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Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Want To Heal The Internet? Ban All Collection Of User Data

The social media/search giants have mastered the dark arts of obfuscating how they're reaping billions of dollars in profits from monetizing user data, and lobbying technologically naive politicos to leave their vast skimming operations untouched.

I've been commenting on the cancerous disease that's taken control of the Internet-- what Shoshana Zuboff calls Surveillance Capitalism--for many years. Here is a selection of my commentaries:

800 Million Channels of Me (February 21, 2011)

The New Facebook Buttons: Promote, Despise, Abandon (November 1, 2012)

How Much of our Discord Is the Result of the "Engagement" Advert Revenue Model of Social Media? (October 24, 2017)

Are Facebook and Google the New Colonial Powers? (September 18, 2017)

Hey Advertisers: The Data-Mining Emperor Has No Clothes (September 15, 2017)

The Demise of Dissent: Why the Web Is Becoming Homogenized (November 17, 2017)

Should Facebook, Google and Twitter Be Public Utilities? (March 5, 2018)

Should Facebook and Google Pay Users When They Sell Data Collected from Users?(March 22, 2018)

The Blowback Against Facebook, Google and Amazon Is Just Beginning (April 27, 2018)

How Far Down the Big Data/'Psychographic Microtargeting' Rabbit Hole Do You Want to Go? (April 25, 2018)

If you've followed any of my analyses, it will come as no surprise that I've concluded the only way to restore the health of the Internet is to ban all collection of user data. That's right, a 100% total ban on collecting any user data whatsoever.

We need to distinguish between customer/supplier data and user data. If a social media or other corporation wants to collect data from people who pay it money for services rendered, or from suppliers that it pays for services, then that process of data collection should be 100% transparent.

A customer pays for a service in cash; a user pays nothing. A company might want to collect data from its paying customers in order to upsell them or serve them better, and corporations who produce goods and services might want to collect data from the suppliers they pay.

Banning the collection of any data from users would of course destroy much of the revenues of companies such as Facebook, Google , Twitter, Instagram et al. It would also destroy the perverse incentives these corporations have institutionalized and excused as "garsh, you can't stop the advance of technology," as if their pursuit of Surveillance Capitalism were somehow an inevitable outcome of the Internet rather than a malign disease that's undermining democracy and the free flow of diverse opinions and dissent that is the foundation of functional democracy.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Without consulting with its users, Microsoft has installed an establishment media browser extension, purportedly designed to rate the accuracy of news websites, as a default setting on mobile versions of its Edge browser. In practice, it creates a news blacklist by warning users away from sites including Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail."

Anonymous said...

All your credit cards, all your store discount cards, your bank, your insurance company even your registered vehicle. All your information is a brokered commodity. It's soft Communism under the guise of free Capitalism. Your social security number might as well be tattooed on your arm. Your not in a concentration camp your in a limited free range distraction camp. Keep paying,praying and obeying and waving the flag and fearing others and taking divisional sides in elections and administrations that amount to nothing. It amounts to nothing. Your values, beliefs or lack there of are just demographics to be rewarded or exploited in a much larger finely oiled machine of reality making that benefits the wealth holders. They will appeal to your base instincts and concerns and humble human procreative notions and fantasies of hearth and home. You'll be lucky to get out affording a grave stone.

lmclain said...

Thank you 6:58...

I see now that I'm not alone.

I'm betting that you have a few guns, too.

Anonymous said...

So what's your answer 6:58