*

Free. Your Facebook, your Instagram. The games on your phone, every single service provided to you free of cost*. 

Hello, asterisk my old friend. The be-all, end-all, catch-all caveat to cover all conditions. You are the physical manifestation of the User Privacy Agreement that no one reads and clicks "Agree" to continue. You just sit there in the corner, like the eye Big Brother keeps on us, and manage to coerce us into giving up many of our freedoms in return for the smile plastered on your face which screams "FREE". 

So consider this a PSA for everyone oblivious to the atrocities committed by companies providing "free*" services. It might not be as bad as I make it out to be, but that's up to you to decide. 

I don't know how many of you have read 1984 by George Orwell. It paints a very bleak picture of the potential dystopia caused by invasion of privacy and freedom. We aren't there yet, of course, but we're slowly getting there. Again, not as bad as I portray it, but please adjust for the potential writer's bias caused by my bleak mood. 

Selective truth is the buzzword here. Or is it clever conditioning to make sure that no one knows what they're getting into. Lulled into a false sense of security by the promise of a free service, which always evokes the feeling of safety, only to harvest what is truly ours. Our identities, our information. Preferences, ideas, perspectives, likes, dislikes. Everything that makes us unique from the scores and millions of others on this planet. All for them to come and pick and choose like taking apples from an orchard. Up for harvest. I mean, sale. 

It's kind of funny how we give them not only our time, and in many cases our money, but also our information, in exchange for keeping up with that one friend from high school who you had a crush on, or that person who you were always jealous of getting married, or even more time wasters like certain "journalistic" websites. We give them all of this, in return for something which is "free".

Wise up, maybe. As one of my friends always says," If the product is free, then you are what is being sold.".

Fin.