Zeynep Tufekci talking about the digital residue we leave behind as we use digital tools and spaces.
There is the narrative that “as long as you’re careful online” you’ll be okay. As Tufekci indicates, there is no longer any chance of “opting out” of challenges in these spaces.
Because of technological advances and the sheer amount of data now available about billions of other people, discretion no longer suffices to protect your privacy. Computer algorithms and network analyses can now infer, with a sufficiently high degree of accuracy, a wide range of things about you that you may have never disclosed, including your moods, your political beliefs, your sexual orientation and your health.
More to the point, Tufekci describes this as “computational inference.” This is akin to the data inferencing that we could make about an individual’s views based on what magazines or newspaper someone subscribed to. This pattern finding is on steroids given the amount of data online.
Tufekci indicates that this (computational inferencing) does not always have to be a bad thing…but it is also used for social control. There are also significant challenges when this occurs based on bad data, or incorrect inferencing.
SOURCE: The New York Times