Source: Forbes.com

Recently, we saw our friends and family share some oddly weird pictures on social media. You know, the ones that look like them but not quite? It seems like a new filter is trending, and it answers the question of how old you would look, many, many years from now! And apparently, Artificial Intelligence has the answer for you!

Over the years, we have seen social media users take to trends quickly, offering their wacky take on things like the Ice Bucket challenge (which raised good awareness for the disease ALS), the Harlem Shake challenge which featured a group of people dancing in a bizarre manner (and not even actually doing the Harlem Shake) to more recent things like the ten year challenge which was a clear ploy by Mark Zuckerberg to improve his site’s capabilities to recognise people’s faces over their entire lives (the sad part is this could very well be the case!).

Source: Social News Daily

The thing is, every time a new app arrives on the scene and acquires some level of popularity, it is inevitable that a series of articles and tweets come through, explaining that the latest app you have downloaded has accessed all your data and now knows everything you are thinking and now you are under the control of Vladimir Putin/ Xi Jinping/ Mark Zuckerberg. That’s when you realize, Oh God, what have I done!? My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

So here’s my personal and probably controversial take on this: don’t get me wrong, I have massive respect for those who hustle to actually read the terms of agreements and find discrepancies in terms of how applications seek more information from our smartphones than what they need. But in my opinion, the time to save our data from the prying corporate world and snooping governments has already passed. If you are reading this, you probably have an account on Google, or one of Facebook’s social media platforms (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram). In this situation, your information is with them and they know you well enough to give you more of what you desire and want instead of what you need, which is probably a break from social media!

We cannot escape the Internet

We cannot deny that two realities exist in today’s world: the real world and the Internet world. They threaten to crossover, mix and distort your perception of what is true and what is not, but both have their own unique characteristics. The tones conveyed through text messages can easily be misinterpreted and lead to various conflicts, while you might prefer to speak face-to-face to a person about things to ensure that your point is made through what you say and how you express it.

We have a tendency to acquire a different persona online as opposed to how we interact offline. Many tend to show more of who they are (or rather, what they want others to think of them) across social media platforms. Some tend to show aggressiveness through texts which is not reflected when they open their mouth (it could also be that they have not understood the texting convention which somehow exists). Some like to keep everyone updated on what they are upto by uploading pictures on the Internet (either temporarily as Snapchat introduced or permanently). For some, social media offers a chance to express their talent whether it is their singing, dancing, cooking, photography or selling their personality to a wide audience to seek opportunities that would never have reached them pre-Internet. But sadly, whatever you do on social media will be stored by these corporations and sold to other corporations so they can spam your feed with their latest products to tempt you into buying them.

So what if you don’t have social media? All you need is a smartphone these days and since Facebook comes pre-installed in most smartphones, they still track you and collect your data anyway:

If you’re not a Facebook user, though, the data is less valuable. That’s because Facebook doesn’t sell targeted ads based on that browsing history like it does if you’re a registered user. But Facebook can still use that information, which includes your IP address, to show you ads encouraging you to join Facebook. That means Facebook might not make money from your browsing history if you aren’t a user, but it might spend money trying to reach you with its own ads. — Vox

So now, the only way you can beat around this whole data privacy issue is to not have a smartphone, a Google account, cut off access to the Internet and rush to a forest in the middle of nowhere. But these days, people in remote areas somehow have access to the world of the Internet and mobile connectivity. Also not to mention how you would literally have no means of living without having any connectivity to the world.

You would not have LinkedIn to refer for jobs and connect with people in the industry, Facebook to know what your relatives are up to, Instagram to know which restaurant your friend visited and what food they ate or Twitter to read tweets about people getting outraged about data privacy when they already sold themselves out years ago while making a Google account.

Did we lose our right to complain long ago?

My father always tells me to read up all financial documents that he makes me sign, to be aware of what you are getting when you sign up for a policy or scheme. After all, money is on the line here and you need to be careful with your money. This is often regurgitated by companies as well while asking people to invest in their stocks or other financial offerings:

Mutual Fund investments are subject to market risk. Please read the offer document carefully before investing.

Source: ReLakhs.com

Does this ring a bell? Yes, it is the warning they place at the end of their advertisements.

We are so careful about these things, yet we never bothered to explore these terms and conditions when we downloaded that gaming app or the latest social media that came up. But why is that?

Because it did not cost us a dime. Or so we thought.

People have always celebrated the Internet for providing so many things for free. Information is more readily available than ever before. We can do so much more and enjoy so many services that were otherwise locked away by the constraint of money.

It’s free so we can be happy, right?

As it turns out, that wasn’t the case to be.

Ironically, the Joker foreshadowed this in the Dark Knight (2008):

If you are good at something, never do it for free.

While this was meant in a different context, nobody ever asked themselves why apps were available for free if they offered so much to us, the customers, and we never paid them in return for what they provide.

The answer to the same was provided by blue_beetle on August 26, 2010 in a reply to a discussion on Metafilter:

If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.

This might as well be put on a plaque; or rather shared around on Instagram by a page that posts quotes with a coloured background as a reminder of the price we did end up paying.

We never realized it at the time of signing up, simply because it was not part of the conversation the public had at that point in time. We just cared about having something for free, because we would not bother paying up for a service when we could get it for free. This is a mentality we do have in both the real world as well as the world of Internet. It is just that we only realised the true value of our information that was stored with these apps and websites, and how they had difficulties protecting it against external threats and how they used it to make money off us that we started getting outraged about it.

But even there, it was a battle we already lost.

Today, we see our data being exchanged and used to influence our purchasing, or what we read and watch, through algorithms designed to reinforce what we want and keep us hooked onto their services. We have seen respectable news outlets lose face and the rise of clickbait sites because we don’t want paywalled journalism to support the investigation of the real facts and fall for propaganda. We read headlines and make our conclusions, leading to the rise of public personalities who make outrageous statements to make equally outrageous headlines which people take notice of and discuss, leading to the legitimisation of their presence and making them more famous.

The best example of this being Donald Trump.

Source: CNN

The best part? These companies don’t even care about the negative PR they get when their app goes viral. In fact, they secretly encourage it knowing well that it keeps them in the news and in the conversation of the public, and thus they see it as an absolute win. They keep doing what they do, generate outrage, keeps them relevant and soon it dies out, only for it to resurface later on and repeat. Facebook just reached their highest stock price despite a 5 billion dollar fine levied by the EU, and FaceApp gained more downloads than ever despite being in existence for two years due to their trending filter.

In short, this is the Internet world we have made for ourselves. It has opened up so many opportunities for us to make our dreams come true, but we know the price we have paid for this to happen. Sure, we should still be concerned about the way our data is being misused. But unless we reconfigure the Internet as we know it, this problem would have already made it’s impact on you. Your data is probably out there with so many companies. With the legal teams these companies hire to make use of loopholes in the laws to protect their interests, it is unlikely they will get rid of your data in your lifetime.

So don’t bother if your friend (who probably is a product rather than a customer) tells you that this latest app will steal your data. You can either have a ‘live only once’ attitude and do whatever you wish (without infringing on other people’s issues) or be more conservative. Either way, the Internet is what it is and you signed up for it, knowingly or unknowingly.