Will there be a 'Present & Algorithm free' backlash?

You can’t beat being in a social situation, usually a family event of some form when the discussion suddenly turns to all things online privacy and digital advertising targeting as if somehow YOU own the Facebook or Google privacy T&Cs.

These discussions mainly elude to the clever shanagins around the industry phrase the Filter Bubble. Best summarised, the Filter Bubble is how algorithms are increasingly deciding who our friends should be, how much of a friend a given friend actually is based on how engaging back they are online and lesser known uses such as what music we should be into based on our listening habits, time of day or location.

As the masses seem to be by all accounts apathetically drifting into sharing more and more of their lives with Facebook et al to the gain of Facebook capitalised worth no one really seems to be really talking about it. Where are the discussions on Loose Women, This Morning or (gulps) The Daily Mail crowd about the implications?

Apple, who routinely receives criticism for its closed ecosystem and market protectionist antics has to it’s credit said they are not in the harvesting data game to aid revenue growth.

In Tim Cooks not-so-veiled shot at many of its Silicon Valley Neighbours he said they are not in the business of their users being their product, they make their profit from the hardware.

In fact, Apples raison d’etre is the fact they achieve the highest revenue per handset in the industry post sale, that’s right the apps written by their third party developers make the real life time value cash for the business post purchase.

Business approaches aside, what Apple has touched on is there is a clear choice for the consumer to make as they decide on their hardware and software ecosystem.

I witnessed over the weekend a brilliant exchange around Facebook's ‘Friends Day’ video. Facebook's clunky algorithm attempted to piece together a snapshot of who your friends actually are, no doubt using its friend proximity algorithm.

It’s when these very public and widely shared outputs from Facebook's algorithms surface that the assumptions the overall Edgerank algorithm is making about its users and their vast array of friends come to light.

The questions is how much do the mainstream user base understand the impact these algorithms are having on their everyday social interactions which after all shape their entire lives?

Dating website OKCupid got some negative exposure when Christian Rudder, the company’s founder admitted it had performed three experiments that manipulated user perceptions to test its own matching algorithm.

Facebook have admitted to similar antics when they tested on 700,000 of its users posts response activity to negative or positive sentiment.

In the marketers world a simple bit of email subject line testing or Adcopy variate testing usually leads to some useful back patting marketeer learnings, but in OKCupids case it led to peoples lives genuinely being impacted.

Of course the whole machine learning /AI debate has already impacted the stock market historically, is probably having huge implications on the betting world and if Stephen Hawking's prediction comes true could be the end of humanity as we know it.

Then there is music. I’ve been using collaborative filtering from the likes of Last.fm initially and now Spotify’s ‘Listen to Radio station’ function for a number of years and it’s impacted my musical taste hugely.

Random taste diversions have been skilfully bridged. Bands I wouldn’t have previously thought could be linked have been and the process fully oversaw my full adoption of electronic music from my 90’s alternative prog rock indie heritage (The Smashing Pumpkins '1979' electronic drums also helped).

As a marketeer I don’t actually have a problem with the level of data being collected and in fact how it is used. That has to be the case as from an ethics perspective I have bought millions of pounds worth of media over the years driven by the very data collected by the likes of Google and Facebook.

My issue that plays on my mind somewhat is I’m not convinced the masses are being educated into the implications of how their data is actually being used. Ham fisted, poorly executed, albeit highly shared 'Friends day' videos summarising just how badly a handle Facebook has on your real life friend groups are a main stream reminder of data collection and resulting execution going a bit awry. .

Indeed their user based ad targeting is a lot better, no surprises there.

Those people who have completely shunned the Facebook algorithm and similar often share the trait of what they call in Yoga circles as being ‘present’ (follow the Instagram rock star Yogi ‘Yoga girl’ to find out more about this or take it from the wonderful lady spotted at the Black Mass film premier used as the title image of this post in October last year - to be present is where it’s at.

To be present is to enjoy that very moment and not be all consumed by a smartphone whilst pandering to the common Fear of missing out (FoMO) scenario which is the deep rooted driver of all things social media.

My observation is my friends who are 'present and algorithm free' appear to be the happiest and ironically less materialistically driven, admittedly ignoring the number of Mountain Bikes and Surfboards they own. It will be this subset which in old marketing terms were the only ones impossible to target by way of direct mail for example that will be impossible to target as we go forward.

Alas, I shall continue to dabble in my algorithm/FoMo ways whilst attempting to lead a ‘in the present’ lifestyle as long as I have the geeky desire to understand where the modern marketing train really is taking us all.

See you on Facebook.