People take selfies because they are indoctrinated in modern humanist nonsense to think their mundane "individual" experiences have relevance in social sphere. Selfies are nothing more than an expression of narcissitic, Western capitalist, pornographic social culture that predominantly stresses self-gratification. There is no "conspiracy" to collect data, as the idiot drones naturally step-over each other, screaming to be noticed, by informing society of their mundane, useless, irrelevant existence in hourly updates on their "social media" sites. In fact, the portable cameras on mobile phones were not faced towards the user, until the manufacturers noticed the inordinate amount of narcissistic self-worship in the users, several years into producing these mobile phone gadgets. Contrary to popular myths, those who govern have little to no interest in the plebian lifestyles of their drones.