Platform-mediated networks are everywhere, the most prominent among them Facebook and Google. Those two love your data input as much as the famous “fat kid loves cake”. It should not be news to anyone these days that every step you take on the internet and especially on these platforms is monitored and either analyzed for personalized advertising or security (Hello NSA!) purposes. Regularly, your and my Facebook friends go crazy and post something like: “I do not allow FB to xyz according to their policy change 1,200,500.” Hate to break it to you, but by logging in or using the Google Search machine you as good as confirmed those already. We get annoyed, we fear data breaches, we worry about hacking but yet give our personal information freely to just about any online platform.
Why are we still using these networks? Easy! Because everybody else does (Facebook, Instagram etc.) or because I find exactly what I’m looking for there (Google, instead of Bing, who is this Bing anyway?!) This is the famous network effect at work and it is SO useful! Google for instance mediates multiple types of networks: sellers and buyers, advertisers and customers, those asking a question and those who have an answer. Thus, networks are mediated within pretty much no time; being listed first for a search query almost guarantees success.
Yet, there is sharp contrast between companies’ data policies with regard to data protection from governmental side and even more so the selling of data to third parties (AppleInsider, 2016). On the other hand, customers seemingly become more concerned about the use or their data: Google itself found that UK citizens’ have increasingly searched for cyber-security related issues and questions in 2015 (Telegraph, 2015). With regard to platform-mediated networks, the researchers Li and Pavlou ( found that we often face the network value versus-information privacy concerns dilemma, a “trade-off between positive network externalities (network value) and negative network externalities (information privacy concerns)”. As true as this may be, most of the times we willingly set our concerns aside to “get our value”; using the services a platform offers to us. So how big is this dilemma really? Are we customers really that concerned about what happens to our data? Are we more in fear of the mean, unknown individual hacker when in fact, we should be worried about all the platforms we give our consent to collect and use our data?
A nice illustration of what how data is used and how users regularly act on the internet is illustrated in the documentary “Terms and Conditions May Apply” by Cullen Hoback (2013). The movie shows how people consent to all sorts of terms and conditions with regard to their privacy rights without actually reading them; the former is certainly complicated – and knowingly so- by companies which follow non-transparent and questionable data policies. If you want to gain a short overview of recurring issues and greyish areas and techniques today’s companies apply, I recommend watching this movie. A lot of things have changed since 2013, some things may be presented too simplified or overly drastic but still, it is an interesting watch!
Now back to you: Do you sometimes catch yourself in the” network value versus-information privacy concerns dilemma when using an online platform” or are you regularly “not that bothered”?
Sources:
AppleInsider (2016) http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/02/17/user-security-privacy-issues-draw-sharp-contrast-between-apple-ios-google-android-in-fbi-encryption-case last accessed September 25th, 2016
Hoback, Cullen (2013) “Terms and Conditions may apply”. (Movie)
Li, T., and Pavlou, P. 2016. What Drives Users’ Website Registration? The Network Externalities versus Information Privacy Dilemma. Working Paper.
Telegraph UK (2015) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/11814471/google-reveals-spike-in-british-privacy-concerns.html last accessed September 25th, 2016
Cover picture: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o0UBqCvAd_M/Ul7XViQ5WoI/AAAAAAAAO7o/qV-hpMc3dfo/s1600/terms_and_conditions_may_apply.jpg last accessed September 25th, 2016
