The United States is a culture of sharing. People share their personal lives on almost every aspect with social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The idea of free online services has attracted people’s natural instinct to indulge themselves into these free services. What they do not know is what these “free-services” ask in return. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have revolutionized how people connect with one another and the way people retrieve resources, which also allows massive private information accessible to organizations.
In the article called “Twitter’s Lucrative Data Mining Business” published in The Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Dwoskin talks about Twitter’s disclosure that its company has “$47. 5 million came from selling off its data to a fast-growing group of companies that analyze the data for insights into news events and trends” (Dwoskin). Although the internet has opened doors to many business opportunities and innovations, it has invaded social media users’ private information and often exposes them to unauthorized organizations such Facebook and Twitter for monetary gain.
Legal standing has made it possible for these companies to appropriately set users’ policies regarding the disclosure of user’s privacy, but people often disregard how companies are distributing their information that may expose their privacy to unauthorized organizations. Most successful companies based their product on big data to gather information for consumer demands. In the book Big Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the Opportunities, Thomas H. Davenport explains about the importance of big data for organizations.
He claims that it will help “improve decisions, products, and services to strengthening customer relationships”, which promotes the benefits between corporations and consumers (115). A market based on supply and demand is effective because companies can adjust their manufacture productions according to the potential consumers. Consumers will, in return, benefit from having their needs and wants satisfied by the products made based on consumers’ interests and necessities. By allowing organizations access to consumers’ information, it will give the organization an opportunity to innovate and to provide benefits for its consumers.
However, Facebook has an accessible amount of information to connect people’s interests and hobbies, which comes with the price of potentially exposing users’ privacy to marketing manipulation of products. In the article “Facebook Immorally Exploits Its Users” publish in Netiquette and Online Ethics in 2013, Kevin Kelleher claims that Facebook takes advantage of its users by selling their information to big corporations in contempt of its users’ rights. Facebook has been selling its data by manipulating people’s “sharing” policies to allow the company to own people’s data, which Facebook has taken for granted with disregard of its users.
According to Kelleher, “many of the most popular applications, or ‘apps’, on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information — in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names — to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies” (Kelleher). Moreover, Facebook’s users are not allowed to own the company’s stocks when in fact they “are digital sharecroppers, but it’s not [their] work lives being exploited for the gain of others, it’s [their] personal lives” (Kelleher).
In the excerpt “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty, with Real Dangers”, published in a book called Opposing Viewpoints Series: Privacy, Nicholas Carr argues that people’s rights are being violated and exposed to “criminal harm and marketing manipulation” (21). He encourages people to protect their rights of privacy online, because the internet has become an online market that does not consider the protections of consumers’ information. Rather, companies such as Facebook uses consumers’ information to create profits for their own corporations.
However, the internet has opened doors to many business opportunities and faster access to news. The Wall Street Journal journalist, Joanna Stern, addresses the issues of social networking in her article “How to Make Twitter Actually Useful” the usefulness of Twitter. Twitter is a 140-characters form of communication in an instant format that can capture the highlights of snippets of breaking news, for instance. Stern argues that people should recognize and understand the uses for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Therefore, people should learn to look at technology as a set of tools, not as a tool to measures their lives.
In the book Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture, Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel believes that big data can help trace the history and redefine the future to improve society and its economy. They give access to a whole new field of research about cultural trends that allows people to understand information as a form of power. They explain how “our current era [is] the information age, a period marked by the sensational speed with which information can be passed from one person or place to another” (Aiden and Michel). This gives people access to information in ways they can devise themselves.
Aiden and Michel argue that people have taken things for granted and forget the values of information. They explain how “[people] lose sight of how quickly raw information could travel in centuries past, using mechanisms whose potential [they] no longer fully appreciate” (Aiden and Michel). Online social media users have also failed to see digital devices and digital applications as a form of communication and tools to access information, which leads to one of the main issues of sharing the excessive amount of information that contributed to the big data collected by companies such as Facebook and Twitter.
These companies may seem to provide ultimate free online services that help connect people, but what they ask in return surpasses the boundary of others’ lives. In the book Privacy in the Age of Big Data, Theresa M. Payton and Theodore Claypoole talk about how “digital devices have made our busy lives a little easier and they do great things for us too–we get just-in-time coupons, directions, and connections with loved ones while stuck on an airplane runways” (Summary). However, these devices invade people’s privacy without their consent whenever they use the free services.
Although many people do not know how data is being collected and used, they can be informed and learn about how to protect their privacy while continuing to benefit from the ever growing innovations and technology that improves how people connect with others via social media. Also, social media help online businesses that outreach consumers onto international, which brings prosperity to the country. Moreover, the internet has exploited people’s lives as many people enter searches on online search engines that records their data.
For instance, news outlet online can still data mine to show advertisements related to people’s search history. As a former CIA chief of analysis at the Agency’s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) in 1993, Paul Pillar said that “there are substantially stronger reasons to worry about the collection and use of big data in the private sector than in government agencies”; however, there are substantially stronger reasons to worry about the both private sectors and government agencies (148).
He argues “there exists a disproportionate concern toward government collections of data than toward private company collection of data”, because people uses “search engine on the internet, [they are] voluntarily using a free service in return for being exposed to some advertising and allowing the operator of the search engine or [their] Internet service provider to collect, and exploit, data about [their] interests” (149). The indication that people are unaware of how information is being collected by entering into a search engine allows organizations and law enforcement access to the big data that exposes people’s privacy.
It raises the question of whether people voluntarily share their information while knowing the consequences, or if they have been deceived. In the excerpt “From No Logo” written by Naomi Klein, a Canadian journalist, she talks about how successful corporations advertise themselves based on marketing rather than their products. According to Klein, “the first mass-marketing campaigns had more to do with advertising than with branding” (778).
However, she also says “although it was understood in the corporate world that bolstering one’s brand name was important, the primary concern of every solid manufacturer was the production of goods” (777). Within only two years, the market for big data “has grown seven times as quickly as the information technology sector as a whole” and it has earned up to $16. 9 billion (Dwoskin). Facebook recognizes this aspect of marketing and sells their users’ interests and hobbies to these corporations, which allows companies the guarantee sales of their products to their targeted consumers.
According to Elizabeth Dwoskin, along with Facebook, Twitter is considered the industry giant in the field of big data “because of its public real-time data stream” as compared to Facebook’s “private sharing among friends” (Dwoskin). However, in the article published in the Wall Street Journal, Emily Steel and Geoffrey Fowler found “that all of the 10 most popular apps on Facebook were transmitting users’ IDs to outside companies” (Steel and Fowler).
They argue about a spokesman who of Facebook who claims “knowledge of an ID ‘does not permit access to anyone’s private information on Facebook” (Steel and Fowler). Steel and Fowler say “Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person’s name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private”, because “the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with ‘everyone,’ including age, residence, occupation and photos” (Steel and Fowler).
Social media is a form of marketing that people should be aware of. The need to understand how companies use users’ private information to develop new products to consumers, so they can learn the importance of protecting their own identities from being misused. According to Douglas Rushkoff, author and FRONTLINE correspondent of the documentary Generation Like, adolescents are more vulnerable to online marketing as adolescents are prime targets of most big corporations.
He states that adolescents are not informed about how the media has been structured to manipulate consumers’ buying habits by “taking teen culture and selling it back to them,” which also shows adolescents are more vulnerable to the manipulation of the online marketing (Douglas). In the article, “Teens Love Snapchat. Also Instagram” published in USA Today, Brett Molina, an online producer for USA Today, shows that “more than 100 million users visit the messaging app, and its ability to reach a younger audience has drawn interest from advertisers and media” (Molina).
She shows that “snapchat raised $538 million in a funding round valuing the company at $16 billion” (Molina). Consumers need to learn how to think critically when receiving the endless amount of images presented by the media, so they can be empowered with the knowledge to make wise decisions and understand how organization distribute their information. Add a Topic Sentence.
Payton and Claypoole write in chapter fourteen “Laws and Regulations That Could Help Preserve Privacy” to show how people should conjurns ways to protect their own privacy and “outline simple ways to limit intrusions into our personal data without placing significant restrictions on business or law enforcement” (227). The Constitution does not protect the privacy of digital devices users from being impeached by law enforcement and companies, but the U. S. law does protect users’ financial account information and health-care provider data.
Payton and Claypoole argue that people should fight to protect their private information by addressing the issues and votes for privacy bills. However, the authors explain that “when we tell legislators that privacy is a priority for us, we may be told that more privacy necessarily comes at the cost of increased prices, is a false choice” (230). They argue that “where businesses limits are clear, companies tend to stay within those lines,” and “we should place the lines in a manner that protects areas of privacy where we are losing the most privacy the fastest” (231).
They say that by “addressing location privacy now would keep U. S. businesses from building business models around collection of that data” (231). Therefore, people should beware of how organizations use users’ information and vote for privacy bills that protects their private information. Facebook became not just a social network but a means of proving one’s social reach. Posed group photographs, tagged pictures, and friend counts were signifiers of social net worth, and a sign of healthy participation in the digital world. As Facebook rose to prominence, so did its model of what it meant to interact online.
The subject of the MySpace bathroom selfie—with its tableaux of bathroom counter, mirror, face, and upper body—always looked alone. Selfies were for people without friends; the savvy moved on to more advanced networks (Losse). Online users should be aware of how their information are conducted by the organizations, so they can keep their privacy from being exposed to the public. They also need to understand the importance of votes for privacy bills to protect their private information from being violated by these organizations.
Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat does help to connect people in ways that revolutionized communication, but it also gives access to companies to use users’ data as a marketing strategy. People should be aware of how these companies uses their private information and learn how they can vote on privacy bills that will protect users. Although people have benefited from having “free” access to online resources, it places them at risk of releasing their privacy into the wrong hands.