But this business model—what I consider spying machines—has enormous potential to violate civil liberties. Big tech is already being used abroad to enhance the power of repressive regimes, as my work and others' has shown.
While it is not presently a direct threat to U.S. democracy, I worry that the potential for future abuses exists so long as big tech remains largely unregulated.
Big tech's spy machines
Current news is rife with examples of data abuses. In April, NBC News broke a story detailing how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had used data gathered by the platform to support his friends and defeat his rivals.
This is not Facebook's first privacy PR nightmare. In 2018, data firm Cambridge Analytica used a Facebook app to collect data profiles of over 87 million people, which was later used to distribute targeted political advertising during elections.
Facebook is not alone in the data collection boom. This May, it was revealed that Snapchat employees were using the app's data to obtain location data, pictures and email addresses without users' consent. A new book by former Harvard business professor Shoshana Zuboff goes into great detail of the practices of what she calls "surveillance capitalism." Zuboff writes, "Once we searched Google. Now, Google searches us."
0 comments:
Post a Comment