Facebook Purchases Thought Monitoring Startup

Facebook spent a fortune to acquire a New York City based “neural monitoring” company, according to a post by its vice president of the augmented reality and virtual reality sectors.

“We spend a lot of time trying to get our technology to do what we want rather than enjoying the people around us,” Andrew Bosworth said. “We know there are more natural, intuitive ways to interact with devices and technology. And we want to build them. It’s why we’ve agreed to acquire CTRL-labs. They will be joining our Facebook Reality Labs team where we hope to build this kind of technology, at scale, and get it into consumer products faster.”

According to Bosworth, the product that Facebook is working to implement is just about as intrusive as it sounds. He promises that it will allow you to have “control over your digital life” simply by “intending to.”

“Here’s how it’ll work: You have neurons in your spinal cord that send electrical signals to your hand muscles telling them to move in specific ways such as to click a mouse or press a button,” he said. “The wristband will decode those signals and translate them into a digital signal your device can understand, empowering you with control over your digital life. It captures your intention so you can share a photo with a friend using an imperceptible movement or just by, well, intending to.”

Practically speaking, the device allows for the user to think about making a movement, and simply that thought will cause the intended response from the device. Current technology exists that allows one to make a physical move to control a device. For example, shaking an iPhone while using the text messaging application causes the phone to prompt the user about whether he or she wants to delete the text. CTRL-Labs’ product promises to remove the necessity for physical movement altogether.

“Facebook has been working on brain computing projects for a while now,” according to Engadget. “Back in 2017, it announced it was developing brain computer interfaces that will allow users to type using just their minds.”

The tech website insists that such technology is “still very much in its early stages.”

The development of technology that understands one’s thoughts has obvious potential consequences – the main one being that “thought crimes” will actually become a reality. While we may not have to worry about that just yet, Facebook and other Big Tech titans already have ways of controlling which thoughts are accessible on their platforms.

Users like our own Laura Loomer have been banned from Facebook for Orwellian “wrongthink” simply for being outspoken conservatives. Those who harbor conservative viewpoints have been known to be run off of social networks, which in turn causes self-censorship of active users.

Loomer is currently fighting back against all of the Big Tech platforms that have arbitrarily banned her, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently decided to hear her case against the Silicon Valley giants, a step in the right direction in holding Big Tech accountable for its censorship of conservatives.