Dave5

Surveillance capitalism (thanks Sheryl (she implemented the model at both Google and Facebook)) is the root of a bunch of evils in big tech. It’s a deeply user unfriendly business model that needs to end.

Here’s the “Privacy First” pitch: whatever is going on with all of the problems of the internet, all of these problems are made worse by commercial surveillance.

• Worried your kid is being made miserable through targeted ads? No surveillance, no targeting.
• Worried your uncle was turned into a Qanon by targeted disinformation? No surveillance, no targeting. Worried that racialized people are being targeted for discriminatory hiring or lending by algorithms? No surveillance, no targeting.
• Worried that nation-state actors are exploiting surveillance data to attack elections, politicians, or civil servants? No surveillance, no surveillance data.
• Worried that AI is being trained on your personal data? No surveillance, no training data.
• Worried that the news is being killed by monopolists who exploit the advantage conferred by surveillance ads to cream 51% off every ad-dollar? No surveillance, no surveillance ads.
• Worried that social media giants maintain their monopolies by filling up commercial moats with surveillance data? No surveillance, no surveillance moat.