Infographic: What You Look Like to a Social Network

The New Yorker - December 16, 2013 

It’s hard to escape the sense that we provide social networks with too much information about ourselves. They know our names, our faces, our friends, our favorite music and movies, our employment history. Since they profit by using our online identities to sell targeted advertising, it’s only fair to ask how networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram view us.
In short, they see people as data, breaking their users down into categories that fit neatly into a machine-readable stream of information. This data is gathered not only from what users share on the social networks themselves but also through programs that plug into these networks by way of an application programming interface, better known as an A.P.I. For instance, think of any time you signed in to a Web site or an application with your Facebook or Twitter login, used a Facebook or Twitter app that was made by a third-party company like Zynga, or clicked a Like button at the top of an article. In different ways, those applications all talk to Facebook or Instagram social networks via their A.P.I.s.

To read more...