Your Recommended Article For Today
An exploration of how data privacy agreements and collection affect everyday users
As the 8 hours of work on Friday snails to completion, songs on your playlist change from mellow to rave. When your social circle wakes up to the weekend, an hour to freedom, you hear the notifications you want to. The lucky ones with shorter hours are already on the loose, planning the next two days.
Finally, as you head out of the office an hour later, your news feed mentions a restaurant around the corner that your friends reviewed on social media. A four-star rating from the foodie in your group warrants a visit. Getting into the bus back home, you open your preferred red and white video streaming app to find your recommended video — a full technical review of the phone you’ve always wanted. A few videos later, you decide to try out the dictionary app that seems to magically predict your next word, or words.
As you get out of the bus and climb the stairs to your place on the second floor, you remember an advert on that website for a new online fashion store that’s throwing an all-out sale this weekend. You unlock your door and sit down on your couch to unwind, before buying that trendy outfit shown in the advert that seemed to be tailor-made for you. You then head out to the restaurant mentioned in your newsfeed for dinner. On the cab back home, you wonder how to exploit the new phone you just bought when a notification startles you: ‘Hope you enjoy the night ;)’
God mode is watching.
With the emphasis on data and information on the rise, market shares and spoils are in favor of the company that can exploit it the most effectively. Data collected from everyday browsing, social media platforms, and other services are used extensively for targeted marketing, demographic research, trend analysis, and social influence.
When a website, app or service is given permission to use cookies or collect data, it basically allows the provider of the service to collect data that does not come under ‘Personally Identifiable Information’, or any data that does not identify the end-user or give away any of their personal information such as social security number, credit card details or anything on those lines. Despite being called non-identifiable data, this includes the device being used, the specifics of the app and the device, the location and other information that doesn’t have a name tag on it, but can be related to the user. This data is used to streamline the experience of the user, and for targeted marketing.
Data collected by service providers is legally sellable to advertisers without notifying the user of the device from which it is collected, and contains user identity, location, links clicked or visited, and any online conversations. All the services we use have well-documented privacy policies in place that explain how this data is collected and used. Despite all of this, the data that is voluntarily handed over assuming anonymity can still be traced back to its owners. This is done by comparing data collected from different websites and apps for patterns and similarities.
The data that isn’t personally identifiable information is so valuable to companies and service providers that these companies value their users at $733 at Amazon to $182 at Google and $28 at Zynga. This valuation reflects the type of company. For instance, for service providers/social media companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn, each person is worth between $70 and $180 whereas to companies providing goods and/or services (Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, etc), this value rises to around $600. The disparity in worth arises mainly due to how much data these companies collect and trade. Being the biggest tech giant in the lot, Google has the resources and ability to collect data that dwarfs even companies like Yahoo ($70 per person). In the goods/services sector, Amazon values its customers at a weighty $733 compared to Groupon’s $28 per person. This variation in value is reflected in Amazon’s customer personalization, other services such as music and streaming platforms, cloud computing section, and most recently, voice assistant.
The question that arises with such access to information is whether this can be used to target certain sections or groups of people to alter their perspective. This takes place in varying degrees in daily life. Whether you decided to try out a product because you saw multiple recommendations on a social media site or sign for a petition, there is always something at stake for these large companies. Facebook has a disturbing history of psychological experimentation on its users, starting from social advertising to social selection to massive-scale emotional contagion that involved altering the mood of the users of the network. Some of these experiments are harmless that simply judge the reach of a product whereas some are of questionable ethics and morals.
This monopoly on information is not exclusive to the tech industry. As recently as February last year, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) accepted that retail store, Tesco, knows more about its customers than they do about their patients. Tesco had details about customers’ purchases, store visiting frequency, localities, and other related details. In contrast, the NHS fails to have data regarding prescribed medicines, implants, or medical history.
All of this leads up to a dangerous game played by the tech giants and services that control every device we own and provide every service that we avail. What this finally comes down to is how much of our data do we allow them to take and how much it means to us. It is not the legality of the actions that matter right now, but the morality.
If it is fine by you to allow a third party to dictate what your preferred songs or movies are, then go ahead and permit the app to track your every movement and your every bucket list selection. Who knows, maybe this was indeed your recommended article for today.
