Are we tracked(watched) online?

Is big data dangerous?

Big Data means that everything we do gives a trace. (from financial data to social media feeds, from photos to voice recordings) Large companies and not just web giants are knowing this and are trying to get to consumers’ data and behaviors more than ever. Many decisions that affect our lives are now dictated by the interpretation of our data profile rather than our personal interactions. As Kosinski said: “the web now is like a people search engine where it is easy to ascertain facts such as Lady Gaga followers are extroverts and that users give data voluntarily & unconsciously without knowing how it will be used later.” Who is Kosinski you would say? Assistant Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business on social computational who made an experiment that analyzed Facebook’s biggest dataset — details of 8 million FB users with the involvement of 200 researchers. His project proved that psychological profiles can be created from data with an accuracy that we cannot imagine based on “emotional contagion”. (“ex from his project: on the basis of an average of 68 Facebook “likes” made by a user, it was possible to predict their skin color with 95% accuracy, sexual orientation with 88% accuracy, and political affiliation. 70 “likes” were enough to outdo what a person’s friends knew, 150 “likes” what their parents knew, and 300 “likes” what their partner knew.”)

Are we tracked (watched) online?

• Is Google’s Recaptcha a training device for Google’s AI?! The entire industry that is involved in processing, profiling, and selling user data is operating without control so, in the last several years, Google got millions $ of fines for failing to comply with GDPR.
• Google, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay frequently run experiments on a small set of users without their knowledge to tweak algorithms, improve the user experience and release new products. 90% of the world’s data has been created in just the past recent years. Now comes the scary part. More than 600.000 Facebook accounts are compromised every single day and 1 out of 10 networking users admit to falling victim to some type of phishing scam or fake links.
• Some apps from web stores transmit user data to at least 135 companies that don’t have anything to do with the functionality of those apps.
• When we are reading a book on Kindle or Nook device, we are tracked on what we are reading, when we are reading it, how often we read it, how quickly we read it…etc. There is an app that monitors the way a person types, taps, and scrolls while using other apps. Based on this the app can diagnose mental health disorders.
• Walmart can take data from our past buying patterns, our mobile phone location data, and social media and analyze all of this in seconds.
• Research revealed that commercial facial recognition tools sold by companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon were more likely to correctly identify White people and misidentify Black people.
• A state operation Endless Mayfly created inauthentic websites spoofing established media outlets and online personas to spread false and inflammatory content targeting other states from 2016 to 2018.
• Viral sloganeering was used recently to create short, catchy phrases intended to deliver persuasively, disruptive messaging capturing social media attention, provoking media coverage, and sometimes garnering institutional responses?! (ex: “Lock Her Up” aimed at Hillary Clinton / “Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people.” / “It’s okay to be white” )

So is big data dangerous? In their efforts, companies are, intentionally or unintentionally, getting involved in a violation of basic ethical principles related to privacy, data ownership, and information ethics. Increasingly, the financial profiles of users are being mixed with behavioral profiles and shipped to third-party agencies. But everything was more clear after SGL and Cambridge Analytica scandal was revealed in the media. This is the company that helped the EU leave the Brexit campaign and Trump’s online campaign. They used psychological assessments combined with information about citizens’ digital behaviors to influence the masses. Those profiles gave the political strategists insights into users’ beliefs, impulses and motivations. So the use of big data involves some consequences that could influence large-scale personality profiling and transform it into an effective tool to sway the elections in the favor of one or another party. Hell yeah!! Some feel that such unintended consequences are a part of the use of big data and that no other things are required. My opinion is that they will intensify forms of classification and discrimination. Will introduce risks to privacy, particularly when the process is not transparent. For better utility companies should operate clearly on practices and simplicity on terms and settings: let users know about data collected in real-time and simplify the changing of user’s privacy settings.

The Business ecosystem of today is built on profit surveillance, behavioral profiling, manipulation, and influence. So yes we are tracked online.

Ok, but how do they work?! Psychometric profiling is not something new. Edward Bernays a few decades earlier with the ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud documented the process of using psychology to influence others. He worked with tobacco companies to induce women to purchase cigarettes under the guise of gender equality calling all his actions the term “the engineering of consent.” As civilization has become more complex so the use of more powerful strategies emerged. We must understand that covert influence is not something unusual or foreign to western civilized society. We began to create personalized advertising to identify a person’s needs and address those needs at the right moment. These dynamics have increased with the appearance of the internet and big data making psychometric research a hot topic in different institutions. What everyone accused Cambridge Analytica of was done by all the companies in Silicon Valley. From phones to apps and games. Demographic and psychographic data, including social class, personality type, age, sex, political affiliation, cultural interests, social ties, personal income, and marital status are information extracted from users by all of them more or less.

Did you hear of “shadow profiles” and the profit behind them? (ex: big data companies are compiling data on everyone possible, including people without accounts on their platforms.) Did you know that some of these companies have separate political divisions specifically geared to help target and influence voters? (For ex: “Mosaic Experian is a computer program that assembles up to 400 pieces of publicly available data about each voter to put them into one of 15 main groups, or 89 hyper-specific categories. Others are: Nationbuilder; i360; BlueLabs”)

The process: (was transformed from the old company Simulmatics which had the idea that, if they could collect enough data about enough people and write enough good code, everything, one day, might be predicted and influenced.) First is the gathering of data obtained from big giant internet companies. (questionnaire, surveys, pools, games) The data gathered is used to determine characteristics that are not directly observable, so they need to be inferred. Based on five personality traits, known as the “Big Five”: openness (how open are you to new experiences?), conscientiousness (how much of a perfectionist are you?), extroversion (how sociable are you?), agreeableness (how considerate and cooperative you are?), and neuroticism. (are you easily upset?) All of them will reveal an accurate assessment of the kind of persons detected. Their needs and fears, and how they are likely to behave. (ex: try for yourself the tool of the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Center) Above all-everything also works in reverse: not only can psychological profiles be created from data, but data can also be used to search for specific profiles. This system also helps identify whether someone is best approached by email, phone, or in person. Then strategists and marketing gurus craft messages taking into account factors that may give a much more potent psychological and manipulative power. And with the use of AI, a constellation of companies got all sorts of strategies: traditional voter targeting, political propaganda mills, troll armies, bots, and targeted ads. The troubling thing is that we as users might not like or recognize ourselves in the profiles that are created for us. Our online profile may look nothing like our real-life one but this concern doesn’t matter for the right players. They care only about numbers. If the result of this algorithmic analysis is discriminatory or unfair we cannot do anything. We’re a single data in a wave of trillions. Why anyone would make an exception in the system just for us?

Even if people are still amazed by the idea that the internet, in its pure, untainted form, is some kind of magic machine that will give them liberty, we are tracked and profiled every minute of every day by big data companies. A machine that manipulates opinions, exploits attention, commodifies information, divides voters, atomizes communities, and alienates individuals. We effectively donate free data every time we enter the world wide web click here, order that, and play that YouTube video…. What increasingly got me concerned was the gaming industry where this strategy is tested and implemented without any of the customers even being aware of all the extra code that could profile them. Those companies are not bound by any common sense they are only bound for profit. Big data offers great opportunities to produce a significant impact on society but also they can produce more damage and bias.

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