What I didn’t realize I “agreed” to in the terms of service agreement
Terms of Service. The most despised/lengthy/overused form of information that pops up any time you open a new form of social media. If you’re anything like me, you are guilty of scrolling to the bottom and checking the “Agree to Terms of Service” without actually knowing what you are “Agreeing” to at all. So, what is all that mumbo jumbo that these companies want us to know about them? To find out, I dug deep into research on the Terms of Service of both Facebook and Instagram to see if I could find anything interesting, surprising or scary!
When given the assignment in my Advanced Computer-Mediated Communication class to create a blog post about the Terms of Service for two social media platforms, I knew immediately I must do it on my two most frequently used apps (better late than never).
Facebook, oh how much information Facebook has. Having been created in 2004 and becoming a major success in 2009, it has consumed over a decades worth of personal information from billions of users. What I found in my research to be both the most interesting AND scary is how Facebook is funded. It can be found in the second section of its terms of services that Facebook is funded by other companies paying them to put ads on everyones news feed. Sounds normal right? WRONG. No one persons ads are the same. The reason being that Facebook connects each companies ads with who they feel it relates to best. They do this by connecting the different pages you like and respond to, and pair you with ads of the same or similar background. And although they “claim” they don’t share your personal information I have experienced on several occasions where I don’t believe this to be true. For example, I could google a brand of candy on my web browser and next time I get on Facebook BOOM there it is. Many people claim “the government is watching you” (which is a whole other conversation), but I do not feel that is possible for Facebook to know what I was searching without both companies (candy and Facebook) coming together and connecting who I am with what I am interested in.
I found Instagram to be very similar in the sense of their ad usage. But during my research found that they do collect information from your devices (cell phone, laptop, etc.) to provide you with ads that may interest you. This too is scary to think about. If they can access information on your device without you even being aware of it, who’s to say they won’t sell your information for a more profit gain? It all seems very sketchy to me as I didn’t realize just how deep into your personal life they could get.
What we can do to help minimize the information that both Facebook and Instagram can get, is by frequently clearing our search history on our browsers and clearing all cookies (small pieces of text used to store information on web browsers).