By Deauwand Myers
There's a price to pay for everything, even the internet.
In the 90s, the global community decided the internet should be ostensibly free. Think of it: the visibility of a YouTube, the algorithms, security, and data storage of a Facebook or Gmail, the utility of a Google ― all of these and more were supposed to be offered to the masses free of charge.
That's not a business model any company could sustain. Like it or not, the product: The ubiquity of a Facebook or the ease of Google, is not the product. We are the product.
Our personal identities are curated and sold to advertisers. Succinctly, the information we provide on the internet via these and other big tech companies allows them to offer amazing services for "free."
In return, we adhere to user agreements. We barter what many people consider beyond commodification: our very selves. Our aspirations, political affiliations and ideologies, religious beliefs, or lack thereof, sexual orientation, even the kind of alcohol we like or our favorite color … all of these and more, from the intimate to the mundane, are pretty well understood by Facebook and company.
For the construction and maintenance of infrastructure, employees' salaries, technology, research and development, security, and yes, profit, tech companies had little choice but to use advertising as a means of steady revenue.
Even better (for big tech and advertisers), as the television market has become saturated, fractured, and streamed, large advertisement campaigns on big legacy stations have given way (somewhat) to smaller, targeted, personalized, and more effective advertising on all mediums: your phone, your netbook, and your tablet.
There are those who dislike this paradigm. They see this packaging of our identities as a kind of violation of privacy. They find the prospect of big tech and big data knowing a great deal about consumers as Orwellian and dystopic. Really?
People need to grow up. Either we accept this paradigm, or advocate for regulations. These regulations could treat big tech (specifically Facebook and Google plus Gmail) as utilities, like electricity and gas companies.
Having said all that, I can definitely understand people's frustrations. The recent revelations are alarming. Political obfuscation was perpetrated by Russian spies to subvert the 2016 American presidential election via Facebook ads.
Moreover, through Facebook and other social media platforms, Russian intelligence attempted to interfere in other democracies in Europe, like Britain (witness Brexit) and France.
Worse, most large companies, far beyond tech (like banks and retailers), aren't spending the time and resources to protect our private information as best they can.
The recent data breaches at Equifax (an American credit scoring company), Facebook, Yahoo, Whatsapp, Instagram, Target, Walmart, several government agencies in America and abroad, and data intrusion by North Korea of several major South Korean banks, attest to the rather lax way the internet, or at least the infrastructure thereof, has not taken cyber security seriously.
Particularly for tech companies, the way in which most of the applications and computer programs we routinely use are not properly structured.
From inception, phone apps, for example, are created for functionality and utility, not security. The apps are then retrofitted with a patchwork of security features meant to fix vulnerabilities.
This has been going on for a long, long time. Take Windows OS or Apple's various operating systems. These programs are created and sold, then consumers get security updates and patches, often at inconvenient times and with some updates slowing down the overall functionality of the computers using these operating systems (the newest iteration of Windows 10's updates are a glaring and annoying example).
Imagine if people routinely bought cars that needed major fixes every few months. Who would buy such a product (Tesla notwithstanding)? Even worse, unlike Facebook and company, Windows, Apple and Android are programs we necessarily pay for whenever we buy a computer, netbook, or tablet.
There's blame to go around. The internet was conceived more as a means to share information, but like Social Security numbers in America, we use the internet for almost everything without proper security measures in place.
Unfortunately, even paid internet services cannot guarantee 100 percent security, and in the case of Facebook and company, we understand (or should) that our data is subject to being sold, and sometimes mismanaged.
It's naive to act as if we didn't know this, and unless you plan to live under a rock, there's no way to get around this constant vulnerability. The best thing we can hope for is a better balance in privacy, security, and the sharing of our information in a fashion that's legal, transparent, and secure.
We want free stuff and no skin in the game. At least with the web, it has never been that way, and it never will be. Free stuff ain't free. Consumers and corporations need to deal with it.
Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul.
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In the 90s, the global community decided the internet should be ostensibly free. Think of it: the visibility of a YouTube, the algorithms, security, and data storage of a Facebook or Gmail, the utility of a Google ― all of these and more were supposed to be offered to the masses free of charge.
That's not a business model any company could sustain. Like it or not, the product: The ubiquity of a Facebook or the ease of Google, is not the product. We are the product.
Our personal identities are curated and sold to advertisers. Succinctly, the information we provide on the internet via these and other big tech companies allows them to offer amazing services for "free."
In return, we adhere to user agreements. We barter what many people consider beyond commodification: our very selves. Our aspirations, political affiliations and ideologies, religious beliefs, or lack thereof, sexual orientation, even the kind of alcohol we like or our favorite color … all of these and more, from the intimate to the mundane, are pretty well understood by Facebook and company.
For the construction and maintenance of infrastructure, employees' salaries, technology, research and development, security, and yes, profit, tech companies had little choice but to use advertising as a means of steady revenue.
Even better (for big tech and advertisers), as the television market has become saturated, fractured, and streamed, large advertisement campaigns on big legacy stations have given way (somewhat) to smaller, targeted, personalized, and more effective advertising on all mediums: your phone, your netbook, and your tablet.
There are those who dislike this paradigm. They see this packaging of our identities as a kind of violation of privacy. They find the prospect of big tech and big data knowing a great deal about consumers as Orwellian and dystopic. Really?
People need to grow up. Either we accept this paradigm, or advocate for regulations. These regulations could treat big tech (specifically Facebook and Google plus Gmail) as utilities, like electricity and gas companies.
Having said all that, I can definitely understand people's frustrations. The recent revelations are alarming. Political obfuscation was perpetrated by Russian spies to subvert the 2016 American presidential election via Facebook ads.
Moreover, through Facebook and other social media platforms, Russian intelligence attempted to interfere in other democracies in Europe, like Britain (witness Brexit) and France.
Worse, most large companies, far beyond tech (like banks and retailers), aren't spending the time and resources to protect our private information as best they can.
The recent data breaches at Equifax (an American credit scoring company), Facebook, Yahoo, Whatsapp, Instagram, Target, Walmart, several government agencies in America and abroad, and data intrusion by North Korea of several major South Korean banks, attest to the rather lax way the internet, or at least the infrastructure thereof, has not taken cyber security seriously.
Particularly for tech companies, the way in which most of the applications and computer programs we routinely use are not properly structured.
From inception, phone apps, for example, are created for functionality and utility, not security. The apps are then retrofitted with a patchwork of security features meant to fix vulnerabilities.
This has been going on for a long, long time. Take Windows OS or Apple's various operating systems. These programs are created and sold, then consumers get security updates and patches, often at inconvenient times and with some updates slowing down the overall functionality of the computers using these operating systems (the newest iteration of Windows 10's updates are a glaring and annoying example).
Imagine if people routinely bought cars that needed major fixes every few months. Who would buy such a product (Tesla notwithstanding)? Even worse, unlike Facebook and company, Windows, Apple and Android are programs we necessarily pay for whenever we buy a computer, netbook, or tablet.
There's blame to go around. The internet was conceived more as a means to share information, but like Social Security numbers in America, we use the internet for almost everything without proper security measures in place.
Unfortunately, even paid internet services cannot guarantee 100 percent security, and in the case of Facebook and company, we understand (or should) that our data is subject to being sold, and sometimes mismanaged.
It's naive to act as if we didn't know this, and unless you plan to live under a rock, there's no way to get around this constant vulnerability. The best thing we can hope for is a better balance in privacy, security, and the sharing of our information in a fashion that's legal, transparent, and secure.
We want free stuff and no skin in the game. At least with the web, it has never been that way, and it never will be. Free stuff ain't free. Consumers and corporations need to deal with it.
Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul.
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