The Problem with Trusting Online Companies in the Digital Age As Todd Zwillich and Christian Rudder show in “It’s Not OK Cupid: Co-Founder Defends User Experiments” Internet-based companies rely on algorithms and Big Data in order to sustain their business model. That means, these companies—from Facebook to Google to OK Cupid, the matchmaking dating service site—have to understand whether or not their algorithms are working optimally, either to retrieve the right searches in Google’s case or to match the right people as in OK Cupid’s case. However, in order to perfect their approach, they have to perform random tests—which can rub the public the wrong way when it learns after the fact that it was subjected to false information because the site it had trusted for a moment was engaged in a routine test of its processes. So is the problem or fault with the companies for testing their algorithms on the public? Or is the problem rather with the public for assuming this sort of thing would not go on? This paper will show that Internet-based companies should be expected to do this sort of thing—and it is the public who should be more aware of the extent to which they can place trust in these companies.

Anyone who goes on to an online dating site, Facebook, social media platform or uses a web browser that is not private (like Epic) but rather open (like Google) is setting him or herself up for being watched, for having his or her actions scrutinized and studied and even sold to advertisers. Sometimes, in order to...

Data is the gasoline to the business engine of the online company: without it, the company will not go. Big Data is vital, as Rudder explains: “these particular experiments were kind of part of the normal course of our business” (767). In other words, this type of manipulation is par for the course: every online business does it because every online business needs to validate its own data and make sure it is using techniques that are actually good for its business. If users do not like it, they should stop shopping online, stop trusting the Internet, and stop believing that the Digital Age is all for good. In the Age of the Internet and e-commerce, the commodity is often you. Your information is what is being gathered and sold, and the way you respond to cues and signals, whether real or false (as in the case of OK Cupid’s matchmaking test), is valuable information for an e-commerce business.
Zwillich and Rudder essentially say as much: “Everybody, every time they go on a Web site, should have it in their mind that they are being watched,” summarizes Zwillich at the end of his discussion with Rudder (769) and Rudder agrees, following it up with,” Absolutely. Not only being watched, but, you know, there’s someone that’s looking at that exact same Web page that’s seeing something different” (769). That should tell every user of the Internet that while it may be a great tool for communicating and sharing information…