Link to video trailer here.

It was my mother’s innocent question ‘Why does Myntra keep messaging me’ that made me think about personalized or customized messages. She felt that she gets too many emails and messages from Myntra, although she does not even browse their website. I had to explain it to her that Myntra got her details from the one time when I had used her phone number to place an order and hence the ‘bombardment’ of messages and emails.

However, this is not an isolated case of social media or online shopping websites ‘keeping an eye’ on us.[i] One look at google maps on your phone or laptop will tell you the number of places that you have visited in a month, or even a year. It keeps track of every little walk of yours to the grocery shop that you might have forgotten! In other words, Google stores every minute little detail of one’s life. It knows about the applications one uses, the kind of things that you want to buy, one’s birthday or any other occasion. In fact, Google also listens to one speak with friends and family.

However, it is not just google, which stores one’s data. Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Amazon – all of them store one’s data. They also have access to our microphone and camera. Therefore, it is not surprising that if you have spoken about investing in gardening as a new hobby, all you can see are advertisements of gardening tools, plants and planters.

This process of extensive data storage, access and customization is an indication of the network society that Manuel Castells (1996)[ii] talked about – the internet has introduced a multiplicity of communication patterns which is at the source of a fundamental societal transformation. It is also a way of interactive communication (ibid) that can make an individual feel personal and connected. Personalized and customized messages and advertisements help people feel special.

A recent University of Minnesota study published in 2020 looked at people’s perception towards customized messages. While most of the people thought that it was a surveillance tool, it was also found out that the younger generations are more likely to accept customization as a feature that shows them ‘the things that they want to see’. [iii] Many people feel that customization is useful because it saves their time and shows them what they are interested in.

However, customization settings are not limited to only advertisements. It is now also playing a role in the way one’s political views are shaped. There is an intersection of politics and everyday life, and personalized settings play a huge role in this. Social media websites like Facebook show political advertisements and videos according to one’s ‘likes’.[iv]

One is shown updates on one’s feed depending on the content and/or page that is ‘liked’. For instance, during the recent United States of America (USA) elections, voters were categorized as liberal, conservative or moderate according to one’s preferences by Facebook.[v]

Many of these advertisements have been criticized for containing misleading and manipulative information, particularly on Facebook. It is not just that. It is also alleged that many political parties make a lot of money from such misleading political campaigning. In response, Facebook has introduced a button that can be used to turn off advertisements by the users. Another social media giant, Twitter, on the other hand, has banned all kinds of political advertisements.[vi]

Thus, although personalized and customized settings, messages and advertisements seem harmless on the surface; in reality, they play an instrumental role in shaping one’s social and political choices. Many social media sites also play a huge role in spreading fake news. For instance, a study by researchers of Princeton University that was conducted before the 2016 US Presidential elections, found that Facebook referred its users to untrustworthy news sources over 15% of the time.[vii] It has also been found that fake news impacts one’s voting choice, which is dependent on one’s customized settings. Thus, it is a vicious cycle.

Therefore, while personalized messages in the form of earrings or food suggestions can seem benign and ‘time-saving’; the truth is, it goes much beyond that. Shoshana Zuboff calls it a form of surveillance capitalism in which the surveillance capitalists like Facebook see its users only as data sources that can be sold to potential advertisers. Human data can be used to make profit, and as such, ethical concerns about privacy and confidentiality are relegated to the backdoor (Zuboff 2019).[viii]

Thus, while the internet, especially Google, had emerged as a medium for us to ‘search’ data. But now, it is us, who are getting traced, understood and customized. What Zuboff calls ‘surveillance capitalists’ is in control of our intimate and personal details, which they use to regulate us. Even simple actions such as ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ can be used to study and manipulate personal information.

Therefore, while it is easy to store every little information on our digital devices, and not worry about forgetting, it is worthwhile to remember that it comes at a cost. Although it has been only two and a half decades, the shift from Manuel Castells Network Society to Shoshana Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism has been swift. We have now entered the world of customized settings from interactive communication.

[i] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy, accessed on 4^th December 2020.

[ii] Castells, Manuel. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. I. Malden, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell. 

^[iii] Claire M. Segijn et al. (2020). Perceptions of Techniques Used to Personalize Messages Across Media in Real Time. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. 23(5). DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2019.0682.

[iv] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/us/politics/facebook-ads-politics.html, accessed on 5^th November 2020.

[v] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/us/politics/facebook-ads-politics.html, accessed on 5^th December 2020.

[vi] https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet/how-social-media-services-handle-political-ads/article30531732.ece, accessed on 5^th December 2020.

[vii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2020/03/21/facebook-spreads-fake-news-faster-than-any-other-social-website-according-to-new-research/?sh=612bf39c6e1a, accessed on 5^th December 2020.

[viii] Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Profile Books.