The biggest problem posed by surveillance practices is that the individual loses his or her privacy completely and is forced to live in a public space. When “being forced” is an expression used by itself, it can have misleading meanings. Therefore, at this point, the expression of forced is used in the sense of encouraging individuals and sharing their private lives in social media environments. Spotify is a music listening platform that has made a significant breakthrough in recent years. Spotify offers a platform service where you can apply for membership, professional musicians can share their own music and reach a much wider audience, and the ordinary listener can access all kinds of music.
A machine that learns your taste of music
As one of the platforms that uses the Machine Learning in the best way, Spotify creates a list of music on the app screen for you to listen to and allows you to click and listen.
Spotify learns the user’s music tastes by analyzing the behavior of the user within the app. It then offers recommendations based on the music being listened to by bringing music that is likely to be liked by the user. Spotify also performs text analysis using the LNP method and learns what the user enjoys while browsing when he/ she is not using the app.
Possibility to offer personalized content
Tv-movie streaming apps such as Netflix stand out as a place where millions of TV shows and movies are offered after membership for a fee. On Spotify and Netflix, from the listened songs to the track the users skip, from the movie they watch to all the movies they record to watch later, is recorded on their system. With this data, applications can provide personalized content and therefore each user can have their own personalized home screen. These screens can be found in any field today. Based on the movies we watch or the songs we listen to, it is now possible to find suggestions with the title ‘you may like’ on many video sharing platforms, including YouTube.
The surveillance mechanism, which has began to record in writing, is becoming an increasingly audiovisual field, less reading, more monitoring, and visual images become an object of consumption. According to Baudrillard (2000), the reality of the media and the reality of societies cease to be reflections of each other, and reality becomes a hyper-reality.Today, individuals consume various indicators rather than their needs. At this point, social video and music sharing platforms have become a space of surveillance and consumption in their own right, creating a space of consumption for themselves and becoming a production field that serves for the users.
1- Baudrillard, J. (2000), Tüketim Toplumu, Çev. F. Keskin ve H. Deliceçaylı, İstanbul, Ayrıntı Yayınları.
Asst. Prof. Dr. Çağdaş Öğüç
ARUCAD Faculty of Communication