Behind the Ivy - Summer 2018

SUMMER ISSUE |  BEHIND THE IVY

FA C E B O O K : T H E F R I E N D WH O K N OWS E V E R Y T H I N G

KAYLA WANG

Now, try to picture this friend as someone who uses this information about you to make money and to manipulate your decisions to benefit them. Sadly, for us, Facebook is that friend. According to an article by The Verge , Facebook has continued to “collect sensitive data of the users without obtaining their explicit consent,” and used cookies to track activity on third-party sites without providing “clear and precise information” to users. Its incentives are not hard to figure out: Facebook wants to own how we communicate because that means more data, more effective ads, and more ad revenue. Simple enough. That idea should be a little frightening: a company wants to control how we interact with other humans so that they can make money off of it. But this isn’t some secret, evil motivation driving the company behind closed doors. It’s a necessary consequence of the incentives that shape it. However, the problem with Facebook is that it has managed to gain such a monopoly on our digital presence that we worry about quitting it. Let’s be honest for a moment. Haven’t we all enjoyed the information that Facebook has provided us with? We want to know what’s going on in our friends and acquaintances’ lives, and throughout the years, Facebook has become the go-to source for doing that. In the process, we can sit back and wait for some update to appear from a friend or acquaintance and then respond to it.

Recently, I watched a YouTuber try to test out whether companies are using computer microphones to eavesdrop on users’ daily conversations in order to improve ad placement. The YouTuber started the experiment by randomly talking about a “dog toy” for fifteen minutes, a phrase he claimed that he had never used before. Prior to this test, there were no ads related to dog toys on any of his search engines or social media accounts. But after the mock conversation, ads for dog toys started to show up on the websites he visited, his Facebook page, and his Instagram feed. It was spooky. I am used to getting ads for products whose sites I’ve visited or looked up, but product references picked up by my microphone through conversation? That felt absurd. And, in fact, there is no credible evidence that this kind of eavesdropping is currently taking place. But the terrifying truth is that Facebook doesn’t need to listen to our conversations; it can target us well enough without them. Try to imagine a friend who knows as much about you as Facebook does–someone who knows everywhere you go, what you like, what you fear, what you want, and who you hang out with. This could be amazing, or it could be a nightmare. It all depends on what this friend does with the information and how well you can trust them with it.

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