Google and its use of economic surveillance provide a strong example of how social media has affected surveillance culture. Fuchs provides a second example of economic surveillance through social media. Turow looks at the way that social media sites compose their privacy policies, arguing that they are often extremely complex and include a lot of jargon but are often worded in a very polite way. The privacy policies often ensure users that they take a great deal of care over...
Google and its use of economic surveillance provide a strong example of how social media has affected surveillance culture. Fuchs provides a second example of economic surveillance through social media. Turow looks at the way that social media sites compose their privacy policies, arguing that they are often extremely complex and include a lot of jargon but are often worded in a very polite way. The privacy policies often ensure users that they take a great deal of care over their privacy but go on to say they will share information with “affiliates”, this is to try and attempt to cover up the selling of data to marketing companies. Facebook admits in its privacy policy that it uses targeted advertising to sell user data to advertisers. They say that they allow football companies to advertise to those interested in football but do not disclose any personal information. Facebook’s data collection process is far from transparent, with the user not knowing which pieces of data that are being collected (similar to the idea of the watchtower in the Panopticon and who it is being sold to. Fuchs argues that Facebook’s privacy policy tells us that it is an organisation primarily about profit generating through advertising. We see that social media has had a massive impact on economic surveillance as it a form of surveillance that more or less did not exist before the rise to prominence of companies such as Facebook and googles.
