All tied up in the tenticles of the Datakraken? patrickschulze/Flickr
Facebook has a long history of pushing the envelope when it comes data privacy and user rights, and one of the most egregious examples was its research on “emotional contagion,” where user news feeds were manipulated to study their reactions to negative posts. It may have sounded innocent enough to the data scientists in Menlo Park, CA, but the reality was that this Web overlord distorted its customers’ emotional states in order to better understand how to profit from them.
Much like the government intelligence agents who don’t understand (or won’t acknowledge) the severity of their surveillance programs until they go public, Facebook’s leadership acted like the program was “no big deal” until public outrage finally prompted them to openly apologize – well, sort of. Actually, they merely stated their regret for “the reaction the paper received,” without ever apologizing for the research itself.
This sort of hubris and cavalier attitude toward user privacy is not unique to Facebook – it is true of nearly all today’s Data Collectors, or Data States as many of us like calling it. These data hoarders — who hold our data hostage in exchange for “free” services that we can’t live without — actually grow their business by selling off our psychological profiles to advertisers and marketers (not to mention, government agencies).
But it’s their business model, and after all, we do consent to this data collection when we agree to use free services, so who cares: right? Perhaps at one time this was partially true, but the boundaries between free and paid services, between private and monitored channels, and between open and closed environments have now blurred to the point that terms of services (and the benefits) are unclear, with users having little knowledge of where their data is stored, and how it is being used, and re-used.
Recently, I was joined on stage by privacy campaigner Aral Balkan, who pointed out startling examples of this trend, for example Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp earlier this year for $19bn, which essentially bought them millions of phone numbers and the “right” to eavesdrop on them. Facebook is pursuing a strategy of acquisitions not just for the purpose of acquiring new services, but with the end goal of building a giant personal data reservoir that can be mined and manipulated continuously for their profit.
Again, let’s not pick on just Facebook – Google is the poster child in so many ways for critique; “ACH!”, they have perfected the model. With its Android mobile OS, Chrome desktop OS and ubiquitous “free” services like Gmail, Drive and Google Maps, this “open source” company has created an enormous global web of data – including pictures of your backyard, and to-the-second location records of anyone who has enabled GPS on their Android or Chrome-enabled device – to the point that they know where you are going before you leave home.
And when services like Gmail and Facebook are plugged into the APIs of other “free” apps, the result is a tangled mess of user data agreements that no person could hope to keep track of, with the worst case scenario being the digital privacy equivalent of second-hand smoke (as Aral terms it), whereby even non-users have their data exposed – against their wishes or without their knowledge – like for example when communication with Gmail users. Is there anything fundamentally different between this second-hand smoke reality, and the NSA’s own policy of monitoring anyone with three degrees of separation from a suspected terrorist?
As good citizens of the Internet, our instinct in this dilemma is to push for reform – and we have. Unfortunately, both our governments and the Web hoarders have failed to live up to the reforms they’ve promised. Some European countries have made noise about “Surveillance Valley’s” privacy infringements, but ultimately they are unable or unwilling to act decisively about it. My home country, Germany, has made a push against the so-called “datenkraken,” but one has to wonder why more has not been done already, considering our own nasty history of surveillance from the Nazis up through the Stasi. Meanwhile, tech companies are putting tons of marketing dollars into showing how “open” they are, with projects like Facebook’s TODO, the Open Data Center Alliance, and the AllSeen Alliance – which sound nice in theory, but are really vehicles for these large tech companies to hijack open source tools for the construction of even more information silos, threatening the very open nature of the Internet.
If we want to keep a free and open Internet, perhaps there is no doing business with the datenkraken at all. As Amazon, Facebook and Google have shown time and again, there are no such things as free services – you either pay with your wallet, or with your privacy. Instead of wishing and hoping that these companies will play nice, we must create, invest in, and use Web services that respect our human rights on the Internet. If this means exchanging a little money for services in the old fashioned way, then so be it. After all, who do you trust more with your data – a local service provider, or Mark Zuckerberg?
In case you can’t think of an answer right away, consider that Mark has already called you a “dumb f**k” for giving him your information freely, albeit back in his Harvard days. Would you give your money to a bank whose CEO calls you a sucker? It seems unlikely, to say the least. If we believe that our rights transfer over to the digital world, then we have to stand up to this perpetual abuse by a handful of Internet bullies.
Rather than wait for change to happen, the technology industry and its users – the backbone of the Internet itself – must transform from within. And this transformation must focus on technologies that can provide us with Cloud 3.0 services, (and I don’t mean the Internet of Things) that provide the convenience factor and attractive user experience of “free” services, but with a level of integrity and privacy that Internet citizens deserve as human beings.
Private businesses should control their own data boundaries – and that means regulating what data leaves, and what data remains within their organizations. For legally-bound industries, this is even more the case. If companies begin to use Cloud 3.0 solutions, that is a good start – they will pave the way for wide-scale adoption among consumers, as was the case with PCs in decades past. The software industry can’t relax, but instead must become fiercely competitive. Being open and free doesn’t cut it anymore – users demand the ease of use they get with Facebook and Google. In the cloud age everything is easy, except privacy and digital rights. But it doesn’t have to be that way – so let’s reclaim the Internet by only using services that treat us with respect.
Rafael Laguna is co-founder and CEO of OX.
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