Who owns your online profiles?

3 Nov 2023 · 1 min

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In this talk, Tracey Follows argues that individuals must claim ownership of their online profiles, coining the term “profilicity” as a new philosophy for digital identity in the 21st century. She warns that corporations are already harvesting facial data, behavioral patterns, emotions, and micro‑expressions to build detailed personal profiles used for security authentication, AI‑driven customer‑service interactions, and hyper‑targeted advertising. Despite the depth of these profiles, both users and companies fail to recognize them as extensions of personal identity, leaving the ownership of this data ambiguous and vulnerable. Follows calls for a cultural shift toward self‑ownership of digital personas to preserve a sense of identity and autonomy online.

Chapters

If we don't try to take ownership of these profiles online, then someone else is sure to take them from us. If we don't embrace these profiles, adopt profilicity as the new identity philosophy for the digital century, then we'll lose a sense of identity. Companies are busy harnessing our faces and monetizing them in the security arena. They're using our behaviors to help AI agents to deal with our complaints in the customer service arena. They're using our emotions and microexpressions to hyper-target marketing to us in the advertising arena. And they're helping to build these profiles of ourselves, but it doesn't occur to us or them that we should own ourselves because we don't view them as our identity or identities. However, that's exactly what they are.