Hidden in the midst of a very sad story that is itself a reminder of the damage that a combination of technology and meanness can make possible, is a small sign of the troubles that will become more frequent in the age of what Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has coined as the “social graph.” The underlying story is from September 2010, when two Rutgers undergraduates allegedly publicly streamed a secretly-recorded sexual encounter that involved one of their roommates. That roommate then committed suicide.
One of the defendants’ Twitter pages was (of course) soon captured by The Smoking Gun, as happens now the moment someone’s name is in the news. The tweets appeared to be incriminating–with time-stamps, no less!–an indication of the help law enforcement now gets from technology. That’s a good thing.
Less remarked, but also interesting, is how exposed all the associates of the suspect are. On Twitter, Facebook and other sites with friends, fans, followers and likes, there is a permanent digital record of everyone’s circle of friends and acquaintances. In this case, until the Twitter page was pulled down, people (and reporters) even had instant, one-click access to the Twitter followers of the defendant. (That’s great news for reporters, who have a reputation, fair or unfair, for liking their work done for them.)
No more hustling for quotes. On this story, a few clicks was all you needed.
Fortunately, most of us will never know someone linked to a tragic death tied to an alleged crime. But as our circles expand and time passes, more and more people will know others facing bankruptcy, brushes with the law, or other controversies deserved or undeserved. There are companies who mine all of this data and clean it up for employers who use it to screen potential hires. Eventually, this type of data will also be used by banks before they lend, insurers before they insure, landlords before they rent, and on and on.
No one is thinking through the implications of this new world that is upon us. In fact, even the Major Media is happy to suggest all of this data is being mined merely to show us “more relevant ads.” But the ads are not the issue, and people will become billionaires selling your data not to advertisers, but for data mining tied to your trying to get a loan, buy a house, rent an apartment, get a job, or secure health, life, car or other insurance–and that’s just in free countries. (In dictatorships, all of this data will be used to further subjugate people.)
Soon, everyone will have what I call a “social score,” and in just a few years, it will make your current credit score look as outdated and simplistic as one of those suitcase cell phones from the late 1980s. Your social score will be far more intrusive, used in far more ways with far less regulation or ability to intervene to correct errors, and often, you will never figure out why you did not get that job or that loan or that insurance.
It’s bad enough we have to live down our own errors in life; with data-mining of all our friends and acquaintances–which we freely give up on Facebook and Twitter–we will soon be held accountable for all the mistakes of our network.
That discomfort the pals of that suspect felt when they started getting emails and calls from reporters? It’s the shape of things to come.
[We're working on extended discussion of these issues, including the implications both for democracies and dictatorships. Stay tuned.]
Category: Privacy, Violent crime
Tags: Facebook, Rutgers, social graph, social score, Twitter