- 25/08/2019
- Category: Commentaries
People love spending time on the internet, clicking things that they perceive as fun without knowing the risks of digital footprints. Catchy UI and UX trapped users to continually explore the site while testing its features. While most users are posting pictures, videos, locations, and comments are already common while accessing the internet. This act should put in consideration that voluntarily filling up variables of preferences online might be unusual. Because filling up variables online sound unfamiliar, this article will refer the term as online quizzes.
As online quizzes rose into a content that appeals and might boost up one’s personality, it is crucial to reconsider taking those quizzes. Quizzes such as applymagicsauce, buzzfeed, and even the famous MBTI keeps their received data and analyse them without ‘consent’ of the quiz takers itself. By filling up quizzes and uploading data for online platform will also contribute to the user’s digital footprint where it will be a part of their Big Data.[1] The way of filling up quizzes online has inspired Big Data to passively gain its data from users to analyse as the haystack keeps on increasing.[2]
For an easy and accessible example to discuss in this article, Buzzfeed would be the best to explain in this case. Buzzfeed quizzes ask about user’s personal preferences on food, house, colours, and many other things. As BuzzFeed’s quizzes started gaining its presence, it started to make sense of why people cannot get bored with taking their quiz, even when it does not make any sense.[3] This addictive quiz taking activity penetrates users to keep doing it over and over again to bring justification for their psychological thoughts. Laskow explains this addictive habit as narcissistic and indulging the perks of having an existential crisis.[4] As the pleasure of getting our personality justified becomes an ingrained habit, those who are addicted to filling up quiz will keep filling them to attain its pleasure.[5]
When filling up quizzes turns into a habit, sending personal data away then also become a habit. Personal data are indeed sent away by consent, but quiz fillers should know the awareness of how the data will be used and analysed. As quiz fillers keep on feeding their data, the more advanced the analysis would be.
Slightly similar to the case of Cambridge Analytica, the gathered personal data could be unethically analysed and create several classifications for the purpose of micro-targeting that might imply politics, marketing strategy, and even crime. What differentiates filling up quizzes and Cambridge Analytica is that Cambridge Analytica breached data “without explicit consent” and online quizzes collects their data from users own consciousness. Personal data is an essential asset to anyone. It is essential to protect them and not fall into online traps. Understanding Big Data and data security then become vital for every internet users after knowing the risks of giving away answers. Filling up quizzes brings user’s data into the massive vault of data with consent, which means the user’s data does not need to be breached.
As the paragraphs explained about the danger and how online quizzes work, the awareness of data privacy should be reinforced. Data privacy reinforcements mostly revolve around what is uploaded as a post, not about what is being clicked consciously. Reimagining how data could be abused and not instantly jump into a preferably ‘accurate’ conclusion without knowing the user personally should be known by every internet users.
Editor: Janitra Haryanto
Read another article written by Anaq Duanaiko
[1] Stephens-Davidowitz, S. (2018). Everybody Lies. Bloomsbury.
[2] ibid
[3] Bisceglio, Paul. (2017). The Internet is One Big Personality Test. The Atlantic [online]. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/07/the-internet-is-one-big-personality-test/531861/ . [Accessed on: 19 Aug 2019]
[4] Laskow, Sarah. (2014). In search of the ur-quiz. Archives[online]. Availabe at: https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/in_search_of_the_ur-quiz.php . [Accessed on: 20 Aug 2019]
[5] ROOKSBY, E. (2018). HABITUS: A sense of place. S.l.: ROUTLEDGE.
