| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
| |
<
< | | >
> | We post in our virtual canvas, thinking that we purposely and consciously decide the content of those posts, but our mental capacity does not drive those actions. The parasite induces them. The parasite give us tools to share, to edit pictures, and to post, but the underlying reality is that we post the only thing we own: our time. | | | | |
>
> | Nonetheless, our time is relative. We are drained of freedom of decision every time we click, swipe, and accept terms and conditions from the “free” services we use on the internet. I want to emphasize the quotations marks that I placed besides free. The latter, as we tend to think that we decide over what we post and with whom we share and interact. The reality is different. We lie to ourselves when we say that we control our virtual personalities. | | | | |
>
> | The parasite is the only controlling who we are. We feed the parasite with our posts - even when we overthink their content-. We give the parasite control over our capacity to decide. The parasite knows our steps, knows our fertility cycle (it even predicts it), knows our sleep cycle, and suggests what to eat, buy, and like. All these “suggestions” are inductions. | | | | |
<
< | A Growing Need to Protect Privacy in an Era of Growing Willingness to Give it Up | >
> | I have realized that even when we reflect on our virtual accounts, controlling and limiting our virtual content Is not enough. In other words, we waste our time trying to curate the life we want to share. We are not curating or deciding. In the end, it is the parasite that grows. It is asfixitiang roots over our brains. | | | | |
>
> | We are not curating for those who benefit from our engagement (social media platforms, stores, advertisement) or those who follow us and want a glimpse of our life. The paradox here is that every time we feed my virtual profile, we deprive ourselves of the ability to keep things private. And with this, once again, making bigger and stronger parasites. | | | | |
<
< | The Advent of Privacy Challenges | >
> | I ask myself: What is the purpose of keeping things private? And my answer is that privacy buys me time to reflect, think and create. Privacy protects how the piece of information about you has been obtained. Marmor's words: "it is about the how, not the what, that is known about you." The latter, as "our ability to control [how] we present ourselves to others is inherently limited." | | | | |
<
< | Those of us born in the 90s remember the in-between; the shift of people carrying cellphones, to people carrying cellphones that could connect to the internet. Of one being able to use a bulky computer in a stationary place, to carrying around a laptop that let us take our work anywhere. To the only “social” being face-to-face meetings, to social being a word that finds its place before “media.” | >
> | From that stance, privacy gives us time, and therefore protects time, on when to disclose or reveal something. The underlying issue with the parasite is that it is the curator of our profiles, and in that filtration journey that we gave rise to, we have lost our ability to choose how others are using our time (and life). | | | | |
<
< | We look at our current debates with privacy and think, “this is because of the internet revolution.” But in fact, right to privacy is alluded to from the very advent of our nation. The U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, recognizes a right to privacy in multiple amendments. Further, the first article addressing the privacy was by Justice Louis Brandeis in his 1890 Harvard Law Review article, stemming from the advent of photography and newspaper invasion into individuals’ homes. 1948 Saw the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights address privacy, and soon after in 1960, legal Scholar William Prosser “outlined four torts that would allow someone whose privacy was violated…to sue the perpetrator for damages.” (1) | >
> | Feeding the profiles consumes time. We post because the likes, comments, and virtual interactions affirm or reinforce the virtual being we choose to share with our selected community. We believe we have control over what and who we share. Still, the reality is that every click diminishes freedom, extinguishes privacy, and deprives us of the only thing we own: time. | | | | |
>
> | The outcome is our inability to reflect and pause because our consciousness of time is limited by immediacy, neediness, and over-exposure. And the worst part is that the idea of being infinite humans, in the microcosmic stance, is vanished by the constant of self-reinvention instead of self-expansion. | | | | |
>
> | The parasite is playing the game of “letting us choose.” What we have to realize is that every choice makes the parasite stronger. The parasite is using us to increase profits, is triggering our decisions in the way that serves the parasite’s ends. The verbs to share and post, which are the core of the interactions on the platforms, withered integration, insertion, and social construction. We handed our privacy in exchange for a fake sense of control. We gave our time, memories, and the idea of integrity in exchange for a false self-made identity that lacks authenticity and freedom—a self-imposed view by the parasite. | | | | |
>
> | Humanity has dealt with the eternity/infinity question since we articulate ideas. To overcome the fact that our nature is limited by time, people used to write, paint, have children, and teach. By switching the idea of “eternity” towards platforms that hold and “save” our memories, our approach to eternity is rotten. To lay down this, I want to recall when Don Quixote found out, in his conversation with Sansón Carrasco, that his adventures were a topic of discussion among the students at the University of Salamanca. For him, being public, discussed, and remembered was an outcome, not a decisive purpose. He didn't act to be a topic. By the course of his actions, he became a character and, as a result, a subject of discussion. The lions, the windmills, and the galley slaves' adventures were public, and some read those actions as insanity, others as geniality. | | | | |
<
< | The Modern Issues
In the past, such concerns were largely driven by individuals not having control over the actions of others—of the press taking photos, of the government invading their homes. However, in today’s age the concern is individuals’ own ignorance or willingness to forgo privacy for service. In an era of programmatic, targeted advertising, it’s easy to give up our names, ages, emails, and phone numbers, for the convenience and range of services that make life easier, often with the added allure of such services being free.
Earlier this month, former Facebook employee France Haugen released files revealing the results of the company’s internal research results regarding the impact of Instagram on teenage girls. A key statistic that has been highlighted in the media is that “32 perfect of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse” (2). One solution addresses that children under thirteen aren’t even supposed to be making accounts, because data collection on children under that age goes against our country’s privacy laws. Yet, I know many of my classmates signed up for Facebook before they were thirteen with fake birthdays. Facebook also mentioned a potential to create “Instagram Kids.”
Similarly, humans invariably offer up their data. Sometimes due simply to being unaware of what they’re revealing by doing so (as with the military base that was revealed when soldiers decided to compete with each other, uploading their fitness tracker data in the process and creating a map of their exercise route). In other ways, we do so for convenience, as with the FreeStyle? Libre sensors that have been using AI to recommend personalized diets based on individual’s glucose levels (4).
Attempts at Solving The Issue
Apple created a lot of buzz (and some very creative advertising campaigns) when they released a pop-up window that notifies users that an app is tracking their data, allowing users to prevent the app from doing so. (3) Many small businesses and apps were upset by the change, arguing that this was how they allowed users to access their services for free. Facebook responded saying that it was attempting to create a method of advertising that doesn’t rely on user data (3). But is it really that easy to dismantle a $350 billion digital industry? These companies have different views of how much they should roll back such advertising.
While BigTech? attempts to revamp their own privacy systems, can and should users do more to take privacy into their own hands? I’m positive that many people would rather use an app for free than pay to remove advertising (as evidences by the numerous app-store complaints when apps roll out pay-for-no-ads versions of their products). There has been a growing industry of products that market themselves as shirking ads (for example Brave, the private web browser), but how many people choose to use this service?
Furthermore, what is the state of media literacy in our country? One of the first ways we can protect young children who will undeniably sign up for these enticing social media services is to inform them about what they give up in exchange for access to endless streams of videos, 150-word posts, and their friends’ photos.
In the long run, I would argue that this education is a must if we’re to convince people to pay for subscription fees in lieu of paying for such services with their data.
(1) https://safecomputing.umich.edu/privacy/history-of-privacy-timeline
(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/parenting/instagram-teen-girls-body-image.html
(3) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/technology/digital-privacy.html
(4) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/05/intimate-data-can-a-person-who-tracks-their-steps-sleep-and-food-ever-truly-be-free
| >
> | Our desire for control shows that our aim to be remembered is vague because we rely solely on feeding the parasite. If we aim to change this reality, we need to cut ties with the parasite. Disable our social media accounts, the trackings the apps have over our lives. We need to stop posting on those platforms that instrumentalize our time to deprive us of individuality. |
|