drilling rigs bring up oil at about $3 per barrel. Even in a depressed
market, that same oil sells for about fifty bucks per barrel.
In the heart of America’s growing gas belt, in Uniontown,
Pennsylvania, a company haggles with a farmer for the mineral rights
to his land... then drills deep into the earth, hoping to hit a certain
type of shale. This company has invested in fancy equipment, with
drills that can practically turn corners 10,000 feet underground. It’s
expensive. And if the company finds the shale, it has to surround it
with an industrial production, shattering the rock, pumping in
thousands of gallons of briny water, and capturing the natural gas that
breaks free. This all costs more than the oil equivalent of $30 per
barrel.
Now, would it make sense for Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil
company, to divert some of its resources to the fracking fields of
western Pennsylvania? Of course not, at least for economic reasons. It
would give up about $20 per barrel of profit. Why do that?
Facebook faces a similar question. The prime material—the oil—for
Facebook is the billions of identities it is following and getting to know
in ever-greater detail. The easy money is on the sure things in its
people portfolio. By comparison, virtual reality goggles, curing death,
laying fiber, self-driving cars, and other business opportunities
represent much longer odds. If people make it clear, with their clicks,
likes, and postings, that they hate certain things and love others, those
people are easy to sell to. Clear as day. Easy as oil in Arabia.
If I go into Facebook and click on an article about Bernie Sanders
and “love” one about Chuck Schumer, the machine, expending almost
no energy, can throw me in a bucket of liberal die-hards. If it wants to
devote a little more computing energy to the process, just to be extra
sure, it can see that I have the term Berkeley in my bio. So, it delivers
me, with great confidence, into the tree-hugger bucket.
The Facebook algorithm then proceeds to send me more liberal
pieces, and the company will make money as I click on them. News
feed visibility is based on four basic variables—creator, popularity,
type of post, and date—plus its own ad algorithm.^31 As I consume that
content, whether it’s think pieces from the Guardian, YouTube clips of
Elizabeth Warren expressing outrage at something, or my random