Blog Post #5- Social Media and Data Tracking
By Madeline Feehan
Have you ever been having a conversation and felt like your phone is stalking you? For example, you and your friend could be talking about visiting a new ramen place that opened up in your neighborhood, and 5 minutes later, all you keep getting are advertisements for it. Sometimes it can feel like there's always someone or something listening in, trying to anticipate our next move. If you feel that way, you're not alone. According to a Pew Research study, 72% of Americans feel that their phone is being tracked by advertisers. Many people also feel that what they do offline is also tracked. Smart devices like Alexa and Siri will sometimes listen and start speaking even when you don't say their name. I had one in my house for a while, and sometimes I'd just see it lighting up blue and pulsing, as if waiting to dissect and analyze my conversation. It has accidentally added things to my shopping cart on Amazon and randomly started playing music, all because it has listened in and misheard me. The same thing has happened with my Apple Watch. I've accidentally pressed down on the screen or side button, and all of a sudden, it starts talking and Googles something or tries to open my contacts and call someone. This can often feel like not only an inconvenience but an invasion of privacy. According to studies on privacy, Apple openly states that their smart devices collect personal data such as the names of your contacts, the profiles of people in your home, your address, apps, and favorite media. Users consent to this, but what happens when the smart device starts listening in on private conversations and starts recording information outside of these categories?
These smart tools are convenient and can make everyday life easier, but one has to wonder if that's worth the price of our personal data. Is it worth having a device that listens in to my conversations if it tells me how many tablespoons equal a stick of butter when I'm baking and my hands are dirty or plays my favorite song when I'm making dinner? Is it worth if to quickly ask today's forecast even if it might mishear me later and do something I don't want it to do? It's up to the user to decide.
My observations about Siri and Alexa are not unique. In 2019, an Apple employee revealed that human reviewers were listening to conversations, particularly ones that were mistaken voice commands or background noise. There was a $95 million settlement since people felt lied to. Similar to any social media platform, there were terms and conditions, but Siri was advertised as something that activated once you hit a button or said "Hey Siri." There was no expectation that it would be listening to every moment, waiting for your voice command. People were led to believe it was dormant until the voice command, not always active and running in the background. However, if the smart device is always listening to the "wake word," than how is it ever not listening? In order to be ethical, companies should always follow the principles of transparency and consent. As long as you get the user's consent, companies can observe their data and use their conversations to continue to train their technology. As long as companies are open about how they're using the data and don't hide things, people won't feel as if they're being taken advantage of.
Things like this make me wonder if a person can truly ever experience an unmonitored, untargeted social media experience. Social media and smart devices may be different, but both have been known to track users and use their data to shape their experience. Can we just make a profile, open an app, and have it know nothing about us, or is that virtually impossible? Once we like a single post, once we follow a single account, or Google something in another tab, are we feeding the algorithm? Are there ways we can use social media anonymously or is the fact that we have to make an account using an email or phone number already damning? Even if we use a different name, don't add locations or age, and make our profile picture a random cartoon, we might fly under the radar of other users, but we are not fooling the social media site. Eventually, it will show us ads targeted to our age, gender, location, and interests.
I love your sentence about the "wake word"--it's hauntingly on point. I've definitely noticed multiple instances where I'll be browsing one subject on one site, only to receive ads for it on totally unrelated sites. It's a tricky line to walk. On one hand, social media and the web in general makes our lives terribly convenient. Yet this comes at the cost of, well, basically everything! Our interests and identity no longer belong solely to us--we become data, in a sense. I feel that deep down, a lot of people are aware that we're being tracked constantly. There's almost a sense, however, that there's really "nothing" that we can do because this data tracking is so pervasive. Even when I elect not to have a site share or use my data for a specific purpose, I need to suppress suspicion that it will somehow be using it anyway!
ReplyDeleteOf course, this is also a worst-case scenario fear. I definitely agree that companies should be transparent about the types of data they collect. My worry is that some companies will use this as a justification to covertly collect more data than they're letting on, with the excuse that they informed customers that their data was being collected. The key here, I think, is to hold corporations to account. As they say, "money makes people funny"--a mass boycott of a product found to be unethically sharing data would definitely make some companies change their tune! But many understandably may choose to continue using this product simply because of its convenience. All I know is that I'm definitely not getting an Alexa or Siri any time soon!
I've always found it interesting that the "virtual assistants" claim they aren't listening, when clearly they are listening for their wake word! My grandparents have an Alexa that I constantly "mute" the microphone on so that I feel like it isn't always listening to them, but I'm sure it still does even with the mute button activated.
ReplyDeleteWhile some people do like targeted ads, and how it kind of tailors the ads on your feed to suit your interests, how often are you buying from ads? I actively try to avoid buying from random ads, as they are usually a little too good to be true. I make it a habit to disable cookies when I can, because every time I've ordered from a targeted ad, I've been disappointed. But to target ads based on casual conversations is a bit much. I wonder how long all the big companies like Apple and Amazon thought they would be able to get away with displaying ads based on verbal conversations without people noticing?
I'm one of the "weirdos" who doesn't have an iPhone. My Samsung does just fine, and doesn't constantly wake Siri! "Bixby" or whatever the Samsung assistant is called is disabled on my phone, and I honestly forget it's there because I never use it, purposefully or accidentally. But I wonder how much it is still listening...