TECHNOLOGY • Jul 12, 2020
You sure, you are the one making your decisions???
This is the article, I said I would write in the "Facebook like-button" article...
We are all smug in a way that we believe “I make the calls in my life”. But the only way it would be possible is only if you are locked in a room for all your life. All of our decisions are affected by external factors – Ads, posters, movies, books, etc. In most cases, we are the ones choosing whether we want to “do that” or “not”. But not always. In some scenarios, some things might force you (implicitly) to make a decision and you would be defenseless against it and It can be used against you deceptively.
I am going to start with a cliched statement “Google and Facebook know a lot about you”. I can add something more to it – “Google and Facebook know about you more than your mom, your best friend, your husband/wife or Boyfriend/Girlfriend”. This is a statement I can make with absolute certainty; I can bet anything on it. People seem to think “how can a “software” know a person better than another person. While it is true that people are complex, we aren’t that complex. More often than not, we are predictable. Whatever is predictable can be modeled with data. With this kind of data, they can pretty much make us do, what they want.
What makes this kind of marketing dangerous is that, unlike TV ads, it can influence you by knowing exactly what your preferences are. If you take TV ads, it’s just passive advertisement- you decide you want it or not-, but in these online ads, they will know that "you will care about the ad" even before it’s even put up in front of you. This can even be said as borderline manipulation.
Some of you might think “I am not making any serious decisions, so it doesn’t matter” (Students). A Few others might think “I am mentally strong; A software can’t manipulate me”. Both of these are wrong notions because these companies are smarter and you will not even be aware that it has influenced you. I will give just you one example.
First, I introduce you - Michael Kosinski, A Psychology Professor at Stanford. What he did had major implications on this. a little bit of background. Psychologists use something called an OCEAN character test to find what kind of a person you are. The word OCEAN is an acronym (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism). The test asks several questions and gives you a score on a scale of 100 for each of the character traits (I have attached a link for a legit OCEAN test, who I think, don’t sell our data).
Openness- Degree to which you are open to new ideas
Conscientiousness- Degree to which you are planned and organized
Extraversion- Degree to which you are sociable
Agreeableness- Degree to which you cooperate with others
Neuroticism- Degree to which you are emotionally unstable
First, let’s be clear, what I have said above are grossly simplified explanations and It is empirically proven that these measures will give a good approximation of a person’s character traits.
Michael Kosinski’s research was using an algorithm to derive the OCEAN traits values from photos we liked on Facebook. With a few dozen likes he was able to tell almost all your demographic information. And I quote “With 150 likes, we can outdo one’s parents and with 300 likes we can outdo one’s spouse or partner”. With sufficient likes, he was able to predict the OCEAN scores with a 98% fidelity. If this is not scary, I don’t know what is.
This was the same method used to manipulate the US presidential elections and Brexit voting by Cambridge Analytica. Let me tell you what they did in the US presidential elections because it’s a bit more clear and simpler. In the US, winning the election depends on the number of the delegates won and not the total number of votes (Something like India) and they knew some states were traditionally democratic or republican states (means, the other party won’t probably win in that state). But there were a few states which oscillate a lot. And in those states, they Identified people who are fickle and gullible (from the OCEAN profile) and microtargeted them with aggressive personalized ads. The thing here is that Cambridge Analytica doesn’t have to brainwash Tens of millions of people (even though they had data for over 80 million people). A few thousand will do the job (Since elections in those critical states are usually close).
But there are a lot of questions about the effectiveness of this method and there is no empirical proof that this kind of targeted advertising actually works, but there was a time when there was no way to glean the personality traits data from a person in a casual way. So, we cannot presume that there is no way to make this work. What we can unequivocally say is that we are leaving a piece of us in the digital world which is there for the taking.
I am not trying to portray Google and Facebook as Evil corporations who are preying on people to make money. They are not!! They are providing us with a priceless service and as an exchange, we are inadvertently giving our data and that’s the only any business can function - “Exchange of goods or services”- and for the most part, they behave with high integrity. I strongly suggest you start believing “Nothing is ever free.”. Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter any service you use is not free. We are just not paying in terms of money.
There is one thing we can do to “very partially” save us from them influencing us. Go to your phone settings -> Google -> Ads -> opt-out of Ad-personalization. After immense pressure, Google added this feature. Still, it’s not yet available on social media sites. But this doesn’t prevent Google from selling our data to social media companies (Or any company that doesn’t use Google Ads). They do- You can still see Ads based on your google searches on Instagram or Facebook. But, to be honest, you can’t do a lot more, the conveniences we have, come at a cost (Only way you can escape all this is by throwing anything out any electronic device that is invented after 1995).
Documentary on Cambridge Analytica
The Great Hack - Available on Netflix
OCEAN Test
https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test
CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA controversy
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html
Michael Kosinski