Data and Posted Pictures
Last spring I studied abroad and very typically posted a ton of photos of all the beautiful places I was lucky enough to visit.
The better part of my pictures were taken on hiking trails and at national parks, and each has a location tag, so it would be very easy for a company to guess that I like to travel and more specifically that I like to visit beautiful natural areas. And it seems that Facebook has definitely taken advantage of this, because occasionally it will post an advertisement on my feed for student travel sites or articles about how to afford travel, etc.
I’ve also noticed looking through my feed that I haven’t posted a single picture since I came back from study abroad. Most of the reason I posted so many pictures during my travels is because I’m bad with technology and couldn’t think of a better way to quickly save my pictures to a place where I could find them easily. And yet, I have dozens of photos on my page because of the ones I have been tagged in. From my tagged photos, Facebook can probably tell which friends I hang out with most regularly. I’ve especially noticed that Facebook will notify me whenever my closest friends in Raleigh post that they are “going” to or are “interested” in an event, which often leaves me feeling like a stalker for knowing so much about their schedules.
It’s interesting to see that I have hundreds of photos linked to my page despite only personally posting a few. Even without doing anything myself, Facebook can still gather a lot of information on where I go and what I do based on the information that my friends give. It seems to me that this is one of the many reasons it becomes difficult to opt out of contributing to big data.
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It’s soo funny how, even if we wanted to stop making data, or at least restrain ourselves from putting things out there on the internet, out friends can just as easily do it for us. I remember as a middle school kid, my mom would always warn me about the dangers of being online and that I should never give out any personal information. I would try to prevent friends from putting up group pictures that I was a part of, and I wouldn’t post any myself. However, I eventually did, and now I give away information voluntarily, with the social media sites I use and with the pictures I post.
Good insight!