“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
Facebook and Google are not evil. They are made up of ordinary people with ordinary likes, dislikes, biases, histories, failings. Those people don't have to be evil or wrong or even misguided to give rise to this situation. No matter how much they try to (and want to!) do the right thing, they are just trying to make money. Everyone's economic incentive is to make more money. The shareholders demand it!
Economics is what underlies all of this, and it is completely inescapable. The market is rewarding those who track users and profile them in order to predict their behavior, jam ads in their face, or sell them stuff. Entities that do this make more money than entities that don't. Like, a lot more. $100billion/yr more. So. You are going to get more companies finding more ways to track and profile people to figure out how to make more money. Facebook and Google and Twitter and ad networks and everyone else can be absolute angels in their hearts, but the sheer mathematics of economics is like a pervasive wind that just keeps pushing them in this direction.
You either push back, HARD, with your feet and with the law, or you suffer the consequences along with everyone else.
> Facebook and Google are not evil. [...] Everyone's economic incentive is to make more money.
I don't buy the claim that everyone just wants more money above all else and you seem to agree if you're claiming that people can "push back, HARD". We all have the capacity to place ethics above money. Never questioning the impact of your actions--especially when it affects the lives of millions--and simply doing what greed dictates, is indeed a form of malevolence, or "evil"... the 20th century is a testament to that.
Furthermore, if a company's leadership is filled to the brim with these unethical and greedy people, I believe it's acceptable to call the company evil as well.
Tech just needs to stop building tech for tech's sake and start thinking deeply about humans... and holding each other accountable.
> Furthermore, if a company's leadership is filled to the brim with these unethical and greedy people, I believe it's acceptable to call the company evil as well.
I think that's fair. My point was that Facebook and Google and others don't have to be evil to give rise to this situation, economics just does. That, of course, doesn't mean they aren't.
Furthermore, a company's leadership swearing up and down that they "aren't evil" does mean a hill of beans if they give rise to evil through their own economic actions.
Didn't really expect downvotes. Perhaps it wasn't entirely clear from what I wrote, but what I meant was:
Facebook and Google don't necessarily have to be evil for this to happen.
My point that this is a consequence of economics, and statistically speaking, no matter how nice of people you put in these positions, they are going to tend towards making more money. Surveillance makes money. So surveillance is what you get.
That is orthogonal to the question of whether they actually ARE evil.
Just because you can do something, does not mean that you should do it.
People must apply the same creativity, intelligence, and forethought as they apply to designing & building of their technology to considering the consequences of it's existence and use.
And then take appropriate actions to prevent bad consequences and/or misuse. This must include some decisions to not build it in the first place.
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
Facebook and Google are not evil. They are made up of ordinary people with ordinary likes, dislikes, biases, histories, failings. Those people don't have to be evil or wrong or even misguided to give rise to this situation. No matter how much they try to (and want to!) do the right thing, they are just trying to make money. Everyone's economic incentive is to make more money. The shareholders demand it!
Economics is what underlies all of this, and it is completely inescapable. The market is rewarding those who track users and profile them in order to predict their behavior, jam ads in their face, or sell them stuff. Entities that do this make more money than entities that don't. Like, a lot more. $100billion/yr more. So. You are going to get more companies finding more ways to track and profile people to figure out how to make more money. Facebook and Google and Twitter and ad networks and everyone else can be absolute angels in their hearts, but the sheer mathematics of economics is like a pervasive wind that just keeps pushing them in this direction.
You either push back, HARD, with your feet and with the law, or you suffer the consequences along with everyone else.