Big Data – Page 2 – Excited Pixels

I left Facebook a long time ago, before many of the current realities of that ecosystem. Rushkoff didn’t leave for the same reasons I did (which stemmed from philosophical conceptions of temporality, time, and privacy) but his reasons echo those I keep hearing from undergrads. It isn’t just that Facebook isn’t ‘cool’; they’re spending less time on the site because the company is increasingly seen as manipulative, secretive, and portrays users in ways antithetical to how the users perceive themselves.

What is perhaps most concerning is what will happen to all the data the company has amassed if/when it implodes like MySpace did. What if, in five or seven years, Facebook effectively closes shop: who will get the mass of data that the company has collected, and how will they subsequently disseminate or manipulate it? It’s this broader concern about long-term use of incredibly intimate data that leaves me most leery of corporate-hosted social media platforms, and it’s an issue that I really don’t think people appreciate. But, then, I guess not a lot of people really remember the dot com crash…

Dan Goodin has a good piece on one of Bruce Schneier’s recent talks. From the top of the article:

Unlike the security risks posed by criminals, the threat from government regulation and data hoarders such as Apple and Google are more insidious because they threaten to alter the fabric of the Internet itself. They’re also different from traditional Internet threats because the perpetrators are shielded in a cloak of legitimacy. As a result, many people don’t recognize that their personal information or fortunes are more susceptible to these new forces than they ever were to the Russian Business Network or other Internet gangsters.

The notion that government – largely composed of security novices – large corporations, and a feudal security environment (where were trust Apple, Google, etc instead of having a generalizable good surveillance footprint) are key threats of security is not terribly new. This said, Bruce (as always) does a terrific job in explaining the issues in technically accurate ways that are simultaneously accessible to the layperson. Read the article; it’s well worth your time and will quickly demonstrate some of the ‘big’ threats to online security, privacy, and liberty.