The following article from CityLab’s Kriston Capps expresses the exact fear that mariner cites continually and why he is a privacy advocate:

[CityLab] Ben Carson mentioned you: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced today that it is charging Facebook for violating the Fair Housing Act. According to the charges, Facebook’s ad delivery system discriminated against users by screening who can see ads for housing on its marketplace listings. The site gives advertisers—including lenders, real-estate agents, and landlords—the tools to target potential buyers or renters and block others based on specific characteristics.

The charges from HUD describe how that can translate into housing discrimination. One example in the complaint says users can block people from seeing housing listings if they’re categorized as “moms of grade school kids” or “foreigners,” or if their interests include “hijab fashion” or “service animals.” “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson in a statement.[1]

–> Most people are not aware that data mining corporations like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and many others already slice and dice a person’s profile and sell it to other interests. Internet users do not get offers for the better credit cards if their credit history is too low; every time someone uses a search engine, their selections are marketed and the user begins getting advertisements related to that search; does anyone receive only one seed catalogue? And on and on.

While commercial profiling is a nuisance, the HUD violation against Facebook points out the dark side: interfering in one’s private life and intimate issues like health (Insurance companies already are converting policies to require the insured to participate in electronic tracking of everything about the insured; if one didn’t jog today, their premium may increase). As mariner has mentioned many times (and readers know this), if the public isn’t stringent about privacy law, someone else will live their lives for them – saying where they can live, what they can eat, select their spouse, create their budget, limit debt ceilings, alter the cost of retail items – all without the authority and without the awareness of the individual.

Profiling data has the largest profit margin of any industry. It is inexpensive to create and generates political and economic power by suggestion. It takes no effort to slip from suggestion to manipulation by controlling the perceived reality of the individual.

Ancient Mariner

[1] CityLab’s Kriston Capps has the story: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/03/facebook-discrimination-policy-housing-ads-hud-charges/585931/?utm_campaign=citylab-daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email&silverid=%25%25RECIPIENT_ID%25%25&utm_source=newsletter