Crowdsourcing Can Fix Our Data & Privacy Woes
I do a magic trick for my kids where I repeatedly smash a grape on my head, which then pops out of my mouth. Kids love it, and many adults can’t entirely figure out how I’m doing it either. [Spoiler] I use two grapes and a simple slight. There are even a number of times in the trick where both grapes are exposed for anyone to see…but no one ever does. Why? Because everyone is focused on the one grape.
In my experience, the solutions to big challenges often aren’t found through better problem solving. Instead, they emerge only after we re-imagine and question the fundamental assumptions that shape the possibilities we are able to explore.
When it comes to “personal information” and big data, so many of the problems we’re now facing as a society stem from a fundamental misinterpretation of how we view this incredible resource. These problems won’t be solved by better engineering or new privacy policies. They require a fundamental shift in our understanding of what big data is, which will allow us to see its much greater actual value.
One of the most important moments for our company, Public Democracy, came with a shift in how we understood our massive behavioral database, which contained the responses and real world commitments from tens of millions of Americans. Public Democracy is a purpose-driven company with a culture built around asking why more than what, and if we should before if we can. We built our data for a purpose and to help us accomplish specific goals for social good organizations like Oxfam and the U.S. Census. But we originally approached those goals using traditional understandings of what data was and how it could be used.
Our breakthrough came from recognizing our Values Data™ was more than a better way to sell people things or feed mathematical algorithms. We recognized that it was actually a repository of intent, hope, and agency, reflecting moments of connection and commitment from tens of millions of Americans over the past decade.
This was more than just a change in semantics. Perspective and presuppositions matter. Once we understood our data for what it truly was, entire new horizons opened up for us in digital engagement and social understanding that we never would have seen had we continued in the limiting context of viewing data merely as a targeting tool for advertising.
What came next was amazing. Solutions began to emerge for combating opioid addiction, bridging partisan/ideological divides, disrupting human trafficking and white nationalism, uncovering unique economic strengths in poorer neighborhoods, and identifying shortfalls and new opportunities for rural broadband. With all of that came a realization that we weren’t the ones finding these new solutions.
Instead, we had just started paying attention to what the people already knew and were solving for together. The “crowd” had found these answers and were marking the paths to them in the data. We just needed to look at the data differently.
Traditionally, personal data (cookies, online/mobile behavior, purchase history, social networks, demography, etc) has had a single driving purpose. It is used as a tool by those with power and money to better influence the behavior of individuals, primarily to get us to buy or look at things. This system commoditizes attention through measured ad impressions, assigning value based on the number of times someone can pay to try to convince us to do what they want.
That’s not necessarily bad. We need to buy things, and I’d rather see better ads. But data gets built and is valued based on its perceived purpose. So the market develops more data around attention than commitment (see this great Medium post on why that matters). It also creates more data around those who buy more than those who buy less. That means people who spend the most time online and those who can buy the most things are worth more to the system. They are understood better by it, too, because the system is being used — and is largely understood as — a means to affect their future behavior.
This also means that the system and those paying into it perceive each of us merely as products — or at the very least, as markets. Each of our roles as data generators in the system is to be sold or sold to.
But that exact same system is also the ultimate crowdsourcing tool for solving the biggest challenges facing business, society, and government.
When it comes to big data, the individual solutions and paths being explored by each of us are, together, generating incredible answers and solving for massive problems. The problem is, no one is paying attention. Right now, the system only cares about the destination if it helps an algorithm better identify the path each of us will be on so it can predict the best time to show us an ad along the way.
But when we shift the focus of data from personal data to communal data — changing from me to we — patterns begin to emerge that point to social solutions. The crowd is already finding solutions. We just aren’t seeing them because we are focused on just one grape.
Crowdsourcing in the traditional, physical sense involves posing a problem to groups and individuals who then each try to solve and learn from each other. The fundamental premise is that the diverse perspectives and increased processing power of the crowd will uncover new solutions by exploring new directions and by dramatically increasing available human capital. A challenge is issued, people self-organize, and the crowd tries so many options that someone succeeds. That exact process is happening at a massive scale online every day.
Sometimes the solutions are found intentionally when online communities seek better paths to information or real world outcomes. When enough individuals uncover the same solution, that can create a path in the data as well. But often, solutions arise through a more passive form of crowdsourcing. The patterns of everyday life and the choices and commitments people are making each moment end up illuminating new data pathways and insights into the way we all solve, connect, help, and care.
Perhaps the greatest resource we have on this planet is each other. Yet we approach most challenges from the perspective of a few of us trying to solve problems for the many. A better option would be to pay more attention to solutions the people have already found. Big data lets us do that. We just need to rethink the way we think about our crowd of data creators.
When we shift our perspective to view personal data through a crowdsourcing solutions lens, rather than as an ad impression generation tool, each of us shift from products to collaborators. Instead of looking mostly for differences to segment us, suddenly data around our similarities and common purpose become more valuable. Furthermore, in a crowdsourcing context, there is less of a need to track individuals through their individual data. The real value in the system comes from identifying pathways and behavioral patterns that are not dependent on PII.
The intent, hope, connections, and movement of the people reflected in the data creates its own “hive” pattern, showing where the crowd wants to go and what they wish to solve for. That is a dramatic change in perspective from our current system, which is constantly being optimized to help advertisers better get us where they want us to go.
A few years ago, I started beekeeping as a hobby. Bees are worth mentioning in any conversation because they are cool, but I’m doing so here because a healthy colony of bees will cumulatively fly the equivalent of 60 times around the globe each year collecting honey. Early in the season, the bees head out in all directions, and many come back empty-handed (or empty corbiculaed, as the case may be). But some bees find flowers and water. Those bees show the path to others, who then show the path (sometimes slightly improved) to others. And more and more bees head to the good stuff.
That’s basically how the internet and personal data works too. All of us little worker bees head out in search of information, or distraction, or just on a drive to the grocery store (what we tell our phones and where we are in physical space matters, too). Each of our paths is tracked and teach the system where the “good stuff” is. The algorithms that power the internet only know what matters and who wants what by watching countless virtual (and physical) journeys and learning from each. Our current systems are breaking down because all that knowledge is being used so advertisers can find the “bees” en route to the good stuff and pay to point them elsewhere. It doesn’t have to (ahem) bee that way.
Understood correctly, big data becomes a giant map, largely freed from the confines of space and time, comprised of trillions upon trillions of pathways we’ve all charted that point to all kinds of answers and solutions.
What are the solutions to Russian hackers and racist trolls? Look for the paths when the crowd ignores those temptations and continues on to the good stuff, and for the forking points that bring people who have been pulled into those angry orbits back from the abyss.
How can we develop deeper understanding and new solutions for health crises like opioids or Type II diabetes? Follow the PII-free paths (rather than the individuals themselves) created by people heading into crisis. Identify when and how they got on that path and the points where some took a dangerous turn and others did not. Then look for the smaller paths a few who took the dangerous turn found which lead back to a healthier place.
Do you want to understand how a new business can succeed or where to invest? You could look at prior business sales data or real estate analyses. Or you could just look at what all the people living in your market are telling the internet each day about what they are uniquely well-suited to accomplish, most need, and prefer to do.
When we understand big data for what it truly is, we gain access to the communal wisdom and diversity of insight from the crowd. We also gain a better understanding of the worth of each individual data creator. At a time when so many feel isolated and yearn for purpose, it’s worth helping users understand how they —along with their virtual and physical neighbors — are uncovering new solutions that can change our world for the better.
Right now, most of the wisdom in the crowd is passive. But imagine if we could combine passive crowdsourcing from big data with active problem solving and ideation from the most engaged members of that crowd? Imagine using data — not just to sell — but to unlock deeper understanding of what works and doesn’t in communities, and doing so in ways that increasingly allow people to share in the value created from that understanding.
That’s what Public Democracy is doing. It’s a mission reflected in our name.
The potential for agency, purpose, and unimagined breakthroughs is before all us. All it takes is a change in perspective.
