Shopping with Big Brother

I remember the first time I read George Orwell’s novel, 1984.  It was the 70s; the year 1984 loomed large on the horizon.  We were decades deep in the Cold War, afraid of everything from Communist propaganda to KGB double agents.  We feared the potential for the government to read our mail or bug our phones.  We learned to distrust authority.  Just revisit the media and entertainment from those years—James Bond, Get Smart, Spy vs. Spy—and we see our fears of Big Brother, totalitarianism, and espionage manifest in our art forms.

What we could not have anticipated in those days was the way that Big Brother would infiltrate our lives.  In our post-McCarthy era paranoia, we assumed that the watchful eye would be used to monitor the boundaries of our political thoughts.  We could not have anticipated the extent to which commercial and public domain utilities could be used to monitor our behaviors for the benefit of profit mongers.  I no longer fear the government’s tracking my acquaintances and associations.  Instead, I am annoyed at how my private inquiries and searches are used to exploit me as a consumer.   What began as a few benign platforms have now repurposed my contacts, preferences, and shopping behaviors for Big Business' monetary gain.

A case in point.  I responded to an online advertisement that showcased an antique item that interested me.  To shop at their site I was required to provide an email address and to choose a secure password.  Having done this, I was then able to browse their “members only” site.  I looked at a couple of items in depth, even reading the detailed descriptions and zooming in to examine them closely.  In the end I decided to forego the purchase.  I closed the tab and went back to my business.

The next day, I noticed an ad for this site on my Facebook page.  Oddly, it showed one of the same items I had considered the day before.  Later, when I opened Chrome, it displayed thumbnails of the very same items.  In fact, those two items followed me for days, popping up in the margins of almost every site I visited.

Facebook and Google (Chrome is a Google product) are now among the worst offenders.  Most people do not realize how their own behaviors are broadcast on Facebook.  My husband, for example, downloaded Spotify to enhance his access to streaming music on his computer at work.  He uses music in his office as white noise while he is working on his research.   One day last week, while he was operating on a patient all afternoon, Spotify was broadcasting every track it played on my News Feed.  Every two minutes there was another announcement that he had listened to [your song here] on Spotify.  Similar applications report the articles you read to all your friends.  These broadcasts give the illusion that you are endorsing the article, even if you do not.

The interoperability between Facebook and Google-owned applications runs deep.  I realized the extent of this when my daughter accessed her college email (a gmail platform—also owned by Google) from my computer.  When she logged out, it disrupted the operation of Facebook and Blogger (my blog’s Google-owned platform), which had been logged in under my own username and password.  

Facebook is not the only offender.  I am a frequent online shopper, using the Internet regularly to become an informed consumer before making large purchases.  Once, I visited a company’s website to learn about their roof cleaning process, receiving a phone call within 15 seconds of entering their site.  When I expressed my irritation at their forwardness (invasion of privacy) and their inappropriate use of my “cookies,” the salesman argued that I had initiated the contact.

It is said that it is hard for an actor to fool another actor.  In a similar sense, it is hard to “sell” to someone who has worked in the “persuasive arts.”  My career as a strategic marketer has colored the lens through which I see the world.  I am armed with healthy skepticism and a very active bullshit meter.  What other people see as conveniences, I see as undermining my autonomy and privacy.  I was incredibly slow to move from my ancient LG flip phone to an iphone.  Even as I enjoy its greater ease of texting, I remain concerned by the tight integration of the apps and utilities.  When an app offers to “use my current location,” I see its potential to function as a tracking device.  I am suspicious about the security of an online Banking application that is downloaded and managed through a single Apple utility along with my metronome, my koi pond, and my pocket whip.

To be sure, Big Brother has arrived.  Fortunately, we do not live in the totalitarian world of Orwell’s making.  We still have a few freedoms left.  Let’s not become so lazy and techo-enthralled that we trade away our privacy for a few bells and whistles.