Privacy Does Matter!
Do we care about our privacy? Of course yes! Since our lives cannot be without social media and big data, our privacy starts to become the biggest concern. Can we trust all social platforms? We are not sure if the personal information we provided is safe enough. Whether the social platforms take serious of users’ privacy as confidential work will have a strong impact on users’ daily lives.
Driven by online privacy concerns, Apple began showing a pop-up window on iPhones with an updated iOS 14.0+ system that asked people to consent to be tracked by apps. This feature was called App Tracking Transparency (ATT). With the high concern about personal privacy, many users opt-out. The portion of tracked users fell from 73% at the start of 2021 to 32% by now. The data indicated that people do care a lot about their safety of privacy.
Apple’s privacy update made it harder to track iPhone users and target them with relevant marketing. Thus, E-commerce companies had to pay higher prices for digital advertising, which rose the costs of mobile ads. Apple’s privacy changes have added to the uncertainty that marketers face this year as the pandemic continues to impact consumer behavior.
At the same time, Facebook protested Apple’s update and told advertisers in a blog post that it was been underreporting ad performance on Apple iPhones, citing changes to the iOS operating system. Apple’s new tech threatened Facebook’s benefit because their revenue mostly came from mobile ads. Facebook is among the companies that have been forced to adapt to Apple’s privacy update.
Weeks later, Facebook was involved in a scandal that Frances Haugen, a data scientist, being a whistleblower, said in her 60 minutes interview that Facebook over and over again has shown it chooses profit over safety. Facebook leaked users’ privacy information to gain large revenue from advertisements and other potential channels. Through this scandal, Facebook raised privacy concerns to the public.
It reminded me of earlier news that happened in summer. Didi, a Chinese ride-hailing app, was blocked over a privacy breach by China. One of the country’s biggest ride-hailing services had been ordered off app stores over serious violations related to customer privacy. Didi was suspected of leaking users’ personal privacy information and movement while using the app. Although the company said that it would strive to rectify any problems and protect users’ privacy and data security and prevent cybersecurity risks, Didi still faced the problem that it had mishandled sensitive data about its users in China.
Privacy issues regarding social platforms are getting more common. It is more like a moral problem that companies should pay attention to. An unsafe environment for uses’ privacy can bring companies a lot of benefits, it can cause more problems and even harm users’ life safety. If we find out that our privacy is no longer safe anymore, we will start to worry about every piece of information we have stored in our phones or laptops.
