Privacy Issues : A Solution for Media Abuse.

I think we are addressing this privacy issue in a wrong way when it is about the control exerted in our lives by biggies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and some of the lesser known but impactful players in developing countries.

We voluntarily give data in to the hands of these giants and expect them not to use it or abuse it. It is like handing over a weapon or an instrument of leverage to person who know you very well and expect him not to use it when he/she stands to gain a commercial benefit from using/renting or applying it.

What if we are presented with a scenario where we can consume and analyse the information in a difference way, communicate in a different way – all these without leaving a trail. Rewind few decades earlier; advertising agencies were finding it extremely difficult to find out ways to manoeuvre the decision and thereby choices. Then came the internet; where we leave traces of whatever we do. Advertising agencies started picking up the crumbs and started selling it to research labs for the price of gold.

Commodity here being sold are our personal preferences, choices etc.. neatly packaged under tech fancy names such as Big Data, Data Analytics etc.. the list is endless.

Trouble stated brewing up when the players from Fourth estate started to venture in to it looking for additional profit. When they started to use our data; they came under pressure to substantiate their research. It become a compelling situation for them to “lead” the flock in to what they thought will happen – i.e “prediction trap”.

Hold those mixed thoughts for while.

Let us jump to some military strategy. When you are in a hi-tech warfare and your comms are compromised, you adopt to the basic mode of data exchange i.e one to one and face to face. No trail, no records. Information is given direct and precise, without any room for interpretation error.

What if in the present world, we have one such mode which if we adopt we can make these biggies who feed on out data go out of business in a phased way ?.. sounds interesting isn’t it ?

It was available all along, we chose to ignore it. What I am talking about is regarding the good old Radio. We can consume the same information without any drama and no one will not know. Remember, when we browse through the website of a news channel/paper or any website for consuming information, they collect all sorts of data like – how much time spent on pages, time spent of specific images etc…

By listening to radio and consuming the same information, we are getting what we what without giving what they need.

This is an interesting thread I would like to build on. Keep watching this space.