Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit the news, a lot of people have been deleting their Facebook or at least making an effort to use it less. But for a lot of people, this has been a complete awakening to the whole internet privacy controversy and consequently, there’s been a growing trend to boycott all internet services known to be collecting user data. The one other company talked about most in this regard is Google. There have been complete guides going around the internet on how to stop using Google services completely and instead use alternatives for each of its services. That means no Google search, no Google Maps, Photos, Drive, or YouTube, and there are people actually trying this. Believe it or not, there have actually been people attempting to replace their YouTube usage with Dailymotion! As a Google-centric news blog, we are obligated to address this madness.
It is understandable why Google is the one to immediately come under attack here. Google is the one company which collects the most amount of user data. The primary purpose of user data collection by internet companies is to generate revenue by delivering users targeted ads, the custom selected ads for you that you see when using internet services. It is the principal source of income for these companies. This already massive and rapidly growing market has since long been a duopoly between Facebook and Google, with any other company almost non-existent. And Google has always had a considerable lead over Facebook here. While they make money out of your data, you get services from them for free. It’s a fair trade, but only if done sincerely.
There has been a lot of backlash to the increasing adoption of it, but when properly implemented, targeted advertising is great. It has actually been a revolution for advertising. A lot of people are afraid their data is being “sold” to advertisers. But neither Facebook nor Google sells your data. And that is for their own good more than anyone else’s because your data is the tool they use to deliver targeted ads for advertisers, who pay them for it. They sell ads, not your data.
The issues raised against targeted advertising are all, to be honest, pretty trivial. And when compared to the ample advantages it provides, they fall very short. These issues center mainly around concerns of privacy and non-neutrality. Privacy is important, of course. Hence, like I said, proper implementation with adequate data security is necessary.
Targeted advertising lets you see ads from a wide variety of companies and are more relevant to you because they are personally selected for you. It democratizes advertising. With traditional forms of advertising such as that on newspapers and cable TV, there is only one single set of ads delivered to every person. This limited advertising space can only be bought by the biggest companies. With targeted advertising, the number of ads being delivered increases exponentially since a particular ad only goes out to a section of the population who are expected to be interested in it and thus every person gets a different set of ads based on their interests. As a result, advertising costs too, fall exponentially. This reduced cost enables smaller companies and startups to reach potential customers earlier not possible with traditional advertising. And you get to see ads for new interesting products instead of the same few ads you’ve been seeing everywhere from established mainstream companies. It’ simply better resource utilization. A 2009 study by Network Advertising Initiative found that targeted ads generated 2.7 times as much revenue per ad as traditional advertising and was twice as effective at converting users who click on ads into buyers.
What we need to understand is that collecting data, in itself, is not a bad thing. It’s actually a positive thing and should be done because data that is not tracked and collected is just lost forever and can never be put to any use, good or bad. The actual issue here is the misuse of data. How a company handles collected user data is what actually matters. There are three basic aspects you want to consider under this:
Security: How well the data is kept protected from hackers and bad actors. This is probably the most important aspect.
Transparency: How openly the company communicates to users about what data they are collecting and why and the level of control it provides users to modify their privacy settings.
Usage: What the data is being utilized for. What benefits it provides to the company and/or to the users. Whether it is being shared with any governmental organizations or anyone else.
Facebook’s data management has since long been a disaster; much before the Cambridge Analytica scandal blew it up into the mainstream with the whole #DeleteFacebook trend. People have been protesting and trying to spread awareness about Facebook’s dubious data practices for years, with an entire Quit Facebook Day attempted back in 2010.
Besides, not utilizing your data for anything besides ads for their profits, their security is a joke if you look into it. The guy Cambridge Analytica hired to collect the data from Facebook didn’t even need to actually “hack” anything because Facebook really just allows app developers to suck out massive amounts of user data legally. This major loophole with the app permissions has been pointed out multiple times for years. There was even an official complaint filed with the Irish Data Protection Commission leading to audits in 2011. But Facebook didn’t fix this problem until 2015.
While the multiple cases of involuntary data leaks reveal Facebook’s incompetency, the bigger source of contention when it comes privacy complaints people have had against the company has been its moral integrity. Unfair practices that collect data without proper consent or put user data at risk. That may or may not be mentioned in a privacy policy that is poorly written and very difficult to comprehend despite many updates to it in the past years in response to privacy complaints. The privacy policy does even state Facebook may share user data with “other companies, courts, lawyers or other government entities” under certain circumstances. The whole “Shadow Profiles” theory, which was more on the side of a conspiracy theory in the beginning, has proven to be more and more true with recent events. And Facebook in a recent blog post even accepted a lot of these claims to be actually true.
It’s safe to conclude, at the very least, that Facebook as a company values its profits well above users’ welfare and is very careless about user data security.
Coming to Google, they aren’t exactly an organization of angels either, as their “Don’t Be Evil” motto might lead you to believe. They’ve had their share of issues and controversies, such as the big memo controversy just last year. But it’s unrealistic to expect a company of their size and with the history to be without a few issues. And considering that, there indeed have been relatively few. And we can’t ignore the many non- profit projects they run that couldn’t be anything besides philanthropy.
Looking at data security specifically, there have been no notable leaks or breaches in their history: commendable. Google claims they protect user data with “the world’s most advanced security infrastructure.” Not hard to believe given their level of expertise with internet software and technologies. Their concern for security is well known: having always encouraged higher levels of security not just in their own services but for others too. Sites that conform to the recommended level of security standards get a higher preference on Google search. Google developed Safe Browsing, a service to help enable safe internet usage. Originally developed for their Chrome browser, it is now publicly available through an API and most major browsers such as Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox and other services use it.
If you look into the all the privacy allegations against Google, they all mostly talk about concerns over how much data Google collects form each user and the risks associated with sharing so much of your data. But if their track record is any proof, Google is very capable of handling them. Apart from taking precautions against hacking threats, they also distribute data across multiple data centers, so that in the event of a fire or disaster, it can be automatically shifted to secure locations.
Coming to transparency, there isn’t any known notable instance of Google collecting data illegally or out of what is mentioned in their privacy policy except for the Safari browser case in 2012. That the average person has little to no idea about the entire practice of user data harvesting by internet companies, in general, is a totally different issue.
However, there’s one important issue with Google when it comes to transparency and it’s probably the biggest question to Google’s moral integrity. It is the company’s uncomfortably close ties with the US government and underground involvement in political activities. Even beyond the 2013 NSA leaks which spared almost no tech company including Google, there has been a lot of other evidence to indicate this. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange wrote at length about it in his book about Google. I’m not defending the spying programs the US government runs, but we can’t altogether dismiss it as a grossly evil practice either. It’s a little more complicated than that. A lot of people including former President Obama have come out in support of them as useful tools against terrorism.
“Privacy above all other things, including safety and freedom from terrorism, is not where we want to go.” — Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division
The aspect of data utilization is where Google really shines. Google is a company centered around data and data analysis and utilization is something they excel at more than anyone else. Beyond delivering targeted ads custom picked for you, your data is used to deliver some very useful personalized services tailored to you. All free of cost. Articles selected from all around the internet, Youtube recommendations, traffic data and updates on your upcoming trips or regular commute, local weather updates, personalized keyboard prediction and much more. The kind of personalized photo management service Google Photos provides today is something we could only dream about earlier. The more you use Google services and give them your data, the better these personalized services get for you. And with Google Assistant, it’s getting even better.
Google has been very focused on Artificial Intelligence in recent years and it has been deploying AI heavily both in consumer tech and outside of it. Some of the things they have achieved with AI applications are remarkably inspirational: discoveries in the medical field, helping farmers with their crops, helping disabled people etc.
Data is the fuel for AI and without it, AI can’t work. The more data an AI service receives, the better it gets. However, data collected for AI can be totally anonymous so privacy is not as big a concern here.
Google has also been investing heavily in selling hardware recently. This could provide them a big alternative source of income besides ads; the reason Apple is able to boast constantly about not collecting their users’ data.
Conclusion
I realize why it might seem that way, but the main point of this article is not to tell you to use Google and not use Facebook. Or any other company for that matter. You’re welcome to use your own discretion here. But what I’m saying is do not get swayed by the hardcore internet privacy crusade some people are leading post the Cambridge Analytica scandal, asking you to blindly shut yourself out from any and every internet company known to be harvesting your data. That’s just being extremely cynical.
I do still agree, however, that it’s a good thing the Cambridge Analytica got the amount of news coverage it did and raised the issue of internet privacy to the mainstream. Because we do, of course, need to take an important lesson here: not that to completely shut ourselves out online but to be more cautious when sharing our data and to take note of who we share it with; if its a company we can trust. Right now (pre-Cambridge Analytica at least), that’s something most people don’t think about at all. It’s just like when you’re buying a product: you take note of the company it’s from; if it’s one you can trust to invest your money in. It needs to be the same way with sharing your data.
What we need to look at is not who is collecting how much data on you (the current consumer trend), but how serious they are about protecting their users’ data and what their intentions are with it. It’s difficult, however, for the average person to have a very accurate estimate of these aspects and that’s where the government and laws come in. It’s not just consumers who need to take lessons but the government too. Just like we have consumer protection laws focused on buying and selling in most countries, we need laws to regulate sharing and collection of data too. The GDPR in Europe is the first modern legal act to implement this and the US is now planning to introduce similar legislation for it too. A lot of legal work is needed to properly regulate internet privacy. Hopefully, this is the beginning of that, not just for the US but for other nations too.
