Does Facebook and other social media spy on you?

For context, this is a question I answered on Quora

Yes, and if you think this is just a “conspiracy theory” you are a willfully ignorant moron grade A corporate bootlicker. The standard business model of “free” social media is to mine your data and sell it to advertisers and third party brokers I.e. you are the product and that is why it is free.

For over a decade, Meta (FB and Instagram) has been using a tracking code called Meta pixel that the got web developers to embed in their website to feed web browsing metadata and cookies on Android devices back to their apps so they can sell this data to advertisers on their platform so they can put targeted ads on your feed. This web tracking method works even when browsing in incognito mode or hiding your real IP address with a VPN because it exploits a localhost used to test apps and websites on the device itself.

As I relayed two years ago in a prior post, Meta used Meta Pixel embedded on a Louisiana healthcare provider’s website to take sensitive medical data from patients who use the website to schedule their doctor’s appointments and sell it to third party data-brokers and advertisers.

Facebook also spies on your private messages, sent via messenger, on behalf of the FBI and DHS reporting any subversive anti-government sentiment to the Fed which they then turn around and use as a justification for field office subpoenas I.e. national security letters to obtain your private messages legally.

And as I mentioned in The merger of State and Surveillance Capitalism, the Feds, especially DHS agencies, often buy your data from data-brokers as an end around your 4th amendment privacy rights and AI software that can hone in on your data from an anonymized data block. So if you aren’t aware that social media is a tool of warrantless mass surveillance its time to wake the fuck up, face the facts, and either delete it or use it like you are being watched because you are.