If Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos, were to walk into your home and start looking around; if they rifled through your belongings, observed your habits, watched your daily routines, what you like to eat, who you like to talk to, if they listened to your conversations, …you would ask them to leave, correct? And yet, we allow this behaviour, and more, through our interactions on our cell phones and computers.

Social media apps and communication apps lift as many points of data off of our personal devices as possible. They bundle that information into aggregate form and sell that bundle to advertisers. That is the business plan for apps like Meta, (Facebook, What’sApp, and Instagram), Twitter, TikTok, to name a few, and (to a lesser extent), your cell phone’s texting app. These companies rely on our complacency to keep the advertising loop going.

It’s such a dilemma. No one likes that this is happening. We shrug it off because it’s not ‘personal’. But the ads I receive are personal. A lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to make sure I see the ads that are most likely to encourage me to be a good consumer. I won’t ever receive random ads on the best fishing lures because I’m unlikely to purchase. How convenient for me.

On the darker side, the data mined from your online habits and choices affects your news feeds. Readers are spoon-fed articles, videos, and headlines that best align with their current thinking. Like fingerprints, no two newsfeeds are the same.

Perhaps for the average person this may not matter so much. But… I can’t help thinking of the young man in London, Ontario who admitted he was consuming a steady diet of anti-Muslim sentiment in his daily feed. That story did not end well. And… think of the political influence that exists through this process. Algorithms are not designed to provide balance.

I’m not leaving Facebook anytime soon, after all, I post this blog on their site. And it’s safe to say none of us are giving up our free email accounts. But wherever I can I refuse to support these business models. I left Twitter shortly after it was bought by Elon Musk. I am now on BlueSky. From a user perspective, Bluesky offers the same experience as the original Twitter, (by 2015, 85% of Twitter’s revenue came from advertising), but Bluesky is a services-led business model and has stated specifically they will not rely on advertising.

I no longer use Google. I use Perplexity.ai which offers users either a free service or a paid service. The data collection going on in the background is to enhance my user experience. There is no selling of my data.

As much as I can I ask my contacts to communicate with me via Signal instead of What’sApp, texting, or Facebook Messenger. Signal has all the bells and whistles, it’s fully encrypted end to end, and it is, (Gasp!), a non-profit. They make their money from user donations. Once a year I pay what I feel I’ve used. Fair.

I apologize that this may seem like a rant. This topic is not news to any of us, but I believe all of us, as users, have a right to ownership of our own data. Even with the strictest of privacy settings, data is still being mined and sold, just to a lesser extent. Make your own choices.

Now let’s talk about fishing lures. I used fishing lures as an example because fishing lures have never figured in any of my conversations or browser history that I can recall. Now the fun starts. Will I receive advertisements about the best fishing lures out there? I’ll let you know.

Keep your joy.

Anne Milne is an every Sunday blogger, unless it’s a holiday weekend. Or summertime. Facebook or sign up for delivery to your email.