18 Things, #16: Bad stuff scales too

The internet has allowed a lot of good things to scale. Sadly though, whenever good things are created people will work out how to use them for bad things. The bad things come in many forms and only make headlines when they’re easily explainable, like Russians meddling in elections via social media. But the biggest threat for most people right now is the amount of personal data being collected and stored online. And 2018 will likely see the biggest breach and dump of personal data ever.

This decade has been dominated by an obsession with big data - collecting as much data about customers and users and businesses as possible. The result is mountains of data, usually stored with terrible security.

While a big data breach from a brand will no doubt affect that brand directly, it will also impact consumer behaviour and privacy awareness. Over the next few years, data will shift from being an asset to being a liability. The irony is that the mountains of data probably don’t make marketing any more effective anyway.

Confidence: 80%

18 Things is a slightly different take on the usual “Annual Predictions” posts. For the next 18 days I’ll post one thing per day I believe might happen in 2018, with a brief overview of why. Each will also have a confidence level (an idea nicked from Scott Alexander), so I can come back at the end of the year and see how I went.

I’ve mostly stuck to my circle of competence, but please don’t read in to anything too much, and definitely don’t go betting your house on any of these. You can read previous posts here, or if you’re impatient, I’ll be posting these in 3 parts over at Blonde3.com.