Assignment 1
IS434 SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND APPLICATIONS
, ASSIGNMENT I
QUESTION 1 (DATA PRIVACY)
Just what are companies like Facebook, Google, Instagram, Weibo, Twitter,
WeChat, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, Kakao and many other such companies
doing with the data they collect from users like us?
Take Facebook for instance. To determine how to rank news in a user’s newsfeed,
Facebook analyzes user behavior such as who users are engaging with, which
pages they are interacting with, how long a user scrolls through their newsfeed
and how much time they spend on different pages. All these data points are then
used to adjust Facebook’s secret algorithms to display better content in the
newsfeed (1). Indeed, it seems these social media companies are thinking all
about us. (How sweet of them!) They want to get to know us better so they can
customize ads based on our preferences and improve our user experience. But is
this all they are after and should we be concerned about how our data is being
stored and used?
It appears that Chinese messaging apps take things a step further. Despite
claiming that chat histories and other user information are not kept and
analyzed for commercial use, Chinese social media conglomerates like Tencent
which owns WeChat are required by law to record conversations for government
monitoring purposes (2).
According to Farhad Manjoo, a leading technology expert columnist for the New
York Times, “we give digital giants access to our most private information, and
they shower us with technology we can't do without” (3).
Consider the recent Facebook data breach affecting millions of users (4). Perhaps
feelings of disgust, concern, mistrust or even rage may surface for a while, but
how many of us boycotted Facebook after the incident? Soon enough, after the
storm calmed, we are back to scrolling through our Facebook newsfeed, posting
stories, or sharing funny memes.
The truth is that many of us prefer to turn a blind eye, imagining it’s somebody
else’s problem; most of us would rather trade our privacy for the convenience,
familiarity and feeling of connectedness social media affords us.
For some, however, privacy is a real issue. ln a 2014 article, Julia Angwin asks,
“Has privacy become a luxury good?” Alluding to Google which can “scan what
you write in Gmail to offer advertisers a chance to promote their items”,
PAGE 1
IS434 SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND APPLICATIONS
, ASSIGNMENT I
QUESTION 1 (DATA PRIVACY)
Just what are companies like Facebook, Google, Instagram, Weibo, Twitter,
WeChat, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, Kakao and many other such companies
doing with the data they collect from users like us?
Take Facebook for instance. To determine how to rank news in a user’s newsfeed,
Facebook analyzes user behavior such as who users are engaging with, which
pages they are interacting with, how long a user scrolls through their newsfeed
and how much time they spend on different pages. All these data points are then
used to adjust Facebook’s secret algorithms to display better content in the
newsfeed (1). Indeed, it seems these social media companies are thinking all
about us. (How sweet of them!) They want to get to know us better so they can
customize ads based on our preferences and improve our user experience. But is
this all they are after and should we be concerned about how our data is being
stored and used?
It appears that Chinese messaging apps take things a step further. Despite
claiming that chat histories and other user information are not kept and
analyzed for commercial use, Chinese social media conglomerates like Tencent
which owns WeChat are required by law to record conversations for government
monitoring purposes (2).
According to Farhad Manjoo, a leading technology expert columnist for the New
York Times, “we give digital giants access to our most private information, and
they shower us with technology we can't do without” (3).
Consider the recent Facebook data breach affecting millions of users (4). Perhaps
feelings of disgust, concern, mistrust or even rage may surface for a while, but
how many of us boycotted Facebook after the incident? Soon enough, after the
storm calmed, we are back to scrolling through our Facebook newsfeed, posting
stories, or sharing funny memes.
The truth is that many of us prefer to turn a blind eye, imagining it’s somebody
else’s problem; most of us would rather trade our privacy for the convenience,
familiarity and feeling of connectedness social media affords us.
For some, however, privacy is a real issue. ln a 2014 article, Julia Angwin asks,
“Has privacy become a luxury good?” Alluding to Google which can “scan what
you write in Gmail to offer advertisers a chance to promote their items”,
PAGE 1
