It’s no news that Google and co. are making a shit ton of money selling their user’s data/enhancing the ads you see by knowing your interests. And there are many, many people out there who really are upset about the fact that those companies are making money from their data.
I’ve also seen Netflix’s movie “The Social Dilemma”. Honestly, I found it a pretty trashy documentary, but I remember the quote:
If you don’t gotta pay for a service, you’re the one being sold.
I was really upset when I heard that. Lemme explain why with my favorite example: Google Assistant.
Sure, Google uses its data about you mainly for showing you personalized ads. But there’s a reason why Google Assistant outperforms its competitors like Siri and Bixby: They just have so much more data of you.
You could say, “Yeah sure, but I don’t want them to know more about me than myself”. And I really hate that statement. Why do you feel so bad when there’s some of your data on a Google Server or whatever Server? What’s intimidating about that?
It’s not like tech companies hired some dudes who watch at some data all day long. Not only would that be useless, but it would also be expensive. No, they just feed their machine learning algorithms and stuff like that with your data. You benefit from it: not only because Google Assistant works better, but your search engine also already knows if you prefer reading articles.
Good news for you, isn’t it? The same goes for TikTok: For me, TikTok is an AI company. They just have such a good algorithm, which learns your preferences and habits very quickly. Sure, they also sell that data to companies like Google or whatever, but who cares? The only consequence of that is that you receive ads of products you’re actually interested in.