Facebook Data Visualizations from Abroad
Queen Victoria Statue
Part of me doesn’t think I have to worry about being targeted by direct advertising based off of my Facebook or Instagram photos because I have a great deal of security settings in place for both. Maybe that’s being naive. My Instagram profile is entirely private and my Facebook photos can only be seen by my friends. The only exception would be my current and past profile pictures, so that’s what I’ll base this post on.
All of my photos were taken with a phone camera and are either selfies or were taken by a friend. There are no locations added to my photos, but one could use context clues to figure out I had been traveling abroad to the United Kingdom. In one picture, I’m standing beside the Queen Victoria statue located in the Kensington Gardens in London, England. This statue is very close to Kensington Palace and Hyde Park. The other photo, identifiable to one who knows the landscape, was taken in the Scotland Highlands. Both photos are dated to this past summer and indicate I was traveling during that time.
Scotland Highlands
There IS evidence of big data in my photo with Queen Victoria’s statue. Her statue will actually recite facts about her life if an app is used to activate her. By using a smartphone to scan the code on the sign I’m standing beside, the statue speaks. When a phone that is registered from a certain country and state scans the code, that data is probably collected to tally where the tourists visiting the statue came from. For example, if the majority of the tourists scanning that code have phones registered and bought in America, that information could be utilized by the Kensington Garden retailers to sell merchandise more marketable toward Americans.
Based on these pictures being public profile pictures on Facebook, I could possibly be targeted by travel agencies in the future. I could also be targeted by other advertisers based on my appearance and general clothing choice. I have long hair and could receive shampoo advertisements. I wear a lot of tan and beige colors and fashion websites could advertise similar clothing to me. I think I’d be most likely to receive advertisements based off of my clothing instead of my location because I didn’t specifically name my whereabouts when posting the pictures.
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I don’t know if this works when you post pictures, but I know when I take pictures with my smartphone each picture has the date, time, and location listed below it. If that information does transfer when the picture is posted then advertising companies would also have access to that information. Your pictures may not be as secure as you think.
It would be great to think that every little precaution that we take would protect us from data being collected about us. However, that just isn’t the case. I know for a while I would directly upload pictures taken on my phone to Facebook in fear that I was being tracked or something. I didn’t want people to know where I was at every point in my day. I think we just don’t know how much data is being collected from and about us at every point of every day and that is something that still frightens me a bit. It’s just the world we live in and at this point I don’t know if there is much we can do about it.
I agree with what has been said above that regardless of how many privacy settings we have, unfortunately, I don’t think we can know how much data is actually being collected from us. However, I really liked how you included information about the Queen Victoria Statue. Something to think about is how different visual advertisements might be more or less effective depending on the culture they’re presented in? If a global company posts an ad do they tailor it depending on location or are ads mostly “westernized?”
Great Job!