Ethical and social challenges of Big Data

 

Hey there!! Ever hear of Big Data? 

 We all go about our daily lives with our smartphone on our person all day, we scroll on this smart phone on social media, we use it to look up places to eat, using maps to get us to an unknown place. Our smart watched track our steps, the distance we walk in a day and where we walk, when we ask our Alexa or Google a question. 

All things we do with are devices is being gathered along with lots of other data that may already be there all this data that is collected from you and all the other people around you is piled together into what's called Big Data. A lot of things within our lives are not as private as they would have been years ago when we share this information with our devices.

 

One way this his information can be used is being analysed by companies to identify your preferences and target ads towards you. It is handy when you open your Facebook and see an ad for something you have been looking for or an ad for something you didn't know you needed. As much as you would like to think it is magic that these pop up just at the right time, this is not the case. Salesforce explain Big Data and how organisations can use it; Big Data Analytics: What It Is, How It Works, Benefits, And Challenges

You may want to think of the ethical or social challenges that come with collecting, storing and analysing all this data. The regulations surrounding this is being developed at a slow pace compared to how quickly the advancements in technology in this area.

One of the ethical challenges I personally find worrying is the lack of true informed consent, most of the time you or I or the person analysing our data don't really know what discoveries will be made by analysing it. What if we didn't like or agree with what it was being used to discover? How would we know? We don't, I feel that is the problem.

Did you ever hear of social sorting? Either did I until I learned more about Big Data, it sorts one group from another through factors such as, race, ethnicity, income, gender, occupation, social status, and geographic residence, I think this way of grouping people leaves room for discrimination as it doesn't look at the person as an individual.

I hope I gave you some food for thought, it's good to be informed about these things, but then again they may not bother you at all!!

Thanks for reading!! 

Maria :-)