Revelations about Facebook’s extensive gathering of users’ data – I prefer to call it intelligence, not data, because it’s actionable intelligence used for targeted content and adverts – has stirred public angst in recent weeks. This follows the furore triggered by the outing of Cambridge Analytica’s surreptitious devising of psychological profiles of millions of users to target them with political ads.
Cambridge Analytica’s tactics are, of course, sorely objectionable because of the stealthy and undisclosed methodology deployed to gather intelligence.
But this story now transcends Cambridge Analytica – if it had to be about that company alone, it would merely be an instance of wrongdoing – and the wider public disquiet demonstrates ignorance about the business model of Facebook and other social media giants, as well as sensitivity towards any perceived invasions of privacy.
People are indignant that Facebook, and other internet monoliths, gather so much intelligence on us, including our movements, and aghast that such intelligence is then analysed for targeted advertising.
Such data harvesting and analysis is seen as some kind of violation of our privacy. But there is nothing new about targeted advertising. In the not-so-distant past we were used to newspapers and magazines quaintly conducting reader surveys to gain insight into their readership that would then be used to solicit advertising from particular companies whose products or services would be of interest to that particular publication’s readers. Nowadays, internet companies gather the same insight by the digital clues (footprint) we leave behind as we engage with their websites.
Further retreat into guarded private lives would accelerate social fragmentation
What has changed is that automation allows internet companies to gain insights into their audience with greater accuracy than before. This is what has made companies like Facebook and Google hugely profitable; they entice us by offering free public services or entertainment and then make money from targeted advertising as we engage with their services.
Such finely targeted advertising has put newspapers and magazines in financial trouble as companies migrate to better-value-advertising on social media. (Advertising on newspapers may still confer prestige and eminence, but advertising on social media is more cost-effective.)
Although these commercial practices for the sake of advertising are not inherently abominable – internet companies are not charities; their business model is in offering free services while making money from advertising and other commerce avenues – the shock may be in how far this has now gone. Cambridge Analytica devised or deployed something far-reaching and potentially insidious: an algorithm that creates psychological profiles of users from information gathered through Facebook. And this idea of a computer snooping on us as we engage on Facebook, whether in political outpourings or social trivialities, to build an ever-expanding psychological profile on each one of us has the markings of the uncanny and the sinister. It raises the spectre of telepathic thought-control by government or corporations. It is the stuff of science fiction about corporate control.
These developments become more sinister still given the eco-chamber dynamics of social media and the proliferation of fake news. For the same systems that enable targeted ads also disseminate fake news in targeted streams. Producers of fake news may have commercial aims (to produce sensationalist stories to drive traffic to their sites and attract advertisers) or subservient aims (to sway elections or referenda, or even shape public opinion). Once again, this is not new in itself: politicians have always peddled sophistries, or pandered to prejudices, to generate buzz and garner votes. What is new is the heightened effectiveness of fake news on public opinion or electoral results; and the manipulation by stealth.
More insidious is the synergism of fake news in the echo-chamber dynamics of social media. Like-minded people mostly become friends with, or join groups of, like-minded people, and fake news targets these networks in a value-reinforcing manner: the nature of the news or conspiracy-theory comes up on the timeline or social-media pages of people who are predisposed into believing that piece of news or conspiracy theory.
This leads to positive feedback among online gatherings: propensities or prejudices are reinforced, predilections and ideologies are amplified. These echo-chamber dynamics then spill over in real life by creating or widening divisions and misunderstandings among different social groupings, and different interest groups.
Although social media has lived up to its ideal of giving a voice to everyone and facilitating our lives, it is also being used by corporations to maximise profits, and by political megalomaniacs and rabble-rousers to manipulate public opinion.
Another issue is that our online socialising is intensifying social fragmentation in the real world. In this scenario, becoming fixated on preserving privacy may have a perverse effect; social media engagements are by nature public acts (data retention is another thing – it is not necessarily wrong, data analysis can lead to smarter societies).
Further retreat into guarded private lives would accelerate social fragmentation, which would in turn make us more susceptible to fake news and targeted political ads. We need more community, not less; more individual openness, not less. And we need less tetchiness about individual privacy.