Are You There, User? It’s Me, Facebook!

It was 8:03 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 12, and my body had sent me a notification, via my throbbing skull: You’re probably getting the flu. Facebook, too, had just notified me, via an alert on my phone, of its own plan for me: “You and Rosie Schaap are celebrating two years of friendship on Facebook.” Over the next few days, my body followed up with a series of messages: you have a sore throat; you have a fever; you have the chills. In that same period, Facebook emailed me four times. “See Rosie Schaap’s message and other notifications you’ve missed,” it demanded on Thursday, then on Friday, then again on Sunday and once more on Tuesday.

https://www.nytimes.com