Data and Social Media

 Social Media is a business. A very lucrative business. Social media is an interesting sphere because its users are both the consumer and the product itself. On platforms especially such as Facebook, users consume ads and buy products which make the company money. The company (we will focus on Facebook) also sells you to corporations and businesses who wish to advertise to you and sell their products or services. Your data is extremely valuable. Facebook tracks everything you do on their site. Who you talk to, what you say, what you watch, what you follow, what you click on, what you search. It also tracks what you do off the site. Yes, even if you are not a Facebook user, they are tracking you. 

That is because your data is worth thousands of dollars, potentially tens of thousands of dollars. Your data is the most valuable asset that you don't know about. There are only limited ways for us to avoid giving our information out like candy, such as denying cookies, using web browsers such as Opera, search engines such as DuckDuckGo, and of course VPNs, but at the end of the day, you're constantly leaking information.

We do not have information self-determination. Our data autonomy is stripped from us and sold at high prices. Indeed, some have argued that we should own our data or get paid for it, but that will never happen. At least not for the foreseeable future. There is too much money at stake for these companies. 

I sincerely encourage all people to take steps to reduce cookies and invest in VPNs. Targeted ads are a plague and I don't like how much a corporation may know about me. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Media and PR

 For companies, the most important thing is how much money is made. Much of that money comes from advertisement and subscriptions, so it's very important to have a good image in the public, or a loyal audience which will stick with you. In the most recent years, we have seen campaigns led against advertisers of media outlets in attempts to get them to pull sponsorships and deprive disagreeable outlets of cash. This has been met with mixed success. Brands want to appease the public. In reality, corporations largely don't care about social issues or justice. They care about money. If it makes them money to make their logo a rainbow, they'll do it. If it doesn't they don't. I was in Egypt during pride month. Not. One. Single. Rainbow.  I find this exhausting. I'm not really interested in some big commentary on pink capitalism or corporate double standards, but it's just so tiring. People rush to get Coca Cola to pull ads from YouTube because of a single racial ...
Read more

Dealing with Defeat: Fake News and Desperation in Ethiopia

Image
  Dealing with Defeat: Fake News and Desperation in Ethiopia By John Harms Since November 4, 2020, Ethiopia has been at war with itself. Disputes over political control spiraled into violence after the Ethiopian Government moved military units towards the northern Tigray region, sparking a preemptive attack by the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front which saw the army’s Northern Command essentially obliterated. In a single night, a significant segment of the Ethiopian military was either dead, captured, or had defected to join the TPLF. The war which followed was rather quick, with the Ethiopian government calling in old enemies turned allies in Eritrea to attack Tigray from the north, while the ENDF supported by Amhara militias attacked from several roads in the south. The offensive to take all the major cities in Tigray was complete in a month. Over the course of the next 7 months, however, the TPLF retreated into the countryside. You see, the TPLF had a plan. They had prep...
Read more