Reflection
During this unit we talked about data and how people use data in multiple ways within culture. While watching the movie "The Great Hack", I got to understand how digital data can be used through social media. The movie explains how Cambridge Analytica, a data company uses social media as a tool to push voters to vote for Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. The way Cambridge Analytica used their technology was by partnering up with Facebook and making questionnaires for Facebook member that helped determine which side of the political party they’re on. It also helped them find the people who were easily persuaded, they called these people “the persuadables” and when they found these people they’d purposely put certain ads that made the democrat party look bad so that the persuadables would want to vote for the republican side. A lot of people didn’t know that these things were happening until later on when Cambridge Analytica got called out as well as Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg.
Learning about this made me very nervous about what all social media can receive from people’s information. For example, I read the terms and conditions of the popular social media app Instagram which is a part of the Facebook since 2012. Within the terms and conditions it says, “Advertisers, app developers, and publishers can send us information through Facebook Business Tools they use, including our social plug-ins (such as the Like button), Facebook Login, our APIs and SDKs, or the Facebook pixel. These partners provide information about your activities off Facebook—including information about your device, websites you visit, purchases you make, the ads you see, and how you use their services—whether or not you have a Facebook account or are logged into Facebook.”(Instagram network, 2019) This information explains why ads pop up on our social media accounts after looking online for something on safari or any other source of internet used on your phones. It also says that all data on Instagram will be available on our profile for 6 months or until the account is deleted. I didn’t find that out until I started taking this class and it was very helpful to know once I started this project.
These things helped me do my project because I had a better understanding of how the data was collected and how much information these certain data tracking services work. For my experiment I used the Fitbit which in the culture industry is basically the knock off version of the apple watch. Even though it tracked my steps, calories burned, sleep patterns and more, the apple watch is what society likes and wants us to buy due to how popular the Apple industry is. Also, after reading the terms and conditions of the Fitbit I also found out that “when you access or use our Services, we receive certain usage or network activity information.” This now officially makes sense now. When I go onto my Fitbit account and look at new athletic bands and afterwards go onto Instagram or Facebook, ads for Fitbit pop up. Fitbit also connects with my phone and knows my whereabouts. For example, one day I decided to go for a run and set up my Fitbit to track my steps and calories. After I finished my run, I looked on the app and saw it outlined my run to a T showing how long I went for, what streets I went down. Even though it says that all my data is private in the terms and conditions, it’s hard to believe that’s the case when they have information like where I take my runs, my personal stuff like my birthday, gender etc...