Analysis and Impact of Social Media and its Privacy on Big Data
source: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8458066
In the article, “Analysis and Impact of Social Media and its Privacy on Big Data”, it states, “Big data uses parallel processing technique in which multiple data is been used to produce a single answer” and that it uses a Master-Slave-Architecture where “many are working regularly to create this big data” (Bansal, Kumar, Rawat, & Choudhury, 2018).
This data is used to create personalized ads to encourage me to buy their products. By popping up on my Facebook timeline or Instagram feed, these ads catch my attention because they are already familiar with the types of products I look for from surveilling my search engines and browsing history. It then uses many more complex algorithms to pinpoint more of my preferences to lure me into their brand.
The article discusses the different types of data that are used in these algorithms to match preferences to the user in an effort to gain profit. They illustrate the Iceberg Model of Social Media which shows just how little information we think we’re sharing vs the mass amount information we do not know about that is calculated through algorithms. The information that I insert into the platform myself “via account setting, privacy settings, etc” is called the visible part of the iceberg. Past that, there is a mass amount of invisible data that could be stored into multiple files to compute algorithms by these corporations or companies when they are “targeting advertisement, marketing or other uses” (Bansal et al., 2018). This means that even information that I do not contribute myself can be collected and used against me for advertising.
The article shared some questions to ask ourselves and potential solutions when trying to protect your data against these algorithms.
- Firstly, we must make sure that the information we upload into the platform is completely secure with no 3rd party having the authority to collect that data
- We must also make sure of the ways in which the platform handles and controls the usefulness of the high velocity and storage of big data.
This article reminded me that we as users should be conscious of the ways in which our data can be used by platforms to protect our data as much as possible. Although as of now, invisible data is not something we can control, we should try to be wary of the different ways we can still limit the exploitation of our own data.