The social and political forces of polarization can conveniently make use of this opportunity to persuade people towards their propagandas. Spreading fake news is one of the most common and major triggers of this phenomenon. Moreover, in developing countries like India where the ignorance of the public regarding their data rights is high, the possibility of exploitation is quite wide.
Late night I was watching a Netflix original documentary ‘The Great Hack’, which enumerated the sensational data scam by Cambridge Analytica/SCL. The legal battle towards this began with a complaint lodged by Professor David Carroll before the information commissioner’s office in U.K requesting the Cambridge Analytica to give back his personal data. This data scam was a revelation on many grounds, as for a first it exposed the effects of data harvesting and its manipulative uses like micro targeting which, in the case of CA, is believed to have influenced the course of many a number of national elections and campaigns including the 2016 US election and Brexit. The company’s successful involvement in national elections of African countries also reiterated the impact of data analysis in defining the course of democratic process of election. Moreover, it also brought into light the concept called psychographic profiling which, according to Christopher Wylie, one of the whistleblowers in the scam, using data from Facebook and other social network platforms created 5000 data points on every voter in the 2016 United States Election. More interestingly, the Print in 2018 published a story on Cambridge Analytica/SCL’s involvement in Indian politics which according to one of the former directors of SCL India had a number of teething troubles until it shifted the focus to American politics. However, this was for many human rights activists a wakeup call to look into the dark but extensive shades of technological frauds which obsessively thrived on exploiting the personal data of common man. Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer writer and one among the leading investigative journalists who exposed the scam to the world in her TED talk in 2019 openly reproached the tech-giants whom she called as the Gods of Silicon Valley to have allowed the data breach under their nose without any guilt. In the ted talk platform, which if Silicon Valley is the beast is the belly of it, she could send up a flair that terrified the chosen audience who consisted of the gems of tech savvy in the world. She was constant on attacking the impending silence of tech giants on the recent expositions, or their credulity to ignore the iceberg which was created by a platform they have built yet, went beyond their reach.
Carole also blamed the Facebook CEO for his constant silence on Facebook’s role in intensifying the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar or Russian interventions in elections. But, as a ripple of this stone, a public consciousness has been created by these attempts which could at least make Mark Zuckerberg finally to apologise to the US Congress over the Cambridge Analytica scandal .
In the background of these incidents, there raised a positive gesture on public platforms about the security and confidentiality of personal data which is amassed by social networking sites. Simultaneously, a call for including data as a human right was also in motion. What caught my attention in this documentary at this point of time when we fight a pandemic, is the thought that how extensively the digital platforms are being used at a time when a larger portion of people in the world are on a forced ‘lock down’. In countries like India which is second in number of mobile network users (390.9 million users in 2018), the sharp increase of users in digital platforms simultaneously heightens the impending risk of data breach. The economic time reported that in India, the first week of lock down has a significant impact on digital platforms that the TV viewership rose from 32 million to 592 million as the mobile data use had a 6.2% hike. The nationwide shutdown of a country like India will in fact destabilise the structure of normal social life of people drawing them largely towards the digital platforms to connect with each other. It is a peculiar time when the most number of people are put to use a medium of transaction where they unknowingly leave the traces of their identity and behavioral features in different dimensions. The use of these traces is the thing I wish to give a thought about. If the data mining, data analysis and political consulting firms like Cambridge Analytica can grab a hold on these data; as it has happened in the past, they would possibly use it for the ‘targeted information feeding’ in the social network which every social network platforms uses to provide customized advertisements and news to its users. Moreover, this will possibly lead to extraction of personal and behavioral features of users through profiling which would even be used for all sorts of campaigns in the countries. This vulnerability always remains a threat to all sorts of democratic processes as it functions surreptitiously. The social and political forces of polarization can conveniently make use of this opportunity to persuade people towards their propagandas. Spreading fake news is one of the most common and major triggers of this phenomenon. Moreover, in developing countries like India where the ignorance of the public regarding their data rights is high, the possibility of exploitation is quite wide. National Politics being the biggest benefactor of data breach, Carole Cadwalladr asks the world whether a free and fair election is possible in the world anymore. Brittany Kaiser, the whistle blower in the CA scam also responded that data is the most precious commodity in the present world that defines the course of our time. What is required to tackle this on the ground level is a better social awareness to differentiate between what is true and what is intentionally cooked up, because every news on the internet has a target population and covert intention. It is high time to take a jab on your comforts of social networking and see to the winding perils behind it.
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