Problem that we are facing: The Social Media and Digital Marketing is collecting more data than we expect. 

As people who are about to enter society, contemporary college students spend a lot of time on social media every day. Social media offers an unprecedented way of privacy that differs from the knock on the door before a family member enters the room. Social media users are irresponsibly uploading their thoughts to social media, not realizing that “Big Brother is watching” is behind the screen. People always expect Social Media companies to keep it private for them. On April 10, 2021, CyberNews had reported the APP Clubhouse – one of the hottest social media – had a data leak. 1.3 million scraped user records leaked online for free. Again and again, the news always comes up with something about social media compromising the users’ privacy. As the future mainstay of society, college students must understand how social media marketing works; and we must clear whether privacy collection has a positive or negative impact on the community.

Why Social Media Marketing? 

There is no denying that social media is a part of our lives. A survey I conducted about social media use among college students showed that out of 100 respondents, 90% use social media regularly. I also ask a question about the platform for watching videos, only 8% of the respondents choose TV, but 88% choose the internet platform. As a result, traditional TV and newspaper advertising is beginning to be overtaken by social media.

Another Facebook study found that 94% of people have a smartphone on hand while watching TV, and research from the Center for Research Excellence and Nielsen found that second-screen usage goes up 50% during TV commercials.

Even though the living room is still the same,  the TV is no longer the center of focus. TV content has often become the background sound when using a cell phone. Marketing around social media is becoming quite valuable.

How Does Our Privacy Affect Social Media Marketing?

In the digital age, our privacy is a line of code. Advertisers can use the user behavior tree provided by the platform to target us with precision. It maximizes the benefits to the advertiser.

But for users, the almost tailor-made ads are intimidating. In my Social Media Marketing Survey, I asked a question about “Do you agree that you often feel that social media advertising invades your privacy?” Out of 100 responders, 10% of the responder choose “Strongly Agree,” and 34% of the responders choose “Agree.”

When more and more consumers feel uneasy about it, the problem between developers and consumers becomes more serious.

How can this be regulated？

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said: “So, as an industry concerned with developing new processes and technologies to manage data in support of marketing effectiveness, how can we tread this ever-so-thin line between value and privacy?”

To achieve better marketing results, many small companies still choose to wander the edge of the law. Between consumers and developers, a third party should be involved in the regulation of data, and the government is the most appropriate role. The government of a country usually holds the data based on the majority of the population. As a regulator, it couldn’t be more appropriate. Relatively, the government should also have to adapt to this society at a faster pace.

Other than the government regulated, what can the Advertisement Provider do? 

The developer can have more ways of doing social media marketing. When we look back – back to the magazine age – the marketing is based on the content. We are hard-pressed to find the ads for cosmetics in National Geographic. We would also be hard-pressed to find the ads for off-road vehicles in VOGUE. It is a type of advertising that targets a user group of readers. Readers who enjoy reading National Geographic always prefer adventure and road trips. Therefore it is appropriate to place off-road vehicle ads, outside watch ads, and even sports drink ads on National Geographic. It is not unique that the readers who like to read VOGUE are usually more sensitive to fashion content. It is more appropriate to put fashion advertisements.

Are there any positive impacts on collecting data?

Artificial intelligence is the most popular future element these days. All of the AI involved project – like Self Driving – is based on powerful artificial intelligence. Training a powerful artificial intelligence requires long periods of machine learning.

We are involved in the “taming” of AI as well. When we are doing the CAPTCHAs, we are helping software providers like Google train AI.

“reCAPTCHA also makes positive use of the human effort spent in solving CAPTCHAs by using the solutions to digitize text, annotate images, and build machine-learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, and solve hard AI problems.” Google said.

Although the computer’s arithmetic and analytical ability are much better than humans, it is hard for the computer to recognize a picture of a running kitty – a three-year-old child can do. Every time we enter a CAPTCHA – entering text in an image, checking the signage in the picture, or even doing some simple math – we are training the AI. It is a faster and more cost-effective way to train AI. The CAPTCHA itself is also a tool for cybersecurity. And this is one of the few win-win situations in data collection.

Conclusion

Internet giants inevitably always collect a lot of data in the normal operation of their software. This collected data often becomes the most valuable data for many companies. Social media marketing is the main marketing method of the future, which is in line with the development of the times. The collected user data is used to give back to the users, which is also something meaningful to them. Drawing a clear line on privacy is where the government, Internet companies, and users need to discuss together in the future.