a court of law demand copies of everything you ever posted on facebook in a search for incriminating evidence?

The big hand says yes. Plan accordingly.