Archive: Opinions

Google does it.  Facebook does it.  It sounds like a Cole Porter song.  But that's not the 'it' I am talking about.  These companies and a spate of other digital giants like Apple and Amazon and Microsoft make billions on our personal information.  Private information about what we like, who we are close to, what we think and care about, and what we shop for.

Except it's not private.  Because we give them all this information ourselves, which they -- some of them shamelessly -- turn into cash.  For themselves.  Not us.  Why are we giving our very selves away like this?  Are we really that stupid?  Well, yes, we are.

Have you seen those Facebook ads that start out by telling you that Jane Doe 'likes' that particular product?  Jane didn't know she was going to be used as an inducement to buy it when she 'liked' the product or the company page.  She just thought she was 'liking' it because she happened to like it at that moment.  You are probably showing up on Jane's Facebook feed as liking products, too.

The strategy is that if something is recommended by a friend you are more likely to pay attention and buy whatever it happens to be.  Facebook is non-discriminating about this -- an algorithm simply farms your information and tells your friends what you like.  The problem is that you probably didn't know they are doing this,  Maybe you didn't intend for people you know that you like a particular thing.  What if you 'liked' some embarrassing product in a moment of whimsy?  Do you really want your children to know you like sexy swimwear, for example?

Services like Google and Facebook lure us in with amazing free services that we use all the time and love.  There is nothing wrong with them finding a way to pay for that.  The problem is that there is a big difference between making us view ads and telling people we know that we endorse the ads.  Because we may never have seen those ads and we're not being told that our friends are being told we recommend those things.

The worst example of this is the ads I keep seeing on my Facebook feed telling me that my friend Ruth likes various products.  Ruth died.  I don't think she is liking products any more.  Maybe she liked them at one time, but she is certainly not liking them now.  This is an ugly way to be reminded of this smart, caring, competent woman who died after a long painful battle with cancer.

If I like a product so well that I want to tell my friends about it, believe it or not I just tell them.  Possibly in an email or online somewhere, but usually with my mouth.  That Facebook doesn't trust me to recommend products they advertise says something nasty about the company's faith in the products they tout.

How long did it take before you realized Google was collecting statistics on everything you do on their services?  And how much time have you spent trying to figure out how to disable that?  I search for all kinds of things on Google.  But I don't want or need a record of those searches, and despite the company's argument that they can serve up a more personalized and valuable experience if they show me ads about things I am interested in, I find the whole thing unsettling and creepy.

The creepiest is those ads that show up on a lot of sites that seem to know what you have been doing.  When I visit a site for the first time and see an ad for something at a store I just bought from (usually the thing I just bought, so I don't really need another one) I do not get a warm, tingly feeling.  It's more like, "Holy crap!  I never heard of this site before one minute ago, but they know everything about me!"

That's why many people are migrating to DuckDuckGo for their searches.  That company's come-on is 'Take Back Your Privacy'.  I don't know how they are going to monetize their service, but I have to say that a search engine that doesn't track my activity is mighty reassuring.  But let's face it.  Google is amazing.  It's going to take a lot to get folks to stop using Google.  Maybe there is nothing that will stop us.  Maybe that says we just don't care?  Or maybe it says that we are really, really easy to bribe.

All these sites have ways to turn off tracking so some extent.  It is very disturbing that they are on by default.  And despite their best PR efforts Facebook and Google and all the others are not at all convincing when they say it is easy to do so, if they even bother saying it.  So next time you post something online, think twice.  Don't post anything personal.  Stop liking all those sites -- you're not going to win a free car for 'liking' a Web page no matter what they promise.  Besides, if you have to be bribed with the promise of a free whatever, maybe you don't actually like the thing after all.

George Orwell may have jumped the gun when he said Big Brother would be watching in 1984.  We are certainly being watched now.  Beware!

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