A while ago I bought fresh roses from Colombia from a firm called Global Rose. Two days after they arrived ads for Global Rose started to appear on the screen whenever I used Google. Targeted advertising, care of Google. It was harmless, but it was the speed with which it happened that startled me.
The power of Google and Facebook lies in user-generated data that lets them make huge amounts of money from companies wanting to target their advertising. They sell to a host of entities – public and private – hungry for the knowledge that can be harvested from massive data sets. Probably neither Google nor Facebook fully understand the value of the information they sell, amd most users have no idea how their searches and comments are used. This has led some to worry that there is very little holding these companies to account.
Facebook is thought to have increased voter turnout in the 2010 US congressional elections by at least 340,000 by providing an “I Voted” button to 61 million users, essentially peer-pressuring their friends to do the same. In 2013 44 per cent of US adults accessed news on Facebook, rather than newspapers or TV, up from 31 per cent. Since its news feed algorithms control which stories people see, there are concerns that the company has the potential to shape public opinion by curating the news.
Google slso causes concern. It could, for instance, start charging insurance firms to access group insights from its massive user base, which could mean individual customers’ premiums go up. Or it could close down services that millions of people find useful because they don’t bring in the right kind of saleable data or adverts.
The UK’s National Health Service recently handed over to Google’s artificial intelligence arm, DeepMind, millions of retinal scans, on the assumption that DeepMind will reduce the burden of eye disease. And they did it for free. There was no discussion about the deal beforehand, and no privacy safeguards put in place as far as we know.
“My prediction is that we’ll look back in 10, 15 years on this period as a remarkably naive and irresponsible time,” says Julia Powles, a researcher in law and computer science at the University of Cambridge.
This sounds as if we are all collectively being very naive and very unwise. I don’t like monopolies at the best of times. Let’s assume that the current owners and managers of Facebook and Gogle are well-meaning and honest. What happens if more greedy people take over their management in the future?