We regulate public utilities like gas and electricity to ensure they don’t abuse their power. But Google and Facebook are different in so far as they cost us users no money directly and it doesn’t make sense to break them up, since the point of them it that everyone is on one network. At the moment the system relies on common sense and goodwill. All the same, these natural monopolies should be accountable to the public. In particular there should be an oversight organisation that examines data collection and processing practices. The EU now has a set of regulations called the General Data Protection Regulation, which will apply from 2017, and can subject companies like Google and Facebook up to 4 per cent of global annual income for serious data protection breaches.
We really have to inform ourselves about the information and personal data we are giving away to these big companies, especially since manufacturers, car makers for instance, will be collected data automatically, and using it to enhance their profits – Google and Facebook are not alone.
The following are typical instances of what we give away freely when we use them:
Instagram: As well as being a huge audience to direct ads to, users of the photo-sharing app are giving parent company Facebook hashtags, which its uses to train machine learning systems that handle images.
Facebook: The words you type and the clicks you make are used to teach machine learning systems what you are interested in, so it can show this in your news feed. Your on-site conversations are anonymised and used to train its systems how to hold human-like conversations.
Google search: After analysing billions of searches, Google knows that humans aren’t as unique as we think. Its algorithm has become so sophisticated Google has started to display the clearest answers right at the top of the search results, above any web links.
WhatsAp: Last week, the messaging service announced that it is sharing some users’ data – including phone numbers – with parent company Facebook, opening another way for business to reach customers. (A precis of an article by Hal Hodson in the New Scientist).
Corporations spend fortunes trying to be free of oversight and regulations. The latter are there to protect us, the users. We must not let them have their way.
I agree that the use and sharing of personal data ought to be tightly regulated. But when data becomes anonymised, such as Facebook using messenger to teach its systems how to have conversations, I don’t see the harm. Ultimately nothing is free, and the anonymous use of data in exchange for being able to use social media is a price I’m willing to pay.