Why Do Companies Want to Collect Your Data?
You might be curious as to why companies want to collect data on you; you're not special, you're just an average Joe or Josephine (if you are special, then apologies) - what's so important about your data?
We've already mentioned that your data helps personalise services to you, for example:
- Social media platforms
- Music streaming services
- TV/Video streaming services
- Online shopping sites
They will all use your interactions with their sites to suggest content:
- Social media platforms - people to follow, content you might like
- Music streaming services - playlists, bands, albums, genres you might be interested in
- TV/Video streaming services - recommending TV shows or videos based on what you've already watched, keeping track of how much of a TV show you have watched and cueing the next episode for you
- Online shopping sites - recommending items based on your site browsing/buying history
Companies are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they collect as much information as they can about you to:
- tweak the content that they show or recommend to you to maximise the time you spend on that site/app/platform; the more time you spend there, the more adverts you will see.
- show you more relevant, targeted adverts. If you click on an ad, the site/app/platform gets a commission
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold"*
Many online sites services and platforms are free; so how do they make money? The simple answer is that you are what's being sold. Your searches, your posts, your purchases, your attention; your online activity is very valuable to the companies that provide the platforms that we use because your activity is easy to monetise. These companies collect vast amounts of data about your behaviour, preferences, interests, and interactions on their platforms. This data allows companies to create detailed profiles of users, which can then be shared with advertisers who want to target specific audiences with their ads. In this sense, your attention, behaviour, and personal information become the "product" that the platform sells to advertisers. Some examples:
- Facebook makes money by through targeted advertising. It collects extensive data on user behaviour, interests, and connections, which it uses to sell highly targeted ad placements to advertisers
- Google's primary revenue source is advertising, especially through Google Ads. It collects data on search history, email content (for ad targeting), location, and browsing habits to deliver personalised ads to users. There's some evidence to suggest that Google deliberately made its search engine poorer so that people would spend more time on it and so see more ads, while at least one study suggests that Google search really has gotten worse, with researchers noting "a torrent of low-quality content, especially for product search, keeps drowning any kind of useful information in search results."
- Twitter generates revenue through promoted tweets, accounts, and trends, which are targeted based on user data such as interests, interactions, and demographics
- YouTube's income comes through ads that are shown before, during, or after videos. The platform collects data on viewing habits, subscriptions, and interactions to serve relevant ads
- Like Facebook, Instagram earns revenue through advertising. It uses data on user behaviour, interests, and engagement to serve targeted ads to its users
*The quote is by an Internet user named Andrew Lewis, though the concept dates from the mid-seventies
<< Tracking Cookies Social Media >>
