Here’s a thought-experiment that captures Facebook’s betrayal of users | Richard Ashby Wilson

Imagine if the postman read your mail and then sold your information to extremists who want to target you

Imagine that right now the postman is reading your mail and making a note of your most private thoughts and preferences. He notices that you lean slightly to the right and read the Wall Street Journal. He begins hawking your intimate information all over town and sells it to a newspaper further to the right of the WSJ. He observes you reading that new, more rightwing publication and then starts hawking again, and this time he sells your private information to someone more rightwing: a publication like, say, Breitbart.

Year after year, the postman continues selling to everyone, and one day you start receiving a far-right extremist magazine intent on destroying democratic institutions.

Richard Ashby Wilson is Associate Dean for Faculty Development & Intellectual Life and Distinguished Professor of Law and Anthropology at the University of Connecticut School of Law