Introduction
Social media refers to computer-mediated networks that enable the creation and exchange of information online between two or more people. Statistics show that over 2 billion people are on Facebook and 36% of this population makes purchases based on Facebook advertisements. Facebook provides various tools to maximize the online marketing using big data including flow, Google Analytics, agora search, short stack, and likealyzer. With the Facebook users’ data being so readily available, it poses a risk to cyber security. Cyber security entails the protection of the user information and their privacy from hackers and other malicious third parties. The government enforces laws to regulate the use of metadata and reduce cybercrime to protect the users and limit the manipulation of personal data by marketers. Metadata is used in market segmentation, consumer tastes, and preferences prediction and in increasing brand visibility and brand awareness. The data can, however, lead to cyber-crimes like phishing, spamming, hacking and identity theft if it falls into the wrong hands which call for legislative measures to contain these crimes.
The Use of Metadata In The Social Media Marketing Industry and its Benefits to the Businesses
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The social media industry has witnessed a lot of growth over the years and is among the industries that store the most amount of data across industries (Cohen, 2013). Research shows that Facebook is the biggest online marketing platforms used by marketers in today's tech-centered world. Facebook business goals include increasing the use of their various products including Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus to one billion users per product (Hemann & Burbary, 2013). Facebook’s second goal is to improve the mobile marketing experience for the marketers and their target consumers and to build the largest computing platform and offer internet access to as many people as possible all over the world (Dean, 2014). The company's goals are therefore to capitalize on optimizing customer satisfaction since an increased satisfaction translates to many logins and more adverts and more marketing data collection.
The metadata about consumers and customers is important to the businesses that use Facebook marketing because it helps in analyzing marketing trends and predicting future consumer behaviors (Smallwood, 2014). Facebook processes over 600 terabytes of data daily, over 2.5 million photos and over 3 million likes on posts and over 2 million posts per day on average. Through the big data collected from all the online interactions, Facebook derives metadata which is relevant to specific marketers showing which products they like best (Liebowitz, 2014). The daily data analysis and comparisons over time inform the predictions of customer tastes and preferences which helps businesses to reorganize their strategies. The data is also used in market segmentation for businesses since tools like social bakers which instantly analyze the user demographics (Stair & Reynolds, 2016). The market segmentation informs the companies which groups to target and how to package their products to attract more customers.
The metadata also enables the business to increase their brand awareness since their business name pops up on the client's timelines if they interacted with related business pages previously (Hider, 2015). The pop-ups increase the business visibility, and if the page gains the consumer's interest, they may turn into loyal customers. Metadata also increases the traffic to businesses social sites and websites since they show up on the client's search results on Facebook whenever they search for a phrase in the companies' line of products and services (Cohen, 2013). All these factors, in the long run, are critical to businesses using Facebook marketing because they increase profitability, boost sales, increase brand visibility and awareness and help in predicting consumer tastes and preferences and in market segmentation.
Instances When The Gathering Of Meta-Data By Businesses Negatively Affects The Customer
In spite of all the benefits accrued by the consumers from the metadata collected by Facebook, there is a high risk of compromised cyber security and unethical use of personal data (Dean, 2014). The metadata collected by Facebook sometimes contains sensitive information like geographic locations of the users and the pages they frequent. In the hands of hackers and stalkers, this information can lead to adverse effects and harm to the customers whose data is accessed (Hider, 2015). The metadata also helps in the formulation of suggestions of pages and posts that the Facebook user may like based on their past likes and interactive posts (Stair & Reynolds, 2016). This feature would infringe the consumer's privacy especially if they visited a page with sensitive information like health needs or other personal needs (Moore, 2014). In case someone else stumbles on the consumer's Facebook account, they can see their private information based on suggested pages and posts (Brenner, 2017). The metadata, therefore, breaches the customer's privacy by making the Facebook suggestions for people, places, and businesses which do not take much for anyone to put together what they have been up to online.
The gathering of metadata also denies the customers the liberty to choose which marketing messages and advertisements they want to see on their newsfeeds and timelines (Cohen, 2013). The metadata generated posts bombard the consumer’s walls at an alarming rate disturbing their social media interactions, therefore, affecting them negatively (Hemann & Burbary, 2013). Telemarketers use the consumer data to advertising their products without the consumers' consent which can be annoying and disturbing to them (Moore, 2014). In the instance that the metadata on a customer exposes their personal details, they become exposed to identity thieves and other cybercriminals. Identity theft can be damaging to a person's reputation, and the identity thief can make bad decisions which reflect wrongfully on the rightful identity owner and mess their life up (Hider, 2015). Metadata, therefore, exposes the customer to stalkers, hackers, and other cyber criminals by retaining private information about them and infringes their privacy.
Possible Activities That Lawmakers Should Consider In The Regulation And Control Of Metadata Gathering And Usage of Information In The Social Media Industry
Metadata collection and usage just like any other business practice if left unregulated can have negative consequences on the consumers and companies (Brenner, 2017). Unscrupulous parties with access to the data could sell it to competitors and other people who shouldn't access it and use it for immoral purposes (Smallwood, 2014). To protect the people operating online the government should put in place regulations that check how the information collected through the big data technology is used. In the legislation process, they should consider the utilization of the metadata gathered through the social networking sites (Stair & Reynolds, 2016). Any use of the data contrary to marketing purposes should be declared unethical and punishable legally. Metadata should not be used for personal purposes like spying, stalking or for personal financial gain to protect the social media users from malicious people (Hemann & Burbary, 2013). They should hold the businesses liable for how the data is used to ensure that they put measures to protect the data in place so as not to attract the legal penalties.
The legislators should also consider how the social networking sites store metadata (Moore, 2014). They should direct that all data be securely stored to protect it from hackers who could access the data and use it for malicious purposes. They should set minimum security data protection requirements to ensure that the companies that collect and use the data are compliant and set up strong fire walls in their systems to make hacking impossible (Al-Hamami & Al-Saadoon, 2015). The legislators should also consider the practice of document structuring. They should direct that the social media companies store the big data in formats that are hard to decipher by the common criminals and the encoding access be granted to just a few qualified professionals (Moore, 2014). That way the data will be safe, and the social media users' privacy safeguarded and protected.
Why Lawmakers Should Consider Monitoring the Industry Activities and the Goals of Their Regulations
The government regulation of industrial activities is a contentious issue with some people arguing that it is necessary while others argue that it negatively affects productivity (Dean, 2014). The need for government regulation is, however, a necessary evil without which the business environment would be in chaos and characterized by unethical practices (Brenner, 2017). The lawmakers' goals are to protect consumers from exploitation by drafting laws against the vice. They also aim at protecting consumers’ privacy by passing laws against the unethical use of consumer data and the use of their personal contact information without their consent (Hider, 2015). The law makers also aim at protecting consumers from spammers and enforcing the laws against consumer harassment to protect them.
The law makers should consider monitoring the industry activities to protect consumers from exploitation by the companies that store their internet activities (Liebowitz, 2014). If not regulated, businesses can access people’s credit card details and bill them for services that they haven’t ordered (Smallwood, 2014). The legislators are keen on metadata legislations because the consumers need to be protected from aggressive marketers who will go to any lengths to make a sale (Cohen, 2013). The law is clear on such activities like unauthorized calls and texts and spamming consumers’ emails. There is an established toll-free number that consumers can report to if harassed by telemarketers and the law on the prosecution of scammers is enforceable (Al-Hamami & Al-Saadoon, 2015). The legislative regulations are also necessary for the protection of the business people from exploitation too. The trend of pretexting is prevalent in metadata analysis whereby information brokers pose as customers and access a company’s big data (Hider, 2015). The law deems this act prosecutable and illegal, and the lawmakers should, therefore, consider regulating the metadata practices to protect all the parties involved from cyber criminals like information brokers, identity thieves, and hackers.
What Might Happen To The Goals of This Industry, And to the Public Sector Goals, As More New Cyber Security Regulations Are Put In Place For Business Compliance?
As more cyber security laws are enforced, the industry will get better and the customer experience improved (Brenner, 2017). Once the business people comply with the consumer privacy directive, they will be unable to send unauthorized emails and text messages after getting their contact details off the big data (Hemann & Burbary, 2013). Cyber security will also curb the prevalence of cybercrimes like hacking, spamming, phishing, and information warfare and identity theft (Dean, 2014). The limitations will however negatively affect the marketers since they will not be able to access a large number of customers through the calls, messages, and emails. The cyber security laws will further the Facebook company's goals of improving their customer's experience by protecting them from unwanted ads and only showing them relevant information (Al-Hamami & Al-Saadoon, 2015). Business compliance to the cyber security laws will ensure that their metadata systems are protected allowing them to compete fairly in the industry without the influence of information brokers.
Conclusion
In sum, the regulation of the metadata practices of Facebook in the social media industry is a necessary evil. It has both positive and negative impacts on the industry and the clients. For the clients it protects them from the risks of cyber-crimes like phishing, spamming, identity theft and hacking and protects them from exploitation by marketers while protecting their privacy. For the businesses, it protects them from information brokers and unfair competition but at the same time limiting the extent to which they can use the personal client information gained from the metadata.
References
Al-Hamami, A. H., & Al-Saadoon, G. M. (2015). Handbook of research on threat detection and countermeasures in network security . Hershey: Information Science Reference.
Brenner, S. (2017). Cybercrime: Criminal Threats from Cyberspace . Santa Barbra Ca: Praeger.
Cohen, C. (2013). Business Intelligence: the Effectiveness of Strategic Intelligence and its Impact on the Performance of Organizations . Somerset: Wiley.
Dean, J. (2014). Big data, data mining and machine leaders Analytics: value creation for business leaders and practitioners . Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Hemann, C., & Burbary, K. (2013). Digital marketing analytics making sense of consumer data in a digital world . Indianapolis, IN: Que.
Hider, P. (2015). Information Resource Description: Creating and managing metadata . London: Facet Publishing.
Liebowitz, J. (2014). Business analytics: an introduction . Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.
Moore, R. (2014). Cybercrime: Investigating high-technology computer crime . Newark, NJ: LexisNexis/Matthew Bender.
Smallwood, R. F. (2014). Information Governance: Concepts, strategies, and best practices . New York: Wiley.
Stair, R. M., & Reynolds, G. W. (2016). Principles of information systems . Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
