If someone were to tell you that Facebook, Watsapp, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc… or any free app or site you are using that identifies you with your email id or some other identification is eavesdropping on you…. using it to manipulate you… that they look for more and more pervasive data to mine you… that in one sense they violate your privacy to unprecedented levels… what would be your reaction?
Some of us don’t even know it… however most of us have an idea… after all, we all get ads of recent past searches… and now even sometimes on things which you just mention on the phone (or outside of it)!…. Some of us are really scared… But you know what… Almost all of us choose to ignore it… Why?
Because we do not really care for most of our data as much… we find this targeted advertisement harmless… we think what we put out is harmless as well… and to be honest… some of us are are happy sharing our most intimate date… as we actually want to advertise ourselves… And the benefit that this apps provide… those are just a delight to our mind… free pleasures that are now our necessities…
As long as we do not suffer financially or overtly psychologically… till no one steals our bank account details, till no one hacks into our identity and masquerades as us, till no we are not a public target due to our online profiles… we are generally ok with focused advertising and news feeds as long as in our mind its innocuous…
We are in essence ok to be the commodity that the Internet companies sell to anyone who wants to influence us… we are ok to be sold via our data… Yes – we are the commodity of this apps that is sold… but we are ok…
We may start getting uncomfortable when there is a difference in the stated intent and then someone pulls wool over our eyes… Instagram showing last google search based ads, that’s fine… Facebook showing news feeds based on the stories I have been spending more time… that’s fine… they are trying to show only relevant stuff… they are not manipulating…
However what we do not understand is that marketing fundamentals are based on how our brain, our mind works… repeated messages no matter how small and in the corner… will be registered… and we will forget at some point in time whether it was our idea or someone else’s… like the movie inception…. showing us the same thing over and over again… is temptation… and the moment we have enough means, our mind cannot resist temptation… what we repeatedly hear and see… becomes the reality and the truth for us… and part of our belief system… showing us a priming message – is an implicit act of manipulating our choice…
And hence by allowing ourselves to be willing commodities to be sold and spending hours and hours on such app’s… we willingly allowing our manipulation…
However… is it this only a recent issue? Has not the marketing and advertisement business been there for centuries via TV, print, plays or word of mouth before? Did we as humans not aim to influence since birth? Trying to find common groups… Everyone tries to find an audience, all communication is in one sense propaganda…
Why then the concern over social media and the internet?
Probably because, now this tool of marketing is ubiquitous… spread to unprecedented mass levels… its like all monkeys in the jungle now have the gun, not just the hunter… would you not be scared?
For are we as a mass capable of grasping and managing our choice? It is the essential debate on limits of personal rights & democracy vs what really is good for us as humans… Once any nameless, faceless identity can in obscurity of the net start creating havoc at global levels in an uncontrolled manner… using the tools we feel are benign… we will feel cheated… And hence we need control…
The very word control of the internet ignites a ferocious debate on the issue of fake news vs net neutrality… Who will govern… Should there even be governance? Would not the control of the masses like block chain keep the last visage of true freedom the right barometer and direction keeper of human society? Can we trust the masses? What about responsibility of the service provider? But what if they are biased to their own commercial interests?
We need to accept that we need governance… for most of the things in our life… and the sphere of personal freedom needs to be ring fenced… today however we live in a world of personal freedom as a doctrine… And hence whilst on one hand any manipulation seems unfair and convoluted as they are being stretched to an extreme for justifying a selfish end… On the other we find it difficult to digest someone else having the control as well…
Our civility wants to ensure that power of any sense if overt and obvious will need to look and seem limited and controlled… No human should be allowed to play god… And hence even if one has too much power, its better that its not known lest it cause despise, jealousy, fear, anxiety and worry among the masses… So there can be no control on the internet! And yet when the use of covert means by forces on the net to exert power are uncovered they cause the uproar…
Coming to a full circle again though… we as masses remain quite agnostic of the tool… For that same knife is required by us for our pleasure… we just want to control its use to not kill or harm us… We have no issue with the knife… Our basic addiction to internet, our FOMO, our need for self gratification, our need to advertise our life and thoughts / ourselves, our own desire to know… is insatiable and its a much bigger desire than the threat we believe that the misuse of the tool can have… And we cannot accept that the tool be controlled – lest we ourselves lose the right to use it the way we want!
Inside VG... 