Data is Money- Google-Facebook Case Study

Recently, two technological giants were made to sit in front of US senators, reason being the amount of personal data held in the servers of these Tech-Giants.

After Crude oil, the next big thing is Data, and the companies dealing into the data territory are the world leaders today, IT giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook have huge amount personal and impersonal data held in their servers. The good news is that the digital industry is growing strongly, with revenues up sharply in 2020. The bad news is virtually all of that growth is going to exactly two companies- Google and Facebook, which hence is creating monopoly, which is not a good sign.

Data is being increasingly used by companies to improve their services. For example, a clothes brand tries to gather data on customer preferences. At present, Data analytics is the fastest growing field. Advertising companies use data such as location, interests etc. to show targeted ads. No one can live away from digital world. Because, even if we are not using internet, our data may be in online because now govt records, land records, identity cards, certificates etc. are all available online. Almost all companies today use data to target customers according to their online search and behavior, which is stored under companies like Facebook and Google.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Case

Mark Zuckerberg was held accountable recently for data manipulation, For one thing, there’s the question of how Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes different types of content, and how changes to the algorithm be enormously damaging to publishers. Zuckerberg opened his remarks before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees by taking responsibility for failing to prevent Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, from gathering personal information from 87 million users to try to influence elections. However, mark Zuckerberg made point in defense which was heard and the decision was in favor to Facebook.

Google’s Sunder Pichai case

Google CEO Sunder Pichai was asked to explain why a Google image search for “idiot” turned up pictures of Donald Trump and whether that was a case of intentional bias, He emerged relatively unscathed after a 200-minute grilling before a US Congress panel where hardline Republican lawmakers expressed deep suspicious over purported liberal stranglehold on technology, particularly in the social media and internet search engine.

Key point of Digital ownership

With the growing data-based economy, our privacy is at risk. Cyber crimes are increasing. Cyber security is also one of the fastest growing industries.

Now, more and more people are realizing the importance of consent for using personal data, many countries have cyber police and a strong cyber security cell to save leaks and manipulation of data.

Now, there are fights on localization of data. Data localization means storing and processing the data of citizens inside their country rather than in other countries. This ensures security of the data. But it also violates trade laws.

Digital Footprints are very hard to erase, and as online data is money, manipulation of data is a very big threat now.

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