Shouldn’t Privacy be Personal?

Have you experienced advertisements related to your browsing history? I’ve been having that experience since I had my first laptop. At first, I thought that was amazing, feeling like someone knew me well and I could make a suitable purchase. However, I was young, innocent, and naive at that time. I discussed that with my friends, and I got the creepy and anxious feeling. I felt I was being watched, even though I stayed home alone. Privacy is important for us, we don’t want our personal stuff to be shared by others. We want our privacy to be personal, instead of shareable.

It is time for the regulation

A few years ago, the European Union started The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to regulate personal data within the EU. Two years after, California passed a digital privacy law, aiming to let consumers have more control over their personal information online. This is regarded as one of the most significant regulations in the United States. The legislation started being effective in January 2020. I call it the start of the regulation trend, and national regulation of the internet should follow by. It is hard to start because people are scared of regulations, but it is still possible. Also, it’s never too late to take action for protecting consumers’ privacy. It would be great if this can be the trend of privacy protection, and now it’s the right time.

How much regulation is needed?

We don’t need much regulation about the spread of misinformation and disinformation so far although those also give us many challenges. I believe the very first step is to protect our privacy. When companies collect our data, they should ask our permission, and they are supposed to keep it confidential unless consumers ask them for the data. This is very basic, consumers have the right to decide wherever their personal information go. Acxiom is one firm that sells personal data, and it had $1.1 billion in sales last year. For people who are willing to share their data, they should get some compensation by those companies. What I am saying is that it’s consumer’s right to decide whether their data is shared, not the companies. I consider Facebook and Google as media companies because they always post commercial advertisements for profit. Also, they are much more than a basic tech company because they have become so powerful. Facebook has 2.50 billion monthly active users, while Google has even more. They can easily change one’s opinion by showing them some related articles. If those are disinformation or misinformation, disaster happens. These days a lot of misinformation and disinformation appeared during COVID-19. Those fake news keep challenging us. Thus, I think the second step is to issue a credit scale to those media. A firm posts real news will have a much higher credit score than the one posts fake news.

Big companies’ responsibility

To make the regulation easier, big media companies should also take action. It’s not possible for a government to take control of everything, so regulate those companies to have self-regulation is a solution. They made tons of profit from their consumers, they can spend a small amount of their profit to take the responsibility to monitor misinformation and disinformation. We’d like to keep our privacy personal, we also want to read real news posted on trustable companies.

Citation

“General Data Protection Regulation.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Mar. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation.

Wakabayashi, Daisuke. “California Passes Sweeping Law to Protect Online Privacy.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 June 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/technology/california-online-privacy-law.html.

Morris, Jason, and Ed Lavandera. “Why Big Companies Buy, Sell Your Data.” CNN, Cable News Network, 23 Aug. 2012, www.cnn.com/2012/08/23/tech/web/big-data-acxiom/index.html.

“Facebook.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 Apr. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook.

Browne, Ryan. “What Europe’s Copyright Overhaul Means for YouTube, Facebook and the Way You Use the Internet.” CNBC, CNBC, 29 Mar. 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/03/28/article-13-what-eu-copyright-directive-means-for-the-internet.html.