“BlackBerry Cofounder Jim Balsillie Says You Should Be. The entrepreneur who made billions putting BlackBerrys into pockets is now sounding the alarm about Big Tech’s creep toward surveillance capitalism.
The data-driven economy, Balsillie warned, was developing faster than the ability of policy makers to reckon with its consequences. “We are cascading toward a surveillance state,” he said, conjuring a world divided into the watchers and the watched, a world where Big Tech piles up astronomical profits by distilling our everyday experiences into data to monetize—in some instances, doing so “without a moral conscience.” He mentioned how, in Australia, Facebook had been caught designing algorithms to identify stressed, overwhelmed, and anxious teenagers on its network, presumably to assist advertisers who might want to target them. Google has faced its own parade of scandals, which include the accusation that it illegally collects children’s personal information through YouTube, a subsidiary with algorithms that can push viewers toward increasingly polarizing and vile content—from neo-Nazis to Trump-bashing conspiracy theorists. Why? Because that’s likely to keep us most engaged, thus maximizing Google’s ad revenue.”
Read the full article by Brian J. Barth here.
This wonderful article is a blueprint. We can always cite it when defending data privacy of people. Also when favoring decentralised autonomous economies where no company yields power of users. Well, regarding Google: we have been warned. Regarding Tender Economy: not only will we not snoop into user data, we won’t even be able to see or store it.
* The beautiful artwork is provided by graphic artist Evgeniya Porechenskaya
