This month I decided to write a little bit about the value of data. It has surpassed oil as the most valuable resource in the world. Just let that sink in for a moment. The most valuable resource in the world is YOU. Specifically, your browsing/likes/interests/location/dob/etc. Now, think about how much regulation there is around the data you generate. Odds are, you live in a country that has very little protections in place for you that protect how your data is used and how it is shared.
Let us imagine for a second that we’re talking about oil again. In this hypothetical situation, you own land and a company found some oil on your land. So, you tell them that if they pave a road from your house to the main road so you can visit your friends, they can have the oil. So you give up the most valuable resource you have in order to have a bit of convenience in visiting your friends/family. Now you have a paved road from your house to the highway nearby. Now, if you got royalties from that oil you could have easily paid another company to put in a road and had plenty left over, but instead you gave it away for a bit of convenience. Now imagine if you didn’t really have a choice. The company came in and said they’re taking oil from your land and they’ll build a road on your land as a thank you. They’re offering you convenience in exchange for a valuable resource, but you don’t get a choice.
That’s how the big tech industries have operated for years and continue to operate without much for regulations or protections. They offer their services to people, mine as much data (oil) as possible from the users, and encourage them to give data about their friends & family as well. “Share your contact list with us so we can help find your friends using the service too” they say. Well, now your friends have given the company some of your data without your consent. Then your friend starts uploading photos and tagging you. Now the service knows what you look like, and to top it off it was a photo of your birthday celebration and they wished you a happy birthday in the post, so they gave up your dob to the company as well. You see where I’m going with this right? Even if you don’t use the services these big tech companies offer, it is likely that your friends and family do and they’re likely willing to divulge plenty of data points about you while doing so.
The proof of this, is the Cambridge Analytica scandal that I’m sure you’ve heard about. There’s a good documentary about it on Netflix called “The Great Hack” by the way. They created a personality survey on Facebook that about 100,000 people took. When someone took this personality survey, they gave CA access to all their Facebook data (likes, interests, posts, pictures, friends, etc), but that isn’t where it stopped. They also gave access to all the same information about every single one of their friends on Facebook. This caused a relatively small number of users taking the survey, to give up virtually every American’s data in the USA. They weren’t ever close to the only company to take advantage of this in Facebook’s interface, but it did get a lot of media coverage because it was used politically during the election.
So I guess my point in bringing up the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal is that these tech giants like getting as much data as possible about you, whether or not you use their services and that your friends/family are more than willing to give up your data too. Maybe they want to find out if they’d be Ross or Chandler from “Friends” or maybe they want to know what Ninja Turtle they’d be, but in the process they’ve been more than willing to share their own data as well as yours. It is even possible, you are the one taking these surveys and sharing the data, possibly without realizing it.
This isn’t just a problem with Facebook and 3rd party apps on Facebook though. It is a problem with our society and how little we value our data as well as the data of the people we know. If you had to pay $5/month to use Facebook, would you? What about Google products? Or Amazon? These companies make billions a year on your data, but if the average person had to choose between a couple dollars a month or as much data as the company could gather, many would pick the data. It’s hard to put a value on your interest in mountain biking for example. You can put a value on your mountain biking gear, but to put a value on your interest is difficult. Of course the tech companies know there is value in that interest and they’re willing to offer “free” services in order to get that data.
There’s an old saying that if you don’t pay for the product, then you are the product. When it comes to big tech, you are the product. Facebook and Google have customers, but their customers are other entities that want to pay for ads. The fuel is your data, and you are the product. Is this an industry that we want to continue supporting with little regulation? Should it still be socially acceptable to give up handfuls of data about your friends & family in order to play a game or read an email? These are questions we have to ask ourselves now and in the coming years.
Link from the article:
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/the-worlds-most-valuable-resource-is-no-longer-oil-but-data
Bryan's Blog 