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'We Didn't Lose Control Of Our Personal Data -- It Was Stolen From Us By People Farmers' (ar.al)
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, wrote an open-letter over the weekend to mark the 28th anniversary of his invention. In his letter, he shared three worrisome things that happened over the last twelve months. In his letter, Berners-Lee pointed out three things that occurred over the past 12 months that has him worried: we do not assume control of our personal data anymore; how easy it is for misinformation to spread on the web; and lack of transparency on political advertising on the web. Cyborg rights activist Aral Balkan wrote a piece yesterday arguing that perhaps Berners-Lee is being modest about the things that concern him. From the article: It's important to note that these (those three worrisome things) are not trends and that they've been in the making for far longer than twelve months. They are symptoms that are inextricably linked to the core nature of the Web as it exists within the greater socio-technological system we live under today that we call Surveillance Capitalism. Tim says we've "lost control of our personal data." This is not entirely accurate. We didn't lose control; it was stolen from us by Silicon Valley. It is stolen from you every day by people farmers; the Googles and the Facebooks of the world. It is stolen from you by an industry of data brokers, the publishing behavioural advertising industry ("adtech"), and a long tail of Silicon Valley startups hungry for an exit to one of the more established players or looking to compete with them to own a share of you. The elephants in the room -- Google and Facebook -- stand silently in the wings, unmentioned except as allies later on in the letter where they're portrayed trying to "combat the problem" of misinformation. Is it perhaps foolish to expect anything more when Google is one of the biggest contributors to recent web standards at the W3C and when Google and Facebook both help fund the Web Foundation? Let me state it plainly: Google and Facebook are not allies in our fight for an equitable future -- they are the enemy. These platform monopolies are factory farms for human beings; farming us for every gram of insight they can extract. If, as Tim states, the core challenge for the Web today is combating people farming, and if we know who the people farmers are, shouldn't we be strongly regulating them to curb their abuses?
What's the case for trusting big anything else?
The less data we put out there, the less they can steal. That, and proxies.
When I was a little kid I left my bike out and it got stolen. So I never did that again. That strategy worked.
Bought. Silicon valley bought the data from us. For the most part every company that is collecting data on users made this clear in their terms of services. In the vast majority of these cases the product they are supplying is also free and thus paid for through the collection of data.
Furthermore, users don't care. Providing the data is anonymised and the value of what they are receiving is worth the cost of the data users will continue to use it as a barter.
The government steals data. We have no contract with them to provide it and we are unaware they are collecting it. Silicon valley trades services and features in exchange for data.
>We didn't lose control; it was stolen from us by Silicon Valley
>Let me state it plainly: Google and Facebook are not allies in our fight for an equitable future -- they are the enemy.
>These platform monopolies are factory farms for human beings; farming us for every gram of insight they can extract.
The whole problem with the internet - the whole problem with our very language is... hyperbole!
WE give it away freely.
This should be obvious,
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The day a person was first hired to be a "Cyborg rights activist"
BlameBillCosby.com
It was 'bought' from the native American for a pile of beads. The fact that the actual value was of the exchange was inequitable and one of the parties in the contract didn't even understand what property ownership meant, is of course irrelevant? Isn't it?
The fact the native Americans believed you could no more own the land then the sky really has no bearing on weather or not they contractually obligated themselves or the other party was being honest about the value of the exchange?
A very similar situation here, the customer basically doesn't understand what they are giving away or what it's value is, so to them they are seemingly 'getting something for free'.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
... or explain what a 'Famer' is.
Sure, here you go. People who reenact the movie Fame. Like people who reenact the Civil War, but for young, dancers and singers. They sing the body electric. Not sure why it's on /.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
We didn't lose control; it was stolen from us
The WWW never provided a way to control our personal data. Its goal was to make all information available everywhere.
I think it's even worse than just plain old garden-variety theft of our personal information. There has also been for some time now a systematic indoctrination of the general public, the younger generation in particular, that the desire for 'privacy' is either a symptom of some sort of mental illness, or evidence of criminal intent, and that 'sharing' of everything with everyone (even if you've never met them in person, only ever online) via so-called 'social media' is what's normal and natural. Then there's the fact that ubiquitos mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc) lack what I'd consider even a basic level of data security, as well as 'apps' intentionally harvesting data (GPS coordinates, browsing habits, etc) without the knowledge of the end-user. Add to all this the harvesting of all Internet traffic of individual users by ISPs and wireless companies, plus actual criminals and criminal organizations actively exploiting security holes and weaknesses to outright steal people's identity and banking data, both over the Internet, and in real life via hardware devices like card skimmers (both activities are, relatively speaking, rampant). No one is particularly interested in fixing any of these situations, either, because actually giving people the means by which to secure their digital devices and their personal data to a reasonable degree would mean the end of the monetization of end-user data by so-called 'people farmers'. Of course none of this even begins to touch on what 'law enforcement' agencies and 'government intelligence' agencies are getting out of this Wild West of Internet data rustling; they all have every reason, in their natural mode of over-reaching and obsessive need to control everything and everyone, to allow it all to continue, because it makes it that much easier for them to grab any and all data on any and all persons they care to. Meanwhile it's only the ever-thinner patina of actual rule of law and basic human and civil rights that keep all of this in check to any extent -- and those aspects of our society are weakening, especially in the most recent major change in our socio-political landscape here in the United States. At this point in time, the only way to protect yourself at all from further intrusions is to leave the Internet behind entirely and go back to the old ways of doing things: write paper checks for your bills, pay cash for everything, use a landline phone, stay off the Internet entirely, or just stop having Internet access altogether. Of course the situation has degenerated to the point already where if you 'go off the grid' like that, you raise all sorts of red flags, sparking even more intrusions of your privacy, as our so-called 'law enforcement' investigates you for suspected terrorism. All in all it's a dark time we're currently living in, and I'm afraid it's going to get darker before it gets better. The only advice I can give anyone is to hold on; these things tend to go in cycles. Eventually, there will be a revolution of sorts, and reforms to roll back all the intrusions into people's lives. The younger generation may, for the moment, believe that 'privacy' is some sort of sickness, but as they get older, they'll understand what it is they gave away -- and they might well fight to get it back, if not for themselves, then for the next generation.
It's not just personal information that Silicon Valley is stealing, it's now letters of the alphabe.
Not to mention that's like the shittiest way they could have done a title. No attribution, no context. That's not an article title that's a pull-out quote. Stupid.
We traded our privacy and personal information for "free" content. In the early days of the web, we wanted Social Media, but we didn't want to pay a subscription for it. We said we were okay with advertising, even targeted advertising, to pay for their services. We wanted a web of free content and told them to figure out how to make money on it. So they grasped at the one thing they could find, our identities as consumers, and it was so lucrative, it re-shaped the way the web operates.
Oh, this has been going on for much longer than Google and Facebook had even existed. Loyalty points cards, Newspaper readership lists, etc.
The only thing that's change is the sheer scope, both in terms of number of people, and the varying kinds of data being amassed.
And the single biggest factor in this is no one else but the average person. The average person doesn't *care* that their personal data is being hoarded. They don't *care* that their privacy is being obliterated. Hell, if anything, they're *encouraging* it because of the whole "Only criminals have something to hide" attitude. If not that, then they can be very easily swayed to give up their data for minor benefits like saving a couple percent on a given purchase, etc.
IMO the defining moment was when Snowden made his revelations public. What was the response? Worse than no change. The people who were already concerned about their privacy had their fears validated, but everyone else simply didn't care. But a sizeable percentage honestly believes to this day that Snowden was in the wrong for doing what he did, and not the agencies for unlawfully collecting and hoarding all that data. The same people that scream "No big guvmint!" are somehow perfectly satisfied to have every subtle aspect of their daily lives recorded and analyzed by not just the government but by countless corporations as well.
The majority of the citizenry either doesn't care, or actually wants this to happen. The few who can (even if just vaguely) see the direction all this is going, are already taking what limited steps they can by closing social media accounts, etc. (For all the good that does at this point. :P) . But we're basically screwed, and those who don't want it are being dragged into it kicking and screaming by the majority who happily do.