Ilmaista tietoa ei ole
Already in 2006, British mathematician Clive Humby stated that “Data is the new oil”. With that now famous sentence, he meant that, like oil, data is not valuable in itself. What is valuable is what it can be processed into. However, Humby’s statement still lacked one essential observation: while oil is not renewable, consumer-sourced data is. Currently, the amount of information on the Internet roughly doubles every year.
The information collected about us media users and provided by ourselves online is “processed” into a commodity by means of data analytics. This creates equations, or algorithms, based on machine learning. Algorithms control what the user sees next in the service. In the data economy, there is no such thing as free information or services – we always pay for them online with money, data or a combination of both. The largest merchants in the platform economy are multinational search and social media services, such as Google, YouTube (owned by Google) and Meta and related services (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger).TikTok has quickly become the number one media platform for people under the age of 24. In early 2024, the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service warned that the Chinese service could leak data to Chinese intelligence services.
A testament to the value of the data from young users, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has expanded its service offering from short messages to music streaming, online shopping and book publishing. The use of AI services also carries similar risks: it is often impossible for the user to know where their data ends up. In fact, there are Russian technology companies behind the AI-created American dating services Blush and Replika, for example. The terms of use of the services state that all pictures, videos and messages entered into the services are stored. It is not stated where they are stored and what they are used for.
Technology also gives the authorities unforeseeable opportunities to control citizens – of both their own state and other states. The lack of transparency in the data economy and the concentration of digital powerthreaten not only democracy and human rights, but also our security, as we are exposed to partially hiddeninformation influence. Means of defence include individuals’ digital education and information literacy.
The regulation of the data economy requires new legislation. Such regulation is a balancing act between the principles of freedom of expression, the free market, data security and privacy.
Video: Troll farms and online data
While Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed in the US presidential election in spring 2016, a series of events that came to be known as the Digital Gold Rush started in a small town in North Macedonia. A group of young people fabricated disinformation as bait to earn income through Google’s AdSense advertising system. Data collected from network users was a key tool in this scheme.
Video text
Slideshow: Free information does not exist
- Every click and cookie collects data about us
- The use of data is regulated differently in different countries
- Protect yourself and your friends online
In-depth text on which the slideshow is based
Independent task 4.1: Get famous on TikTok?
Team task 4.2 (3–4 people): Cash flow results in responsible content?
S4 Task slides
Precise sources to protect your data
Our online behaviour reveals our digital skills
Protecting information online and limiting what content is disclosed to the services of technology giants is everyone’s own responsibility. In everyday life, cookie settings are often ignored, and few go through the privacy settings of the different services they use. National Cyber Security Centre Finland has compiled a toolkit for internet users. An important point is that you should also take care of your own online identity – it shows your level of digital education and information literacy. Sitra’s Digitrail study contains concrete examples of how data collected from users moves between services, while the digital profile test allows users to test their own information, attitudes and activities online and get individual tips for managing their own data. The test takes about five minutes to complete. On the website of the Finnish Information Society Development Centre, you are challenged to learn about your own digital footprint.