I had a discussion with my class today about issues that are raised by keeping our data in the Cloud. It was an interesting conversation, and a number of students raised some really interesting points.
At some point I mentioned something a colleague had said to me recently. “What happens,” he asked, “after you take a picture with SnapChat?”
The students all knew part of the answer. After a little while, your image disappears.
But then I asked them what my colleague had asked me: What happens to the data? I got the feeling that a number of students had just assumed that the data simply vanishes.
But of course it doesn’t. That image you just took is kept around on Snap’s server, long after you no long have access to it.
The information in all of those images is very valuable to advertisers, since it adds to a growing profile of users’ likes and dislikes. Which explains Snap’s high (if somewhat volatile) market valuation.
Some students seemed non-plussed by this point. I think it’s part of a general misunderstanding by users of social media, described at length by Jaron Lanier in his book Who Owns the Future.
Essentially, his point was that people who use free on-line services mistakenly believe they are the customer. When in fact they are the product.