I must have
the people over at Google thoroughly confused. They now think that I am an
impoverished-but-wealthy black, gay, Jewish female who is into cooking and who
races Formula I cars in France on the weekends. I'll get to why they think this
in a moment. (This is assuming that there are
people at Google, and that these days it's not simply a pulsating, gelatinous
glob of algorithmically driven hive-mind protoplasm. Although that would be
very cool too, and would make an awesome B movie. It's too bad that Tab Hunter
is dead.)
You see, like
Facebook, Twitter, and the rest, Google has always been about collecting,
manipulating, and mining the data we happily supply it. The Goog then takes the
data and sells it to people who use it to sell stuff to us, sometimes further
manipulating and mining the data along the way. In this fashion, marketers can
build up surprisingly accurate—and often chillingly complete—dossiers on us.
These are used to present to us items for sale in which we may be interested.
(This is only a little unsettling, and could even be helpful.) Sometimes the
marketers use the information they've purchased from The Goog in order to sell
us things related to things they know we
like. For instance, if I've purchased vinyl records, it's probably a good guess
that A) I'm interested in turntables and B) I may have a man-bun. If I've
purchased (or even simply viewed) a
baseball glove from an online vendor, it’s a decent bet that I could be
interested in, say, sports memorabilia, season tickets to a sporting event, or
perhaps a particular brand of sportswear. (That's getting just a bit creepy.)
But what if I have not viewed or
commented on or reviewed an item, let's say a guitar, but I have friends who have done those things? For a
marketer or data salesperson, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that, since
people with like interests tend to hang out together, I may begin seeing
guitar-related ads on my various social media feeds or in sidebar ads on
websites that I happen to frequent, not because I've looked at such items
online, but because my friends have done
so. (Okay, now we're getting a seriously creepy.)
What we've
encountered here is what some social scientists have called
"dataveillance." We're being surveilled digitally, based on the data
trail we leave when we traverse the Web. Now, that's not always a terrible
thing: sometimes these ads are helpful, just as Facebook's "people you may
know" list is occasionally useful and surprisingly accurate.
But we have very
little control (read: almost no control)
over how that data is used. The real issue with dataveillance, as Cornell
University's Helen Nissenbaum has noted, is that it often constitutes a
violation of what she calls "contextual integrity." We give someone
certain information with a particular understanding of the context in which
that information is to be used. I don't mind giving my doctor very private
information about myself and my (growing number of) physical ailments. But I
would mind very much if she were to share that information with a drug rep or
insurance salesman. I explicitly give The Goog data about my travels on the
Web, but I did not (knowingly and
willingly) give The Goog permission to mine that data, manipulate it, compare
it to my friends' data, and then sell it to people who will further refine it
and who may then turn around and resell
it or combine it with other datasets, the existence of which I am unaware. (If
you're dying to read more about Dr. Nissenbaum's work, I interviewed her for my
book, which—not at all coincidentally—is available here.)
Of course, The Goog
pretends that this is all harmless and that its data collection is benign,
incidental, and in fact helpful.
Except that they're
not even pretending anymore. You may have encountered a Google program called
Google Opinion Rewards. If you sign up, The Goog will pay you to fill out "opinion surveys." For each brief
survey, Google will add from 10 to 30 cents or so to your Google Play account;
you can then turn around and use that money to buy books, music, apps, etc. on
the Google Play store.
But these surveys
rarely actually ask your opinion about
something. By and large, The Goog doesn't want to know what you think; it wants
to know what you are. How much money you
make. Whether you rent or own. What sort of car you drive, and if you're likely
to be in the market for a new one soon. Here are some sample survey questions:
- What is the likelihood that you will get a flu shot this year?
- Did anyone in your household get food stamps . . . In 2017?
- What is the combined income of all members of your family in 2017?
- Are you covered by any kind of insurance or health plan . . . ?
- What medical condition or concern are you most embarrassed to ask your doctor about?
- Which [of the following categories] best describes your political views?
These are sent to
you with the disclaimer that they will be used "to show you more relevant
advertising" or to "improve Google products." (Which is more
than a little ironic, given that, in the end, you
are the product.)
But I've gamed the
system: I simply give wildly inaccurate (and often contradictory) answers to
the survey questions. Thus, The Goog is now completely confused about who I am,
which is only fair, given that I am also confused
about who I am. (I mean, in an existential sense, aren't we all confused about who we are, about our place
in the world? My personal existential crisis begin in 1973 with an attempt to
understand the lyrics to songs by the Steve Miller band.) I think it's only
fair that Google's algorithms should be just as confused as the rest of us.
Perhaps the algorithm in charge of all of Google's other data-mining algorithms
has called an 8 a.m. meeting to discuss what went wrong and to argue about
which of the junior algorithms was supposed to bring doughnuts to the meeting.