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New Book Argues Silicon Valley Will Lead Us to Our Doom (sandiegouniontribune.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the online-overlords dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader Zorro quotes the San Diego Union-Tribune: To many Americans, large technology firms embody much of what's good about the modern world. Franklin Foer has a different perspective. In his new book, "World Without Mind," the veteran journalist lays out a more ominous view of where Big Tech would like to take us -- in many ways, already has taken us... These firms have a program: to make the world less private, less individual, less creative, less human... Big Tech has imposed its will on the resident population with neither our input nor our permission.
The reviewer summarizes the book's argument as "Once hooked, consumers are robbed of choice, milked for profit, deprived of privacy and made the subjects of stealth social engineering experiments."

Interestingly, Foer was fired from The New Republic in 2014 by its new publisher -- Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes -- and Foer's new book includes strong criticism of the way companies are assembling detailed profiles on their users. "They have built their empires by pulverizing privacy; they will further ensconce themselves by pushing boundaries, by taking even more invasive steps that build toward an even more complete portrait of us."

22 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Only if we let them... by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I myself have no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or otherwise social media presence. You hand over power over you because you believe you get something back, but that something is often just an illusion.

    1. Re: Only if we let them... by lucasnate1 · · Score: 3

      I only expose what I want myself in social metworks. in return I occasionally get a fuck or a job offer. Feels like a good deal to me (note: I never upload pics and rarely report my position).

      --
      Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
    2. Re:Only if we let them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That worked as a solution *before* they got so big. Now they are everywhere and are unavoidable. If you want to join ANY group or contribute to ANY non-profit, communicate, meetup, collaborate, etc. They have Google Forms, Google Docs, Facebook Groups, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. There is no way to avoid it. The entire world was dumb enough to hand over power to these asshats.

    3. Re:Only if we let them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do you have friends? Family? People you just happen to know?

      The problem is that it's becoming increasingly impossible to avoid being on social media, even if you never use it yourself. Other people posting pictures of you, combined with facial recognition, means it's possible for social media networks to know quite a bit about you without you ever using them yourself.

      As data mining technique improve, this is only going to get worse. Simply existing is going to be enough for companies to build profiles on you, regardless of whether you yourself use their services. It's not enough to not use the services yourself, you need to make sure no one you know ever posts anything about you as well.

    4. Re:Only if we let them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Congratulations on making yourself an outcast. I'm against the whole craze myself but what can one do when the vast majority has already decided? You want to shut yourself out, it's your right but it doesn't make any difference. The war for privacy is over and we lost. Staying out counts only as sulking, they already have your profile whether you like it or not. You have to ask yourself, as I did, is it worth it? Becoming an outcast in the name of a principle nobody cares for?

    5. Re:Only if we let them... by Archtech · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Congratulations on making yourself an outcast. I'm against the whole craze myself but what can one do when the vast majority has already decided?

      I am amazed to see such sentiments expressed on /. Here I was thinking that slashdotters were inner-directed, free-thinking, independent minds. But apparently at least one is just a herd animal.

      Try visiting

      https://thoreau.eserver.org/

      --
      I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
    6. Re:Only if we let them... by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sadly, it may be too late. We've already handed over control of almost all public discourse to private companies, companies which are free to censor that discourse at will. They're already using that power to censor ideas from the right that they disagree with. And many leftists are celebrating that, championing it even. But that's a mistake they'll regret.

      You see, what these anti-"hate speech" leftists have failed to consider is "what ideas are going to be censored next?" Do you really think that this handful of super-powerful corporations who you've ceded control to are going to tolerate anti-capitalist rhetoric, or calls for higher wages, worker rights, higher corporate taxes, and unions? Ha, not for long! And you've been the one who championed them having the the right to censor, never thinking that power could be turned against YOU too. But once they've banned the "Nazis" you can bet they'll come after the "Communists" and "Socialists" next. And you Bernie bros will end up just as cut off from all the major social media outlets as your bad-guy-du-jour Milo Yianopolis.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    7. Re:Only if we let them... by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd say they're privacy oriented, like I am. What can you do? The same thing that people have done in the past, refuse to participate in it. Something is only lost when you give up, as it stands there is no "social media" presence for me out there. I don't exist at all among social media networks or anything else. It's not hard to do and still keep a large enough social and work network. If anything, I see more people going back to face-to-face social networking because they're tired of all the inane, pointless, bullshit drama that happens on every single platform.

      You have to ask yourself, as I did, is it worth it? Becoming an outcast in the name of a principle nobody cares for?

      Sure is. The real question is, are you a person who can hang onto their principals while others are throwing theirs to the wind?

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    8. Re:Only if we let them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      There's a difference between acknowledging that surveillance exists and willingly participating in your own surveillance.

    9. Re:Only if we let them... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 2

      The problem is that you also expose your information just by existing, unless everyone else you interact with ALSO abstains from the use of social media.

      And you probably have a credit card, and a driver's license. Maybe you entered a contest once.

      I try to stay out as best I can, but last year someone else tagged me in a photo and now I am easily Googled. Of course, there were already shadow profiles of me out there, but now they have my face, and who knows how many public sources of faces they'll be scanning 10 years from now?

      Privacy is gone, because morons can't give up on the idea that the world needs to know what they ate for breakfast this morning.

    10. Re: Only if we let them... by west · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > Most HR offices will trash your resume if they can't find your facebook page.

      Is there *anyone* who works in HR who can actually confirm a resume trashed for lack of social media contacts? This sounds like a folk-tale to me, but then perhaps the world has changed.

      I know people who've been approached via Linked-In to good effect, but I've never heard of anyone whose failed to get an interview because they don't have a Linked-In (or FB) profile (and I work in tech).

    11. Re:Only if we let them... by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      It's only potentially a privacy violation if you can be readily identified anyway. A photo of a random person taken at an unspecified date and time could ostensibly be a photo of any of thousands of people who have, at some point in the past, looked enough like that photo when shot at that angle, so long as those people have been in that city at the right time of year between when the building in the background was built and torn down. If there are no trees, then the time of year doesn't matter. If there are no identifiable buildings, then it could have been taken at any time (ignoring identifiable changes in film chemistry, DPI, etc.) over the course of many decades, anywhere in the world, so the potential list of candidates is huge.

      What makes it a privacy problem in the modern age is that the photo has a precise timestamp, and Facebook has so much data about which family members of each possible candidate were in a given city on that date that they can guess who is in the photo with reasonable accuracy, and thus de-anonymize what would otherwise be a photo of an anonymous person. That is the privacy violation—not the picture itself, but rather the giant repository of data that can be trivially used to unmask people who wish to remain anonymous.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    12. Re:Only if we let them... by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'd say they're privacy oriented, like I am. What can you do? The same thing that people have done in the past, refuse to participate in it. Something is only lost when you give up, as it stands there is no "social media" presence for me out there. I don't exist at all among social media networks or anything else. It's not hard to do and still keep a large enough social and work network.

      You have a presence in social media even if you've never created an account. You know those little 'f' icons you see on websites which link back to Facebook? They're not a link. They're a script which sets a cookie or examines your cookies to uniquely identify your computer. When you visit slashdot, that 'f' icon in the upper right tells Facebook that user #51853601342 has visited slashdot. And they add it to their database with all other sites user #51853601342.

      Then one day a friend of yours sends you a Facebook invite via email. You happen to click on it to delete it (instead of doing a select-delete) which causes it to load in your browser, and now Facebook knows that user #51853601342 is yourname@gmail.com. They start cross-referencing your name with comments, other friend requests, public documents, etc. And now Facebook knows who you are, where you live, who your family is, who your friends are, what you look like (thanks to photo face ID), where you work, who your co-workers are, and how much you make. All without you having an account.

      It's not enough to avoid creating social media accounts. You also have to run script blockers specifically targeting these tracking scripts (e.g. Ghostery) and/or browse in incognito mode at all times.

    13. Re:Only if we let them... by Sir+Holo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That worked as a solution *before* they got so big. Now they are everywhere and are unavoidable. If you want to join ANY group or contribute to ANY non-profit, communicate, meetup, collaborate, etc. They have Google Forms, Google Docs, Facebook Groups, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. There is no way to avoid it. The entire world was dumb enough to hand over power to these asshats.

      Did anyone ever notice, back in 2001, that every group you communicated or traded with (as list-d above) – all suddenly wanted your cell phone number, when they never had before? Did anyone else notice this sudden change?

      Consumer-data firms absolutely love cell phone numbers. They are a unique identifier that is not illegal to use (as SSN & CC# are). Cell phone numbers are an extremely powerful correlate to whatever other little scraps if data might accompany it.

      I stopped giving my phone number out to anyone unless it was central to the relationship. For about 10 years. Well, now, big data is very big, and everybody and their mother is selling your info, which is later correlated with other data, and your cell phone number is one of the most high-confidence correlates. I have given up.

      YOU DO HAVE A FB PROFILE, even if you never created one. They follow people around the web (via cookies, etc.), and build a profile of you whether you like it or not. Sign up, and you might see how creepy-much they have.

      There are hundreds of these 'Consumer-behavior Aggregating Companies', and they are effectively uncontrolled. It is a new industry. Compare them to the three credit agencies are heavily regulated. See how it gets scary?

      John Oliver did an informative piece on these shady companies within the last year. Very informative.

    14. Re: Only if we let them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      1. Companies can also lobby to change laws with their capital and influence, something that the average Joe couldn't compete with equally.
      2. It's not about not using services anymore honestly. Even if you don't have a social media account your family could be posting pictures and videos of you online for the algorithms to collect. Web browsers collect info on everything you search online pretty well. You'd be surprised what these companies have on you. You'd also be surprised at how good these companies have gotten with exploiting the human psyche to stay addicted to their endless barrage of trash news and trivial outrages.
      3. Readily available and cheap food owes much of its success to the chemical fertilizers and assembly line slaughterhouses perfected during WW2. Computers just help make it more efficient.
      Deterrence via nuclear arms arguably played the biggest role in preventing conventional wars, way before even Apple was a thing, so countries turned to supplying rag tag militias with guns to fight for them instead. We still do that to this day. It's just that those wars are more or less background noise. Space travel was pioneered during the Cold War with military aims backing the project to make sure the Soviets didn't pull anything with their own space programs. The corporations just got the leftover research. The government is the one that funds most of these space startups anyways(*coughSpaceXcough*).
      4. The recent scandals and controversies have shown the cracks in Silicon Valley's culture. Firing people based on their opinions, criticizing others for lack of diversity despite lacking it themselves, a general sense of cultural isolation from the rest of the country, a lack of self awareness, cultivating public shaming, etc.

      SV hasn't learned anything since the Californian Ideology days. They may have good intentions, they just don't seem to consider others' as well.

  2. I've said it here before by onyxruby · · Score: 3

    If you aren't paying for the product you are the product.

    1. Re:I've said it here before by TimothyHollins · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's not true. Sometimes you pay for the product but you are still the product.

  3. Essay by the author in the Washington Post by Koen+Lefever · · Score: 4, Informative

    Franklin Foer wrote an article "How Silicon Valley is erasing your individuality", which seems to be an abridged version of the book.

    --
    /. refugees on Usenet: news:comp.misc
  4. Ignorant little snotball by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    They have Google Forms, Google Docs, Facebook Groups, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

    I'm sure somewhere among them there's a group dedicated to learning Latin. Why not join it?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. Solution in the summary. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Once hooked, consumers are robbed of choice, milked for profit, deprived of privacy and made the subjects of stealth social engineering experiments."

    Now that you know it's addictive, you can simply not use what they are offering. Of course if you are already hooked then you should leave them behind. If that means quitting social media completely, you quit that shit. If that means not using Android or iOS then get a smartphone that lets you choose a libre mobile OS or *gasp* don't use a smartphone. Hell, if that means going off the power grid you go invest in some solar panels and batteries, dammit! ;)

    If you don't like your situation, you change it, you don't sit around and cry about it.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  6. Re: Big Tech? by Sique · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But with a few companies having a quite complete picture about everything you are up online, it will be more and more difficult to develop something revolutionary (pardon: disruptive) without them noticing. And with their superior manpower they might be able to beat any small group of developers to market.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  7. Ad-driven revenue model... by hazardPPP · · Score: 2

    ...was the original problem here. Since 99% of all internet services are delivered "for free", primarily as a result of the internet's decentralized nature, the service providers had to find a way to make money. It went from banner ads to now mining all of your personal data for profit.

    Why doesn't e.g. Netflix get mentioned with the GAFA quadruplet? Because you pay 9.99/month for Netflix, so Netflix doesn't care who your friends are and how to sell that to advertising companies. The problem is that even if people would now be willing to pay 9.99/month for Facebook, Facebook wouldn't want it that way - they've seen they can make much more massive profits by mining people's personal data. There's no going back now.