The internet is creepy. So, so creepy. In recent weeks, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress about violations of privacy, my belief that nothing we do online is truly private has only been reinforced. Privacy has become a joke, a farce to the American public. How we view it has become evident in how privacy (specifically the lack of privacy) is manifesting as a meme (see title of this piece). We already know, and, at this point, no longer care, that basically everything we do is recorded and read.
After watching The Persuaders, I am even more freaked out about the lack of privacy in a digital age. For this post, I decided to pay extra attention to what kinds of ads I see.
A couple of months ago, my mother broke my phone (accidentally). She replaced it with a cheaper version that doesn't really work. Since then, I have practically been continuously looking up affordable iPhones and cell phone plans, since I am also dissatisfied with my current plan. I noticed that I saw a ton of technological ads. I kept seeing "buy one, get one free" cell phone ads, as well as commercials enticing me to switch my plan. The ads also went above and beyond what I had been searching. Although my searches were limited to cell phones, I saw multiple ads for computers, especially new MacBook Pros. The data mining companies might think that I am interested in just getting new technology overall, since I have been looking up new phones, which might be why I am seeing these ads. Also, since I almost exclusively look up Apple products (even though I don't actually have any), more Apple products such as MacBooks might show up.
I wasn't sure if the ads I saw were coincidental or not, so after looking at my ads, I took note at what my whole family was seeing. While my ads were more technological, my parents mainly saw stuff that was related to housework or domestic chores. For example, when my mom was watching a YouTube video the other day, she saw a bunch of detergent ads. Her ads, as well as my dad's, seemed pretty formulaic. 90% of them showed kids messing up and then a magical product, such as detergent, fixing everything and making life easy for the overworked parents. It makes sense that my parents would be the target audience for these ads, because they have two clumsy kids that are always spilling stuff.
And then I got to my brother. God, an 11-year-old boy's search history basically fits into two categories: games and sports. cool-math-games is my brother's site of choice and, I noticed that whenever he is playing a game, the ads on the sides are normally for games that he has played before and enjoyed. Data mining companies collect information about what games he typically plays, and then show those games to him as often as they can. He doesn't really get as many sports ads because he isn't looking up sports gear so much as the outcome of a certain match.
In conclusion, everything we do online, even this blog post I am currently typing up, is being collected- and that's super weird. We can make jokes about an FBI agent watching us, but data mining is actually a huge issue.
So tl;dr for whichever company is in charge of my internet presence: I'm onto you.
I also posted about the Facebook scandal😂 it's pretty crazy and scary. And I've also had those moments where I get super targeted ads on YouTube, even though I rarely use the app, and I was wondering if you've heard about the new European Union privacy laws? Basically they prevent companies for using your personal information without your permission. Do you think that a similar law to this should be put into effect in the U.S. to prevent data mining? And how effective do you think it would be?
ReplyDeleteNot sure if I already posted this because my site is confusing me but...
DeleteNo, I hadn't heard of the new European Union privacy laws, but, based on what you said in your comment, I think it would be a good idea to institute similar laws in the United States.
I'm not sure how effective these laws would be, however. Large corporation already spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars trying to find loopholes in existing laws. They might just hire new lawyers to find ways around new laws, but I don't know enough about the topic to say for sure.
What are your thoughts?
I totally agree. It's so cynical, but I feel like social change is going to take a massive upheaval to occur. It seems like every issue, like privacy, police brutality, gun violence, universal healthcare, etc, never gets passed because Congress won't even vote on it, or big corporations throw their weight around to make sure it never comes to a vote because they'll lose profit.
DeleteEverything seems so motivated by money, and it's so disheartening and disgusting. Why save the planet when we could make billions of dollars polluting it? Why respect people's privacy when we could use their personal information to make money off of them? It's very frustrating.
There was huge breach in 2017 where 145.5 million people's personal data was stolen from Equifax. That was the most recent time a consumer privacy protections bill came to a vote, but it failed to pass in Congress. What do you think it would take to pass such a law?