The Implications of Big Data in Social Media
As technology has improved in the last two decades, social media has become more of a dominant part of every-day life. The younger generations have only known life where there exists social media. It has come to a point where being connected on social media is necessary for normal life. Most social networking platforms are free to use, so how do these companies make money?
The main answer is through ad revenue, which relies heavily on the use of big data from their users to make educated decisions on targeting ads. However, is it ethical for these companies to sell your data? Is it ethical for these companies to show little transparency with how our information is used and the resulting effects of the use of our information?
As Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford demonstrated in their article “Critical Questions for Big Data”, we know very little of the ethical implications resulting from the use of big data. It’s possible that pattern recognition algorithms may take the original data out of context or that the original author of a post didn’t want their data going towards something they didn’t support. Additionally, they define three different classes that people fit into in the realm of big data: those who create data(users), those who collect data(companies), and those who can analyze it(data scientists).
Facebook has been under much scrutiny from the public after their 2018 scandal involving the breach of up to 87 million Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica, due to Facebook failing to keep its personal data secure. They also deny ever selling users’ data. Additionally, they are known for sharing its users’ data with other companies, including Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon. They didn’t sell them the data, but rather shared it to them to benefit their own agenda. They collect an obscene amount of data and give it to those who can analyze it, without informing the users. As of now, the collectors control what happens with the data.
Facebook is an example of how little is enforced and how little the public knows about the use of users’ private data. They do not give much, if any, insight into what they do with users’ private data and the ramifications or justification for doing so. Most users don’t fully understand that their actions are used as data for potentially any purpose, and it is pivotal to inform the public if we are to make an ethical consideration on it.
