(Source: Russell, 2018)
Social networking sites came into existence in the early 2000s, since then there was a huge expansion in the social media platforms and the clear winners have been Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat & Twitter. The global digital snapshot above here shows the penetration of Internet across the globe which forms the preamble of the essay here. In a world with a population of 7.476 Billion, there are 3.773 Billion Internet users (50% Penetration) and the total active media users are 2.789 Billion (37%). This shows the extent to which Social media and Internet has penetrated in the daily lives of people. The purpose of the essay here is discuss whether Facebook, Google and other social media organization can be blamed for their data mining operation when the users are willing to share the information online.
The line “Customer is King” has become lacklustre and has certainly been replaced by “Data is the new King” in the present times. Global, national and domestic organizations across the globe have tweaked their business models to have a right fitment with the changing times. Social media marketing is extensively used not only by Internet companies but a large number of organization are using the fruits of social media and Internet to increase the product and brand awareness but also help in pushing the sales of its product. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Google are the biggest contributors behind the success of the organization and also to push the envelope of customer services (Debatin et. al., 2018)
Organization are spending plethora of Human and Financial resources to improve the customer experience and their journey with the business organization. In order to do so, data mining is playing the most important role. Data in the simplest form can be understood as a general concept which refers to the fact that certain existing information or knowledge is represented or coded in some form which is better suited for further usage and processing. Hence, data is extremely important in the present data. Business organization are buying a lot of data online from the Third party App creators or illegally mining data or involved in theft from the behemoth of social media and search engine. However, if all this is done to help the consumer in making better decisions, it is really advantageous, but, it is not the case anymore. Data is being illegally being traded or being acquired from social media and search engine behemoth by the usage of third party app developers (Gerlitz & Helmond, 2018).
Data mining is a process which is used by companies to turn raw data into information which can be better used by the organization for the advantage of not only the company but also its consumers. Able and efficient usage of software to identify the patterns in large batches of data, businesses have the opportunity of learning more about their consumers which help them in creating effective marketing strategies and also help in determining the future trends(Dwyer, Hiltz & Passerini, 2017).
Social media and specifically Facebook and Google have become the largest storehouse of consumer’s data. Facebook has over 1.2 billion Active Facebook users, who willingly share their information on the platform. Facebook through its app and privacy notification ask the questions if they are willing to share their information online, to which they willingly respond in a yes. Thus, Facebook not only has information of consumers in terms of his age, sex, education, job, location but has a lot of control over the user’s entire online journey. Social logins have become hugely popular ad users in order to get an easy access to other application give permission to the Facebook and other social media platforms which makes the user data easily available to this third party application who have been using this data to their advantage. Due to this willingly sharing of information with other application, Data mining of Facebook will be on an increasing trend even in the coming years (Barbier & Liu, 2016).
In one of the recent data mining scandal at Facebook by one of the organization Cambridge analytica took not only the company but the entire country by a storm. It posed a very serious privacy concern in regards to the data of billions of consumers who have been using the Facebook platform without any fear of any kind of data leak. However, Cambridge analytica was not the first one who has been exploiting this easy access to the data, even in the past plethora of third party app developers have informed Facebook on the possibility of data leak, to which Mark Zuckerberg turned a blind eye(Cohen, 2018).
Cambridge Analytica in particular was one such incident which impacted the data of around 50 million Facebook users through a third party personality quiz application. The users were literally clueless of this data leak and without their explicit consent, due to the policies of Facebook at that time; data was passed on to the firm. The firm then used the user’s data and build detailed user profiles of Facebook users, which was then used to create micro-targeted political ads with the intention of swinging the result in the favour of one of the candidates in 2016 US elections. The impact of this data breach cannot be however found with utmost certainty, but the bigger picture here is the breach of data/confidence of the users on Facebook. Facebook received strong flak due to this incident on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook itself. It got to another level when one of the present business leaders Elon Musk deleted his Facebook account due to the security issue, and commented that he had no idea their company even had a Facebook account. Such news not only hampers the reputation of such behemoth social media platform but also affects its business considerably by losing the faith and trust of the consumers (Jin, Lin, Luo & Han, 2016).
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook was summoned by the FBI and was questioned for over a couple of hours on his stance on the issue and his future strategy to stop such mis-happenings in the future. Facebook was further drilled because it was pointed that if only 270,000 people played the quiz on the application, how it was possible that data of 50 million users was compromised. Data of friends, families and relatives of the people who played the quiz was also compromised. This is definitely one of the grave concerns for Facebook and its loyal users. All this specifically points that any company, research firm and political party can easy access the user data and used it for targeted advertising (Jernigan & Mistree, 2018).
The only valid reasoning the team at Facebook could provide to the FBI board was that the users gave the permission to share their data, but the glitch here is that users were of the opinion that their data will be harvested and not used to have an unfair influence over them by the technique of targeted advertising. Facebook scrutinizes even the little detail of its users and non- users and use the data for its Targeted advertising. Facebook has the ability to learn everything about the user by using Artificial intelligence to understand the behaviour of the users. This vast information is of greater use both for the advertisers and even for a specific political agenda (Coenen, 2016).
Facebook has been actively tracking the user behaviour online by its software tools, like, share, comment button and Facebook pixel. Facebook is easily dropping an invisible code on other websites which the users visit and allows company to track the activity of the users. The bottom line still remains that Facebook will continuously keep on data mining of its users data to give them better products, create customized product line for the users and also help the organizations to create products desired by the consumers(Gandomi & Haider, 2017).
Google is the largest search engine platform across the globe and billions of people everyday use the platform to consume information, purchase product and for any other purpose. Google using its digital analytics, ad platform, trackers, Meta tags and other such techniques track the journey of the user and store their information for targeted advertising. Larry Page and Sergy Bin are sitting at the helm of success because of the vast amount of user’s data which they use to target the consumers. Marketer’s wants data of consumers to show them their product, create awareness about the product and push them to purchase the product. Google and Facebook both gives its advertisers an option of remarketing and retargeting through which the advertisers can easily show the products they have already shown to the consumers. This not only helps in creating top of the mind recall for the brands, but also is an effective measure to boast the sales of the organization. Users normally keep their device location on, through which Facebook, Google and other data collecting platform gain further information on consumers, which they use to show ads to them. Thus, it is a very plausible statement to make that organization like Facebook and Google use data mining as a breach to customer’s privacy, but in actual, it is the user’s responsibility to go carefully through the privacy options of the application they sign in before agreeing to the terms and conditions (Wilson, Gosling & Graham, 2017).
Facebook, Google and other social media platforms were created with an intention of improving the lives of its users by improving their social profile and helping them to buy the products they are actually interested in. Thus, it was a very noble effort by these organizations to help the users to take leverage of the platforms and make better informed decisions. With the similar little software pertaining to data analytics, data mining, programmatic buying was created to further improve the experience of the consumers. These software, tools and techniques divide the consumers into a specific profile in sync to their online behaviour. Based on which marketers are able to target the users and sell them product online or offline (VanDijck, 2017).
However, much has been changed in the past and report of data theft/data breach and concern related to privacy has become quite common. The onus no way lies on the Internet companies; it is the joint responsibility of the companies and users to secure their data from fraudulent third party apps or developers. This effort from both the users and the companies will help in taking care of such fraudulent activities. Facebook and Google clearly asks permission from its users before sharing their information, once the users gives their permission, only then the Internet companies use this information to improve the experience of the customers.
Facebook and Google have faced problems not because of their greed in general, or due to the smartness of third party app developers, it is only a section of society who wants to use such useful platforms for their own advantage. No way can Facebook and Google be held accountable for data theft/data breach. These companies are doing a great job in safeguarding data of billions of consumers whilst improving their online experience; it is due to some miscreants that such companies become privy to strong criticism. The growth of Social sign in on other application and software is the major source of concern or the trouble causing point for the users and the internet companies. Once the users give them access to their social media log in, it’s literally nothing Facebook and Google can do, as the users themselves have agreed to sharing their information. Incidents like Cambridge Analytica will keep on happening in the future, it the users do not use due diligence in sharing their information. Advancement in technology has led to multiple innovation and created plethora of companies which are providing better experience to the consumers. Internet is an open platform, which holds significant importance in the present day, thus it becomes the responsibility of every user to contribute towards the safety of their data. Facebook and Google have been doing their bit in boasting the security and privacy features, the companies have also created video tutorials to make the users aware of the privacy concerns. Regulators are doing their job in ensuring the breach of users data by keeping a close on how the internet companies are functioning and also by imposing strong penalties on any lacunae whatsoever in the practice(Appendix 1).
Thus, the essay can be concluded by saying that Facebook, Google and other organization in no way can be hold accountable for the theft of user’s data or data breach. These organizations take the required permission from the users before they sign up, the entire intention here is to improve the shopping experience or consumer experience online. It is due to certain miscreants that the user data is at times compromised. These organizations are big help to the marketers who get access to the customer profiles and use the information to show relevant products to the consumers (Appendix 2). It can thus be said that due diligence has to be ensured both by the consumers and the Internet companies to safeguard the data of the users and maintain trust and relationship with them. Regulators will have to do their bit in keeping a close eye on how the Internet companies are using the data of its users. Hence, it can be clearly said that companies like Facebook and Google are not to be held completely accountable for incidents like Cambridge analytics (Appendix 3)
References
Barbier, G., & Liu, H. (2016). Data mining in social media. In Social network data analytics (pp. 327-352). Springer, Boston, MA.
Coenen, F. (2016). Data mining: past, present and future. The Knowledge Engineering Review, 26(1), 25-29.
Cohen, N. S. (2018). The valorization of surveillance: Towards a political economy of Facebook. Democratic Communiqué, 22(1), 5.
Debatin, B., Lovejoy, J. P., Horn, A. K., & Hughes, B. N. (2018). Facebook and online privacy: Attitudes, behaviors, and unintended consequences. Journal of Computer?Mediated Communication, 15(1), 83-108.
Dwyer, C., Hiltz, S., & Passerini, K. (2017). Trust and privacy concern within social networking sites: A comparison of Facebook and MySpace. AMCIS 2007 proceedings, 339.
Gandomi, A., & Haider, M. (2017). Beyond the hype: Big data concepts, methods, and analytics. International Journal of Information Management, 35(2), 137-144.
Gerlitz, C., & Helmond, A. (2018). The like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web. New Media & Society, 15(8), 1348-1365.
Jernigan, C., & Mistree, B. F. (2018). Gaydar: Facebook friendships expose sexual orientation. First Monday, 14(10).
Jin, X., Lin, C., Luo, J., & Han, J. (2016). A data mining-based spam detection system for social media networks. Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment, 4(12), 1458-1461.
Russell, M. A. (2018). Mining the Social Web: Data Mining Facebook, Twitter, Lin
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