GIS Specialist SME NG

Position: GIS Specialist SME NG911
Location: New York

The Digital Dustbin:
How Social Media Platforms Undermine Surveyors, Erase Our Knowledge, and Profit from Our Expertise  I. Introduction:
Surveyors, Social Media, and the Illusion of Connection  Once upon a time—though not so long ago—social media arrived with a promise that felt revolutionary: connection. Platforms like Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter (now X) vowed to bring professionals together, collapsing distance, breaking down communication barriers, and making it easier ... than ever to share knowledge. And for the land surveying profession—an industry built on collaboration, mentorship, and collective experience—it sounded like the perfect fit.

Finally, a place to swap stories from the field, troubleshoot technical problems, and pass down hard-earned knowledge from one generation to the next.  But what surveyors got instead wasn’t connection. It was extraction.  Today, Facebook and its competitors are less a gathering place for professionals and more a digital graveyard—a place where the knowledge of thousands of surveyors is mined, monetized, and buried by platforms designed not to preserve expertise, but to harvest it.

Every shared thread, every detailed equipment breakdown, every hard-won legal interpretation becomes another data point in a machine optimized for engagement and profit, not preservation or education.  Surveyors post photos, videos, case studies, and questions, believing they are contributing to a living knowledge base. What actually happens is simpler—and more sinister. That content is scraped by algorithms, indexed for ad targeting, and then rapidly buried under a tidal wave of newer, less meaningful content.

The average lifespan of a post on Facebook is a matter of hours—after that, it might as well not exist. And unlike a library or an archive, there is no system in place to resurface the valuable knowledge that slips beneath the waves.  What’s worse is the illusion of ownership social media creates. Surveyors often assume that because they posted it, because their name is on it, that the information is somehow theirs.

But the fine print tells a different story. Anything posted to these platforms becomes the property of the platform—to be used, repurposed, sold, or deleted rs of field experience, hard-earned knowledge, historic photos, best practices—they all disappear into the data vaults of companies like Meta, whose only loyalty is to their shareholders.  And while surveyors build this digital treasure trove for free, the platforms quietly get rich.

Worse still, AI companies increasingly scrape this data—yes, including those equipment specs, boundary law discussions, and RTK drone tips—to train the very models being designed to replace licensed professionals. It's happening in real-time. What was meant to educate peers is now being used to automate the profession itself.  That is where Land Surveyors United comes in—not just as a platform, but as a response.

A living archive designed by surveyors, for surveyors, LSU is everything Facebook isn’t: searchable, preservable, and owned by the very community it serves. It is structured not for clicks, not for likes, but for the long haul—for education, mentorship, and legacy.  The argument is simple: surveyors cannot afford to keep giving their knowledge away to companies designed to exploit it.

What we share should be preserved, not buried. What we know should build the profession, not Big Tech’s AI models. And the only way forward is to choose our own platform, our own archive, and our own future.  II. The Data Extraction Problem:
How Social Media Companies Farm Surveyors for Profit  For most surveyors, posting online feels harmless—another photo from the field, another equipment tip shared, another conversation about changing regulations or best practices. But behind the screens, a far more calculated process is unfolding. Platforms like Facebook, Linked In, and Instagram aren’t neutral spaces for knowledge sharing—they’re data extraction machines, designed to mine every interaction for profit.

And in the case of land surveyors, the extraction isn’t just personal—it’s professional, technical, and potentially…