The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Our online selves reveal all
We sold our souls to the American tech gods in return for the ability to like cat videos – that is the essence of the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal.
Both companies stand accused of harvesting personal data for commercial gain, specifically to target lazy voters into action in the US presidential vote of 2016.
The legality of this is moot – it is the hot question attached to the scandal.
The morality seems a bit clearer – people simply didn’t know how much information they had given to Facebook, and its use for political campaigning appears an invasion of privacy.
The fuss marks the end of the first age of social media, when people were gulled into exposing themselves online, their digital selves to be sold to the highest bidder in an abstract form of human trafficking.
To understand this strange story, you need to know a bit about social media.
Facebook invites you to post a profile of yourself online at no cost.
This profile page then allows you to link with other profiles, of friends and family.
When you post something on your page, it is seen by all the people in your group, and you see all their posts.
Your photograph of a summer holiday or your paragraph of writing about your child’s brilliance is then “liked” by other people in your group – a “like” is a digital tick of approval, a shorthand for showing interest in other people’s lives.
Of course, all of this is just numbers in a computer code – numbers which can be analysed with great precision.
Your data plus your likes gives a very accurate picture of the kind of person you are.
An algorithm can know you better than you know yourself.
Facebook does this all the time – it is how it targets advertising on its site.
We accept this use of data as part of modern life – we know advertisers want to target ads at likely buyers.
It becomes sinister when applied to public debate.
For example, you may have a tendency to “like” things identified with a politically-conservative mindset, yet your stated politics is for left-wing parties.
The algorithm will identify you as sympathetic to the right, without you knowing.
Your profile page will then be targeted with news and adverts which play to your conservative instincts without you knowing, your opinion is repeatedly endorsed by all the information that appears on your Facebook page.
You may think the world is confirming your options, but in fact your prejudices are being fed by selective information from people who want to influence your thoughts.
Some of this is as old as history – we seek out people and opinions we agree with, and this reinforces our prejudices while helping advertisers know where to find us.
What is exceptional with social media is that we give so much personal information to private companies.
If a canvasser were to ask you intimate questions about sex, food and fun, you’d probably tell them to sling their hook.
Yet on Facebook, we give this information up willingly, and the company stores it forever.
It has your home address, your email, your education – it knows your cultural tastes, your favourite places to go, your family network, your political beliefs and records for evermore those bad days when you say something stupid.
Much as another American tech giant, Google, knows your every curiosity, your taste in pornography and your exact geographic location.
Social media works on the paradox of apparent control and anonymity, while digging into our psyches and using that data for commercial gain.
Liberty and the right to privacy are notionally alive in the actual world, but are increasingly meaningless given the digital shadows that follow our every step.
Cambridge Analytica took all this data and crunched it such that people who might vote for Donald Trump in 2016 were goaded in to action – the firm claims to have won the election for the Republican.
People in politics are endlessly claiming to have the latest trick or tactic which wins votes – each needs a pinch of a salt.
What does need to be taken seriously is the exploitation of private data.
For a licence to operate in the UK, both Facebook and Google should be required to delete all search data and postings within a fixed time period, say three months.
They will howl at this, as data analysis is a growing business worth billions.
It is a trade which operates on the easy seduction of people who want to share, and on the lethargy of humans who can’t be bothered to read the small print.
Of course we should know better, but then we should know better than to gamble, take drugs, drink to excess – yet we approve of laws which restrict these acts of self-sabotage.
There is another more sobering aspect to the story – democracies work on the idea that we are agents with free will and considered opinions.
The data scandal only works because we are entirely predictable creatures who would rather be liked by our neighbour than change our mind.
Your opinion is repeatedly endorsed by all the information that appears on your Facebook page