Privacy, Authority, and Ownership of our Online Identities
In 1872, long before the web, Friedrich Engel theorized that the existence of increasingly powerful technology will create a need for increased authority and regulation. (Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics). This theory was highly contested, but as tech giants have taken control over our online identities, concerns about the power social platforms have over us and our rights to privacy are more common than ever.
Docu-dramas like The Social Dilemma paint social media apps as omniscient algorithms that can manipulate us into using their platforms addictively. These algorithms know us to our core, knowing exactly what to place in our feeds to keep us scrolling. Tech companies create detailed demographic profiles about every user based on their account history and trail of cookies on the web, and we can’t use most services without allowing those data collection practices.
I wondered what kind of person my accounts think I am, so I took to Google to find out. Google shares ad personalization data with users in account setting s— you can log in to find your ad persona here.
The photo above shows my demographic data on Google. I’ve turned off location services and search history, so my profile isn’t very accurate. According to Google, I am an 18–34 year-old man who enjoys cars and American football, when in reality, I’m an 18–34 year-old woman who doesn’t have a car and has never made it through an entire football game at her Big Ten university.
The inaccuracy of my profile was pleasantly surprising, but If I’d allowed the default levels of data saving, I could’ve searched through an interactive map of every location Google had recorded for my profile as well as all of my web/app history. Even if all this data is only being used for targeted ads, and even if it predicts my identity somewhat incorrectly, this level of surveillance does not sit well with me — and this is only one of my many social profiles.
Privacy concerns are front and center in the tech industry for this reason. Every tech corporation will tell you that they don’t sell your data. Instead, they sell access to user data. Tech giants like Google want to convince users that they are in control of their own privacy, but in reality, without regulation of private companies’ access to our personal information, we don’t know what really happens when we opt out of personalized ads or search history records, and we can’t avoid this ambiguity without giving them up completely.
In this sense, Engel may have been right — the only way to ensure online privacy is to require regulation by an authoritative figure. But who should have that authority?
