Data harvesting, combining, enriching and reselling occurs everywhere in a global market that is mostly hidden to regular internet users (See also: Privacy is fundamental to Humane Tech (and Democracy)! )
Though all of the attention is on Facebook, probably the biggest player in this regard is Google (has probably gigabytes of data on just you), but almost every big tech player is involved in this in some way or other. Information is currency… money and power.
Facebook and others don’t need to sell the data for it to be profitable. They create incredibly powerful tools for very detailed profiling and targeting. This allows advertisers to be very specific in placing their ads, saving them money and increasing effectiveness (click-through rates, conversion, etc.) at the same time.
They do this by designing queries, such as:
- Display this ad to people in this region
- Who are left/right leaning
- And are in this age group and gender
- And who are having this mindset and medical affliction
- And are most likely to buy muy product in the next 3 months
- etcetera
It gets incredibly detailed.
Action point: We should collect a list of what kinds of data/knowledge is collected
It would be great to make people aware of the pervasiveness of their privacy invasion, and much more willing to act upon it. Maybe good sites already exist that offer this information.
Also good examples of how this can be used in other ways than just targeting ads (you rarely hear proper talk about this). Like:
- Not being able to get health insurance, or at much higher cost, because your life expectancy and health record have been compiled.
- Being rejected for a job application before getting a chance to have a personal chat with HRM, because of some profile information that the company dislikes. And not having the reason of rejection disclosed to you.
- Consuming fake news and targeted propaganda without ever becoming aware of it.
- When social credit systems arrive (and they may already exist behind the scenes) miss out of all kinds of benefits in society, because of a low-credit score, calculated by an algorithm from your data profile.
- etcetera…