Doreen Tipton: Internet? Have a proper gander

Well, don’t blame the companies. It’s not their fault. It’s the pesky EU again doing what they do best – ruining the world with bureaucracy. Under the usual guise of protecting citizens’ rights, they set about limiting our freedom. Companies are now forced to get your permission to use your ‘data’ and not surprisingly it’s putting a lot of people off. Unsure of what they’re signing up to, many click away from the page they actually wanted to see.

But what exactly is your data? Is it the keys to your house? By clicking YES (or the more usual and trendy ‘GOT IT’) are you telling these companies they can strip your lounge of all your worldly possessions, empty your bank account, take your car complete with little England flag, drink the beer in your fridge and wee in your toilet?

Nope.

For most of us, the difference between allowing a company to use our data, and not allowing it, is boringly simple.

If you do allow it, the advert that next pops up alongside whatever you’re browsing on the internet may be something you’re actually interested in. If you don’t, there’ll still be an advert – it’ll just be an advert for something you’re not interested in. Because it’s about targeting messages.

So which is best, I wonder? Reminding an old lady that the stairlift she Googled earlier is now available at a better price? Or trying to entice a 14 year-old vegan to buy a juicy pack of pork sausages and a Ferrari?

Yes, it’s your data – and if you want to be precious about it keep it to yourself. Stuff it in a drawer somewhere, if you can find it, in an envelope marked PRIVATE, or hide it under your bed next to your chamber pot. But personally I’d recommend you to use it with gay abandon, cos it’s free and you can’t take it with you. Live a little – leave a trail of data scandal wherever you go – it’s far more fun.

For my last show I bought an inflatable man from Ann Summers online. I sat back and waited for the data to circulate. Imagine how that brightened up my internet experience for the next few days. I was offered things I hadn’t been offered since I was a teenager in Tipton – I may even have bought a few of them, but I’m not telling you because of data protection.

So if you want to look at something online, just say ‘YES’ to the damn privacy pop-up and do it, otherwise what’s the point of the internet? A brilliant idea is being systematically ruined by control freaks.

Personally, I quite like the fact that adverts for neck braces, crisps and rubber men come up on my timeline. And that you can order them delivered to your door with one click. It’s a lazy cow’s dream.

And if Facebook can’t make enough money from advertisers in the future because we all go paranoid and hang on to our data (because I reckon that the 14 year-old vegan ultimately won’t buy the sausages and the Ferrari) please don’t come crying to me when they find other sneaky ways to get the money out of us, as they inevitably will, and the price of just about everything, including inflatable men, creeps up that little bit to compensate.

All this has happened, of course, because the EU hates anything (except itself) getting too powerful.

Last week I put a short clip from Doreen the Movie on Facebook, which featured a little cameo moment from Wolves legend Steve Bull, and an outtake of me kicking a ball. I did it just to be topical, because for some reason there was a lot of football on the telly.

Within one day the video had been viewed by over a third of a million people, with nearly 10,000 sharing it. That’s quite extraordinary. But it’s even more extraordinary when you consider that last year Facebook dramatically changed its algorithms (whatever they are) to make it much, much harder to reach lots of people. Nowadays, only about 4 per cent of the people who follow your page actually get to see your stuff. That is, of course, unless you ‘boost’ your post (in other words slip Facebook a few quid in a brown paper envelope) and even then it gets nowhere near the levels it used to.

Before the recent changes, that same post would have reached multiple millions of people just through sharing. And that sort of thing, of course, scares the establishment big time.

People power, you see. Totalitarian governments often introduce laws limiting the number of people allowed to gather in one place. This is the virtual equivalent.

Facebook has created a powerful monster, and they’re now desperately trying to find ways to control it, and the people who use it, while also stuffing huge wads of money into their pockets. The EU, in turn, don’t like the idea of Facebook being more powerful than them (and American) so they invent some wonderfully complex new rules on Data Protection to trim everybody’s wings.

Everybody is jostling for pole position in the race for power, and the propaganda machine, as ever, will be key.

Just thank God the EU don’t own Facebook. Yet. Now that would be seriously scary. How long before we’d all get adverts for unelected rubber bureaucrats, pre-inflated with hot air?

Tarra a bit x