Thoughts and Reflection

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism By Shoshana Zuboff

Zuboff poses a very thoughoutprovoking question on whether or not we are able to peacefully co-exist with "smart" techonology. It is so painfully true that nearly all digitally scripted contracts known as "terms-of-service agreements" are often times if not always agreed upon without any real inquiry or thought to what or where the information they collect will be stored or used. As a regular consumer I like to think that there is a level of basic moral and ethical respect that companies adhere by simply for the sake of it, if not for their public image or that there are reliable legistlations in place that restrict private businesses from exploiting my data, but I know that there are or were a lot of debate on whether the government should have a say on what private businesses do. The most prevalent but, pardon my language, idioticly poor example of the government's attempt at exactly that is the bipartisan passing of the bill that banned TikTok on the false basis that it was sending American data to China's communist party???? I digress.However, Zuboff continues to address how even essential home appliances like the thermostat forces one to agree to these long-winded contracts otherwise they would face a compromised system that will cause detrimental issues. Furthermore, Zuboff delves into a profound concept known as the serveillance capitalism where companies in the face of competitive pressues will seek to manipulate our behavior and desires through what Zuboff describes as instrumentarianism. By analyzing our personal experiences these parasites are able to inject a customized flow that they know will influence us. What's crazy to me was I always thought the saying "If it's free, then you are the product" was the most accurate summerization of how these industries operate, but after how Zuboff denounce it with an even more disgusting truth--of how surveillance capitalism does not see us as the product but rather raw-source-material and that the real customers are enterprises that further's the loop and extortion of the system--then I have realized I have been blind all this time.

Facebook Got Rid of Racial Ad Categories. Or Did It? By Jon Keegan

My first impression of Keegan's article was "wow" like I knew Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg was problematic from what I've seen from other news articles, but this is insane. The consistent lack of transparency and accountability for their product is getting old. To follow up on what Till Speicher said in his quote, "The approach that Facebook seems to be pushing is not really sufficient to prevent discrimination...If you're determined, you can find some way around that." With a problem as big as discrimination with racially targetted ads, surely with all the profit and talented team that meta, one of the biggest FANG companies out there, has more than enough capable people to resolve this issue in a respectable way. It's unbelievable that something so abhorant continues to reside in your product and all you have to say for yourself is "it's not our problem".