In a recent class on ethics in PR, we discussed data protection and targeted ads. It got me thinking about the ethics behind this form of advertisement and how far organisations will go to harvest our data.
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In todays blog post I want to scratch the surface of the sneaky, debatably unethical ways in which organisations have been suspected to collect data through listening devices. According, to USA Today 'Amazon is watching tracking and listening to you'. Could this really be true? On a more personal level a friend and I were convinced that the listening device on apple devices known as Siri is to blame for our targeted ads on social media. For instance, a discussion about a particular obscure piece of jewellery led to that same evening a targeted ad for that exact piece of jewellery on my friends Instagram and similar cases have happened with Alexa devices. Something as minor as jewellery seems totally harmless but when it can lead to target vulnerable people to sway their political views it has even been claimed that some methods and usages of data have threatened democracy, this leads me to argue that data collection can become unethical.
Can these cases of ads matching discussions all just be coincidences? Amazon point blank refused that they are spying and denied the claims of USA Today they told NBC Miami , "We do not use voice recordings to target ads."
Linking this back to ethics, I'll leave the readers of todays blog with a question, if it is the case that devices really can listen to us, is it 'wrong' to collect data through these means to target ads or is it simply a clever tactic for those in the advertising, marketing and PR industry?
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