Commodification & Power
Demographics are valuable data because it is very helpful knowing what audience to target. For example, when shopping online, almost every time you have to put in personal information when making a purchase. If I could own demographic information I would sell it to companies that sell goods and services. I would do so by making sure that products match the demographic needs of the different companies. Information such as gender, age, and even household income could be very beneficial when owning a business.
I do think companies are justified to take this data. After all nothing is free. We cannot expect to get things without giving anything, and in this case, it’s data. On the other end, we have also become so used to putting personal information online, so if we blame anyone, it would be us for giving the information out so easily. I know I typically don’t think twice about giving my information away online. Mainly Facebook has most information on me, and I often find myself “logging in with Facebook” on other sites, allowing the access to my information from Facebook. Facebook is by far getting the most out of my electronic activity because it basically has access to my life. Facebook knows my personal information, my location, my friends, access to my camera roll, and more.
When it comes to app, I would say that my location is given out most frequently. For some of them I find it very necessary, and for others not so much. For example, I have a coupon app downloaded on my phone called retail me not. When first downloading this app is asked to have access to my location, so I will receive notifications when I am near a store that has a current coupon out. I find this fair because it is benefiting me by getting me great deals. I am giving the app my location information as it allows me great deals, so it’s a fair trade in my opinion. I also choose to allow my Fitbit app access to my location, for the exercise feature. When using this feature when running, it marks a trail on the map to show where I ran, the distance, and time. I wouldn’t say it’s necessary for apps such as Instagram and Facebook to ask for access to your location unless you feel the need to post your location on pictures, but that isn’t benefiting me in anyway, so I do not.
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I also have noticed many apps allowing you to “log in through Facebook.” I almost always do this just because it is so much more convenient than having to create another account. However, it is crazy to think about how much information I am willingly giving away when doing so. I also notice those frivolous yet exceedingly entertaining quizzes on Facebook, for example “Which Friends character are you?”, actually require you to log in through Facebook if you want to take the quiz. Which of course, I take because I obviously need to know if I am more of a Rachel or a Monica. I also enjoyed how you mentioned demographic information being the most valuable type of data and I am in complete agreement that information like gender, age, and socioeconomic status are beneficial to companies for marketing purposes.
I think your explanation for what you’d do with the data if you had access to it is really interesting, and I think it echoes the video we saw from the Predictive Analytics group. Collecting data and modeling data, then auctioning it yo the highest bidder (so to speak) has been a thing for some time now, and I imagine it will only continue to be the wave moving forward; I think we’ll see more and more of these big companies get in on the action in the future. Ultimately it’s an arms race, with the arms in this equation being the data. Access to that data will determine who has the resources, which is really the measure of power to begin with
Location seems to be the piece of information that other companies are the most interested in getting, usually without the user’s knowledge. There was an earlier post that expanded upon this idea, but the gist of it was that knowing patters of people’s movement (and therefore what kinds of place/stores they go to) could be useful for finding marketable trends.
Also your post is a little short. Please expand upon the ideas in one of your paragraphs to meet the word requirement.
After reading a couple people’s posts, it seems that everyone says something along the lines of “nothing is free,” and I agree. I just wonder how much of this idea stems from capitalism and how much of this idea stems from the advent of technology. To add to this idea another thing we hear often is that technology is taking over jobs etc. It’s possible that technology is not taking people’s jobs but rather changing what we sell and work to achieve. A hundred years ago they might have sold coats, but now we sell people’s data. It’s crazy to think of the changes in our economy and the underlying force of capitalism.
I often think I don’t even realize the extent to which my location is being given to Apps or services. Sometimes without my prior knowledge- although this is probably due to the fact I didn’t take the time to read the terms and conditions. This class has made me much more aware of things like this. Now, instead of agreeing to allow every App access to my location, I am going to think before saying “ok” and possibly do some further research on the matter as well.