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If Data Is the New Oil, Are Tech Companies Robbing Us Blind? (digitaltrends.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Trends: Data is the new oil, or so the saying goes. So why are we giving it away for nothing more than ostensibly free email, better movie recommendations, and more accurate search results? It's an important question to ask in a world where the accumulation and scraping of data is worth billions of dollars -- and even a money-losing company with enough data about its users can be worth well into the eight-figure region. The essential bargain that's driven by today's tech giants is the purest form of cognitive capitalism: users feed in their brains -- whether this means solving a CAPTCHA to train AI systems or clicking links on Google to help it learn which websites are more important than others. In exchange for this, we get access to ostensibly "free" services, while simultaneously helping to train new technologies which may one day put large numbers of us out of business.
In an age in which concepts like universal basic income are increasingly widely discussed, one of the most intriguing solutions is one first put forward by virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier. In his book Who Owns the Future?, Lanier suggests that users should receive a micropayment every time their data is used to earn a company money. For example, consider the user who signs up to an online dating service. Here, the user provides data that the dating company uses to match them with a potential data. This matching process is, itself, based on algorithms honed by the data coming from previous users. The data resulting from the new user will further perfect the algorithms for later users of the service. In the case that your data somehow matches someone else successfully in a relationship, Lanier says you would be entitled to a micropayment.
In an age in which concepts like universal basic income are increasingly widely discussed, one of the most intriguing solutions is one first put forward by virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier. In his book Who Owns the Future?, Lanier suggests that users should receive a micropayment every time their data is used to earn a company money. For example, consider the user who signs up to an online dating service. Here, the user provides data that the dating company uses to match them with a potential data. This matching process is, itself, based on algorithms honed by the data coming from previous users. The data resulting from the new user will further perfect the algorithms for later users of the service. In the case that your data somehow matches someone else successfully in a relationship, Lanier says you would be entitled to a micropayment.
Companies are making billions of dollars trading on "facts" about you and me. They compile and sell this data with no recompense. They make no real attempts to ensure the data is accurate or that our lives aren't negatively impacted by errors. And when they inevitably get breached and our data gets stolen, they offer a token few months of credit monitoring (especially ironic coming from Equifax). Gee, thanks.
The dinosaurs are lucky; they aren't around to give a shit that they're being sold for profit.
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I saw Google, Facebook, and the others for what they were the second the came on the scene. Not a social media account or cloud account do I possess and none will I have.
I enjoy good products and good services and I think they should cost money. For this reason, I happily pay for Fastmail, an email company that treats me with respect and solves any issues quickly. They are humble, transparent, and worth the money I have shelled out for years. The only other company I think one can trust with their data is rsync.net. I would not give me data to anyone else willingly.
"We reserve the right to share your information with ..." ..."
"You grant us an unlimited license to
Yeah, we've been robbed blind, and for decades longer than this current all-seeing-eye craze. Contracts of adhesion should have been outlawed a long time ago.
Since it's mined, it's the new coal.
Remember when people were concerned we were sleepwalking into a surveillance society.
Now everytime I turn on my phone, it contacts Google and does an install of whatever Google Play tells it to. I didn't choose this, it was a 'free-bee' feature that came when I installed an OS upgrade.
YouTube on Android needs approval to upgrade.... it's needs new permissions. What permissions does a video player need now? Access to your contacts, your GPS position, your SMSs, your Microphone, your device ID and call information. i.e. who you talked to, when, where you are, who you are, who you associate with, what you said to your friends. None of this is NEEDED by Google, it's WANTED by Google.
Try uninstalling Google Play and it will uninstall every app you bought. It's like going into Walmart, and buying stuff, and deciding you don't want to visit Walmart anymore and Walmart taking all the stuff it sold you back, and keeping your money anyway.
The situation is a joke, suppose Putin doesn't put in Trump, suppose he got a proper dictator into power and not a wannaby self-deluded one. A few laws later and all that data would be there to do a stasi wet dream of a surveillance.