From Where I Sit: A novice’s experience with Facebook
by Mukund Jayaram ’22, Contributing Writer
I had never “caught on” to the idea of Facebook. Back when I decided to join the Hamilton Class of 2022 Facebook group, I logged in to an unused Facebook account I had created 9 years ago, updated my personal information, and accepted two pending friend requests from former classmates. It’s quite common knowledge today that Facebook tracks our data, but I don’t think we fully appreciate the depth to which it does this, nor the complexity of the data which is processed. My “recommended friends” list changed drastically after accepting the friend requests. Where there had earlier been a bizarre and random assortment of Indian teenagers, there was now a condensed list of my former classmates and teachers, the majority of whom I recognized. It was pretty impressive to see how Facebook had used simple data points — first my age and home city, then the two friends who I had added — to understand me and connect me with people I may know. However, Facebook’s tracking did not stop there, and pretty soon became disturbing. I had disabled all permissions for the Facebook application on my phone. Around a week after reopening my account, my “recommended friends” list began to change: seniors in my current school (I had switched schools) began to appear, and gradually became the majority. It turns out Facebook tracks IP addresses, which allows it to pinpoint location and connect you with others who are using Facebook in the same location at the same time. I experienced this when I visited my grandparents’ house twice in the summer, and the first and third people in “recommended friends” were my grandparents.
Facebook also tracks searches, posts you click on, and even the amount of time you spend looking at a particular post. Interested and a bit disturbed by how much information Facebook was gathering, I began to record everything I did on the site. When I clicked on the “See more” option of someone’s long post, they would appear as “Recommended friends” the next time I logged in. Viewing profiles and searching for people had the same outcome.
For someone who had been using the site very sparingly, had only two friends, and never posted, commented, or even liked a post, Facebook understood me quite thoroughly. The amount of data Facebook has on people who actively use the site is extraordinary. After reading Brian X. Chen’s April 11 article in The New York Times on how large companies (Facebook, Google, etc.) now offer the option of downloading and viewing the data they have on you, I decided to give it a shot.
When I downloaded my Facebook data, I was surprised to see the three-megabyte package had a thorough record of everything from the IP addresses and locations where I had accessed Facebook, to messages I had exchanged and searches I had done. Most shocking were the advertisers who were linked to my account. All five companies who had connected with me had done so indirectly, using information such as my phone number and email address to identify me, and send me ads via Facebook.
But why should this concern us? Isn’t it a convenience for Facebook to know our interests? It is, to a certain extent. However, our interactions on Facebook allow the company to understand us as people: our habits, our moods, our vulnerabilities, and our physiological and psychological state. In another New York Times article, Natasha Singer shows how Facebook learns enough about active users to divide them into categories, such as political affiliation, income levels, and susceptibility to advertisements, all of which Facebook gleans from our interactions on the site. Companies and political parties use this to target those who are most susceptible to their advertisements.
There are several other issues that I haven’t touched upon, such as Facebook’s facial recognition (to determine the people in photos), which was outlawed in the European Union in 2012, and Facebook’s tracking of both users and non-users across millions of sites using a complex cookie system, which came under federal scrutiny earlier this year. I encourage those interested to look into these issues and learn more about Facebook’s data mining processes and the laws surrounding privacy.
While it’s easy to read about these issues, the difficult question to answer is: what do we do about it? Quitting Facebook is an extreme option and would be quite difficult for many people. Currently, reforms in privacy laws and data collection policies are happening, but it will likely be years, if not decades, before we see the end of this debate. And Facebook is not the only offender. Other companies that compile an unprecedented amount of data include Acxiom and Google, both of which offer the option of downloading the data they have on you. My Google data is an unexpected 36 gigabytes; I’m afraid to see what they know.
‘From Where I Sit’ is a column dedicated to international students’ voices. If you are interested in contributing a piece, contact Features editors at featspec@hamilton.edu.
