If you look up my name on Google and scroll down, you’ll probably find evidence of my participation in an elementary school “math fair.” Before you laugh at my young self, consider how effortlessly simple it is for you to find out this basic piece of information about me. And that something much more sinister lies just below the surface.
In the age of the Internet, where any one of us can find out any information in seconds, privacy is a serious — and growing — concern. And, as a result, intensely personal information about all of us has become readily accessible. With only someone’s name, it is problematically straightforward to find their address, political party affiliation, phone number, and plenty of other personal identifying information in seconds.
Even more troublesomely, major companies on the internet have accumulated more information about us than just these simple facts. Websites like Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter possess vast collections of personal information about millions of people. These companies use tracking software to collect sensitive personal information, including age, location, employer, search history, likes and dislikes, relationship status, past purchases, and more.
Whenever you peruse the web, you give these companies new information about yourself. Search the web while shopping for a new pair of headphones? Google now knows what you may be looking to buy. Like a video promoting the latest trend in fashion? TikTok will put it to good use. Comment on someone else’s post? Chances are, the company now has a pretty good idea of your relationship with them.
Perhaps more disturbingly, these tracking practices are almost impossible to escape. Share and like buttons designed by Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram), embedded innocuously on webpages all over the Internet, can still track your web browsing and collect information on you — even if you don’t ever visit the site. If you don’t use Google, you still probably use one of its subsidiaries (YouTube, for instance). And while you may have known exactly where to go the last time you took a drive, the navigation apps on your phone stored data about exactly where you went anyway.
“Why should I care?” is the question most people ask next. So what if my phone knows all of these things about me? Well, these practices have some extensive — and terrifying — real-world implications. Meta, for example, allows advertisers to tailor their ads to a concerningly specific audience. Some uses of these “ad targeting” systems are seemingly innocuous — perhaps the company would be more likely to market a pair of headphones to you after you express interest in buying some.
More ominous uses are commonplace, too: advertisers on Meta’s platforms can exclude certain users from an advertisement based on race. In fact, in 2016, investigative reporters for ProPublica were able to purchase a real estate ad, direct Facebook to show it to people looking for a new home, and exclude nonwhite users — an obvious violation of the Fair Housing Act. And until 2021, advertisers could use Meta’s systems to specifically target children based on their interests.
This ad targeting has some serious implications: if advertisers are given free rein to target people based on a seemingly infinite series of criteria, we become increasingly vulnerable to being taken advantage of by advertisements.
Most concerningly of all, the same algorithms that are used to curate different ads for different users also create “echo chambers” — an environment where people only encounter opinions that reinforce their own pre-existing beliefs. If you like several Tweets by progressive leader Bernie Sanders, Twitter will be more inclined to show you similar material to increase your engagement, rather than displaying a wide range of opinions. Google “stop the steal rally near me,” and the site will display more results that bolster such conspiratorial thinking.
By fortifying someone’s incorrect beliefs and worsening the problem of ideological isolation, echo chambers can produce dangerous results, which eventuate in violent outcomes like the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The systemic problem of data privacy is widespread, widely misunderstood, and lacks one concrete solution. At a personal level, we should all strive to use websites committed to protecting our privacy. On a societal one, Congress has the power to implement regulations to protect consumer privacy and the rule of law. All that any of us have to do is act. 🆅
The opinions expressed within this piece are solely the author's and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of North Mecklenburg High School or the Viking Voice.