Self-Education Is Our Best Bet in the Fight Against the Panopticon
Regulation is slow and Big Tech has its own interests, so it’s up to us to understand what we opt in to
Originally, this story was going to be about how we can avoid Big Data Brother online — or at least be a little less vulnerable to it. I had several points planned out: an explanation of how ad retargeting works, including why Facebook ads feel like Facebook is listening to you through your smartphone’s microphone, plus a handful of tips, tricks, and best practices to deflect at least a minimum of surveillance from social media and other digital data-gathering companies. It was supposed to be a simple, straightforward “digital hygiene and you” piece.
Then Cambridge Analytica happened.
In March, it was discovered that political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which ran data operations for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign (and counts the conservative billionaires in the Mercer family among its major donors), had been able to gather and improperly retain user data from an estimated 50 million Facebook users through a quiz app downloaded by just 270,000 users. A few weeks later, that estimate skyrocketed to 87 million users, reportedly including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s own private personal…
