Media corporations take in data daily from their users’ and constantly analyze their likes, dislikes, location, and personal information. Social Media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook have created an algorithm that studies their users’ data and capitalizes from it by selling this sensitive information to advertising companies. These sites are closer to their users than ever before through many features such as Ads, geotagging, and live content tracking.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization devoted to safeguarding internet user’s cyberspace rights since 1990, has made it their mission to bring invasive algorithms and data for profit to the forefront of the social media dilemma. The EFF has also discovered that media platforms use tactics such as fingerprinting browsing, customer trafficking, geotags, and aggressive advertisements to gain information and flip it for significant financial gains.

Pew Research, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to producing scholarly research on varied topics to help individuals make educated decisions, reviewed that over 67% of Americans obtain their news from social media and generate 2.5 quintillion bytes, or units of digital information each day. Companies can use the user’s data to manipulate their newsfeed and engagement to keep the money rolling.

Social platforms are tailoring content to keep users more engaged and involved with content; the more time they spend on these sites, the more data they can collect and sell-off. This act of pumping content comes at the expense of vetting whether the provided content is accurate or fabricated to keep audiences engaged, supplementing misinformation or fake news, which travels six times faster than truthful news and constantly sends out on social media platforms.

Travelers who have created a full-time job by generating content for social media may be unaware of how these media platforms use them to gain information on individuals and simultaneously harm the safety and privacy of the destinations.  Eleanor Emerson, director of study abroad at St. Edwards University, touched base on the pros and cons of social media usage and geotagging while traveling.

“People are divided on this, and maybe it is my generation, but I am not a fan of geotagging. I understand the purpose of sharing your location with others. Still, I think the cons far outweigh any pros,” said Emerson, “I appreciate exploring places off the beaten track that are not spoiled and overrun with tourists, and there are fewer of these places because of geotagging.  It increases tourism to levels that put people, landmarks, and wildlife at risk.”

Media users use geotagging features on multiple social media platforms, but geotagging can be detrimental to travelers and their destinations. These harms include the overflow of tourism, increased cyber poaching, and unauthorized tracking of users and their loved ones while on vacation. National Geographic covered these issues in 2019 when Bogle Seed Farms in Ontario, Canada, had to temporarily shut down after 7,000 people littered and destroyed sunflowers in a single day after a post went viral.

“It has come to a point where these corporations have complete control of our lives,” says Dalila Hernandez, a junior design student at St. Edwards. “They control what we see, hear, and sometimes think. I am honestly scared for the future, and hopefully, something will change, but I doubt it.”

Though the light at the end of this tunnel may seem far and in between from any solid solution, there are ways users can take back their lives and fight back from the unauthorized data analyst and track their information for profit.

Ways travelers can be more cautious when posting to social sites are as follows:

  • Disable location tracking for media apps within settings to ensure location metadata on photos, videos, and posts cannot be tracked or analyzed
  • Remove geotags from existing posts
  • Tell apps not to track information for analysis when prompted by a smartphone
  • Delete or take breaks from these sites for overall mental health and secure data purposes

It may seem as though the social media dilemma continues as the world becomes more heavily dependent upon engagement and media presence. Still, by following these simple steps, travelers can ensure the safety of their information and the places in which they wish to roam.