The odyssey of finding my data started Monday when I sent requests to both Facebook and Google to dig it up. Surprise, surprise the big bad tech giants did not want to enlighten me with how they target me with ads (mainly about anti-dandruff shampoo and libertarian political coalitions). Nevertheless, I believe in the power of big data—so much so that I have followed the story of tech companies’ censorship of user posts an. Decisions about Facebook’s privacy policies matter now more than ever given we find ourselves in the advent of the 2020 who gets to be either mercilessly ridiculed or praised like a god on Fox News for the next four years contest.
During our lab sections, I found parts of the Netflix documentary The Great Hack fairly enlightening. Even beyond the context of politics, I think have realized that data has become a sort of currency—a hyper inflated one which not a lot of people know about. Like any new kind of currency, though, people much smarter than you and I need to figure out to how to wrangle with it and regulate it.
Companies such as Facebook and Google require advertising dollars as part of their revenue. In 2014, according to Investopedia, Google for example, made 68% of their revenue from advertising on search (one can only assume that number has soared). Facebook, where the user cannot easily avoid ads and other promotions with browser software, hauled in 24% of its revenue from ads.
Although Facebook and Google have way too much information on me, I wonder if targeted ads really work. Of course, Facebook gives absurd access to advertisers, have not these same advertisers have targeted us all along. After all, one would not put an ad for a luxury fashion brand in the middle of a lower-class neighborhood. Advertisers have always thought in terms of demographics.
Alas, I have come to the part of the blog where I ultimately question my assumptions about the topic at hand while acknowledging that the thinking traps I fell into were understandable. In this case, I must admit that my original musings still have merit. Being my anti-social media self, I perceived data as an ultimately meaningless but scary facet of modern technology. As an informed citizen one must keep in mind the capacity for malformation on Facebook.
We have a responsibility about how much data we give these companies because we chose to participate in social media. Although Zuckerberg acts righteous and academic (shout out Georgetown), the informed viewer knows about the lobbies pushing Facebook to keep its information market unregulated. However, like another unregulated market over a decade ago, it will crash and burn.
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