3 things students attending my trainings asked me
"How does Facebook know about me, enough to show me ads about my private needs?"
Running workshops for students and young people meant fielding a constant stream of questions, observations and feedback. In an earlier post I described my methodology in training over 1,000 individuals in the central Indian region of Vidarbha. Today I want to focus on what they actually asked me.
At the end of each 2-hour session, I circulated a feedback form — filled in anonymously, to improve the probability of honest responses, without fear of being singled out. The questions wouldn't stop. People stayed back informally. Some questions spilled onto the forms. I've selected three of the most common.
1. "How does Facebook know about and show me ads about my private needs?"
"I wanted to buy a bike. I only just thought of it. All of a sudden, I start seeing bike ads all through my Facebook feed. How does Facebook know about it already?"
Asked by a 17-year-old student. On hearing his account, others chimed in with similar stories from their own observations.
2. "I don't want my child being recommended any adult content on YouTube."
"He uses my device all the time. Can you tell me how this can be prevented?" — asked a 30-year-old mother, worried about her 8-year-old son who had been attending online lessons on her mobile device since the pandemic.
Compulsory online education for low-income households meant sharing a single mobile device across multiple people under the same roof. This sometimes led to the accidental discovery of things about one another — with unequal consequences depending on who the device belonged to and what was found.
3. "You showed us WhatsApp settings. But what about other payment and banking apps?"
The moment people realised that a few settings could make their online presence safer, demand grew immediately. There were also questions about Google privacy: "How much does Google know about me? Is there a way I can find out? Can you show us?"
Other themes: fake news, cloud storage, and wanting to do more
Fake news was a concern for many: "How can we tell the truth from false forwards?" On cloud infrastructure, one feedback form read: "I learned about server farms today. In future I will consider how my photos and videos are stored by companies. And I will now remember that cloud is something stored in a PHYSICAL data centre. Thank you."
Many participants wrote that they were interested in volunteering to spread awareness on online safety.
Addiction to online games
Some confessed to facing deeper problems. One anonymous submission read:
"Actually I'm also addicted to PUBG. A friend who used to play with me made friends with a boy. The boy later started demanding money from her, threatening to edit her photos and make them viral to all her Facebook contacts if she didn't pay. My friend was very stressed about it."
Anonymously submitted feedback, Nagpur workshop
This conversation neither starts nor ends in a workshop.
Things we can all do
For starters: talk more about what's happening — with friends, in trusted spaces, or publicly wherever comfortable. There is a huge disparity in awareness levels across different income groups and sections of society. Naturally the impact of these problems is most adverse on those with the least access to counselling or advice.
Inequality has exacerbated the worst effects on those left behind.