Facebook Are Spying On You, and It’s Mostly Legal
Recently, one of my friends was looking at chains on Google and had gone through a couple of the results while browsing, but couldn’t find anything he wanted to buy. Later that day he went on Facebook and found himself being bombarded with advertisements for chains and rings. The same thing happened to him when he went onto Instagram, and then Snapchat. You’ve probably you’ve probably had a similar experience with a different product, or on a different website. Have you ever thought about how or why it’s happening? Or have you ever thought about how sites like Facebook make money? After all, they’re completely free to use. Facebook, for example, made tens of billions of dollars of profit last year, for providing a free service for you to message your friends on—but how?
Facebook, and many other technology companies, make most of their money through advertisements. However, they also make income through selling data, this data can then be used to tailor these advertisements towards individuals. This data is acquired from the users of the service. And it’s not just your email address and name that they collect. It’s more invasive things such as your location, the kinds of posts you enjoy looking at, how long you spend watching videos, and even what times in the day you open and use the app. In some ways these things will be more valuable to them than money, because it means they can optimise their algorithms to show you more things you enjoy, or things that they think you want, so that you spend longer on the app. They want you to spend as long as possible scrolling through posts, because then they can show you more ads, and collect more data, and therefore make more money. It probably also means you will spend less time using competitors’ services, which is also a big win for Facebook.
The worst thing about this is that technically the users of the service have given these companies permission to do this. When you signed up to Facebook years ago you would have accepted certain terms and conditions. You almost certainly did not read those conditions, probably because you weren't forced to, or because they were long and boring, and you couldn’t be bothered. It’s just some text under the “Create account” button that you can click on, if you want to, after all. And that’s the problem; because the app is free to use, users don’t feel like they have anything to lose, but something to gain. Facebook are in the same position, because they will be able to collect a lot more data if the app is free, and data ultimately means money for them.
A more up-to-date example would be with TikTok. Back in 2018 it was found that the app contained almost no privacy features at all, essentially allowing anyone with a basic knowledge of computers to come along and collect personal information on the users, without their knowledge. This led to the Chinese government temporarily banning the app from their restricted internet and only allowing it back once they had introduced new age restrictions and censorship policies. These policies are thought to allow the Chinese government access to the data, which is why American President Donald Trump recently went all out trying to ban the app from the United States completely.1 All this collection of data (most of which users have no idea about) means that free services are not free at all. Sure, they might not cost any money to use, but it does cost you your personal information.
To put a number on how much these companies are making from our data, Zach Graumann, campaign manager for Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign, said on Yang’s podcast that when Yang suspended his campaign back in February, that they were bombarded with other campaigns and organisations trying to get a hold of their mailing list. According to him, some of these companies were offering “a couple of dollars an email”—for a list with over a million emails on it, would have ended up being a lot of money for the campaign.2 Now imagine how much the campaign would have been paid if they held more than just emails, for things like location and app use patterns, no one outside of these tech giants knows for sure how much but it’s certainly a lot of money—money that the users arguably should get a fair cut of.
Thankfully users are already starting to see some of this money. Facebook was recently ordered to pay $650 million in settlements to the state of Illinois after it was found that the company’s use of facial recognition violated the state’s law on how such software can be utilised. This money will go directly back to the users, with payouts of somewhere between $200 and $400 per person.3 Facebook originally tried to settle with the state for $550 million but the judge rejected it for not being enough. Had the case gone to trial there are reports of payouts totaling as much as $47 billion if Facebook had lost, which would have meant a huge payday for users in the state.4
The state of California also recently passed an act called the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which gives consumers in the state complete control of their data. The most important part of the act is that it gives the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information. And once you opt-out, the business must wait at least a year before asking you to opt-in again, so no more annoying pop-ups every time you visit a site asking you to agree to things that you probably have no interest in. The Data Dividend Project is focusing on the right to opt-out, and will soon be using it as a way to make these businesses pay the consumers for the right to sell the data.5 This is huge for users, as it means that they will get a cut of all the revenue that Facebook and other tech giants make—a universal basic income for your data, if you will.
The Data Dividend Project is the brainchild of Andrew Yang and will act as a voice for the many when it comes to fighting for data rights. Its primary objective is to enforce data property rights under laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and act as a voice for the people. So, if you are a resident of California and haven’t signed up already you can do so at https://www.datadividendproject.com/. It only takes a couple of minutes and is totally worth it, because in the future it will become a source of passive income. And if you’re not based in California, hopefully other states and countries will take note, and introduce similar laws in the future, so that you can get your fair share of the income that your data generates.
(1) Zhang, K 2020, Hong Kong children expose their identities, thoughts and flesh to millions of strangers on popular iPhone app Tik Tok, Post finds, SCMP, viewed August 2020, <https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/2146840/hong-kong-children-expose-their-identities-thoughts-and>
(2) Yang Speaks 2020, We want to get you paid for your data, Yang Speaks, viewed August 2020, <https://youtu.be/x-WuwG_fYJ4?t=630>
(3) Marotti, A 2020, A massive Facebook privacy settlement just got bigger. Illinois users could split $650 million., Chicago Tribune, viewed August 2020, <https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-facebook-privacy-settlement-increased-20200724-n5gjh6aq2bdfvdk2x76hrplpzm-story.html>
(4) Morrison, S 2020, Facebook’s sad summer continues with a $650 million settlement, Vox, viewed August 2020, <https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/23/21335806/facebook-settlement-illinois-facial-recognition-photo-tagging>
(5) Xavier Becerra Attorney General, California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), State of California Department of Justice, viewed August 2020, <https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa>
