Personal Data Will Shape Our Future — We Have To Decide How
Mark Zuckerberg was questioned by Congress last week about the 87 million or so Facebook profiles used by Cambridge Analytica to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. The EU has requested a similar conversation as they look into similar issues with the Brexit referendum and elections in Europe.
As these investigations into the role of social media and targeted ads in our political processes develop, we are waking up to just how much our technology now knows about us. We’re checking our Facebook ad settings and finding that the social network’s algorithms have placed us in boxes according to various aspects of who we are — our family and household structures, political views, social connections, habits, values, and so on.
In the decade or so since Facebook became ubiquitous, its functionality has expanded to the point that it is able to construct rudimentary psychometric profiles of its users in order to show us ad content specifically targeted to people in our demographic groups.
For many of us, this is a frightening revelation, and rightly so. This information has already been used to manipulate us, and there’s a natural urge to push back against the structures that accumulate such data. But fear may not be the most appropriate response.
