The way Meta gathers and processes not only user information, but also non-user information, from all corners of the internet is astonishing. Meta mainly uses this information for targeted ads, which in its core isn’t all that harmful. However, there appear to be cases in which social media is crawled to “tailor” a product, which is not desirable for consumers. E.g. when you watch a lot of car/motorcycle stunt content, it might ultimately mean that your next car insurance payment will be higher, because the insurer thinks that you might start doing that dumb stuff too. That is probably the least scary use case.

What really is the most dangerous is what you saw over the last couple of years, Social media platforms being used to manipulate people and push a specific (geo)political agenda. We also have echo chambers of communities that can potentially be harmful to society. All of this, combined with the data that Meta gathers is dangerous beyond comprehension.

Couple that to your statement “I don’t have to worry about someone using a 2 second clip of audio to scam my grandma into thinking I’m trapped in a foreign country and sending over thousands of dollars using Facebook.” Even without AI, this has happened over the past years using social media platforms. Scammers and thieves know when you are not at home, because you are posting those holiday pictures. When a data leak occurs, which happens quite often, scammers and thieves get access to your historical information and patterns, which can also be used to scam your grandma, or worse. It is quite easy to social hack someone when you know pretty much everything that happened in that persons life. “Hey grandma, sending this message from a strange phone number from Bali, since someone stole my phone on the beach, can you send over some money to buy a new one?”.

Not saying we shouldn’t use social media anymore, I am also posting this on one. But people should be mindful of the information that is out there.