How data can reveal the true nature of anyone
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In 2014, a German data scientist started to collect data about articles from the German digital newspaper magazine “Der Spiegel.” For 2.5 years, he scraped over 100,000 articles as well as the associated metadata, such as publishing time, section, and author. After collecting the data, he began to analyze it. One of his findings was that he was able to predict which authors of “Der Spiegel” had intimate relationships with each other. Furthermore, his results provided insights into the internal personnel structure of the company itself.
This example already reveals the true danger of the transparent human. With only a small amount of data that may not seem particularly dangerous, you can gain highly personal insights about an individual. While I wouldn’t assume any bad intentions on the part of David Kriesel, the German data scientist mentioned above, there are groups that may view everything differently and want to have an impact on you. They seek to change behavior and would like to manipulate individuals for their own advantage.
One of these groups was Cambridge Analytica — a British consulting company that was allegedly involved in the political campaigns for Brexit and the Trump presidential campaign of 2016. Their basic concept was to use data from Facebook activities to…