Emily Turnage
Gamification of Social Media
For this week’s blog post, I can’t seem to find a better or more appropriate topic than that which has been the headline of nearly every major internet news outlet I follow - the recent vote by Congress to “keep a set of Internet privacy protections approved in October from taking effect later this year.” This will have the far-reaching effect of making it easier for ISPs to gather and store personal information of their users - browsing histories, app usage information, and more - in order to sell it to the highest bidder, most namely advertisers looking to more directly target consumers.
As I discussed in a previous blog post, the idea that these companies are saving information about us can be terrifying; though our names might not be attached to that information, enough identifying information is there that could pinpoint us, and that’s not going to sit well with many people - hence the outcry against the ruling. However, as I discussed in a previous blog post, the way that advertisers are using this information is, by and large, not out-and-out malicious. It’s simply a way to formulate better ad targeting, which is something many people may find useful, even if it can be creepy - for instance, my mother emailed me our itinerary for a trip to Las Vegas about a month and a half ago, I googled the places she mentioned, and then suddenly all of my ads across many networks - Google, Tumblr, Facebook - were all Las Vegas-themed, encouraging me to buy Cirque tickets or stay at New York, New York even after the trip had concluded. Still, the fact that Congress is unwilling to rein in ISPs making yet another cash grab at the expense of their users’ privacy - because indeed, that’s what the whole selling user information is - is worrying to say the least. Though buying personal information of specific individuals has been publicly ruled out by ISPs themselves - though that’s not to say what they would do behind closed doors - people are still funding campaigns through sites like GoFundMe and even new nonprofits set to donate to funds like the ACLU in order to both challenge the legislation, and in some cases actually attempt to purchase the browsing history of certain congresspeople who voted to halt the regulations. Though it’s an enjoyable - and ironic - sentiment, the true battle will be waged by utilizing tools created to protect one’s privacy such as VPNs, browsers like Tor, and ensuring that the sites that you do use have HTTPS enabled - a more secure way of transmitting your information to the site in question, without ISPs being able to see as much of that information.
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For this week’s blog post, I’d like to dive into a little more detail about Sesame Credit, China’s new “social credit rating” designed to reward people it considers good citizens. Sesame Credit analyzes everything about a person’s social life - from the purchases they make through Alibaba, to the posts and links they share on social media, even going as far as to factor in a user’s friends’ scores based on all of their social media presence. Being a good citizen gets one benefits, while being a poor citizen (using the word “democracy” repeatedly, for example, or sharing information on Tiananmen Square) will eventually reap negative consequences, such as slower internet speeds. This sort of social monitoring is exactly the sort of terrifying, all-encompassing Big Brother movement that we’ve been terrified of - and especially so because of how Sesame Credit goes about its suppression of opposition.
See, the terrifying beauty of Sesame Credit lies in its ability to monitor your friends’ activities and attribute them to your own. By not being a “good, obedient citizen” in China, one risks being ostracized and made a pariah by people they called friends, simply because being friends with them could cause their social credit score to go down, and prevent them from getting certain benefits, like getting government paperwork signed off faster, or even getting a discount at a hotel, as one couple spoke about in a BBC article on Sesame Credit. By weaponizing gamification and using it against disobedient citizens, Alibaba and Sesame Credit have turned everyone in China into Big Brother, by selectively rewarding them for cutting association with those known to speak out against the Chinese government’s regime. And it horrifies me to think that companies like Yahoo are partnered with Alibaba, in effect supporting the giant company’s totalitarian regime over the social lives of its citizens - because make no mistake, though Sesame Credit is optional now, the plan is for it to be mandatory by 2020 for all Chinese citizens. That we can just sit by and allow this sort of monitoring is awful; but, because Alibaba is Chinese owned and maintained, there is little the US can do besides encouraging its own companies to drop their partnerships with it, creating a clear stance that the US will not stand for these awful human rights violations - but then, China seems to be no stranger to violating its country’s citizens’ rights. For this week’s blog, I’m going to get into the good and the bad of Uber, a company that’s rapidly replacing taxis and public transport in metropolitan areas, and is even gaining ground outside of them. Uber seems to be the target of a lot of controversy as of late - with their breaking of the taxi strike in New York after the travel ban was put in place, to accusations of racism and sexism by its drivers.
First, the bad - in an article on Alternet.org, a study details that “Uber drivers in Boston have a pattern of prejudice against black and female riders.” The study goes on to show that the drivers are twice as likely to cancel a ride if the customer has a black-sounding name, and likely to drive women on longer, more expensive routes as well. This sort of discrimination, though it is human in nature and not completely incorrigible, should absolutely be given a zero-tolerance policy by the company. If a driver is known to cancel rides fairly often, and those rides have a common element - requested by women and people with nonwhite sounding names, then that driver should be punished appropriately, with either suspension or loss of their Uber driving privileges. The same goes for routes taken, although this is less easy to track as cancelled rides. In order for Uber to maintain its station as a distinctly modern service, it needs to eschew the prejudices that plague it currently and make a concerted effort towards equal treatment and support of their userbase. That being said, not all Uber drivers are at fault; a story on the SFGate site details “How an Uber driver stopped child sex trafficking in Elk Grove”. The Uber driver called police when a young girl - estimated to be twelve years of age by the driver - was being groomed for sex work by two older women also present in the car. Though Uber does not train its drivers in dealing with these sort of situations, it was a heroic move by the driver and his actions have been commended by the company; it is stories like this that Uber must set its precedent by, and addressing the claims of racism and sexism mentioned previously would do a great deal towards maintaining this standard. In an article “Tech companies like Gmail, WhatsApp may be asked to store user information” for The Economic Times of India, Surabhi Agarwal describes a new movement toward data collection proposed by the Indian government. Under these new rules, email services and communication apps - among others - would be required to store data on their users, such as messages sent or received, or even personal information, for a set period of time. Of course, this movement has been met with opposition from these companies, citing difficult implementation and invasions of users’ privacy as primary reasons why many are speaking out against it.
Despite this sudden outcry, many data collection companies have already begun doing so. Acxiom in particular is an data marketing firm that offers information - including browsing habits, and ways of identifying what type of consumer a user is, from “potential inheritor”, “adult with senior parent” and “diabetic focused”. It then sells this information to companies for a profit, sometimes without the knowledge or consent of the users whose information it is selling. It’s easy to think of all of this as horrifying - a blight on our privacy, that some company is, in the words of Vienna Teng, “gathering every crumb you drop / these mindless decisions and moments you long forgot”. To be sure, the data collection and storage already done by Acxiom, and now proposed by the Indian government on the parts of messaging apps, is worrisome if the consumer has not given consent for their information to be stored in such a way. But - since it’s already happening, and comparatively little can be done about the information that’s already out there, perhaps it’s also important to look at the benefits data collection may have for us. For example, in an article for Business Insider, the vice president of Macy’s customer strategy division describes responsible data usage as such: "Consumers are worried about our use of data, but they're pissed if I don't deliver relevance. … How am I supposed to deliver relevance and magically deliver what they want if I don't look at the data?" Being able to examine consumer data in order to provide relevance in advertising and products is a convenience that many consumers may take for granted when lobbying for increased privacy. It’s a delicate balance that needs to be struck between collecting enough data in order to give customers the products that they want, and advertising that will interest them, but also not infringing on customers’ personal rights to privacy. |
AuthorI am a senior studying Communication Design, with an emphasis in Game Design. I like playing video games, writing, and yelling too loudly about things I care about. Archives
May 2017
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