Joram van Rijn

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Cloud computing is revolutionising our lives. The digital transformation is driving our economy forward, while it is advocated that the cloud supports sustainable growth. The environment is considered due to improved efficiency. Is this actually true, however? Can the cloud be the solution to tackle global warming or is it an new type of greenwashing (Matthews, 2013)?
This blog will address both the environmental benefits and concerns of the transformation towards cloud storage, in comparison to traditional data storage.

So, how does the cloud differ from local IT storage? Cloud storage increases energy and resource efficiency. Energy efficiency is improved by the way that energy is used on the cloud. Data centres for the cloud are supposed to be more streamlined than traditional data centres. Businesses can reduce carbon emissions by switching to cloud facilities.
Resource efficiency is mostly due to dematerialising the economy. The cloud allows companies to stop investing in hardware and stop frequent updating. This contributes to reducing waste, further benefiting the environment. On top of that, the cloud enables proper online communication, limiting the need for business travels (and commuting, especially relevant with the present COVID-19 crisis) (Matthews, 2013).

On the other side, concerns are raised about energy consumption of the cloud. When companies use traditional data storage methods, they are required to publish their IT emissions. However, when firms move to the cloud, their power use is shifted towards cloud ventures like Google, Amazon or Microsoft (Mytton, 2020). The emissions then become indirect and no longer require publishing. The cloud enterprises themselves have been obscure about their energy consumption. So, it is not precisely known how much energy these cloud data centres actually use. Back in 2011, The New York Times reported that one Google data centre consumes the same amount of energy as 200 thousand homes (Glanz, 2011). Google responded that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks due to improved efficiency. On top of that, the tech sector is the biggest consumer of renewable energy.

So, what can be concluded about the environment? The cloud creates a situation where energy consumption is dominated by a few major parties that lack transparency. This has made the sum of emissions difficult to calculate. However, the cloud increases the potential of emissions-reduction massively. Huge data centres running on renewable energy could singlehandedly shift our digital economy towards actual sustainable growth.

Sources:

Glanz, J. (2011). Google details, and defends, its use of electricity. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google-details-and-defends-its-use-of-electricity.html#:~:text=Google%20disclosed%20Thursday%20that%20it,full%20of%20computers%20use%20electricity.

Matthews, R. (2013). How environmentally sustainable is cloud computing and storage? Planet Watch. https://earthmaven.io/planetwatch/energy-economics/how-environmentally-sustainable-is-cloud-computing-and-storage-QF6qx7l9L0-e4uh7aE39sw#:~:text=Conclusion,by%20millions%20of%20metric%20tons

Mytton, D. (2020). How much energy do data centers use. David Mytton. https://davidmytton.blog/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-use/

image:

https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/climatechange/resources/Pages/topic-08.aspx

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Both the 2016 presidential elections in the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom had surprising outcomes to many. However, two years later, it was revealed that a new way of shifting elections had been discovered. Cambridge Analytica had bought the data of 50 million Facebook users to create political microtargeted ads to switch voting in their clients’ favour, with clients being both the Republican party and pro-Brexit parties. Former director of business development at Cambridge Analytica, Brittany Kaiser, states that governments consider this communication tactic as “weapons-grade” (Amer & Noujaim, 2019; Dwilson, 2019; Mills,2019).

So, what happened exactly? This situation has to do with the approach that certain parties took to monetise data: creating value with personal information. Mrs. Kaiser calls data “the most valuable asset on earth in the Netflix documentary: The Great Hack. Cambridge Analytica’s strategy evolved around buying private user information from social media platforms like Facebook and analysing it. Next up, micro-targeted political adverts were created to sway voters’ political opinions (Amer & Noujaim, 2019).

Mrs. Kaiser states that not everyone’s opinion can or needs to be changed. Key is to identify and target the narrow group of people that can be persuaded: micro-targeting. This is possible with big data and exactly what Cambridge Analytica did by harvesting personal data. Certain people received advertisements that told them exactly what they needed to hear to be nudged into voting for a certain party, adverts personalised and tailored with a scary precision. The approach did not even primarily focus on convincing voters for a cause, but on shaming the competition which worked just as, if not more successfully (Amer & Noujaim, 2019; Sharp, 2020; Mills, 2019).

Why the uproar, you might ask? The revelation created outrage around data security on social media and even democracy in a digital society. There is debate about Facebook intentionally violating data security and anti-competition laws to monetise data. Selling personal user data and allowing adverts to be extremely personalised and solely promoting one political view, often even showing misleading and contradicting messages. To have honest political debate and fair campaigns, however, voters need to have a shared understanding of what different parties stand for so that a fair decision can be made (Mills, 2019; Sharp, 2020).

Micro-targeting in political adverts might well be the most powerful tool to win an election during the digital age. However, the practice is flawed, considered by many as unethical, illegal and against the foundations of democracy (Sharp, 2020).

Sources:
Amer, K. and Noujaim, J. (2019). The Great Hack. United States: Netflix.
Dwilson, S. D. (2019). ‘The Great Hack’: Cambridge Analytica’s Weapons-Grade Communication Tactics. Heavy. https://heavy.com/entertainment/2019/07/weapons-grade-communication-cambridge-analytica/
Mills, S. (2019). How data can win you an election. Medium. https://towardsdatascience.com/how-data-can-win-you-an-election-3093b0bf76ab
Sharp, E. (2020). For a healthy democracy, Facebook must halt micro-targeted political ads. Web Foundation. https://webfoundation.org/2020/01/for-a-healthy-democracy-facebook-must-halt-micro-targeted-political-ads/

Image found on: https://www.martianpassage.com/culture/digital-voting

Can the cloud save the environment?

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Winning an Election during the Digital Age

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