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Thread: "Today’s tech oligarchs are worse than the robber barons"

  1. #121
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    It makes both good things and bad things possible. Maybe more bad than good.
    I only see the bad, but I'm an old crank.

  2. #122
    Am I the only who thinks the US-based social media & the "opt out" orientation of our businesses toward privacy have made much of the technology we use to interact with each other (Facebook, Google, etc) and use in our everyday lives a fairly serious privacy risk?

    Working in IT Sec, the more I read about GDPR and it's requirements to ensure privacy - think of it as HIPAA for everyday life - the more I realize the privacy of Americans was either mostly ignored, or more blatantly, we've been sold to the highest bidder or worse (Cambridge Analytica).

    I basically stopped using FB when the CA story came out.

    There's still a demand for the connectivity that Facebook provides, but they're so far behind the curve on security I don't think it's recoverable, and for completely different reasons, youngsters are going away in masses. Looking for a EU-based alternative that will take privacy seriously, which I think a lot of Americans would be interested in hoping onto.

    This all reminds me it was the Germans who discovered Google was capturing information on home WiFi networks via Google Maps' and their Streetview rolling cameras.

    I wish I had confidence America had the political will to address privacy. I just don't think it exists, and leadership on IT Sec for the masses will have to come from outside the US.

  3. #123
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    Am I the only who thinks the US-based social media & the "opt out" orientation of our businesses toward privacy have made much of the technology we use to interact with each other (Facebook, Google, etc) and use in our everyday lives a fairly serious privacy risk?

    Working in IT Sec, the more I read about GDPR and it's requirements to ensure privacy - think of it as HIPAA for everyday life - the more I realize the privacy of Americans was either mostly ignored, or more blatantly, we've been sold to the highest bidder or worse (Cambridge Analytica).

    I basically stopped using FB when the CA story came out.

    There's still a demand for the connectivity that Facebook provides, but they're so far behind the curve on security I don't think it's recoverable, and for completely different reasons, youngsters are going away in masses. Looking for a EU-based alternative that will take privacy seriously, which I think a lot of Americans would be interested in hoping onto.

    This all reminds me it was the Germans who discovered Google was capturing information on home WiFi networks via Google Maps' and their Streetview rolling cameras.

    I wish I had confidence America had the political will to address privacy. I just don't think it exists, and leadership on IT Sec for the masses will have to come from outside the US.
    I agree. Although I still use Facebook I’m much more careful about it than I used to be. I’m also not sure that makes any difference.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  4. #124
    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    Am I the only who thinks the US-based social media & the "opt out" orientation of our businesses toward privacy have made much of the technology we use to interact with each other (Facebook, Google, etc) and use in our everyday lives a fairly serious privacy risk?

    Working in IT Sec, the more I read about GDPR and it's requirements to ensure privacy - think of it as HIPAA for everyday life - the more I realize the privacy of Americans was either mostly ignored, or more blatantly, we've been sold to the highest bidder or worse (Cambridge Analytica).

    I basically stopped using FB when the CA story came out.

    There's still a demand for the connectivity that Facebook provides, but they're so far behind the curve on security I don't think it's recoverable, and for completely different reasons, youngsters are going away in masses. Looking for a EU-based alternative that will take privacy seriously, which I think a lot of Americans would be interested in hoping onto.

    This all reminds me it was the Germans who discovered Google was capturing information on home WiFi networks via Google Maps' and their Streetview rolling cameras.

    I wish I had confidence America had the political will to address privacy. I just don't think it exists, and leadership on IT Sec for the masses will have to come from outside the US.
    I'm afraid the genie is out of the bottle on this one.

    Aside from social media it is over two decades in of global and widespread use of email and it is STILL not even remotely secure and no viable options are getting support or adoption.


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  5. #125
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I agree. Although I still use Facebook I’m much more careful about it than I used to be. I’m also not sure that makes any difference.
    Unless you're only using FB from a single computer and never uploading any photos to it or commenting on anything, your information is leaking.

  6. #126
    Quote Originally Posted by U-Ute View Post
    Unless you're only using FB from a single computer and never uploading any photos to it or commenting on anything, your information is leaking.
    How bout if you don't have a facebook? Of course, my information is probably leaking in other places. Like here.

  7. #127
    Quote Originally Posted by sancho View Post
    How bout if you don't have a facebook? Of course, my information is probably leaking in other places. Like here.

    U-Ute has been selling your info to the highest bidder, which strangely enough is Mary Kay.

  8. #128
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    U-Ute has been selling your info to the highest bidder, which strangely enough is Mary Kay.
    Hmm. Any way I get a pink cadillac out of this?

  9. #129
    Here's some really encouraging news - California passed the most robust online privacy law in the nation: https://slate.com/technology/2018/06...e-country.html

    All the big Tech giants opposed the measure (presumably because they'll need to find alternate sources of revenue).

  10. #130
    Not oligarchs exactly, but rather the people who invest in tech ... a fascinating article:

    https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...sm-singularity

    How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse

    "Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape."

  11. #131
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    "Today’s tech oligarchs are worse than the robber barons"

    This is wonky but interesting. It’s behind The NY Times paywall but if you have enough free reads left I recommend it.

    Amazon’s Antitrust Antagonist Has a Breakthrough Idea

    With a single scholarly article, Lina Khan, 29, has reframed decades of monopoly law.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/t...an-amazon.html

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  12. #132
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Alex Jones begging the government to fix his problem for him is some funny irony.

  13. #133
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Donald Trump must bust Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google monopolies like Teddy Roosevelt.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...mn/2049321002/

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  14. #134
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    This is interesting.

    European privacy search engines aim to challenge Google

    https://www.denverpost.com/2018/11/2...ngines-google/

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  15. #135
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    This is interesting.

    European privacy search engines aim to challenge Google

    https://www.denverpost.com/2018/11/2...ngines-google/
    There is an American company that has tried the same thing: https://duckduckgo.com/

    It is hard to change the behavior of the average person who doesn't understand what is going on though.

  16. #136
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Hmmm.

    Facebook has said it will end a controversial market research program in which the company paid users to install a mobile app that tracked their activity and data.

    In a statement given to TechCrunch and other websites, the company said that its "Facebook Research" app, which paid volunteers between the ages of 13 and 35 up to $20 a month to access nearly all their data, would no longer be available on iOS.

    The news came just hours after TechCrunch's exposé on the Facebook app, which used an enterprise certificate on iPhones to get people to sideload the app and skirt Apple's App Store rules. In the same announcement, the company also took issue with the way its "Project Atlas" program had been reported, claiming:
    https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/30...-research-app/

    Then this:

    Facebook is facing the wrath of Apple today for misusing an enterprise certificate meant for internal use to get Facebook users to sideload a data harvesting "Facebook Research" app that violates App Store policies, and as it turns out, Google has been doing the exact same thing.

    According to TechCrunch, Google has been distributing an app called "Screenwise Meter" using the enterprise certificate installation method since 2012.
    https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/30...e-certificate/

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  17. #137
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    Hmmm...
    There's a great documentary at Sundance about what Cambridge Analytica did, based on data from Facebook.

    The Internet giants absolutely need much more regulation. The comparison to the Robber Barrons is apt.

  18. #138
    This editorial makes me think that we need to have more Bill and Melinda Gates in the world.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/o...-feminist.html
    I used to think Bill was a pretty evil guy.

  19. #139
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Evidence Contradicts Right Wing Narrative Of Tech Censorship And Bias

    https://thehill.com/opinion/technolo...rship-and-bias



    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  20. #140
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Facebook/Instagram nuke a few accounts.

    Instagram and its parent company Facebook announced Thursday that they were banning conspiracist Alex Jones and other far-right users under the platforms' policies against dangerous individuals and organizations. The Silicon Valley giant removed several accounts aligned with the far-right mediasphere: former Breitbart figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos; white nationalist personality Laura Loomer; former congressional candidate and anti-Semite Paul Nehlen; and Paul Joseph Watson, one of Jones’ proteges at the conspiracy site Infowars. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s account was also nixed.

    https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/...r-right-people

  21. #141
    Quote Originally Posted by U-Ute View Post
    Facebook/Instagram nuke a few accounts.
    Maybe this should be in the Political chit-chat forum, but the social media giants have a big role to play if we are to avoid getting manipulated from abroad, and if we can bring our national discourse back toward a reasonable tone.

    I don't know how much faith I have in Facebook's pivot toward privacy, but with GDPR and other nations leading the way on this issue, the big US social media titans need to start taking privacy and guardrails of social decency seriously, and stop allowing their platforms to be used in the decline of our national cohesion.

  22. #142

  23. #143

  24. #144
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    I hadn't realized the extent of their acquisitions.

    In total, Wu reports, “Facebook managed to string together 67 unchallenged acquisitions, which seems impressive unless you consider that Amazon undertook 91 and Google got away with 214 (a few of which were conditioned). In this way, the tech industry became essentially composed of just a few giant trusts: Google for search and related industries, Facebook for social media, Amazon for online commerce.” And these new tech monsters have a one-two punch that Standard Oil lacked: not only do they control immense wealth and important industries, but their fields of operation – which give them enormous control over communications, including communications about politics – also give them direct political power that in many ways exceeds that of previous monopolies.
    https://www.amazon.com/Social-Media-...language=en_US

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  25. #145
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    What Do the Oligarchs Have in Mind for Us?

    https://quillette.com/2019/06/19/wha...n-mind-for-us/

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  26. #146
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    I was listening to a podcast recently and learned that the "23AndMe" business model has nothing to do with finding your ancestry or medical conditions.

    No, they want to make the largest genetic database they can sell to companies.

  27. #147
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    The White House is reportedly moving to regulate “anti-conservative” social media

    This seems to run counter to the belief of corporations as people who have a first amendment right in a post Citizens United world.
    Last edited by U-Ute; 08-12-2019 at 09:26 AM.

  28. #148
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Tech has learned from finance (initially pioneered by aerospace?) how to use the revolving door between the public and private sectors to secure lucrative contracts.

    Inside Amazon And Silicon Valley's JEDI Mind Trick On The Pentagon

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