No one wants choice either. Having 100 social media apps on your phone is not ideal. We want one choice that is also a good choice. That seems virtually impossible when companies are motivated only by profit and only kept in check by customers having a better choice or by government regulation.
If facebook was driven purely by the motivation to help people stay in touch with their friends and to find events going on it would be a truly wonderful platform. Virtually every issue on facebook comes from seeking profits. At least problems from facebooks side anyway. There is also the social issues of propaganda and jealousy but facebook would have more time to deal with these when they aren't making the company more money.
> That seems virtually impossible when companies are motivated only by profit and only kept in check by customers having a better choice or by government regulation.
Assume this in every situation and you'll never be disappointed ;)
Agreed, as noted in the survey I linked to, 9 out of 10 people (in accordance to this survey, but even its more realistically 7 out of 10, its still a lot of people) claim to. I think its a few things:
1. Awareness. I don't think people are aware of how/what services are collecting data and how that data can be collected
2. Influence. Its hard, I imagine, for a lot of people to drop social media altogether. Its not all vanity. My wife has a disability that sometimes leaves her bedridden for weeks. Without social media, she wouldn't be able to communicate with our friends unless they call/text/come over, which they do, but its not always feasible one of those things will happen, so following them on Instagram and chatting via Facebook Messenger is really helpful in keeping her spirits up in those times.
3. Inertia. I think a lot of the current outrage against Facebook has been media driven, in particular, I think after Trump got elected -
(just a side note here before I continue, I'm talking about a criticism of media in general, not democrat vs republican politics or anything of the sort)-
I have a strong feeling, that I can't really substantiate, so take it as you will, of course (I acknowledge I could be wrong), large main stream news outlets started digging around about the mechanics of that election, and stumbled into the Cambridge Analytica scandal as a result, increasingly their practices came under fire, in part because I think some large media organizations (rightly, in my opinion) blame their data harvesting practices on getting Trump elected in the first place.
This also brings up another point I find so sad: despite the openness of the internet, the mass media still reigns supreme in being able to influence the masses, and I (anecdotally) feel like the power of freely and ubiquitously available knowledge via the internet has not had the impact on this sort of thing that one would have hoped. It was one of the promises of the internet in the 90s, that we would all vastly become more informed and it would take vastly less effort (and it does, if you are looking for it).
Or why did hundreds of thousands of users actively choose to share their data with a random company called Cambridge Analytica?
They certainly have never chosen to do so. You can accuse them of participating in some innane quiz, but it was exactly the big scandal that not only the participants' data, but also that of their friends was sucked and resold to Cambridge Analytica without their knowledge by the "researchers".
All participants have actively clicked a button to confirm that they would give Cambridge Analytica access to their profile data and data from their friends.
The scandal was not that the data was collected without the participants knowledge. The scandal was that they used the data for something else, than what they initially had told the participants.
Slight correction: since 9/10 said they care about their privacy, its more that they are not educated on what Facebook does with their data, or how to limit their own exposure. Lack of education != ignorance.
Maybe they do care about their privacy, they just care more about sharing stuff and more about looking at videoes than they care about looking at ther privacy settings.
The media has been all about Facebook and privacy for many, many years. Facebook have had popup dialogs on user feeds asking users to check their privacy settings.
People are not uneducated about it. They just don't care enough to change their behavior or make an active change on their settings.
The problem really is lack of choice.