Our Personal Data is a Lot More Valuable than We can Imagine
Changing buying habits, or steering elections, our data is more valuable than we can imagine
We, or more specifically our Data, are the Product
It is a well-worn cliché: “If you are not paying for it, then you are the product.” We are in an age where we use some very useful products such as Facebook and Google that capture significant amounts of data. Our so-called digital exhaust — clicks, likes, dislikes, friends, purchases, comments, tweets — are captured, stored, mined, and used to influence and perhaps manipulate behaviour. In some ways this is innocuous and maybe even useful — we get better ads, we find things quicker and easier. But in other ways this is problematic.
Privacy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Shoshana Zuboff’s states in her recent book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism that our digital exhaust is used to create “rewards and punishments aimed at modifying and commoditizing behavior for profit” which are used by “those who sell opportunities to influence behavior for profit and those who purchase such opportunities.” In Zuboff’s view, the result is quite problematic: “Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new ‘behavioral futures markets,’ where predictions about our…
