How can we be manipulated by data companies?

Cambridge Analytica, a data company located in the UK, is claimed to use the leaked information to help the current US president Trump win the election; the data company had a data usage contract with Facebook, the largest social networking company in the world, and now Facebook has banned Cambridge Analytica. Such report about how a data company exploit users is unpleasant; however, it is necessary to question why we are so easy to be exploited.

There are several reasons for this question. Firstly, we have constraints when we are collecting and analysing information that we need. Collecting and analysing information is very costly, it can cost our money as well as our time. When we are making decisions about how we accept the information we find, we are judging the costs and the benefits of further analysing the information and collecting more information; if the cost is significantly greater the benefit, then we may just simply accept the information we already have and not find any more information or do any further research. In an election, this is very the case. An individual's vote is not going to change the result of a presidential election, so the benefit of doing research is not significant, but the cost of finding more about the candidates is very time consuming; therefore, there is no incentive for any individual to voluntarily find more about the candidates and they could just accept any information they are given. Secondly, our human beings have a "weakness" in analysing information, information analysis has a property of "first come, first served" that it costs more for the second to overcome the information first arrives. Therefore, if a piece of specific information is sent faster than all other information, this piece of information could be taken much more seriously and weighted greater when people are using the information to make decisions. Thirdly, we tend to trust information from the senders with particular properties. Let's think about the company mentioned above. If I tell you there is a piece of information provided by Cambridge Analytica without letting you know what they have been doing so far, you may trust the information, because the company has "Cambridge" in its name, makes you think about the famous university Cambridge University. There are other properties that can make you trust the information sources, such as figures, "powerful" or "influential" people. People are influenced by the properties of the information sources may be caused by their constraints of collecting and analysing information, because when people face constraints, they need to use indirect information to judge the information they are given, the properties of the information sources definitely can help them to judge the information to some degree.

To conclude, the main reason for data companies are so easy to exploit people is because of people's constraints of collecting and analysing information, data companies can create certain properties to make information more acceptable for individuals to use.