Implications of Social Media as a Regime of Surveillance as Well as a Regime of Commodification

Over the current decade, the world has experienced a significant boom and foundation of numerous social platforms which have become an integral part of people’s social life. Nowadays, almost every person in the world is, in one way or another, part of this global sensation and advancement in social technology. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp are examples of commonly used social networks today where users share and upload content to their peers. Social networks have made the world a global village, whereby it just requires the use of easily available devices, such as phones, tablets, laptops, and access to internet connectivity to connect with anyone in a different part of the world. However, the advancement of social technology hasn’t been as smooth as it sounds. This is because some have viewed it as an opportunity to observe and monitor people’s activities on social media and their real-life day-to-day activities. This vice is commonly known as surveillance, which is in most cases considered socially unethical since it infringes on an individual's right to privacy and freedom of expression.

Social Media as a Tool for Surveillance and Commodification

Taking Facebook and Google as examples, I am going to delve into the implications of surveillance and commodification these social media giants have. Facebook Inc had 2.19 billion active monthly users in the first quarter of 2018. That’s more than one-fourth of the world's population. Facebook has been able to achieve this while being off-limits to more than a billion Chinese. The company is valued at over 435 billion dollars. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been facing congressional hearings in the US. Lanier, who is a Silicon Valley innovator, said, "His pals were some of the first to create advertising-based models for programs like Google and Facebook. As the technology improved, it evolved into a full-blown continuous surveillance and behavior modification model, and that is something that really is not survivable" (Lanier, 2018).

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden criticized Facebook in a tweet after the social media giant suspended Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that worked for President Trump’s campaign. Facebook accused the firm of not deleting data it had improperly harvested from tens of millions of accounts. Snowden said, “Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as 'surveillance companies.' Their rebranding as 'social media' is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense” (Snowden, 2018).

Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a voter-profiling company that provided services for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. CA was looking for American Facebook users. It offered to pay users to download their personality quiz application on Facebook called thisisyourdigitallife. About 270,000 installed the app in return for about 2 dollars. The application scraped information from their Facebook profiles as well as detailed information from their friends' profiles. Facebook then provided this data to the makers of the application. Over 50 million users' data was harvested. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie has said he feared that the data may have been turned over to Russians who aimed to interfere with the U.S. election. He has alleged the Facebook data was used to target voters by U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

A business model based on vast data surveillance and charging clients to opaquely target users based on this kind of extensive profiling will inevitably be misused. The real problem is that billions of dollars are being made at the expense of the health of our public sphere and our politics, and crucial decisions are being made unilaterally and without recourse or accountability.

Google's Role in Surveillance and Commodification

Google was established in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford University PhD graduates. For quite some time, it has created the greatest seeking stage of the new media era. It has truly turned into an equivalent word for "search." Presently we know Google as a search engine, as well as an innovative organization with numerous applications and dutiful organizations.

Among the most prominent applications is Google Maps, which is the most widely used navigation software. Google Analytics—a site tracker, the mode of emailing Gmail, and Google Chrome—a search engine. As advertised, Google search and Google apps are not free. According to Google (2017), its revenue originates from promotions and the arrangement of DoubleClick. It implies sponsors pay only for a measure of clicks individuals made on their website. Google’s greatest advantage is the data collected from clients, which allows them to modify advertisements based on the preferences of the user.

Google utilizes keywords for password security, targeted advertisements, and preferences of the customer. Compared to other search engines, Google's white interface is straightforward and not crowded with unnecessary news or data. Google search is clear, free, and it completes a considerable amount to gather information on its clients for better results.

As per Smythe (1981), in a commodification demonstration, an audience isn't just watching promotions; they give the impression of working for sponsors by watching them. Obviously, the intention was built when Google and the web didn't exist, but it isn't entirely different from the new media era. These days, we have Google, which is the medium that pitches the audience's information and sells it to sponsors.

The commodification of an audience is impossible without surveillance. Google manages data about us in three major ways: it collects data on us when we are using the searcher, it saves and duplicates any good or harmful data about us, and it captures images of open spaces worldwide.

Google gets data from our use of their services. It collects users' device information, log information, including the user's phone number, length of calls, and contact details. It also gets an IP address that enables the user's current location. Google's Privacy Policy states, "We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users" (Google, 2018). The greater the number of Google applications you use, the more it knows about you. Cookies, settled in our mobile or computing devices, are a unique technology that identifies our devices. That means, regardless of how much the user deletes, downloads, or where he signed in, that technology ties all his program activity to one person. By observation, Google stores the information even your closest didn't know.

Conclusion

I feel that social media is being used as a means of surveillance and commodification to raise its profits and standing in the market. Advertising products and services specific to users' needs requires information about the user, which is sold, and that is how targeted advertising works. The implications of social media in our lives today raise many unanswered questions regarding surveillance. Google uses its audience and makes people its commodities. It collects information not only by the keywords and interests; it acquires the data about social networks and address contacts. As a result, Google also commodifies social relations of people. Nevertheless, the number of Google users grows, as does its power, and we can only imagine how far it would go in the future. The most powerful are those who own information, and Google has a monopoly on such kind of invasion. It is our choice to be aware of Google’s imperialism or just passively consume everything we’ve been offered.

Google is enhancing day by day. It appropriates users’ data and therefore users themselves, and sells them to the government and advertisers. It makes a benefit from people’s blind faith in Google and invasions in users’ personal life without them even knowing about it. It collects, stores, and saves all the information for years. Nothing can be deleted on the internet, and every step you make is clearly identified and watched, especially when you use Google applications, and the amount of these applications grows geometrically. You can even not know the things mass media knows about you.

References

• Google. (2018). Privacy policy. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/
• Lanier, J. (2018). Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. Henry Holt and Co.
• Smythe, D. W. (1981). Dependency road: Communications, capitalism, consciousness, and Canada. Ablex Pub.
• Snowden, E. (2018, March 18). [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/975231732047474689