Initially,
when viewing the data that Facebook had saved about me I was not too surprised.
All the information was profile info that I had entered. When I finally clicked
on some of the other categories, I noticed that there were extensive records of
my activity on Facebook over years and years. They had everything from my
comments and photos, to the addresses of houses I was going to for an event. I
think this is what I was most shocked about. It was a little uncomforting to
see addresses, times, and people I was with from the beginning of my usage of
Facebook until now.
Although
Facebook recorded my past, I was more impressed with the Google statistics
about me. They are able to infer what kind of person I am based on what I enter
into the search bar, and were pretty accurate. They understood a lot of my
interests, including fitness, movies, music, and outdoor life. However, Google
is limited on how accurately they can describe me because they can only infer
based on what I have searched. There are certain topics that are more
searchable than others, which could give a false perception of favorite
interests of a person. For example, Google thought that I was more interested
in Spanish than I am in something like Fishing because I do not search Fishing
tips as much as I do for Spanish papers.
Personally,
all of this information being stored makes me question how my personal
information is being used. I am not using this database of my past for my own
use, so who is? This reminds me of Eugeny Morazov’s The Net Delusion, in which he argues that the internet is more
useful in empowering the authorities than the common citizen (Wells, 2013).
This was a slight tweak on his original message that whatever advantages
activists gain from digital media, repressive states will gain more. This
stored information of me makes me believe this Digital Dystopian view since the
only people that would need my information are people like the NSA. Of course,
this information may be useful to advertisers, but do they need to know what my
favorite music was in middle school?
There
is no practical use for keeping 6 year old information of a person in archives.
If digital media truly exists to help foster education for all, then the
information available should pertain to that goal. It is a little bit scary to
know that everything that occurs online is saved, and we don’t know if or when
it will be used again. This makes me weary of the communications we have
online. People have always told me to be careful of what I post on sites like
Facebook, but until actually viewing these records, I did not know the extent
to which they record everything you do.
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