Why I make such a big deal about trying to keep so little of your data

If you’ve read any of the terms or privacy policy on this site, you’ll know that I make a really big deal about how little I want your data. I really don’t want it. But you might be thinking, “Why are you making such a big thing of this?”

Well, my first issue is security. I don’t need the hassle of keeping other people’s data that – if I gave it up to a third party, whether voluntarily or through a data breach – could end up with you, the user, losing all sorts. For example, if you store a username and password and my site then gets breached, that username-password combination will be right out there. And any other sites you’ve used that username-password combination will now be susceptible to a third party logging in with your credentials and accessing your account. So I don’t want that. Oh, and use a password manager.

If that’s the first issue, are there any others?

Yes, and this is really what this article is all about. A common phrase people repeat is, “Yeah, I just don’t care. So what if a company is collecting my data? What are they going to do with it?” This is a problem – just because you don’t know what someone can do with your data, doesn’t meant they won’t do it. So I’ll make a few extravagant claims here and you’ll reject them as ridiculous but you’ll read on to so just how I can possibly justify myself. Sound OK?

Go ahead, punk. Make those claims.

OK. results from you giving up your data to any old company: You could have your mind controlled, you could lose relationships that are precious to you and you could endanger your lives and those of the entire planet.

That’s more extreme than I was expecting. Thanks. Makes it easier to dismiss out of hand. You’re a nutjob.

But you’ll read on, right? It’s kind of interesting to find out how a nut-job’s brain works, yes?

OK. *folds arms*

Every time you use a device to connect to the internet, you connect through your ISP to a remote computer that is always on, called a server. Servers are where the websites live. Google has servers, Amazon has servers, the BBC has servers. All sites are based on computers that run 24 hours a day, every day.

The server receives a request from your computer/device. That device gives up a lot of information about you. Some of it you might be familiar with, such as your location or your ip address (which can be found here). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Do you use Google Chrome? Specifically, what exact version? I’m using version 96.0.4664.93 at the moment. What is your screen resolution? What size did your browser window open at? Because all of these things help data analysis firms build a picture of you. They don’t necessarily know your name, but they don’t need to. They know that there’s someone using Google Chrome version 96.0.4664.93 at a screen resolution of 1920×1080 but the window opened at 980 x 846, that that person has the ip address 150.152.142.39 and they’re based somewhere near Newcastle and they searched for self-driving cars at 19:28 on the 31st December.

So what? What does that tell them?

Nothing, yet. But the next time someone with that exact combination of data points (let’s call them Person X, since we can identify you from your data points but we don’t have your name) searches for something else, the data company can identify you as potentially that person who looked up self-driving cars last time. They might serve you an advert for a self-driving car or similar. Remember, it is not just cookies they are using to track you. They are building a digital fingerprint of you, based on hundreds of data points.

So I see a few ads for things I’m already interested in? So what?

We used to think that’s where it stopped. But the story did get murkier. Much murkier. A combination of whistleblower events (Cambridgde Analytica, The 2021 Facebook expose) showed us just how weak we are when it comes to recognising manipulation. The problem comes down to news.

News?

Nobody wants to feel like they have been manipulated, which means we are all pretty defensive when it comes to being duped ourselves. I’m including me in that. And I’m definitely including you. You should read up more about these incidents yourselves – if you find out information yourself, you are more likely to believe it than if I just tell you.

However, you may have noticed that news and politics seems to be particularly… extreme these days. Whether it’s saving the planet from pollution or from immigrants, the dominant voices appear to be very much at either end of these spectra rather than speaking from the centre.

Are we going to get all political now? Because that’s really going to annoy me…

That’s … my point. Our technology has evolved much faster than we have as humans and certainly much faster than our legislative organisations have. The Facebook affair showed that it was not just adverts that we are being pushed towards. If we feel more strongly about something – whether we love it or we hate it – we’re more likely to engage with it. This has meant that, according to the sources of these worldwide scandals, over the last few years, companies such as Facebook (although I do not for a second believe it’s only them) have been promoting messages and news stories that are more extreme on a personal basis. From your previous searches and browsing activity, they now have a pretty good picture of which way Person X is leaning. They don’t need your name. And they know the sort of stories you will respond to.

That’s my big problem with data. The accusation is that they are using your data to make you more angry about the news so that you engage more with their platform. As this news is being served to people on a one-to-one basis and not being broadcast nationally (as it would be with TV), there is, frankly, no de facto requirement for the news to be in any way true. Just a de facto requirement for it to make you mad.

We have not noticed this now until it is far too late. And it doesn’t matter what side of a particular political divide you are on. We’re all being manipulated.

Proof needed. Evidence.

Here’s an explanation from Wikipedia. I have included it because it explains very clearly and is sourced, but I wouldn’t want to claim it as my own words:

In 2015, in addition to the Like button on posts, Facebook introduced a set of other emotional reaction options: love, haha, yay, wow, sad and angry. The Washington Post reported that for three years, Facebook’s algorithms promoted posts that received the ‘angry’ reaction from its users, based on internal analysis showing that such posts lead to five times more engagement than posts with regular likes. Years later, Facebook’s researchers pointed out that posts with ‘angry’ reactions were much more likely to be toxic, polarizing, fake or low quality.

^{[Source – Washington Post]} 

It’s way beyond the scope of this blog to go into too much detail about all the other sources for these accusations, so I’ll just leave you with the sources that do a far better job than I would. However, don’t just take my word for it and don’t just trust my cherry picked sources. That’s the whole point. Look it up for yourself.

Sources: Telegraph Bloomberg BBC Guardian Wall Street Journal CNBC Washington Post New York Times Politico

What does this all mean?

It means that we are all being manipulated all the time. That has always been the case, but the methods of manipulation are now far more sophisticated and nuanced than we have ever had to deal with before. What’s more, we’re not good enough to detect it because we tend to believe things that we already somewhat believe – i.e. if we are pro- a point of view, we’re more likely to accept a news story reporting the extreme version of this.

Over the last few years, new technology has facilitated people having their minds changed … tuned … from moderate to more extreme viewpoints. Pushing people to either end of the extremes by definition pushes them further from each other. Friendships, families, relationships have all been affected. Even extremely dangerous and demonstrably false health scare stories are presented as trusted news, perhaps one of the scariest features of the COVID pandemic.

Can I test it out?

Yes. Spend a couple of weeks looking up news stories from sources you wouldn’t normally countenance. You’ll find that your news feed starts looking different. Some of the stories you agree with will be pushed to one side and you’ll start seeing stories from the other side – stories you don’t like and you don’t agree with.

But I don’t want to see stories I don’t like.

Which rather elegantly illustrates the point.

James