Kathryn Combs

Why is Privacy important?

Most social media and big tech companies promise us privacy - but what does that mean? In most cases, when companies promise “privacy” they refer to safety from fellow users. But what about the data they collect themselves? Apps like Facebook and Instagram track our behaviors online (not just on their apps) and activate the speaker and camera even when their apps aren’t open and when our phones aren’t in use.

These constant small intrusions add up to nearly unfathomable amounts of data. This information is used to influence our behavior, and in some cases have reinforced existing structures of racism and misogyny.

Can this be changed?

It’s no surprise that big tech companies collect and sell consumer data. After all, the internet runs on advertisement dollars. The algorithms that serve us relevant content (particularly AdSense by Google) have helped build technological empires. In order to make all that money, tech companies tap into hundreds of billions of data points each day to serve us custom ads and manipulate our shopping behaviors.

So can this change?

Yes.

In 2018 the European Union began enforcing the General Data Protection Regulations (also known as GDPR.) GDPR stipulates that websites and apps that are used be EU citizens can only collect certain types of data, and that this data can only be stored for a certain amount of time. This set of regulations is applied to all companies that deal with citizens of the EU, regardless of where the company is headquartered/based. This means that Google, Facebook Products, and Apple have been adhering to GDPR policies for years without significant harm to their revenue - but they don’t follow the same procedures for citizens of the US.*