The Attention Merchants
This is about big tech and what I think is one of the defining issues of our generation.
Much of the thoughts and ideas in this blog stem from listening to the book ”Don’t Be Evil The Case Against Big Tech” by Rana Foroohar, and reinforced by listening to “Permanent Record” by Edward Snowden. The words are mine and maybe a few of the ideas are, but the real credit goes to those books and the Netflix documentary, the "Social Dilemma".
Don't Be Evil
“Don’t Be Evil” was the slogan used by two software engineers when starting a search engine business in the early days of the internet.
We think of these geeky hippy types who just love to code, the total opposite of greedy capitalists, so don't be evil is exactly the type of counter culture phrase we expect of this type. It certainly helps create a good legend, that is until you forget your founding values, then it becomes embarrassing.
These two engineers happened to be students at Stanford Uni and they saw that the new internet had a chaotic collection of random things that individuals had just put out there.
There was no user friendly way to find any of this stuff. So they wrote code which trawled every document, file, video loaded to the internet, finding key terms, indexing them, but importantly, looking at the relationship between each document and site, then ranking the results and returning them to the end user. Essentially putting a useful layer of organisation over the chaos of the early internet, along with the ability for the end user to find stuff. An activity that some have described as theft or breach of copyright, but which we now consider normal.
They used “Don’t Be Evil” as a strap line within their company. That company is now Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc is now one of the worlds largest and richest companies and the single biggest corporate political lobbyist in the USA.
Its predecessor company, Google Inc never even existed in 1995, and its product is free. It charges us, its customers nothing, and it is used for 90% of all searches on the internet.
During its transition from coding geeks to global domination, the slogan has been quietly dropped. Given that the search engine allows you to trawl and find instructions on how to make nuclear weapons, bombs, and how to kill or behead people, perhaps the gap between reality and the slogan got to great and it was right to drop it.
When Steve Jobs was asked what he thought about the Google strap line of "Don't Be Evil" he said:
"Its bullshit"
The Monster
Foroohar starts her book with this quote:
I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.
Mary Shelly Frankenstein
This seems to me to be such a good quote for how the internet and social media have changed from their original ideals to what they are now.
So much potential, but a wrong turn has been taken, whether intentionally or not, it doesn't matter. The same wrong turn that many companies and industries take when greed, lack of regulation and lack of democratic accountability become dominant.
Before I go any further, I am not going to say don't use your phone, stop using the internet and come off social media, and I am not going to say that its all evil. Its not, and some of its tools are life chargingly positive.
But I do want to take a step back and try and see how it started and what it once looked like, and now see what its become and what it may become. And once I have done that, I hope that you may also conclude, as I have done, that social media and phones are fine, but we must approach them with caution and with our eyes wide open, in a careful manner, such that we remain in control of what we give to it, rather than allowing it to take what it wants from us.
Counterculture and The Valley
These giant American tech companies have their roots and origins in San Francisco, specifically Silicon Valley. Apple, Google and Facebook HQ's are less than 15 miles apart.
San Francisco is a city with a history of revolution, free love, and hippy socialist values, people who reject consumerism, arguably the capital of the 1950s beat counter culture and the 1960s summer of love, the legacy of which today is environmentalism, equality, passivism, anti war, freedom of speech, artistic value and freedom, poverty reduction, feminism and the sexual revolution.
The coders of today, mainly born after 1980, were raised by this generation and as a result, as teenagers often express similar values to the hippies of the 1960s, at least in the myths that’s grown up around many of the tech start ups.
For a teenage coder, tech is not not about global domination, its about having fun, staying up late, playing video games till the early hours, eating pizza and finding a way to impress girls without playing football when you're actually on the spectrum. Harmless stuff.
These teenagers saw the power of technology to make the world a better place for everyone. Information would be freely available to all, not held back by those in ivory towers, knowledge would become democratised. Democracy itself would be strengthened and held to account by a connected electorate. Individual consumers would become more powerful and could hold greedy companies to account.
A vision that is really far away from what we see today.
Where Are the Hippies Now?
Maybe the problem was that whilst these teenagers had apparent socialist principles in that things were shared and in common, not for profit, they were in fact more libertarian and had more in common with the American right wing and the belief that any form of Government was to be treated with suspicion, and sharing a natural affinity with laissez-faire economics and Friedman style capitalism, leave us alone, don’t interfere, don’t regulate, we’re going to change the world for the better.
Given the disruptive nature of the technologies in markets such as photography (iPhones) telephones (Skype) cars (Tesla) taxis (Uber) hotels (Airbnb) perhaps disrupting democracy was a natural next step.
However, as with communism and extreme capitalism a’ la Friedman, these beliefs are only ever good on paper. As soon as you mix in humans, with their imperfections and tendency towards greed, things break down and you will struggle not to be evil without decent regulation holding things in balance.
The trouble is, disrupting taxi rides is one thing, but when you disrupt the economic system and democracy, people die, wars start, the peace loving hippies have well and truly lost.
The Internet is Born
As Edward Snowden says, when he first went online at the dawn of the internet, it was a place of freedom, there were no large companies there, some people were nice, some people were stupid and unpleasant, much like in any group, but you would share information about yourself or remain anonymous and search out vast amounts of freely available information on subjects you were interested in.
Individuals were connected, it wasn't about profit, it wasn't a place for large corporates, it wasn't about economic gain.
Snowden laments a number of losses from the internets beginnings:
And in fact, before Google had even been named, the two academic software engineers who had written the code, also published an academic paper saying that advertising on the search engine would corrupt it.
But the two engineers, Sergey Brin and Larry Page stopped behaving like academics who share their research and findings with peers so that others can learn from it and build upon it, they sought investment, one of their first investors gave them money on the basis that they would get 1 million clicks a day and ad revenue from that of 5 cent per click.
For a company who was unknown at that time, $50,000 a day income wasn't bad.
The main search engine at the time was Alta Vista, AOL was something your parents struggled to use if they had any interest in this new technology, cool kids used Yahoo. Unlike Google, these other search engines presented page results based on the number of mentions each page got from other pages.
Yahoo however, had decided to be a portal to the web rather than a search engine, giving over its search bar to Google. This meant that people saw Google on screen, but the value of that was nothing in comparison to the ad revenue and data that Google then harvested from every search being performed. This was a business model that satisfied the venture capitalists demand for ever increasing returns.
I repeated the Frankenstein quote above to highlight the monster that this has become, but in fact, Frankenstein is about a well intentioned scientist who inadvertently created a monster, Brin and Page knew it would be a monster if it was monetised with advertising, but "greed, for want of a better word, is good", and that won.
Remember that when reading on, none of this is hindsight, all of the nefarious ways in that would play out, from unethical use of data, to poor ad driven commercially based search results, to election rigging were known up front, yet nothing was done.
The Past Is A Different Place, They Do Things Differently There
Where are we now?
80% of corporate wealth is owned by 10% of companies, thats a lot of power to monopolise the networks and crush competition.
If you have 90% of eyeballs on screen, or 95% of the population have Facebook accounts, as they do thats a lot of eyeballs on screen, and that has value.
Facebook is bigger than China when measured in number of users!
The FAANG companies, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google are larger than France in economic scale.
The value of cash held offshore by the FAANG companies dwarfs the 'too big to fail' banks should an economic crisis ever occur, a gun is held at the head of every Government should they try and control these companies.
The summer of love and the core principles of a better, friendlier, fairer democracy and capitalism have been left in the 1960s.
Data is the New Oil
Oil is the extraction of a resource. An activity that has destroyed the planet. Yet despite this damage, the oil companies have been allowed to continue making money from doing it. Thats how capitalism works at present. Its not value based where all factors involved in the extract of an asset is factored In, its based on profits for shareholders, if that occurs, it’s allowed to continue, even celebrated.
Data is the new oil and the value being extracted is estimated to be worth $197 billion. This is massive resource extraction. Yet no where, not on any balance sheet of any company is the value of this asset shown, why? Because if you put the value of something on the balance sheet, it becomes visible and a potentially taxable asset.
To change this, we would need economists who specialise in the valuation of data. We do have these people. These jobs exist. They all work for Google.
And remember, oil requires a skilled workforce. Its not easy to erect an oil rig in the North sea, or build an oil well and pipeline, then drill and extract oil. It takes skilled, trained well paid workers.
Data extractions just requires you to get users to download a new app and you then track the data from the back end of it, whether thats what a person eats, where they are, the content of all their messages and conversations, their heart beat, their music tastes, how many times a day they use the toilet, everything. No workforce required just sit in Silicon Valley and gather it up.
In our dystopian fantasies, we always thought it was Governments who would spy on us and attempt control our behaviour. We got 2 things wrong. We thought they would only attempt to control our behaviour but fail, and we misidentified the baddies.
If you have ever wondered why there isn’t a delete button in Gmail, it’s not because Google thinks it’s being kind and helping you not to delete things by mistake. It’s because that data, that draft email you never sent, that embarrassing email you did, will always be useful and of value to Google.
Its Just Advertising
Google and Facebook are massive advertising companies. Apple, Amazon and Netflix data mine just as much as Google and Facebook.
But they’re more than a normal ad company who may look at your post code and think, they would benefit from double glazing so they place an ad in your local paper or puts a leaflet through your door.
They know more about you than you do, and they sell that, without your consent or knowledge for a vast profit, to whoever they like.
To be fair, it is with your knowledge and consent, because they do present you with a set of terms and conditions which, as long as you have 3 hours to read and a law degree, you’ll understand, but instead, on which, you always click agree.
This in itself is probably one of the biggest scams of modern times.
Targeted Ad's Are Good
One argument I hear is this:
“I don’t want to get ad’s for things I’m not interested in anyway, I’d much rather have an ad for something I may want to buy.”
It seems pretty harmless I guess, if thats all it was.
But what if the Amazon Alexa in your home heard you one drunken night shouting at an MP being interviewed on TV and your view wasn’t in line with Amazon, so your internet connection was removed and you lost your job then your home as a result?
What if your home insurance premium increased because they know that people like you are more likely to have a house fire so its only fair you pay more insurance? Some people would even say that was fair to as insurance premiums are based on risk anyway.
If private insurance companies start to withdraw from the less well off based on the data thats been made available to them, it will mean that the Government will end up taking the burden of insuring the most vulnerable, leading to a transfer of the cost to the taxpayer, while private companies increase their profits then stash their wealth offshore to avoid paying tax into the system which they helped make more expensive. This is not the system of capitalism we all believe we are living under.
But due to the volume of data and intrusion into our lives, Amazon would have data on the exact number of people who have a house fire and the exact circumstances of that fire including the things said and done in the days and weeks leading up to it.
They may already know today that within 3 years you have a 75% chance of burning your house down with an 83% chance that that will lead to your divorce and given that your wife’s parents live in a different part of the country (they know your contacts and your contacts details too and its all linked back to you) there is a 98% chance you will change jobs and move cities within 5 years. The ad’s can be targeted based on this and advertisers will pay a fortune to Google to target you using this data.
A single person is a bigger consumer than someone in a couple so it is financially beneficial to them not to warn you about this, nor to feed you adverts about smoke alarms and fire extinguishers.
Their only goal is to make their founding billionaires even richer, not to help you with the data they have about you.
They may even know that 96% of men who have been drinking actually die in the house fire but they will still do nothing about that because they know that your beneficiaries also become better consumers when they inherit money and they know exactly who they are and what ad's to target them with now, so that in 3 years time they are highly likely to buy the latest smart car with their inheritance.
It’s not just your messages or search engine history. It’s every conversation in your home. It’s every purchase, the time, the date, the weather at the time. It’s pictures of your house and front garden on Google maps, taken without your consent, it’s 3D scans of the inside of your home and how you move about in that space.
If you’re outraged at the surveillance used in China or Saudi Arabia against its citizens, don’t be. It’s much worse for those of us living in capitalist democracies. Something has gone very wrong indeed.
Even if we didn't know about election meddling, an internal Facebook report leaked to The Australian newspaper explained:
According to the report, the selling point of this 2017 document is that Facebook's algorithms can determine, and allow advertisers to pinpoint, "moments when young people need a confidence boost."
Let that sink in a moment. They can spot when girls are feeling low, depressed, unhappy or upset, and they can increase their profits and their advertisers profits at that point.
Facebook users are supposed to be over 14 years old, but in reality, we know they are younger than that as Facebook doesn't really care who is using their site, each user is a gold mine especially young, impressionable, hormone filled vulnerable girls.
Was this well intentioned tech being misused? No, this was all part of the plan. More people, more attention to their screens, total exploitation of children and endangering young girls.
Social media has weaponised and commercialised child abuse.
Are you still comfortable with targeted ad's?
Its Not Just Advertising
Advertising in the old days was manipulative, but it didn’t feel such a big deal. Yes we were bombarded with images to try to get us to buy the latest thing, and flicking pages in magazines meant you saw hundreds of add, perhaps some of these adds led to impulse purchases that you then regretted, or that if you thought about it, you didn't need to make.
But the manipulation we are now faced with is in a different league to this.
Its not about buying and consuming anymore, Facebook already know they are changing our brain chemistry to manipulate us, and that manipulation is not about buying stuff, but bigger things, getting different results in elections is just one example.
This is a business engaged in undemocratic societal change, they are not trying to sell us shiny gadgets.
We are all okay with advertising, but this?
Privacy and Civil Liberties
Did you really consent to this? Did you vote for this system? Did you ever really care about your privacy and civil liberties?
The other argument I hear is this:
“I do nothing wrong so if the Government intelligence agencies want to read my boring messages, be my guest.“
This is true. What have we got to worry about?
I suppose it’s the same as most average Germans who didn’t have a Star of David painted on their front door, or sewed onto their blazer. It didn’t affect them, so why should they care, what do they have to worry about?
As long as we are happy not learning any lessons from historical mistakes about how authoritarian regimes took hold, this is a valid argument.
Snowden puts it this way:
Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google already have vast amounts of data about you. More than you can imagine. This is not a dystopian fantasy, the example above is merely the tip of an iceberg that already exists today. No new advances in technology are needed.
Snowden also confirmed that by them having it, means the government has access to it. Ignore the annual case that hits the press of Apple refusing to unlock a lock phone for the FBI, these are the annual show events to make you think things are private, nothing is private anymore, including those encrypted messaged. They may be private to the police, but they are not private to the Government.
While you click on cat videos and enjoy the other cat videos being presented to you by the algorithm, other people click on racist, extremist, conspiracy theories, paedophilia, hate speech, suicide content and more and more content is delivered to them, because that is how the profit is made.
Big tech knowingly monetise and serve up content which undermines our democracy and makes your life more precarious.
Is this the society we want?
Systemic Privilege
The point is this, if you have a system thats already set up to favour those with more money (the majority white population) as we do today, and if that tech is coded and owned by white middle class men with poor social skills, around 40 years old beneficiaries of a decent American education, all you are doing it perpetuating a system where the poorer, weaker and more vulnerable members of society will be worse off.
And this is not just an issue of skin colour. The majority of white people in the UK are also economically disadvantaged already and this is already creating problems within society as people become unsettled and dissatisfied.
In the stereotypical 'American dream', thats just how it is and they are happy to allow people to rot on the streets in their brutal version of capitalism. But its not the European way, and whilst in Britain we are heading at too fast a speed towards the American system, its not our way and its certainly not democratic, we never voted for Amazon to be able to make decisions on our behalf about how we live in our country.
The New Empires Blessed by God
In a blog I will release in November 21 I will share a story I wrote about empires rising and falling. A common theme with empires is their belief that they are doing gods work, hence they cannot be wrong.
With the global empires of silicon Valley, this is no different, not only do they believe they are doing gods work, they are setting out to change gods work, Google has invested $billions in solving death.
The Slave Trade
Another historical parallel that comes to my mind is the slave trade. A capitalist enterprise that in its day was held up as a force for good. It also made a nice group of small people wealthy.
These people did amazing things helping the poor and weak, building hospitals. These people were so good that we built statues to them and celebrated them every year, even after their death.
This system was right and just, and in fact, it was scientifically proven at the time that the white man was superior to the black man, so fully justifiable. Despite that people started to campaign for change.
It was this, in the end, and after many years, that eventually brought about change, even though in the US, that change resulted in civil war between the north and south, when the very livelihoods and way of life of those southern slave owners was under threat from those who wanted abolition in the north.
It is similar to big tech, they can track everything you do and monetise it while people suffer and die and wealth accumulates in the hands of a small few.
But employing people to remove hate speech and content about child suicide would reduce their profits and that’s not what the rules of the game demand so they say they can't do anything..... until they can and do censor and remove people, Donald Trump being just one example, censorship of anything religious or critical of China being another.
Monopoly and Oligarchic Power
In addition to the slave trade, these companies operate in a virtual monopoly. This is also a lesson we have faced in the past. The railways and telecoms companies in past had natural monopolies.
The Government (and electorate) considered this to be undesirable and not what capitalism is all about, and rules were put in place to avoid this or at least control the monopolies so that the powers they had could not be abused.
Despite having these lessons learnt, we are not learning from them and doing nothing to break up or control the monopolies these big tech companies have today. You cannot set up a Google or Amazon, do it slightly better and expect to succeed.
Your technology will either be stolen by them, copied by them, or if you are lucky, bought, which while good for you, is not good for the capitalist system which relies on competition to remain healthy.
We, in the West, sneer at the Russian oligarchs smug in the knowledge that our system will never be high jacked by a few super wealthy individuals. Yet that is exactly what has happened in the US. Putin has merely mirrored it because it’s the perfect set up for authoritarian regimes, like his, but also like ours is moving towards without our consent.
In her book Rana quotes Lina Khan, a 30 year old lawyer, a daughter of Pakistani immigrants, born in London who moved to the US when she was 11, who is shaping legislative thinking around challenging monopoly power, arguing that lowering prices (as big tech do) isn't enough to claim that you don’t have a monopoly:
”…if markets are leading us in directions that we, as a democratic society decide are not compatible with our vision of liberty and democracy, it in incumbent on governments to do something”.
In a devastatingly good piece of news, Khan, (only) 32, was appointed last week by Joe Biden as US Federal Trade Commission chief responsible for American antitrust (anti monopoly) laws.
If the link is behind an FT paywall, support decent journalism by paying for it, in the meantime here are some quotes just to give you a flavour:
"She envisions a different antitrust regime...when US authorities did not hesitate to break up monopolies"
"...while she was expected to gain a place on the FTC...few predicted she would be chosen to actually lead the agency."
"...unassuming...somewhat reserved...easy to think of her as the face of 'millennial', sometimes called 'hipster', antitrust...she has really managed to soar high so quickly, and I would attribute it to the fact that she's just been incredibly visionary..."
"Now she's in charge, and she's to be feared...She's got the hammer and all she sees are nails"
But probably my favourite line in the article…
"Amazon declined to comment on her appointment."
Won’t even say congratulations to a woman getting promotion! Come on, don't be evil guys.
Good For Consumers
The other argument we get is that Facebook is free, therefore it must be good or consumers, to be given something for free, right? That might be true if we really were the consumer of this product which 20 years ago no one needed. But in fact we are not the consumer, we are the product.
With products in the past, there have been safety standards, checks, rules and conditions that the products must comply with. Yet with us, Government have failed to take any steps to protect us from either becoming the product or regulating and allowing us control over the value of our product.
Where are our democratically elected leaders exerting product control over these companies?
If our politicians are too scared to do it, or too greedy and corrupt because they are being lobbied and bought off by these companies, where is our recourse to control these companies?
When the democratic means of effecting change disappears, revolution becomes the only resort.
They Pay Tax
But huge companies that make money are good for all of us right, as a country we benefit, thats what we’re always told by TV programs like the Dragons Den, these wealthy business owners have a right to sit in judgement over the smaller people.
And anyway, these companies pay taxes and employ people and we are all told to feel warm and fuzzy about that. But its not quite right.
Even the American taxpayers, who funded and took the risk for most major technologies behind the internet and mobile devices today cannot tax these companies effectively because much of their cash $billions, is legally held outside of American and untouchable to the IRS.
If they IRS can’t tax them to build US schools and hospitals, its naïve to think that HMRC is getting anywhere near the UKs fair share of the money for the value these companies extract from this country.
And while this industry is bigger than any other created in the past, it employs fewer people than ever, the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few Americans, skewing wealth inequality further and further.
How Are We Paying?
What is the real price of all of this, Rana lists a few:
Tech addiction, affecting time and productivity.
The rise of hate speech.
An increase in racism.
People being targeted in scams and fraud.
Loss of all personal privacy.
Wealth accumulated by a smaller group of people.
What these devices do to our brains on a long term basis.
Election manipulation.
Weaker democracy.
Societal breakdown and division.
Erosion of family life.
Funding and silencing of academics who otherwise may speak out (loss of free speech).
The Damage to Us
Tech addiction is like smoking, but we are still in the days when doctors would prescribe smoking as something to help people with bad chests.
There is research already that shows that our devices are more addictive than tobacco and alcohol. The impact of an addiction that distracts you from human relationships is going to become enormous. The generation just coming through who have been given unlimited access to these devices with no understanding of what they are will be like the generation of children given tobacco to chew then wondering why they had gum disease at 22.
Scientific research already shows that the more teenagers use social media, the greater their depression.
I am slowly coming to the conclusion that we have walked into a disaster. Giving access to phones and social medial to children will turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes of my generation that we will look back on in despair. It will take at least 2 more generations before that mistake can be resolved from the point we change.
Unlike when tobacco was first discovered and made available, we do actually know the harm that social media and technology does to children. Voices are crying out for things to change and to warn us of the dangers. Research has already confirmed the dangers, yet there is no regulations and for parents it is extremely difficult to peddle back from the position we are in.
What Needs to Change?
So if we are looking for a populist backlash, if that is our only option to make our elected representatives realise that action is needed, one that seeks to change, what is it that we should be demanding? It doesn’t seem as clear cut as “slavery of another human is wrong, they should be freed” but perhaps it is as clear as "we need proper protection from greed and exploitation".
Data Ownership
Data belongs to the individual who should have total control over it.
Regulation
Ensure the algorithms provide a balance, especially when it comes to news.
Fruit machines are strictly regulated as they are designed based on providing an intermittent reward to the player to keep them playing, and spending. The technology in phones and apps on phones is identical and should also be strictly regulated.
We need to adopt new methods of accounting. So that the free care services currently provided, mainly by women, for children and elderly relatives are reflected in companies balance sheets and the nations balance sheets. These services should be priced and paid. Technology cannot replace caring for your family, but this value needs to be visible.
We need to adjust our education system to bring back critical thinking and to encourage children to think about the levels in which they are being manipulated for profit.
Employees of Big Tech
Ensure that worker protection is increased, and that worker council voices can have a say in gig economy firms.
Share wealth with employees of all platform and gig economy firms in pay and stock.
Copyright
Share more wealth with content creators, whether its musical artists, authors or producers of video content on YouTube and Tik Tok.
Copyright must be respected, Google cannot copy books under copyright without permission as they have done, when permission is given, there must be a fair sharing of any ad traffic generated from it.
Encourage local and in depth journalism, rather than destroy it, platform companies should be forced to pay for this or pay for the content from whoever has it.
Authoritarian Regimes and the Middle Kingdom
Agreeing to censorship in certain countries will result in financial penalties.
Allowing platforms to be used by Governments to suppress information about, or encourage genocide, will result in criminal sanctions of those who benefit the most financially from the company.
Allowing less democratic regimes access to data beyond that legally allowed in liberal democratic countries will attract sanctions.
Revenue Visibility
There must be a clear visibility of ad traffic revenue per online item.
Allowing Governments access to systems and data beyond the rule of law or which breach the spirit of pre-tech law, should be whistle blown, which should be encouraged.
Monopoly
Break up the network monopoly of big tech firms.
If the Government can’t break the monopoly of these companies (because they are American) why can’t the Government fund UK start up that allow an individual to control their own data and only allow other companies to have it based on informed consent and payment? If these American companies choose not to operate in the UK market because of this, so be it, lets let UK start ups take their place. This has already worked in China.
We should be seeing all routes to apply pressure to tech firms, for example via teachers and schools and their representative bodies, via pension funds of which we are part of.
History shows us that in periods of great disruption you need proper control and leadership, otherwise, things descend into war.
In the end its us, as consumers who can change big tech, but we have to move through stages, and stage 1 is waking up to where we are at.
Helping Our Politicians
I said at the start that these companies were more wealthy than France or had more users than the population of China.
France provides world class healthcare and education to its population. Plus police and armed forces to protect and keep them safe. What are these giant corporations providing for us? These companies can and must take responsibility for their content and police it to keep it safe. They have the resources to do this and they have the power.
In the background to the above story, from the origins of the personal computer following WW2, to the rise of the original Silicon Valley hardware giants, Sun, IBM, HP, through the dotcom bubble early 2000 with the Microsofts, Oracle, Cisco and Intel and to the corporate internet and surveillance capitalism and FAANG companies of today, is the impact on our political system.
The piece missing from the story above is that these companies have grown larger and more powerful than countries, but unlike our Government they are accountable to no one.
Many politicians have been bought off, and spend their careers lining their pockets and supporting the status quo. Others still have integrity and may try to change things, but have to push back against a system that controls our thoughts and can swing us against these people, firing abuse and vitriol at them on social media.
Some tech firms have fallen foul of existing laws. Remember Napster? The music sharing company that was eventually shut down because of falling foul of copyright laws.
Don't think that Google have not spent huge money and effort in making sure they side step these types of legal issues, despite doing exactly what Napster was doing but on a grander scale, and our current political class has allowed it, or lacked the balls to fight it.
The one decent exception at present seems to be the Australian Government who do seem to be taking on big tech more than anyone, remember Facebook blocking access to news for Australian users earlier this year? The Government doesn't even control the news anymore, yet Facebook claims its merely a platform!
But while we still have a democracy left, we can change things. We need to ensure we are vocal and make our politicians aware that we need change, we need them to act, and show that we are prepared to get on the street and march if necessary to force change.
Only with us voting for the right people and making enough noise can we effect peaceful change.
The alternative, is something else we can learn from history and we should try and avoid it, until all else fails.
What Can We Do Personally To Change Things?
”I think its become clear to all of us, that some of us are spending way too much time on our device”
Tim Cook - CEO Apple
Install and use privacy based apps and companies where possible, those who reject the advertising and data mining model:
Signal instead of WhatsApp (Facebook owned).
Wikipedia
Duck Duck Go - a search engine extension that can be used within Google that burns all cookies and data as you exit the search.
Avoid using Chrome and Google Maps. Apple also collects data, but their business model isn't based on advertising so if you have to pick, pick Apple.
If you can, donate money to Signal, Wikipedia and Duck Duck Go every now and then to keep their business model going ad free, do it.
Support quality journalism, research and literature by reading it and paying for it, we cannot keep perspective by staying in a social media created bubble.
Encourage friends and others to use apps that do not rely on a business model which monetises your data.
Don't eyeball, click, like or share any content unless you really believe there is value in it for you and whoever you share it with, sharing meme's that make you laugh has value, but keep your nihilistic view for comedy purposes only, remain optimistic at your core.
Turn off all notifications.
Delete apps that you don't use.
Delete apps from your mobile to force you to use it on your laptop.
Create a morning routine where you don't look at your phone until you have reached a certain point e.g. had breakfast, washed, dressed, bed made.
Create an evening routine where you put your phone away.
Be in the moment when out with friends and family and don't needlessly look at your phone or have a conversation where looking at your phone might be a consequence.
And finally, don't beat yourself up when you sit there scrolling. I am as addicted to technology and giving away data as much (and more) than anyone. Giving up smoking wasn't easy, and there were no real benefits whatsoever to smoking. I am not going to give up tech because of the positive benefits it does bring.
But it’s the critics who drive improvements, it’s the critics who are the true optimists.
I think 'Don't Be Evil' is a good mantra, and I am prepared to do small things to try and make sure big corporates are not evil or behaving badly, and ultimately, shape things in a direction in which I think we will all be better off, including those billionaire founders of the companies.
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