Social media invasion - well, it is one of the most intensely ‘debated’
issues worldwide – the invasion of the social media tools in our lives beyond
the ‘perceived’ usage of the social media for us – and the two outfits are
central to the logics of this debate – Google and Facebook – the two online
giants with access to almost 3 billion users.
Here, it is about one such incident associated with Facebook that I
witnessed last night.
Last night, around 11 PM, I was exploring websites of the carriers Air India, Jet
Airways, IndiGo and SpiceJet for Delhi to Varanasi flights on August 15. While
doing so, I was also in my Facebook account.
Suddenly, an incoming message drew my attention to the Facebook page. Nothing unusual! It keeps on happening and
signing out of the Facebook chat app is the best way to deal with it.
Anyway, here the context is different, about invasion of the social
media tools in our lives, going deep into the details of what we do and how we
behave online to dig information for their commercial use, and my first hand
experience of it the last night.
While visiting the Facebook page of my account last night while
exploring the flight booking options, what arrested my eyesight and stuck me
with was the advertisement bar of the Facebook page (left or right side,
depends on what convention one uses to write so) showing advertisements of Jet
Airways and the travel portal www.makemytrip.com
for exactly the same itinerary of mine – Delhi to Varanasi – promising me
special rates – as shown in the screenshots above.
Now, we know websites like Google, Facebook and many others use cookies
and other information collection tools to makes heaps of information on the
social media usage behaviour of their users (in the name of tracking the online
shopping behaviour, a more or less accepted practice by the user who bother to
know about such issues – but, it ‘must’ be limited to what we do on Facebook
and what we do with its advertisements – certainly not with what we do on other
websites) – but what this last night experience tells – that websites like
Facebook are getting so deeper that they can look through what all we are doing
online.
The last night experience was on marketing advertisements based on
information collected on what I was doing on other online platforms than
Facebook – means Facebook can have access to every avenue of my online presence
– be it my online purchases or ‘online window shopping’ or my other personal
online activities - or is it limited to collecting only the commercial
information, something that is the ‘redundant’ sort of catchphrase of these
companies?
But, like always, we cannot trust the defence of these companies – because,
if they have the ability to see what we are exploring and purchasing online –
then, they also have the scale to see what else we are doing while online. We
cannot trust them on their mere assurance because they are yet to share with us
the information they collect from us (on us, about us) by their online snooping.
Have they shared with you?
Yes, it doesn't mean to shut our online presence, but we need to draw
the line and need to very cautious about following this line.
