Tara's Thesis - Tutu

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Tara’s thesis was a highlight from this semester. Tara’s structuring of their argument and how it flowed made for an enjoyable and compelling read. 

In their second chapter, Tara brings up the example of anti-abortion groups targeting women considering the procedure. As Tara argues, “The anti-abortion, geolocation-based advertising is a prime example of how the use of persona data creates an informational asymmetry which allows third parties to exploit consumers and alter their decision making. “(41). In this case, I was unsure if the anti-abortion groups were part of a business (as much of Tara’s focus seems to be business-to-consumer relationships). However, they clearly impacted the women, the “consumers.” What I wanted to explore here is if groups online targeted individuals with skewing information that changed their view, are the individuals to blame for their actions? 

How much blame can be placed on an individual if manipulative information based on personal data targeted them and perhaps changed their behavior? I ask this question in light of the rise of disinformation online and the real-world harm it has caused. Below I follow Tara’s framework to consider two cases where individuals were perhaps altered in their thoughts and how blame can be established.

The first scenario I want to explore is the “Cambridge Analytica” scandal. The scandal involved a consulting firm (Cambridge Analytica) harvesting 87 million Facebook users’ data without their consent. This data was then packaged and sold for Cambridge Analytica’s clients and targeted for political advertising, especially for the Trump Presidential Campaign. In the end, Facebook paid 5 billion dollars for mishandling user data, and Cambridge Analytica eventually shut down. In this case, the businesses behind the mishandling of user data were found at fault, and individuals’ rights to their data were clearly violated. The court saw the influence of one’s political view as a direct attack on their agency to make their own decisions to establish their control on one’s political view/voice. Therefore, in this case, the harm was put on the businesses’ targeting people and potentially changing their political views.

I want to highlight in this case, as Tara argued in their thesis, that although the users consented to be on Facebook, they did not consent to become a product as a result. Therefore, it is clear that data, since it is personal, can be malleable and manipulated by companies with access to it. As shown in the past, there have been considerable consequences when this has been done. There was concern in this case not only because there was severe data harm but also because it exposed the risk of the psychological targeting of individuals and how it could influence them. In this case, there seems to be an implicit understanding that individuals were “ideologically” changed without their consent; those businesses that changed it are to be blamed, not the individual changed.

Now take the case of the Capitol Insurrection. For months/years before, groups had been targeted and spread disinformation online. It is known that disinformation is a problem, but the true extent of it is unknown. The people participating in the insurrection could have been data targeted; This arguably makes them more susceptible to disinformation. Could this targeting be blamed for them causing chaos/harm in the real world? If so, how much are they to blame? I am not saying the people who participated in January sixth are blameless; I am more asking about the extent of the blame placed. If it could be argued that data targeting can explain a shift in one’s behaviors, where does the burden of personal responsibility remain? How can the state determine which party is more responsible for the harm done when it is questionable which had more influence? Was it the information that caused the harm or the individual who acted upon it?

Perhaps, as Tara writes that “anti-abortion, geolocation-based advertising is a prime example of how the use of persona data creates an informational asymmetry which allows third parties to exploit consumers and alter their decision making,” perhaps the same could be said about people seemingly targeted alone for nefarious reasons. In this case, I would argue that this opens up a rabbit hole where the line of responsibility is hard to draw, and an individual’s responsibility falters. In individual responsibility lessening, I believe more harm can be done. However, at the same time, I understand and respect how misinformation can manipulate a person to act in ways that might not be natural to them.

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