What does Facebook know about you? Do you care?

I am a reluctantly happy user of Facebook. So many of its qualities are fabulous. I love being able to click on the feed of a friend or family member and find out what’s happening in their lives. I love getting up-to-date information from groups that I follow. I love being able to spread my own news, both business and personal, in a fun, interactive way.

But like many users, I am extremely skeptical of giving away my privacy to a corporation. In fact, I’d say I’m probably more skeptical than most avid users of Facebook. I try very hard not to post much public information, I have never given Facebook my birthdate or the identities of relatives who don’t share my last name, and I never, ever click on ads or apps within Facebook.

What Facebook knows about me

Apparently my diligence has paid off. Facebook, in response to a number of factors including pressure from the EU and that whole “oops, we let Russians subvert our elective process” thang, is rolling out a new feature where you can find out what they know about you.

I can imagine that for some of my readers and many of my Facebook friends, what they know about you—meaning, the information about you that they have sold to random corporations you have no knowledge of—will be shocking. As soon as I started using Facebook, I noticed that many of my very intelligent, well-educated friends were giving Facebook their lives: real birth dates, dates and birthplaces of their children, companies they do business with, etc. It shocked me that they weren’t more circumspect.

However, what Facebook revealed to me yesterday is more shocking. Please scoot to the edge of your seat now:

I, one of the palest, limp-hairedest, blue-eyedest residents of California, am African-American.

Or, um, maybe that just means I have an affinity for African-American culture? Not sure. But it definitely gave me a giggle.

Not because I have any problem being identified this way. As you may know, I play jazz, which many believe to be the single greatest contribution to American culture by any ethnic group. I’m a writer and love many of the great African-American writers who have enriched our canon. Although I strongly agree that white privilege affects all of us no matter how we try to resist it, I feel that as very pale people go I do a pretty good job of taking people for who they are and not pre-judging them by the physical characteristics of their ancestors.

However, I giggled because Facebook really doesn’t get me. And Facebook doesn’t get me because I haven’t let it get at me.

More things Facebook got wrong

It’s all relative, Facebook. Yeah, I did try to get away from my family by moving to California, then the whole darn lot of them followed me, contributing greatly to the Great California Population Explosion that makes me fume when I sit in traffic Every Darn Day.

And, I will remind you, Facebook, I live in Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz, my politics count as, well, conservatively moderate. I know people who think that the government is dousing us with chemicals from the tailpipes of jets. I know people who believe that we should have laws making it illegal to disagree on certain topics. Believe me, “very” is definitely relative!

The state of my relationship with Facebook

I described myself as “reluctantly happy.” I think that a Facebook-like platform is an important part of what the Internet does for us. I love the way it connects me with the physical world, the way it connects me with the past, the way it gives me ideas for the future.

But Facebook doesn’t have “rights.” Corporations are not people. People are people and have rights. I’m thrilled that the EU is taking this up, given that our government is too dysfunctional to do much of anything. I’m hoping California takes it up, too, since our market is so huge the pressure is too much for a corporation to resist. (See the auto emissions argument playing out right now. And yes, I know that it’s unlikely that CA will do anything to resist the tech industry.)

But aside from what our governments can do, we all have a personal responsibility to know what Facebook is taking from us and not to give it willingly if we don’t want to.

Recommitting to my Facebook use principles

Here’s the plan I’ve been following that has led Facebook to believe I am African-American and estranged from my family:

1. Don’t ever give Facebook personal information it doesn’t deserve. No birthdate. No phone number. No family associations.
2. Keep all personal information private to “friends only.”
3. Don’t accept “friends” that I don’t have some sort of relationship with IRL (some quite distant, but I could actually knock on these people’s doors!).
4. Don’t click on ads. Ever.
5. Don’t use associated apps. Ever.
6. Never use Facebook to log into other platforms, no matter how tempting it may be.
7. Always view my News Feed sorted by “most recent” rather than recommended. This isn’t a popularity contest.

So far, it’s worked. Seeya in my News Feed.