You’re reading this blog post right now, you probably have another window open. Listening to YouTube? Planning your Spring break? Scrolling through amazon? Carelessly looking through Facebook?
Everything that you’re doing at the moment, is being traced for data to specifically target your interests and tendencies. Is this a bad thing? Depends on the way that you look at it.
Yes, you are being surveilled, No, you are not in danger. There are servers that are just tracking what you like, and trying to figure out website traffic. This just means that you will see advertisements for products & services that you would like to see.
“The larger question about the power relations that have shaped control over the capture and use of personal information, resulting in the trade-off between convenience and control over our personal information – remain largely outside the frame of discussion.” (Andrejevic pg. 3)
You know your discover weekly on Spotify? That’s specifically tailoring music to your interests, and tries to give you more music like the songs that you listen to. Facebook specifically puts posts to the top of your feed based off likes & posts you comment on, or even videos you have watched. The ads that you watch on YouTube are even custom tailored to something that you may want to see.
Doesn’t sound so bad right? I mean, you are literally digitally surveilling me at this exact moment. In fact, youre digitally surveilling people every single day. When you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, you are surveilling all of your social media friends.
I personally like the fact that I have an algorithm that specifically caters to my interests and likes. I wouldn’t want to be seeing advertisements and posts that have nothing to do with what I like, it keeps me coming back to each website.
The digital realm acts like an electronic panopticon. You are the security guard, looking at all of your prisoners in a cell. In the digital world, you are surveilling all of the people that are posting on social media. And then those people are surveilling you. There’s an ever changing relationship between the security guard and the prisoner.
In the age of digital surveillance, our ability to download illegal content, such as songs, TV shows, & movies have been hindered. Because of copyright law, people want to be able to monetize all content that they put out, rightfully so. In recent years, we see the downfall of well-known illegal content streaming sites such as LimeWire and UTorrent. I personally had to cope with the loss of LimeWire, and had to make my switchover to Spotify. LimeWire had many things wrong with it, being a virus inducing software, it kind of caused more harm than good. But hey, free music.
This isn’t all bad thought, because digital surveillance helps keep us safe on a day to day basis. We may lose a bit of our internet freedom, but we find solace in knowing that we are protecting from internet attacks and threats.
- Do you feel that digital surveillance is ultimately a good or bad thing?
- How has digital surveillance personally impacted your life?
Digital surveillance has to an extent open my eyes to current events. As someone who rarely watches television, the news, or even listens to the radio, I’ve created a block from society. So when I’m on Facebook and their algorithms have picked up my likes, dislikes and understands generally what I’m interested in, I appreciate the ways it tries to open my awareness.
I think it could be both, the problem with digital survelliance is where you draw the line of privacy. How far can you dig up on someones information. Although algortihms can be beneficial to consumers, it can also impose to much control in the life of the consumer.
Although from a consumer point, I enjoy the convenience of products related to my searches to pop up on websites/emails, it however does create a problem when it constantly bombards the consumer with same AD, which can pressure the consumer to buy the item.