If you lead a digital life you cannot be anonymous

Advertisers once had to rely on clever words and interesting pictures to capture imaginations, build their brands and sell their wares.
As consumer culture gathered pace in the 50s and 60s and the market became flooded with thousands of versions of the same thing, the brand became king. As giant brands were built, advertising became a playground of the super brands – an arena where they flexed their creative muscle by dazzling their loyal followers with big budget performances and through the line campaigns no one could escape.
Smaller brands had to rely on PR, maybe a bit of radio, the odd press ad and of course paying supermarkets and other retailers ‘hello money’ to get stocked in the first place.
No one dreamed that one day there would be a magical platform, a platform that offered advertisers the Holy Grail – the ability to target people, individual people, based on everything they revealed about themselves – their age, their sex, their religion, where they lived, what they liked doing, the colour of their hair, their weight, their hobbies, the food they eat, their musical tastes, the movies and books they liked, the type of friends they had and their ambitions and fears.
Such a magical platform would be ideally suited to smaller advertisers because they could target the people they believe would like their product. There would be little ‘waste’. Unlike big brands who can throw everything at the wall and expect some of it to stick, small advertisers are precious about every cent they spend on marketing.

The magical platform
A magical platform suddenly emerged and everything seemed possible. Facebook became one giant open society where privacy was optional and mostly ignored by both its rulers and citizens. Facebook has the third largest population on the planet outside India and China. Over 800 million people live part of their lives on the social network and freely reveal the most stunningly private things about themselves to anyone who cares to have a look.
What Facebook offers advertisers was once considered impossible – a fantasy even. It would be like saying to a surgeon that in a few years time they will be able to perform surgery without inflicting damage to the patient’s body thanks to a new wand-like device (not yet invented).
Facebook promises to answer the fantasy of all ‘Mad Men’ and determined sellers of stuff. At least it wants to. There is, however, a little problem. A snag. A challenge to the dream.
While Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg believe human privacy is no longer relevant in the digital era, others disagree. These are powerful others. Others with centuries of very stern laws behind them. One such ‘other’ is the European Commission – a not inconsiderable force to be reckoned with. The EC doesn’t like Facebook’s ‘tude towards privacy. The EC believes its citizens, millions of whom also live on Facebook, should be protected from a website that makes its money selling very specific data about people to advertisers.

Weapon of choice
The weapon of choice for the EC is the Directive, and it’s just created one to aim at the heart of Facebook’s plans for world domination. This new EC Directive will come into force in January 2012 and will ban targeted ads. The vice president of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, sees this as a universal consumer protection issue. “Consumers in Europe should see their data strongly protected, regardless of the EU country they live in and regardless of the country in which companies which process their personal data are established,” she says.
While most of the very detailed information Facebook harvests about its users is stored in massive data farms in the US, the EC Directive doesn’t care. If Facebook doesn’t stop what it’s doing it will face legal action and massive fines.
Facebook admits it collects an enormous amount of data but insists it doesn’t engage in any dark arts to benefit its advertising clients.
“We understand that people share a lot of information on Facebook and we take this very seriously. We believe ads that are relevant, social and personalised based on your real interests are better. Adverts are personalised to the individual user. We do not track peoples’ behaviour to serve advertising,” it says.

Ireland’s role in Europe Versus Facebook
As Facebook’s EMEA Headquarters are located in Dublin, Irish data protection law covers the personal data of all users (outside the US and Canada). In fact, the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) has just started an audit of Facebook. Why? Because 22 separate complaints were lodged by an organisation of students from Austria called ‘Europe versus Facebook’.
The complaints relate to Facebook’s data- handling and privacy settings and include claims that:
• Messages (including instant real-time “chat-messages”) are stored by Facebook even after the user has deleted them;
• Tags (labels identifying photographs of Facebook users by name) are used without the specific consent of the user and that users have to actively “untag” themselves if they don’t wish to be identified in this manner;
• Tags that are “removed” or “untagged” by the user are merely deactivated and are then saved by Facebook;
• Requests for access to personal data have not been answered fully and that many categories of information are missing from responses; and
• (The complaint which has garnered most attention worldwide) that Facebook’s “Like” button, which allows users to “like” anything from another user’s comment on his or her Facebook page, to a third-party website which contains a Facebook “Like” link, is creating extended user data that can be used to track the activity of any web users, both Facebook members and non-members.

What is he selling?

Money can’t buy you love
Privacy and data protection agencies all over Europe are watching what’s happening in Dublin with keen interest. Reports indicate that Facebook is cooperating fully with the audit, and that the DPC expects it to be completed by the end of the year. Perhaps worryingly for Facebook, the DPC may order any data processed in contravention of the DPA to be blocked, erased or destroyed.
Everyone knows that digital giants like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook track people online and use this information to make money. Ultimately what consumers have to decide is to what degree are they comfortable with it. There has never been such a thing as a free lunch and Facebook doesn’t want to pick up the tab for 800 million people. If people use these platforms they must expect to pay, not with cash but with personal details. Perhaps Zuckerberg is right? If you lead a digital life privacy is not an option, nor is it a privilege … it could though, be the world’s newest currency?

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