Clicking on the “privacy and security” option in the preference page of my Instagram account, I will have access to the information bundle that documents almost everything ever happened on my account. It even has a lucid list of my ad interests, which includes “cosmetics” and “fragrances.”
Despite the inaccuracy of my ad interest, I was horrified by the unreserved exhibition of my personal information. The creepiness of the data collection from Facebook, however, is more than that.
On the “Data Policy” page of Instagram, legal writers of Facebook claim that they collect information and content that users “provide.” This is quite a tricky diction as Facebook never emphasized its users that anything they put in their account will be collected automatically. The “provided” information is not bounded to all of your posts or stories. It also includes your connection, usage and networks. Basically, every click or touch in the app is recorded instantly.
What’s more, in the second part of the data policy, it tells that Facebook even collects users’ device information. This includes the operating system, behaviors of users on the device, Bluetooth signals, and even available storage space. Frankly, it is beyond my imagination to think of the purpose of inspecting the Bluetooth or phone signal for Facebook.
When we scroll down to the third entry of the data policy, we may reasonably detect some commercial incentives of the massive, uncontrolled collection of users’ information.
In describing how the company will use the information, lawyers made another fantastic move. The page lists five major objectives of using the information: “Provide, personalize and improve our products” is the first, then “analytics, and other business services,” and “Research and innovate for social good” in the last. The order of the terms employed Serial-Position Effect–the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst—to impress their users. Ingenuous viewers, in this case, tend to neglect that they use their data to promote business services.
In terms of sharing, the data policy used an entire page to showcase how expansive their business network is. The third-party partners that are shared with users’ information include advertisers, researchers, and partners who purchased analytics services.
The substantial business partnership undoubtedly brought unprecedented revenue. Last year, Bloomberg reported that Instagram generated $20 billion in revenue in 2019, more than a quarter of its parent company’s total revenue of the year.
While the figure underscores the extraordinary success of the photo-sharing app, the risk and flaw in the data collection and distribution network never decline. For instance, Facebook was breached, and at least 49 million users’ sensitive data has been exposed due to the glitches of their Amazon Web Services server.
The underlying problem that remains unsolved is the lack of checks and balances of the rights that social media companies have to collect and use our data from both users and authorities. Otherwise, Facebook will not be so arrogant to manipulate their policy terms intentionally.
Xiangyuan Chi 