BigTech is Out of Control with Privacy Invasion
Michael Spencer
A.I. Writer, researcher and curator - full-time Newsletter publication manager.
The State of BigTech Privacy
In recent months there have been even more revelations about how facial recognition, smart speaker transcription, and encrypted chat are all used by BigTech companies in a way that might not be safe for consumers and the general public.
Everything We Do Might Be Monitored
So imagine a world where everything we do online might be monitored, might be used to analyze our behavior and predict our behavior for Ads and to optimize AI systems designed to monetize us.
This includes humans listening to your Skype calls, Microsoft recently admitted. Smart speakers train their AI better by having human contractors listening to a select number of our interactions with Alexa and Google Assistant.
A Google boss recently said he has advised people to let guests know if they own a voice-activated smart speaker such as a Google Home or Google Mini device. I mean, how crazy is that?
As a futurist that specializes in privacy, however, it’s clear Facebook Messenger is not safe or secure, since Facebook plans to merge WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram to centralize encrypted chat to better monetize it.
An Internet Without Privacy is an Unethical Web
We already know our health, genetic and financial data (Privacy project) will be next on the hit list of data these big corporations will want to have without fair compensation to users and people.
Clearly, consumers will have a dystopian relationship with privacy in the next era of the data society: a world where we are optimized by AI for better services that can and will indeed be even more potentially invasive to our privacy and human rights. This goes on, it seems, until our very soul is exposed, not just through a Google search pattern but a 360 degree predictive analytics reductionism of all our tendencies by algorithms.
Now I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound to me like we will be living in a world of freedom. We are trading our freedom for convenience, letting our psyche and experiences be invaded, one app at a time.
Big Tech is Under Such Pressure that Privacy is Not a Consideration
Over 500 Googlers are urging their company not to bid on a cloud computing contract with the US Customs and Border Protection. This is because such a contract would lead to Google doing things that would be an abuse of human rights. As Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud grow fast to catch up to AWS and Microsoft Azure, corners will be cut and this is how the AI arms race does create a technological dark age.
There’s no independent ethics committee in the Cloud or international regulation in AI yet in 2019. So companies like Facebook keep exploiting our data to squeeze even higher ARPU (average revenue per user) out of us, even though many of us despise their services.
A new Google Assistant feature tracks the location of your loved ones and sends them reminders like picking up the groceries. Creepy or cool? Google Maps already has had this data on us and tracked us for a very long time.
Global Encrypted Chat Won’t Be Secure
Recently, Bloomberg reported that Facebook uses human contractors to transcribe app users’ audio messages — yet its privacy policy makes no clear mention of the fact that actual people might listen to your recordings.
Why is this troubling? Because Facebook is already a bad actor when it comes to privacy abuses and data-harvesting black mirror-like practices.
BigTech have nothing to worry about because the fines placed their way aren’t significant. It’s beyond belief but also a bit surprising how little Facebook’s playbook around privacy violations has changed, even after 18 months of controversy and a recent $5 billion settlement over the issue with the Federal Trade Commission. Their lawyers know it was a one-time thing. Like a kid going to the detention room, it was no big deal for Facebook, given their scale.
So in spite of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s protestations that Facebook has turned over a new leaf when it comes to protecting users’ information, it seems all Silicon Valley companies are in agreement that our private conversations can be given to human consultants to optimize their product and monetize us better.
For anyone that values their privacy, this is bad news. For every Skype call, Facebook Messenger interaction or smart speaker interaction, someone might be listening. That’s not the internet some older folk can easily tolerate.
The State is Merging with Technology Companies
Silicon Valley is normalizing this level of invasion and National Security institutions are only too happy to have this kind of deep access to user information should they require it. That’s the State and technology companies having too much power over people, without informed consent.
In 2019, we live in a world where we can only count on European privacy regulators to tell us what might not be a great idea regarding the privacy abuses of American led companies. It’s as if American citizens have given up on human rights like privacy or even freedom from censorship online.
More and more it appears Silicon Valley will indeed copy and continue practices that enable them to keep up with Chinese tech companies which operate in a technological surveillance state. This could warp the definitions of consumer rights, privacy, democracy, freedom of information and how social media is used by the state against people. That’s not how the internet was supposed to evolve.
Silicon Valley is Taking Us Towards the Totalitarian State
Facebook has a long history of privacy abuses, and this has deteriorated the trust of the public, but not their actual behavior on its apps and services. This means the biggest digital Ad companies can be dishonest and it doesn't really matter. Wall Street doesn’t care.
The Government bodies face significant lobbying and the news cycle is so saturated with news on Facebook, we’re all desensitized to their abuses as a data harvesting funnel — where our data is fostering an acceleration of wealth inequality. Our sharing online is basically making Silicon Valley managers and investors richer.
This is also because of the enormous power GAMFA companies have on the stock market, where tech companies are a favorite of Wall Street investors. Big Tech companies have financial pressures to shareholders to increase ARPU and the growth of user numbers by whatever means possible. This has also created conditions where our future human rights online might very well be in jeopardy.
Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon (among others) must all be judged by the kind of practices they are deploying to create even better AI: algorithms based on our interactions with their personal assistants, services, chat and communication apps.
We aren’t just the product, we are the guinea pigs in AI built to addict, use and steal our patterns for even better AI. Such is the app economy now in an era of dark technological manipulation of the public. Curiously, this is now being normalized. But is America like China?
This is why broadly speaking as a futurist, I’m worried about the state of human privacy online and with emerging AI-human systems. We aren’t creating an internet that’s safe or that will keep our human rights sacred for future generations of users (products, data, monetization potential) because these companies care about profits, not people.
With regards to Facebook Messenger, everything we do is transcripted by AI. There are records of everything. The chats were transcribed by artificial intelligence and the contractors were brought in to check the accuracy, the report said. WhatsApp and Messenger will be merged into the biggest surveillance and Ad system in the West in Facebook’s attempt to create a super app of the level of Tencent’s WeChat.
ByteDance already has violated the privacy of children’s data in its viral app TikTok. This is because Google and Facebook have set a precedent of how BigTech can behave towards people and consumers. China is copying Silicon Valley just as Silicon Valley is trying to keep up with China.
China can be a totalitarian regime with a bizarre implementation of socialism that will actually morph American democracy by the association of the most powerful technology companies.
Big Tech Could End the State As We Know It
How this plays out is not up to North American consumers or the general public. It will depend on how Silicon Valley technology companies are audited, probed, broken up and regulated in the future — if at all. We stand at the intersection of a world of convenience and dark tech. Which road will we choose?
The future of privacy is no privacy. In exchange for addictive apps and convenience, we are giving our data away for free without even a fair exchange.
This might be the biggest scam of our times and what will drive unimaginable wealth inequality in the decades ahead. Privacy is a symbol of our rights to share in the profits, and those rights are disappearing as we chat online and thumb our lives away in apps.
Follow a Futurist, sign up to receive blog-rolls about breaking news in Business and Technology & related Op-Eds.