Popular internet sites around such as Google, Youtube, and Facebook monitor user browsing in order to customize search results and advertisements. In ways this this is convenient and sensible, however websites often take things too far. Their surveillance of our activity and promotion of content can be disturbing.
Google, arguably the largest internet titan has become a integral part of everyday life and contemporary culture. Serving as a mega online index of information, Google catalogs and organizes websites for search. The company’s widespread success is undeniable and influences so many major aspects of culture. The content of an individuals search on Google is followed and gathered. Google then uses a web of formulas in order to determine possible trends and patterns of your search, so that they may predict and provide relevant information. The formulas often take into account geographic location, country, and most importantly history of searches. By reverse tracing our IP addresses, Google is able to pinpoint our location. For example, since I live on campus if I search for “sushi”, many of the top results are sushi restaurants nearby. Contrary to popular belief, the top results Google displays are not always the most popular, relevant ones. Often times company’s will pay so that their business is one of the top results, thus manipulating the user’s relaxed acceptance of whatever Google presents.
Youtube, owned by Google, also uses many of the same techniques in order to personalize the experience. Constant monitoring of our video viewing, regardless of rather or not we are logged into an account, determines what appears on the homepage and the side bar. Yes, a customization of Youtube allows each individual a personal experience, however it also in capsules them into formulated patterns of expected interest. Keeping in mind that this is a business and website do this to generate revenue, it is saddening to think of how we are targeted as cash cows. One search of food on Youtube, and you are flooded with a sea of fitness, vitamins, and weightloss advertisements. Large markets like these are often the ones most commonly advertised.
Facebook, a multimedia online social site gathers, collects, and stores more information than any other site. Taken directly out of our personal biographies, Facebook utilizes information such as age, gender, hometown, school, and relationship status. As a male college student many of the advertisements on the side pertain to cars, credit cards and “hot singles” in my area. Facebook even takes into consideration how you interact with your friends. Wall posts and conversations are under jurisdiction for Facebook monitoring and eventually these formulated wells of information about us, become our online identity.
Advertisements and suggested content often spark areas of interest for us and provoke our exploration into that topic. Online life is becoming more and more representative of our own personal identities and values. It seems like who we are does not dictate the content shown to us, but instead the content begins to mold our character. We are blinded and shut out of information these website deem unsuitable for us, and our ignorant lives online become more and more self entrapped.