THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ME.....

        As my post title suggests,this is a real life incident that happened to me dated 9th June,2011 . Not at a single line in the post should u doubt about the above line...!! I assure you no part of this post is imaginary or artificial and neither have I shared this post for mere likes or comments .. Its just that I thought I should share this incident with the readers around .

Disclaimer's Notice : The events or conversations depicted in this post are not fictitious at all. Any similarity or resemblance to any person living or dead would not be merely coincidental for sure... :D

I am not sure if you guys will find this post funny , interesting, useful or cheap...But since this happened to me, I cant help myself  but only share it..Please pardon for the grammatical errors if there are any... :)

                 It all started when I returned home after enjoying our coaching class reunion and logged in facebook . I came over a friend request of a person named Disha Jain . I know I am a smart and handsome guy :)  but never imagined a girl with no mutual friend between us both would send me a friend request .! Arousing suspicion in my veins I visited her profile and was impressed to see her pretty profile picture . I had already made up my mind to befriend her seeing her profile pic but being a responsible facebook user, I decided to investigate more . I could hardly find her friends' list at first glance as there only one friend existed in her list . His name was Rahul . 

Her info :
College : Shivaji College (New Delhi)
High School : St. Xaviers' High School,New Delhi .
No religious view nor any political interest . No activity nor any interests
I smiled a bit looking at list of the movies she likes. There were 7-8 hollywood movies in the list,all released in 2011 including Kung Fu Panda 2 along with Inception and Tron Evolution.!! I bumped ahead to see Rahul's profile and to my utter surprise he too had only 4 friends..!! Starting to believe that the profile may be fake I decided to befriend her just to have some fun as I would always have the option to unfriend har at any point of time. 


Within a minute of befriending her chat box popped out with a usual starter 'hi.!' ..I smiled and started the conversation which follows as below : (comments in bracket are parts of my thoughts....)
She : hi..!
Me : hi (simplicity follows)
She : Are u from DAIICT ? 
Me : Ya I am .
She : You knw I jst missed getting into DAIICT by some marks ....I really wanted to get in .
Me : Sad..indeed.. What was ur aieee ranking ?'
She : Dont ask that ever..It embrasses me.
Me : ok fine

(The very first caught : Why would anyone missing out by some marks to get into one of the best institutions in India would study in Shivaji College of Delhi? )

She : I had been to DAIICT once and I was impressed by the students there .
Me : Hmmm....

(I was feeling really good to hear that..!)

She :  So what do u study in ICT ??

(Now that was wierd...She has already met the students at DAIICT..I really wonder what she talked to them about ..! :D)

Me : Its basically a course comprising CS + EC...

(Frankly speaking we ourselves haven't got the whole idea of what we are studying there yet.But since its question questioning ur dignity u r ought to answer smthing.. :D )

She : Hey I am new to facebook . Can u help me building up my profile ?

(Am I a broker on facebook or what??)

Me : What do u mean by that ?
She : I mean can u suggest me some of ur friends ?? plz ..
Me : Frankly u dont convince me as a real person .Its quite responsible job to suggest friends as later they would question me if I know u personally...I hope u understand...
She : Dude , if its fake profile why would I keep pro pic of myself?

(Huh ..? U can always have ur friend's pic downloaded frm smwhere and put it up as ur profile pic . Not convincing answer enough...!!)

Me : But still I m unsure if its real person ....
She : Do u have any gf ?

(World has become so fast forward..!! :D)

Me : No I don't ...
She : Any crush?? Dont mind jst asking....

(I would like to crush ur mind for time being.. And even my crush exists why would I tell u?? :D)

Me : Yaa I do...(Gave this answer for fun to know the reaction....btw dont expect me to disclose the real answer here... :D )
She : Ohh.. May I know her name ??
Me : I cant disclose it...sorry.... 
She : Its okk....Btw do u know Bhavya Bansal ??
Me : Yeah ..He is my batchmate ...He knows u??

(Surely she must have peeped into my friends' list..!! Smart step!)

She : May b...I have met him once long time ago...
Me : Ok...When and where?
She : Met him in ajmer ....when I was in 6th or 7th...

(If she has met him why hasn't she befriended him prior to me??? As a part of my luck , Bhavya was online too ...So i decided to enquire him in other chat window...)

Me : Bhavya do u knw or recall any girl named Disha Jain ?? She sayz she has met u in Ajmer long time ago...
Bhavya : Nahi jaanta...Aur bhai main Ajmer gaya hi nahi hu ...! Fake hai be....
Me : Thanx....

(The answer was as expected..!! I returned to her chat box )

Me : I have talked to him and he is saying he has never been to ajmer..!!
She (after a pause of min) : U can believe whatever u want ...Let this profile be FAKE and I am saying it to u nw...U r pathetic....
Me : And u knw what, go to hell whoever u are and stop fooling people around on facebook.... !! 

       Saying this I first reported it to facebook as a fake profile and unfriended her.....

Life is indeed full of surprises and I experienced it again...Though it was kinda weird experience,I have learnt a lot many things from it...I don't say don't accept strange friend requests..Trust..but verify it.! So if u do encounter any fake profile be sure to report it to Facebook before unfriending......

This incident isn't registered on any other blog or site neither there is any record of it...Its just exists in my mind,blog and Bhavya's mind who involved in this incident unwillingly...:) I don't know its right or wrong,person was he or she but personally speaking , ' Jo bhi tha achha tha..!! '   :) :) :)

 

 

WHAT ARE FACEBOOK & GOOGLE HIDING ?

INFORMATION HIDING 

"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa ."            

       —>  Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder 

Here is an eye opening post on how the 'hidden rise of personalization on the Internet' is controlling-and limiting-the information we consume....Shocking but true.... :(

There is no standard 'GOOGLE' anymore and no more does the genuine so called 'most popular social network website 'FACEBOOK' exists either....

Programs do what you tell them, which is not always what you expect them to do. The Google search engine that you expect to find you the best and most informative news about a given query is really finding you the best and most informative news about a given subject, as it understands "best" and "informative," as what is relevant to you . So if you want to create a search tool that finds the news you need to know, rather than the news you want to read, where do you begin..?

Here is an experiment by me showing discrepancy in google search :

 I and one friend of mine decided that we should search the query "Gujarat" on our machines using same browser and same search engine "Google" . Here are the screenshots of results we received :

Same query but different results with different search times....

You could say that on December 4, 2009, the era of personalization began.

In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on.

You all would be surprised to know that Google uses almost fifty-seven tracking signals — everything from where you were logging in from to what browser you were using to what you had searched for before — to make guesses about who you were and what kinds of sites you’d like. Even if you were logged out, it would customize its results, showing you the pages it predicted you were most likely to click on.

One fine morning while chatting with my friend on facebook I asked him to type in query 'jihadi' and send me the screenshot of whatever result he has got . I too searched the same from my machine.

When I compared the screenshots of our results it was to my utter surprise that both our search results were different ....his result contained 'The bin Laden aftermath: The Internet jihadis react ' related news while mine showed general info about jehadi ; their networks and 'jehadi suicide bombers'......This was like a completely different world from one person to another.

You don't have a good picture of the world. You don't know what you see is just the part of the picture that reflects what you want to see, not the whole picture. What is being revealed to you about the world is based on who you are....

The top 50 websites collect an average of 64 bits of personal information each time we visit — and then custom-design their sites to conform to our perceived preferences. You must have noticed that whenever we log into our account on Youtube , we are shown a list of recommended channels and videos .Their selection based on the videos already watched by you .What impact will this online filtering have on the future ??


And especially on Facebook this is a problem, because the way that information is transmitted on Facebook is with the ‘like’ button is completely unknown to you .These like buttons are the ones prioritizing our information on Facebook. It’s easy to click ‘like’ on ‘I became the topper this semester’ or ‘I really cooked delicious food today.’ But it’s very hard to click ‘like’ on ‘war in Afghanistan enters its 10th year' or 'Baba Ramdev & Anna Hazare to go on a hunger strike in opposition to corruption'....

All you must have been aware of the new Facebook settings introduced which shows the news feeds on your profile only from certain friends classifying other friends as conservative ones. Moreover Facebook doesnt have the courtesy to inform its billion of users about the new settings. 'Top news' ends up being mostly videos and news posts shared by other friends since video and web links tend to get the most response as well. It suggests that Facebook merely weighs the relationships in its 'Top news' algorithm . Also Facebook has the power to hide certain friends' requests without our own consent .

MORE PRIORITIZING TO HARASS YOU 

• Already launched social news site XYDO, aims to prioritize and organize online news based on each user’s social graph and interests.XYDO gathers news from tens of thousands of online sources, matches articles against what users are sharing and talking about on Facebook and Twitter, and then sorts pages by vote counts. Total vote count includes onsite upvotes as well as Facebook or Twitter shares. The user can view news made by popular by the entire XYDO network, see stories popular in their social graph or view trending news items by topic.

• In 2008, the company Microsoft launched an iPhone app that pulls feeds into one app, learns what kind of content the user likes, and then prioritizes that kind of content.   

• Twitter extension 'Mashable' for Chrome that adds a tab to Twitter to prioritize tweets based on user behavior.

INVISIBLE FILTERS

Here is a core of Eli Pariser's (he is the author of the best seller of the week 'The filter bubble : What the Internet is hiding from you' ) argument:

"We really need to get away from that silly idea that code doesn't care about anything."

Personalized filters and algorithms are controlling the Web, creating individual packets of information for each of us. Facebook - the primary news source for an increasing number of Americans - prioritizes the links it believes will appeal to you so that if you are a liberal, you can expect to see only progressive links. Even an old-media like 'The Washington Post' devotes the top of its home page to a news feed with the links your Facebook friends are sharing. Behind the scenes data companies are tracking your personal information ranging from political interests to the color you painted your living room . :O


In such a personalized world, we are fed only news that is pleasant, familiar, and appealing to our beliefs and because these filters are invisible, we won't know what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what future are we exposed to, leaving less room for creativity, innovation and the exchange of ideas.


Personalization would destroy the Internet's original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.... :(

Where are we gonna waste our time when the web becomes intelligent?