This article is tagged as #School. It was previously published on a different website as a part of Stephanie Pichardo's Senior Comprehensive Assignment.
In the midst of all the picture posting and status updates on Facebook, news broke out earlier this year in March on a 50 million people data leak.
People didn’t know how to react to this. The first question was: “Did my information get leaked?”
But before we get into whose information got leaked and who remains safe, the real question is “What exactly happened?”
According to The New York Times, a data-mining firm known as Cambridge Analytica had accessed over 50 million Facebook profiles.
Casey Newton from The Verge suggests that experts on the matter believe that the firm could have used the data to “gain an unfair advantage in targeting voters.”
This sparks up the conversation about online privacy. If social media platforms like Facebook are using our information to influence our votes, then what else is our information being used for?
In an interview with CNN, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released an apology stating that he is “really sorry this happened. [Facebook] has a basic responsibility to protect people’s data, and if [Facebook] can’t do that, then [they] don’t deserve the opportunity to serve people.”
Senior Reporter for the Guardian mocked Zuckerberg on Twitter by posting an image of Zuckerberg’s Facebook apology and not being able to find a “sorry” in it.
After the news broke out to the online community, a hashtag on Twitter trended during the scandal.
“#DeleteFacebook” caused thousands of people to deactivate their Facebook accounts because the idea of their information being shared “without their consent” just didn’t seem right to them.
Others simply didn’t care.
Sure deleting their Facebook prevents their information from being accessed but did they stop to think that maybe this can happen to them on another social media platform?
If those same users that deleted their Facebook accounts own Instagram accounts, then they didn’t really stop Facebook from accessing their information. If you weren’t aware, Facebook owns Instagram so essentially our information can still be accessed.
The same way we see advertisements pop on our feed or on the right side of our Facebook page, Instagram does the same.
“These apps are listening to us,” says Damián Le Nouaille who contributed his experience with advertising and Instagram to the Medium.
If you ever find yourself speaking about a certain product or an activity you plan on doing and you own an Instagram account then most likely you will see an ad on said product or activity later on your feed.
When speaking to Professor Brian Gregory of the Communications Arts Department at St. Francis College, he explains that not only apps such as Facebook or Instagram are using our information in invasive ways but Amazon, Google, and any major website uses our information and bids it off to companies that want to reach our feeds and advertise products to us.
Websites like Do Not Track give users an inside look at how their data is being used. The 7 episode series showcases a “behind-the-scenes” to the algorithms used in all our favorite websites and how many of them are owned by the same third party companies that are buying off our information.
With all the information these companies have on us, how does it benefit them?
Revenue is the simple answer but there’s more to that.
In a research article published by MIS Quarterly, the authors suggest that “these third parties provide support and information required for improved targeting of website ads and improved sales opportunities.”
The article also states that they use behavioral targeting which allows them to use our information shared with these third parties and provide the most relevant ads to us.
In short, their only concern is getting relevant ads out to users in the hope that we purchase things and create revenue for them.
There is no way that our information is safe. “If you’re not paying for it, then you’re being sold,” says Prof. Gregory.
Nothing is free and the price online users pay is selling our information whether we like it or not.
There is no way to escape it.