There is a clear trade off that must be made between privacy and convenience. For me, I tend to feel more comfortable leaning towards sharing less and using less as it relates to social media and other applications, even if it makes life slightly less convenient. I don’t use Facebook, for example. The benefits I feel I used to get from posting something about my life in the end didn’t outweigh the needless anxiety of waiting for ‘likes’, or worse, the uncomfortable realization that that I was building a permanent digital record of my life.
UBER In saying the above, I recognize that it is odd then that I am an avid user of the ride share app Uber. Uber similarly collects quite a lot of aggregate data and it gets to know a lot about its users (where they work, live and even who they know, ie. share rides with). Although I am not entirely comfortable with Uber either, the benefits have absolutely outweighed the privacy concerns for me an I use it regularly. This semester, for example, I have two days a week where I finish a course at the Kennedy School, and have another course down the road only thirty minutes later. Without Uber, I am not sure I would have been able to take both of these courses at the same time.
Uber sells the data I give it to brokers. This is a concern. But defining the broker and how they use my data is also important. Some of them may use it for advertisement and profiling purposes, and I am not so comfortable with that. However, there are a few cases where entities use Uber’s data for more socially altruistic purposes, and I don’t mind contributing to them. In the past, for example, the city of Boston announced a data sharing collaboration with Uber to help with ‘managing urban growth, relieving traffic congestion, expanding public transportation, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions’. Apart from this, Uber also helps around the country with Amber Alert Programs. Given that the data that Uber has about me is largely locational metadata, I don’t have feed it all of my innermost thoughts and feelings and it doesn’t advertise anything to me, I am relatively comfortable with it tracking my movements in the area and its convenience outweighs my privacy concerns.
Twitter I also use Twitter, in a limited capacity. I have what some call a ‘ghost account’ in that I have never posted anything and there is no identifiable information about me (screen name is random, no bio etc), I have no followers and I don’t engage with anyone. However, that is not to say that there is not significant personal metadata being collected, nor that it doesn’t ‘track’ me (I have only recently turned off the location data). Why I use the service if I seem to be so paranoid about it or not engage with it in the way it is designed is a natural question with a simple answer; there are just too many interesting academics and thought-leaders who use Twitter that are hard to follow anywhere else. An old Professor of mine, for example, uses Twitter prolifically and provides real insight on a few areas I am fascinated by. He rarely goes in TV and doesn’t actually publish all that often, save the rare New York Times Op Ed. I am able to see his multiple insightful tweets everyday, if only I bite the bullet and follow him on Twitter.
Still, I am perpetually conflicted. I am concerned that I have made an echo-chamber for myself and I am further worried that Twitter collects more data than I am aware. The same reasons that got me off of Facebook some time ago motivated me to engage with Twitter (which I started using much later) in a different way. I still consider not engaging at all though, and will give this more thought.
Concerns In speaking this week about this post with my friends and family, it seems that most of the people around me are not concerned about the data being collected on them by their social media apps, they only worry about how it is stored and whether or not it is safe. I am the opposite. In general, I find myself feeling uncomfortable with social media companies collecting my data, and I do my best to not feed too much information (that which I can control…like my lunch choice…) to them. However, I am not particularly worried about the security of my information on their servers. I feel confident in the security of theses services, and assume they are quite safe as they have some of the best of the best working on data protection and their whole business models depend on it.
Advertising is one thing, but the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica saga this year really put the issue front and center. This will be a continual battle of convenience versus security and I’m sure all of our behaviors and decisions on which services to engage with, and what to give them, will be subjective and ever changing.
Digital Government Blog 