Unintentional Neglect
Just a few months ago I wouldn’t have cared much at all about the ads I see on my timeline or the suggestive behavior of my phone. But, after everything that has been going on with Cambridge Analytica, Russia, Facebook, and data breaches, in general, I have never been more interested than now. Data is extremely valuable in today’s society, I personally like to think of it as ammunition for digital warfare. When you have the right type of data on someone you can manipulate them from the device in your hand without much effort. You can serve the right type of targeted content and shift entire nations or build systems to regulate certain groups. A lot of the damage is done by private organizations that collect our data and sells them to the highest bidder. Some of these organizations sell the data to the government so that it may be used with surveillance systems. We also have organizations that provide services for these companies to use the data on for ads, such as Facebook, but did they do it intentionally? That’s what I think we should be focusing on. With all of these use cases for data isn’t it important that the data is uncorrupted and not obtained illegally? Is someone reviewing these datasets to ensure that they’re not skewed in a certain way or don’t hinder a group of people in particular? Or do they know and are choosing to ignore it? Let’s talk about it.
Advertising
You scroll through your Facebook feed and you like a few statuses, leave a comment here and there, then you leave for Twitter. Now you’re scrolling through Twitter and you do the same thing that you just did on Facebook. Now you’re on Reddit and you see something. You see an ad for something that a friend of yours had liked on Facebook but you see, you liked that friends status and you also retweeted some of their tweets. Do you see where this is going? Based on the relationship that you have with that friend it seems as though you both may like the same thing. So the advertisers take a shot at gaining a customer by targeting you with these ads. These are called Lookalike Audiences. According to Facebook, a Lookalike Audience is a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to your best existing customers.
Traditionally, advertisements would be random and didn’t change based on the user that was on the website. After a while, we had reached a point where ads could be served based on location. Soon after that, we were able to track users and serve them ads based on what they were or are currently looking for. That is the current standard for serving advertisements today, a lot of us have looked at something on Amazon and seen it follow us all throughout the web. But, in the last few years, companies have been able to link our purchases in the real world with our movement online. Getting to know us even better and predicting our behavior along with what we might want or be inclined to try for the first time. So, these companies are able to track us both in the digital and real world based on the data that we leak as we go on throughout the day. Our profiles on various accounts have unique identifiers that connect to our emails and phone numbers etc, allowing us to be identified. Advertisers then buy this data and target the people they need to specifically.
Is there something wrong with this? A lot of people believe so but these companies are not breaking any laws. The private companies aren’t breaking the laws by selling this data, at least not in the United States. When we sign up for these services we agree to let these companies collect our information, a majority of us don’t read the terms and agreements or look through the privacy settings. This isn’t a form of Unintentional Neglect, a lot of these companies directly serve you advertisements in order to keep their products free. They don’t mention exactly how you’re being targeted with these ads or what is happening to your data after it has been collected. If they told us would we all still want to use these products? Probably not. So their behavior is intentional and to the best of their knowledge, the data is only being circulated and used for advertisements. I began by focusing on advertising because it is the perfect Segway into the more juicy part of this article. The same data that is gathered and used to track your behavior and predictability can be used for malicious purposes.
The Private Sector
With data being extremely valuable and sought after in today’s society a lot of companies are placing the accumulation of data first before anything else. Cambridge Analytica is a name that has sprung to notoriety in the past year due to their misuse of potentially illegally obtained data from Facebook. They used this data to identify people who could be swayed to vote for Donald Trump and are more susceptible to accept the messages that they were being fed on their timelines. A university professor by the name of Alexander Kogan offered users money to take a survey that would tell him about themselves. But due to the nature of the Facebook API at the time, the professor was also able to get all the personal information about the friends of the people who downloaded these surveys for money. All in all, around 100 million peoples data were harvested illegally and without them knowing. Now, here’s where the Unintentional Neglect comes into play. Facebook had no idea that its platform API would be able to be manipulated like this and that the outcome would be sold to Cambridge Analytica and used to sway elections across the globe. They didn’t build the system on purpose, they did fall victim to their own negligence though. Also, to make matters worse they didn’t alert the people whos data had been affected until they were forced to do so. Facebook had found out about the data breach and misuse of information in 2015. They requested that the data be deleted but then they did nothing to alert the users affected by the crisis. After all the news broke out about Cambridge Analytica and their ties to Facebook, the social media giant then began to take the necessary steps that it should have taken years ago. In that regard, they were intentionally neglectful and it caused them to lose a vast amount of credibility.
Russia. They’ve been in the news a lot lately because of how a private company, connected to the Kremlin, called the Internet Research Agency used Facebook, in particular, to meddle in the U.S election. Now, are they in any way connected with Cambridge Analytica and how they meddle in the election as well? So far we don’t think so but it’s very interesting that they both decided to use Facebook as their platform for their “attacks”. The Internet Research Agency didn’t use illegally obtained data like Cambridge Analytica but instead, they bought thousands of ads in places throughout the U.S that were swing states and states that supported Donald Trump. There’s a strong argument here for whether or not Facebook should be held responsible for the behavior of the Internet Research Agency. They were just using the platform as Facebook had intended it too, in fact, had they not used fake information to purchase the advertisements they wouldn’t have done anything illegal at all.
Now in Facebook’s case, this isn’t Unintentional Neglect because they make it clear that they make money through advertisements. Their form of purposeful neglect comes in how they managed the data breach that caused Cambridge Analytica to target and affect the US election. They weren’t pro-active in the matter and was more worried about their appearance and credibility than the information of the users. Think about it, Facebook makes money from selling advertisements and collecting user data. If it got out that the company that was Also, on how their advertisement system allowed for Russia to influence the US election. If they had looked deeper into where these ads were being bought from and how they were being spread then maybe they would’ve noticed something.
In hindsight, it is easy to say that Facebook should have been aware of the capabilities of their advertising program when they launched it. But, in all honesty, who could have predicted what would have come from that. The Russian manipulation and the targeted political ads that would sway an entire election and change the course of our nation’s history.
Surveillance
When it comes to Unintentional Neglect it’s hard to argue in favor of the latter. From the very beginning, surveillance aims to watch and monitor people to ensure the security of people and places. Throughout the world, there are marginalized groups that face unfair treatment due to the personal opinions of the people in power or the history of the country.
Now, when you have datasets that keeps track of criminal records and any other information about an individual that could be skewed by personal bias it is imperative that you take that into account. If models and machines are being built to identify risks but due to the data set it’s been fed it identifies people with darker skins as risks what could this lead to? People will be persecuted and treated unfairly and then all this new data that categorizes those with darker skin as being criminals will become the standard. The Unintentional Neglect when it comes to surveillance is one that is much larger and harder to change compared to everything else that we’ve previously discussed. This layer of UN is built on years of systematic corruption across various nations. The ill driven biases of people create these datasets that paint a group of people a certain way and until people change their perception those datasets will remain flawed.
However, companies and developers that build algorithms and systems for surveillance can change this negative effect by editing to the algorithms to account for these flaws. This is grounds for a heavy debate on whether or not this is fair/ethical. To some people that are giving a free pass to existing criminals and to others, it’s leveling out the playing field.
With the rise of mass surveillance and data being used to effect peoples lives it is very important that we know the motives behind these type of actions. Although a company or organization may have good intentions at heart they may create algorithms and machines that penalize a group of people in a harmful way without knowing.
