As technology continues to advance and become more complex, the collection of data surrounds us. Overall, data is captured in order to support a claim and argue that claims significance. Thus, companies track both the positive and negative reactions to their product in order to make what they offer more desirable. As technology has grown, companies have greater capabilities to take the data of individuals, willingly or not. This has had both advantages and disadvantages to our society. Large social media platforms have the ability to connect people globally for joined causes and make significant contributions to social justice causes and fundraising. One example of such is Apple and Google aiding with the COVID-19 statistics which has provided invaluable information to specialist and research databases. The flip-side of this is those same social media platforms having the ability to contribute to confirmation bias and use their users as political pawns in a grander scheme. One example of which was the data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvesting millions of Facebook profiles of US voters. This is done with the intention of influencing government elections and decisions and creates a direct threat to the principles of democracy. Data has a significant impact on the way we see the world, both positively and negatively.
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The collection of data as a political agent is one of the more dangerous and terrifying uses of data in our modern world. Neither governments nor social media sites likely predicted how greatly the two could impact each other, essentially transforming the way they both function. For example, Facebook and Instagram are largely used as forums for sharing political opinions and campaign fronts, and governments and politicians now have to target and market themselves through social media to a much more active, involved audience. The manipulation of user data to create a certain political outcome is an obvious breach of democracy, but this idea is so new that there is little legislation in place to address it.