What I've learnt from reading Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, is that the 'predictive algorithm' that are hard at work on our devices have been designed to be deeply decisive and hidden. This is so that they can do what they have been designed to do, without the general user realising their impact.
It's difficult to explain how these algorithms work, even I don't know how they really work and I've done quite a bit of research. Zuboff attempts to make this process understandable to the general consumer of these services by explaining the surveillance capitalists methods employed. She argues whilst the photo you upload to Facebook is not being sold to advertisers or third parties, as this would be a breach of the privacy policy, It's the data that is scraped off the surface of these photos that are collected, analysed, and then used against you. For example, facial recognition running on these photos will be able to analyse the emotions you are portraying at that time, which is then sold to advertisers to promote specific products to you. This is an example of the raw materials I have mentioned before. It's been claimed by huge corporations, such as Facebook and Google, who can then use it to make inferences about us, our emotions, our lives. We have no say over it.
These methods used in practice
I became interested in exploring how I may be able to find examples of these algorithms working in real life, possibly exposing them. The consumer will not be able to see the algorithm working, in terms of lines of code, but we may be able to see the impact they have. As this is what they have been designed to be, impact our lives, specifically impacting our behaviour.
TikTok
You may have heard of TikTok as it's increased in popularity significantly in western countries over the last year. "TikTokor Douyin is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. It is used to create short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos." (Wikipedia, 2020).
TikTok has been the recipient of vast amounts of data privacy concerns. The fact it's a Chinese company raised concerns leading to United States senators banning federal employees from uploading videos on the social network, 'in an effort to protect national security' (Hall, 2020).
Reddit CEO has criticised TikTok for being 'fundamentally parasitic' claiming the app abuses the privacy and personal data of users.
I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it's always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone. I actively tell people, 'don't install that spyware on your phone'. (Cuthbertson, 2020).
Should the general user really be concerned? I will now discuss some example of videos I have found on TikTok which show what I have discussed in this blog post in practice, through the experiences of TikTok users from around the world.
Example 1 - Advertising of Specific Products
This TikTok video shows a group of people in the same room running an experiment. This main gist of the experiment is to discuss a certain topic and then browse social media apps to see check if you are then being promoted that specific thing discussed. The people on this group talk about iPhone cases, with someone starting off the conversation with 'I have really been looking for a case'.
The Surveillance Capitalist point of view here is that these predictive algorithms are using all the devices around us, laptops, mobile phones, IoT enabled smart speakers, to track our browsing history, location history and even maybe eavesdrop into our conversations. Eventually, somebody in the group receives an advert of iPhone cases.
The fact that this 'experiment' was conducted by what seems to be youngsters in a highschool does show that this topic could be gaining more popularity by the general public, those whose data is being sold, those who are the main user of these free services. Maybe these companies should become concerned? Or maybe this was just done for fun.
Example 2 - Emotions Through Videos
This is a facinating example of these algorithms at work. A TikTok user uploaded two separate videos of the same content, dancing a popular TikTok dance routine. The person who uploaded it states they are a scientist running their own experiment. In one video they are energetic, smiling, movements are flowing really well. In the other, they are more rigid and look extremely unhappy. The experiment was to find out which video would be prioritised on TikToks For You page (feature page), which means it would be exposed to a higher number of TikTok users. The fact it's called the 'For You' page indicates methods of surveillance capitalism at work on TikToks app. How are they ensuring that the content is specifically for you, and your desires? Data collection?
They asked the viewers to like whichever video they see first.
Enthusiastic video:
Screenshots from the video:
Sad Video:
Screenshots from the video:
After one has exposed themselves to surveillance capitalism, it becomes obvious how services such as TikTok may employ facial scanning techniques within their services to categories content based on emotion, and then promote certain content based on how individuals are feeling at the time. The screenshots above show the differences between the facial expressions in the woman's face, but how will this affect which ones was viewed more?
The results:
So which video was prioritised and feature on the For You page, therefore receiving more likes? The sad one.
The sad video received 3 million likes at the time of writing this blog, whereas the fun one received only 150 thousand likes. What does this allow us to infer about TikToks users? We know that TikTok is likely to be collecting behavioural data on each of their users, building a profile about them, their likes, dislikes, and how they interact with certain content. Now, this begs the questions, why is the sad version receiving more hits? What does this say about the users on TikTok, and what Tiktok knows about them? And does this backup Reddit CEOs point about the app being 'fundamentally parasitic'? If so, then it isn't only TikTok suffering from a parasitic disease.
Reference list:
Cuthbertson, A. (2020). Reddit boss calls TikTok 'fundamentally parasitic' for its privacy flaws. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/reddit-tiktok-privacy-data-china-spyware-huffman-a9362486.html (Accessed: 27 February 2020).
Hall, L (2020). Senator announces plans to ban government employees from TikTok amid security fears. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tik-tok-ban-senator-huawei-china-technology-a9376506.html (Accessed: 25 February 2020).
Wikipedia (2020). TikTok. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok (Accessed: 25 February 2020).
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