Data handling scandals have rocked the world’s biggest tech companies and resulting disillusionment may bring about a sea change as “the carefree oversharing of opinions, photographs and personal messages that characterised the early days of social media may well be gone forever.”
Some analysts say we have reached “Peak Social” in 2018 as user growth tumbled in Facebook along with the company’s market value. Tech companies should have realized by now that abiding by data laws is not just good practice but also good business.
Harry Keen writes that ethical considerations should govern data use in this article in UKTN:
The myriad scandals and almost constant media attention has meant that our cultural view of data has changed dramatically and irreversibly. Once we shared endless details about ourselves freely and without fear. For the companies that used this data it really was akin to oil fuelling their growth. The best part was that unlike oil this data was given to them freely by unwitting users desperate to be part of the new social internet.
Companies should now view data as the ‘new fur’ rather than the ‘new oil’. Just as the fashion industry had to quickly change its practices in the 80s and 90s for its prolific use of animal fur, today’s private companies have found themselves under scrutiny for not handling consumer data in an ethical and responsible manner.
Data handling now transcends legal or regulatory obligations, with consensus building that data privacy is an issue bound not only by rules and laws, but by morality and ethics, far beyond what is currently legally demanded of businesses. Data handling is a reputational risk as well as a business risk. I would even go as far as to say that, for most businesses, the incorrect handling of data has become an existential risk. It’s too important an issue to get wrong.
