Go Ahead, Post the Stupid Photo of Yourself From 10 Years Ago

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

Okay, bad news. Everything you do on the internet is tracked. Your information streams into massive databases that are then linked to one another. At least several companies have good models of your social networks, purchasing behavior, and, yes, your face. Your face 10 years ago and your face today.

Ten years ago, Facebook already had . As you uploaded pictures and tagged friends and, sell it to whoever wants it. They do all this to more effectively show you things you are likely to buy, in the form of advertisements in a feed or product recommendations. That’s literally how the internet works, and it goes to the very core of the new economy, as many smart people have been telling us for years, most recently Harvard Business School’s Shoshana Zuboff in her new book,