Big Data Year-End Reports and Privacy
As the year ends, social media feeds are flooded not only with well-wishes and resolutions but also with annual reports like NetEase Cloud Music’s 2024 listening report, Zhihu’s “My Zhihu 2024,” and the year-end learning summaries from platforms like Dedao. Interestingly, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Auto, recently remarked that “Pony Ma must be watching WeChat users’ chats every day.” WeChat responded by stating that it does not store any user chat records; conversations are stored only on users’ devices like phones and computers. On the other hand, Alipay, which traditionally releases annual spending summaries that spark heated discussions (often leaving men speechless and women in tears), has chosen silence this year and hasn’t published any annual report.
On one hand, people eagerly share their playlists, reading lists, and knowledge subscriptions online, seemingly indifferent to privacy concerns. On the other hand, they fear WeChat might reveal records of them browsing their exes’ Moments. Strangely enough, we appear to be indifferent to the absence of Alipay’s annual spending summaries.
In truth, all your actions are recorded by the internet. It is no longer possible to fabricate or erase them convincingly. The internet, like a deity, observes everything. It is best not to act too contrary to human nature. This new-age deity is neither Satan nor Jesus—it is neutral, pure, and perhaps the best kind of deity—one collectively constructed by humanity. In this era, privacy protection is almost redundant. Service providers collect, store, analyze, and apply user data, whether intentionally or not. Even if they don’t want to, government regulations like the Cybersecurity Law mandate that network operators monitor and log network activities, retaining relevant data for at least six months.
Gyroscope, an application for personal quantified data, does not collect data itself but acts as a connector and visualizer of your data. By linking with health apps like Moves, Apple Health, or Google Fit, it integrates fitness activities, movement paths, and visited locations. By connecting to desktop tracking apps like RescueTime, it consolidates app usage and web browsing data, including usage frequency and duration. Through social media connections like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it integrates social data. This single app highlights the reality: nearly every application we use collects our data.
While service providers collect a wealth of data, they offer users only a curated, structured subset, seldom providing unstructured data. Faced with cold numbers, how do we uncover their underlying significance? Even if we do, can we live better lives? The internet was founded on principles of transparency, fairness, and freedom. Instead of obsessing over privacy protection, why not leverage the power of big data to analyze and improve yourself? Yet, we must remember: what makes us human are our emotions and sentiments—dimensions that data cannot capture or comprehend. Numbers alone cannot spark creativity, but they can make us strive for perfection.
