Every time you open Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you’re handing over information about yourself. Not just what you post. Your location, your browsing habits, your purchase history, who you talk to, how long you look at each post, what makes you stop scrolling. All of it gets collected, packaged, and sold.
For New Zealanders, this raises some specific concerns. Here’s what you need to know.
What Social Media Platforms Collect About You
Facebook (Meta)
Facebook collects the most data of any social platform. This includes:
- Everything you post: Text, photos, videos, comments, reactions
- Your messages: Content of Messenger conversations
- Your contacts: Phone numbers and email addresses from your device
- Your location: GPS data, Wi-Fi networks, cell tower triangulation
- Your browsing: Websites you visit (via Facebook Pixel tracking on millions of sites)
- Your purchases: Online and sometimes in-store transactions
- Your face: Biometric facial recognition data from photos
- Your device: Hardware model, operating system, battery level, signal strength
- Your behaviour: How long you look at each post, what you scroll past, what makes you stop
This data gets combined into an advertising profile that’s sold to anyone willing to pay. Political campaigns, overseas corporations, data brokers, and thousands of advertisers can target you based on this profile.
Owned by Meta, Instagram collects largely the same data as Facebook. Your photos, location, browsing habits, and behavioural patterns all feed the same advertising machine. The “free” photo sharing app costs you your privacy.
TikTok
TikTok collects device information, location data, browsing history, keystroke patterns, and clipboard contents. The algorithm that decides what appears on your For You page is built on granular behavioural tracking that monitors exactly how you interact with every piece of content.
What This Means for New Zealanders
New Zealand’s Privacy Act 2020 gives Kiwis certain protections, but enforcement against multinational tech companies is challenging. Your data is stored on servers overseas, processed under foreign laws, and accessed by companies that may not even have a physical presence in New Zealand.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has flagged concerns about how international tech platforms handle NZ data, but there’s limited practical recourse for individual Kiwis whose data has been harvested.
In practical terms: if you’re using Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, your personal data has already left New Zealand. It’s sitting on servers in the United States, being processed by algorithms designed to sell your attention to advertisers.
How to Protect Your Privacy
Option 1: Adjust Your Settings
You can limit some data collection through privacy settings on each platform. Turn off location tracking, limit ad personalisation, restrict who can see your posts. But this only reduces the collection. It doesn’t stop it. The business model requires your data, and they’ll collect what they can regardless of settings.
Option 2: Use Privacy Tools
Browser extensions like uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger can block Facebook’s tracking across the web. A VPN adds another layer. But again, these are patches on a fundamental problem.
Option 3: Use Platforms That Don’t Collect Data
The most effective solution is the simplest: use platforms that don’t mine your data in the first place.
NZ-specific social platforms built on a privacy-first model are emerging as alternatives. These platforms offer social features, marketplaces, and business tools without the data harvesting. Because they’re not funded by advertising, they have no incentive to build profiles on you.
The NZ-only ones are particularly interesting from a privacy perspective. When a platform restricts access to users within New Zealand, your data stays within NZ borders and within the jurisdiction of NZ privacy law.
Option 4: Limit What You Share
The less you share on data-mining platforms, the less they can collect. Use them passively if you must, but consider moving your active social life, your marketplace activity, and your business presence to platforms that respect your privacy.
The Privacy Tradeoff Most Kiwis Don’t Realise They’re Making
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: when you use Facebook, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. Facebook doesn’t make money by providing you with a social network. It makes money by selling your attention and your data to advertisers.
That’s a tradeoff most Kiwis never consciously agreed to. You signed up to connect with mates. You didn’t sign up to have your conversations analysed, your location tracked, and your behaviour profiled for advertising purposes.
As awareness grows, so does the search for alternatives. Platforms that offer genuine social features without the surveillance are no longer theoretical. They exist, and they’re built specifically for New Zealanders.
What You Can Do Today
- Review your privacy settings on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok
- Install privacy tools (uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger) in your browser
- Explore NZ-built alternatives that don’t mine your data
- Move your marketplace activity to platforms with no data harvesting
- Talk to your mates about privacy. Awareness is the first step
Your data is valuable. It’s time to stop giving it away for free.