update: please consider donating to the gofundme of nex benedict. nex, a 16-year-old non-binary teen in oklahoma, was bullied and beaten by classmates in a bathroom in their oklahoma high school. they passed away the next day. may they rest in power, and their memory be a reminder that we need to all do better.

***

to my harvard peers —

you all amaze me every day that i’m here. fuck prestige — to be among such incredible, bright minds every day is a greater joy in and of itself. even from all of the small-yet-insightful comments i hear in my classes, it seems you all constantly teach me something that revolutionizes my worldview. there’s no doubt in my mind that i go to school with people who r gonna run the world one day.

i’m writing this letter in that vein. because when you all inevitably rocket up to positions of power, i hope there’s some part of u guys that remembers what i’m about to say. here goes.

we live in an era of big data. this is not something to be inherently afraid of, and it can actually be really cool. for example, keeping a gcal of ur exam dates or the birthdays of ur closest friends from home — that’s amazing. but the reality is that we live in a society (just watched joker that shit was gas). on a more serious note, we live in a society where dubiously-ethical governments and less-than-ethical corporations are looking to capitalize on this useful tool.

the following are just a few examples:

• kochava, the industry leader responsible for all those ‘can this app use ur location?’ popups on ur phone, was found selling sensitive data to basically anyone who had $$$ (geolocation data easily traced back to individuals re: visits to reproductive health clinics, places of worship, homeless and domestic violence shelters, and addiction recovery facilities) ¹

• for years, facebook sold comprehensive data profiles (otherwise known as psychographics) of 70 million users to data broker cambridge analytica. in 2016, the trump campaign used this data to identify millions of vulnerable voters and flood their screens with smear ads. trump, of course, won the election by just 80,000 voters in 3 states. ²

• in the same election ^, russian state-backed company glavset did the exact same thing; often explicitly lying to said vulnerable voters. they monitored 60 million social media pages. ³

• the chinese government employs mass data collection of social media services and purchases data from contracted data brokers to identify and carry out its genocide against uyghur muslims ⁴

• the us government’s national security agency purchases data en masse from data brokers to do surveillance. they also collect network data from the source. many creepy male nsa agents utilized this data to stalk women they were interested in, with ~3,000 violations recorded in just one year ⁵

• genetic testing companies like 23andme sell ur genetic data to life insurance providers, which raise ur premiums based on ur genetic predispositions (real fucked up!). auto companies do the exact same, based on data like ur social media and the device u log in from ⁶

these examples are really, really tame compared to what’s to come. the fourth industrial revolution has only just begun, and aggregate computing capacity is growing at an exponential rate. 

so what is starting / already likely to come?

• in developing nations, many users use american media services. these services sell data off to brokers, who sell data off to the world’s worst governments. unknowingly, the ability for authoritarians to track u down has become substantially easier. many have already begun doing so, and when states go rogue, this will literally kill people. ⁷

• corporations priming u and pumping u full of content that will change ur consumer and political preferences. if i subconsciously showed u the number 7 all day and asked u at the end of the day to tell me a number 1-7, u would prolly say 7. it’s the same way — they track ur technology use, build a psychographic profile, and then pump u full of really tempting ads for shit u don’t need (that u will end up buying cause that’s how psyops work). or they tell u exactly who to vote for ⁸

• in shoshana zuboff’s ‘the age of surveillance capitalism’, she refers to what are known as ‘behavioral futures markets’ — that corporations have begun to pareto-optimize data sharing. then they’ll be able to predict exactly what you’ve done and will do across all aspects of life, and sell this info to each other. google is the perfect example of this ⁹

• if u take all of this to its logical conclusion… in the absence of reform soon, one day corporations will likely have extremely detailed and centralized databases of all people. it’ll contain more info than ur best friends know about u. what do u think happens to society at that point? ¹⁰

but what if u don’t give a shit about any of that? fair enough. i’m gonna give u 2 compelling reasons to give a shit.

first, do u care about money? cause loose data is costing u $400 yearly, according to most estimates. one way they do this is masked price discrimination. ¹¹ e.g. wouldn’t it be fucked up if u went into a coffee shop and they charged u double the next guy cause they knew u made 80k yearly? guess what. corporations already do this. amazon literally tracks ur spending and buys data on ur income to advertise more expensive options than u need. ¹² ebay employs ‘clever filters’ to hide equivalent lower-priced products based on the same data. when ur shown more expensive ads cause they know u got more bread, ur gonna lose more bread unnecessarily. ¹³

second, a little experiment. it shocks me how many of u were willing to input sensitive data into things like claim and datamatch, even right here on campus. the experiment will be appended as the first project on this website.

so how do u protect urself? for starters, just put less info into the internet (strip ur inputs to dummy info, or even remove things like last names). turn off cross-app tracking, turn off location data (or toggle it to ‘only while using’ when u need to), download a vpn, switch from google to duckduckgo, disable unnecessary third-party access to ur shit, and so on.

and what can we all do better on?

• for policymakers: we need mandatory encryption standards for any company who collects data, at risk of penalty. we also need stricter data privacy regulations in general, and the right to know where ur data is being sold. vermont is the only state in the country that requires a data broker registry (that requires companies to disclose how ur data is being used), and we ought to expand on that substantially through federal frameworks. ¹⁴

• for cs kids / future swes: please be conscientious of the products u build. this growing trend of ‘moving fast and breaking things’ may be profitable but it is not ethical. assuming that scrutiny is unnecessary because we can simply retrofit patches ignores the damage that happens in the interim. ¹⁵

• for educators: please stress data privacy to students in the same way that you stress alcohol training. stress that if u dont want it on the internet, don’t provide it to the internet.

• for everyone else: consider reading the zuboff piece mentioned above. take government 1433 with prof. latanya sweeney at the college. vote for privacy-conscientious politicians. take reasonable steps to limit corporations’ access. remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

tl;dr there is a reason greedy corporations and exploitative governments invest $400 billion into consumer data yearly. ¹⁶ they wouldn’t do it if they weren’t able to make a lot more than that back. u deserve to know, and to be protected from that.

love,

bernie marx <3

footnotes:

[1] Federal Trade Commission, “FTC v Kochava, Inc.,” Federal Trade Commission, Aug. 29, 2022. https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/ftc-v-kochava-inc

[2] A. C. Madrigal, “What Facebook Did to American Democracy,” The Atlantic, Oct. 12, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/

[3] I. Lapowsky, “Facebook May Have More Russian Troll Farms to Worry About,” Wired, Sep. 08, 2017. https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-may-have-more-russian-troll-farms-to-worry-about/

[4] Human Rights Watch, “China’s Algorithms of Repression,” Human Rights Watch, May 01, 2019. https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/01/chinas-algorithms-repression/reverse-engineering-xinjiang-police-mass

[5] A. Peterson, “LOVEINT: When NSA officers use their spying power on love interests,” Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2013. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/24/loveint-when-nsa-officers-use-their-spying-power-on-love-interests/

[6] M. A. Rothstein, “Time to End the Use of Genetic Test Results in Life Insurance Underwriting,” The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 794–801, Sep. 2018, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1073110518804243.

[7] A. Shahbaz, “The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism,” Freedom House, 2018. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism

[8] T. Buchanan, “Aggressive priming online: Facebook adverts can prime aggressive cognitions,” Computers in Human Behavior, no. 48, pp. 323–330, Jul. 2015, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.072.

[9] S. Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books, 2019.

[10] J. D. Scott, “Selling you out: Mass public surveillance for corporate gain,” The Hill, Mar. 16, 2018. https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/378835-selling-you-out-mass-public-surveillance-for-corporate-gain/

[11] The White House Research Service and National Economic Advisory Council, “Big Data and Differential Pricing,” 2015. Available: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/whitehouse_files/docs/Big_Data_Report_Nonembargo_v2.pdf

[12] Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business, “Algorithmic Pricing: Understanding the FTC’s Case Against Amazon,” www.cmu.edu, Oct. 13, 2023. https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2023/october/algorithmic-pricing-understanding-the-ftcs-case-against-amazon#:~:text=In%20a%20lawsuit%2C%20the%20Federal

[13] S. Joshi, Y.-A. Sun, and P. Vora, “Price Discrimination and Privacy: A Note,” International Game Theory Review, vol. 13, no. 01, pp. 83–92, Mar. 2011, doi: https://doi.org/10.1142/s0219198911002861.

[14] Winston & Strawn, LLP, “Vermont Enacts Groundbreaking Law to Regulate Data Brokers.” https://www.winston.com/en/blogs-and-podcasts/privacy-law-corner/vermont-enacts-groundbreaking-law-to-regulate-data-brokers (accessed Feb. 23, 2024).

[15] N. Raju, “Importance of quality assurance in the era of growing internet,” CXOToday.com, Jul. 12, 2023. https://cxotoday.com/specials/importance-of-quality-assurance-in-the-era-of-growing-internet/ (accessed Feb. 23, 2024).

[16] McKinsey & Co., “Economic potential of generative AI | McKinsey,” www.mckinsey.com, 2023. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier