Data Exploitation on the Horizon

By the year 2020, it is predicted that over one third of the entire population of the world will be using social media. It is no doubt that society has become accustomed to and even reliant on the need for access to these platforms. So reliant in fact that everyone who uses them is willing to give the companies who create them access to any and all data about themselves that could be collected and used. This data is then sold to advertising companies in a symbiotic relationship in order to maintain monetary success. This partnership, known as the barter system, curtails user’s rights to privacy, consent, and the ability to be forgotten. In order to fix this problem, I propose a transition towards a subscription based model that utilizes user’s abilities to come together in large numbers to control social media companies. In order to be successful though, a few obstacles will need to be overcome. There needs to be motivation from users in the forms of education and advertising incentive in order to give them the control that they need over social media companies. This is no small feat and will require action to be taken from both the industry and the user. While it may take quite a long time to create the needed changes at the industry level, the shift towards a subscription model is very favorable over the barter system for all parties. For if the transition is implemented correctly, it could benefit advertisers, the social media industry, and the end-users; while upholding the values that everyone deserves in cyber-space.

An easy way to understand who holds the most power over a company is to trace the flow of money for that company back to its source. For subscription based service models, the money is traced back to the people who are being provided the service - the end user. The end user in a subscription model is a customer who pays money for a specific service (sustaining the business), and therefore holds power over the provider to uphold the values that they are paying for. However, in the context of free social media when I traced the money back to its source I found that it wasn’t traced back to the end user but instead to the advertisers. This means that the people who hold the most power over these companies aren’t even the ones who are using the service for its original intent. So companies like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Snapchat have more of an incentive to develop their platforms in a way that optimizes results for the advertisers as opposed to the end-users. “From the very beginning, advertising has been the driving force of the capitalist system... If there ever was an invisible hand, it is surely advertising’s ability to keep demand at pace with increasing supply. No small task.” (Rifkin, Zero Marginal Cost Economy, 247).

End-users are still of monetary value to these companies though, because social media can only exist through the velocity and volume of its users. Because of this, social media sites create their platforms for the end-user to enjoy (in order to retain usership), but only to the extent of which they also meet the requirements of their controller - the advertisement companies. This is how the social media barter system was created. Users get to enjoy the platform monetarily for free, but at the cost of their data being sold to advertisement companies.

There is an insurmountable quantity of data that is being collected about users from social media sites. Every word that is typed, every button that is clicked; anything and everything can be stored and analyzed later on. I had to ask myself, what could this data be used for? Or, more

importantly, can it be used to benefit society? “Corporate public relations and advertisements, as well as government policy visions, focus on [collecting big data] as a way to fuel economic growth, enhance business and government efficiency, add convenience and self-feedback for consumers, improve physical security, and enhance scientific knowledge... [it is] a means to better human life,” (J. Winter and R. Ono, The Future of the Internet, 6). Winter and Ono suggest that the collection of data on users is beneficial to society because through collecting, processing, and analyzing it we can build a framework. This framework could then be used to not only predict and analyze trends in humans, but also to understand what the future of the internet will be. Unfortunately, that isn’t what social media is doing with our data.

As I mentioned before, social media companies are controlled by the leashes of the advertising companies that sustain them. The framework that is being created isn’t beneficial to society, it is beneficial to the advertisers. “We discuss the implications of [big data collection] and argue that they tend toward a new economy of moral judgment, where outcomes are experienced as morally deserved positions based on prior good actions and good tastes, as measured and classified by this new infrastructure of data collection and analysis.” (Fourcade & Healy, Seeing Like a Market, 1). These advertising companies are exploiting the user’s data to pigeon-hole them into a persona that they aren’t able to forget or easily change. They are eliminating the user’s right to be forgotten.

Furthermore, since users assume that social media companies are creating their platforms only for the benefit of the end-user, they often don’t realize that their data is being collected in such vast quantities and for unpropitious reasons. Social media sites aren’t trying to teach the uninformed user about their data analysis (because that would be unfavorable to the advertisers), which diminishes the user’s right to consent. In Socialnomics by Erik Qualman, he suggests that data collection is the digital alternative to focus groups that used to analyze human patterns. He explains that instead of hiring people to talk about how they think they behave, we can instead analyze their actual behaviors everyday through their social media usage. While this may seem ideal for psychological studies, it completely dismisses the fact that people in focus groups came to that place for a psych-analysis and those who go on social media didn’t go on with that intent. It isn’t conscious consent. For those who do understand what is happening to their data and aren’t okay with how it is being handled, there isn’t an alternative more-private Facebook for them to turn to. Since Facebook and other social media sites have become so vital to stay up to date in society, users are forced to give up their privacy rights to these companies.

I propose an alternative monetary system for social media sites: a transition from the barter system between advertisers and companies towards a subscription based model that places the power within the hands of the end-users. This way users are able to stay connected with peers and the world through social media, without depreciating their rights to privacy, consent, and being forgotten.
As with any transition in a large industry, there are a few barriers that will need to be overcome in order to create a successful alternative for all parties. Christina Allen, Head of Product for Compass, previously Product Management Director for LinkedIn, and author of many publications including Context-sensitive approaches to managing Internet anonymity and What's wrong with the Golden Rule: Conundrums of conducting ethical research in cyberspace , gave some great insight into the reality of this transition. Allen has worked amongst some of the first people to collect data through the internet and has seen first-handedly the undisclosed actions and analysis of our data. Because of this, she also fully understands what companies are

capable of doing with our data. It’s reasonable then to say that she is a pessimist when it comes to the idea of getting social media companies to transition into a subscription based model. Not only do these companies have no interest in collecting less data on their users, but they have no motivation. The only party with something to lose from the barter system is the end-user, and most of them don’t even realize that there is a problem in the first place. Hence, the first barrier: users are not educated enough about social media data collection to care to push the industry towards a subscription based model.

As Christina explained her struggles and past attempts to educate the public about big data extortion through social media, she summarized the difficulties of getting the public to listen. “I don’t think that the general public will pay attention to [this transition]. They don’t care, they just want the fucking product. It’s almost incomprehensibly difficult to explain to them what is happening with their data and how the algorithms work,” (Allen). Without the proper education about the current situation, and even moreso about the potential future implications of selling our social media data to advertisers, the public will never be able to understand even the basics of what is happening to their data. The only way to insight change within these large companies is with incentive. In this case, as I discovered earlier, the only power that the end-users hold over social media companies is the fact that they need the volume and velocity of users in order to operate. If the end-users were motivated enough to stop using these social media sites unless they were insured a more private and less extortive data collection by advertisers, that would effectively force the companies to restructure the system. But as Christina mentioned, that is no small task.

The second and more obvious barrier for the subscription model is the fact that users are quite unwilling to pay for social media services. Modern society has quickly created a culture that is dependent on the ability to use things on the internet for free. In this case, ‘free’ means monetarily free (the users are still paying with their data). Just as with the industries, end-users need motivation too. In this case, they’ll need to know it’s worth it to suddenly start paying for services that have otherwise always been ‘free’.

While it may seem that there are too many obstacles in the way of this transition, I did discover an interesting opportunity while talking with Christina. She mentioned that for some applications, people do pay for subscriptions to get rid of advertising completely. But, there are times when those people still appreciate or need the help of advertisements. “I pay for subscriptions to get rid of advertising completely for some services like Spotify, but it’s not quite right either. Because I do need access to easy information or relevant advertisements without having to hunt for it,” (Allen). She proposed a model that uses the elimination of irrelevant ads and wanting more effective algorithms to display meaningful advertisements as a motivator for end-users to pay for the services. This motivation could in turn push end-users to put pressure on the industry to make the shift towards privacy as well as motivate advertising companies to make their data analysis algorithms more meaningful. “The missing piece in all of this is the big data inferences and the desire of advertisers to target better. The consumers need to turn around and face them and say ‘I should be in charge here’,” (Allen).

This opportunity is the key to the transition. The switch towards this model is a slow and multiple step process, but if implemented correctly is a preferable alternative to the barter system. The first step is education. The public needs to understand what is happening with their data and more importantly, what could happen with their data. On top of that, they need to be educated about the flow of power within the social media industry in order to understand that

they are being controlled by these big companies; even though end-users have enough power in their numbers to take the control.

Once users are educated about their data analysis and motivated through this discovery, they can utilize the sheer size of themselves in order to push the transition to the next step. Through threats of boycotting the free services, users can convince social media companies to make privacy, consent, and the right to be forgotten (the user’s wishes) their priority over data exploitation (the advertiser’s wishes). This effectively shifts the party that holds the most power over the social media companies from the advertisers and their monetary incentives to the end-users and their site-traffic incentives. Ultimately, social media companies need user volume in order to operate, no matter how much money is offered to them. Thus the first part of the transition is created, placing the power in the hands of the end-user.

Now the final step of the transition can happen. The user’s make one final push, but this time it’s directed at the advertisers. If the advertisers want to continue to have any control over social media companies, they need to restructure their algorithms to actually think about what the user may want. “The intent of the user isn’t modeled well on these [advertising] systems. The algorithms are trying to be so intelligent to figure out or infer what the user wants and the thing that they never do is ask the fucking user what they want,” (Allen). Then the transition can complete. The users hold the most power over the social media companies and advertisers still hold some power because their new algorithms are actually beneficial and wanted by the users. Social media companies still receive money (now from users) because they are willing to pay for the protection of their values and helpful advertising, so they still have the volume and velocity needed to operate their platforms. All parties win, values are upheld, and the subscription based model begins.

A famous quote in Silicon Valley states, “If you’re not paying, you’re the product.” People have become far too comfortable using the free internet without thinking of the future repercussions of large-scale data exploitation. If advertising companies were using social media’s data to try and respect all user’s ethical desires while also creating beneficial results, there wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately though, this isn’t the case and there is a bigger potential for degradation of human values through big data than ever before. While other alternative models for the use of advertisements and big data in social media may exist, none of them require users to be the ultimate providers of money. This is why the best solution is a subscription based model. Through subscriptions, users will control the social media industry not only through volume and velocity, but also through providing the monetary needs for success. Control allows users to finally become both the user and the consumer, instead of just the product. While it may be hard to find enough motivation to inspire users to pay, that is ultimately the only way they can be more powerful than the advertising companies. With this power, the industry will be motivated to finally put users before advertisers. On top of that, advertisers can also be pressured to create big data analysis algorithms that actually benefit the people that are using them rather than pigeon-holeing them out of their true identity. With big change comes great sacrifice. In this case, every player involved in the social media industry will have to give up something - money, too much data, and power. But it is ultimately worth it, because this transition could be the next cornerstone towards a more ethical computing landscape. When I look out on this new horizon, I see the potential for all users to reclaim the rights to their data. It begins here - on our phones, our keyboards, and at our fingertips. It’s time to prove that the users are in control now, and that they always have been.