Power of Data and its implications to a common person and small businesses
An eye-opening content in this video to watch that has #Amazon, #Google, #Facebook, and #Apple CEOs testifying and answering some very serious allegations from congressmen based on individual investigations. What intrigued me to keep watching until the end of this 7:30 Hrs recording is the fundamental of the concerns raised to these bosses whose companies combined valuations are multi trillions $$ and owns the world's most powerful #digitalplatforms.
Although this is not the first time they are testifying to congressmen however the breadth and depth of the allegations raise concerns that we all should be aware of while advocating digital technologies and these incredible companies. I am surprised why Microsoft wasn't on the list and here is the summary of all the allegations that were made for helping you skip the 7:30 hours video to jump to the point.
What are these allegations ?
1. Apple''s monopoly on AppStore to delist its competitor's apps and using 3P app developers data for building their own app more competitive.
2. Google's monopoly of using cookies from various websites from their browsers or android system to route traffics ultimately on their own products and for thus benefiting for their AdWords business which is Google's major revenue-driving business model.
3. Facebook's monopoly of using its digital platform to use its competitor's application features and data to understand their strategy, tracking, and finally acquire them when they grow bigger. Benefiting from negative contents that engage millions of users across words by ad and digital marketing as the larger the engagement on content = larger the ad revenue
4. Amazon's monopoly of using data of its 3P seller's product, price and market insights to build competitive products under their private level, and destroy these small companies businesses slowly by offering their private label products at competitive prices and on top ranks on their platform. Other allegations are related to unethical competitions by the extra price for top rankings etc.
I do not know about the authenticity of investigations or the truthfulness of evidence provided by these congressmen in this hearing however what I do know is that these companies have enormous power in their hand that controls multi-trillion $$ of economies and their digital platforms shape the sentiments of billions of users across the world. It will be very difficult to imagine a world without Google which in my view is the digital consciousness of the internet, without Amazon that is global digital baazar, without Facebook which is the digital manifestation of human expressions and Apple which is augmented digital imagination of humans. While millions and billions of people across the world have empowered themselves from these digital platforms in both social and professional worlds it will be no sense to look back or even talk about the pros and cons of digital platform advantages given their benefits to humankind.
What is the fundamental basis of these concern??
No matter how relevant these digital platforms are still they exist with a fundamental concern that is " Control of data" when everything is moving from analog to digital. When there were no whatsapp, facebook, google map, uber or if i can go further no smartphone, our behavior was more analogous like an hourglass. It is relatively easy to see an hourglass and perceive the time compare to a digital watch with reference to the cerebrum activity of our brain. Back then we would be waiting for hours at a bus stop without getting agitated or bothered to track pick up taxi like we do today right after booking a Uber car that has ETA of 3 mins. We would be convinced from a handwritten address paper to go outstation or even a foreign country without hesitating or fearing and a PSTN landline call was enough and our lives was macromanaged with first breakfast in the morning while reading a printed newspaper and then office job and later family time with kids and dinner. We were more influenced by inward power than outward and the outward has a very minimum level of control on our sentiments.
What then changed in last 30 years?
We fragmented our time by augmenting communication and digital technologies to start micromanaging of our time through these digital technologies and the exponential growth of computing power further added the speed of micromanagement to micro micromanagement. What that means is now these digital technologies have an exponential amount of power to change, shape, and manage our sentiments at a microlevel to all places of our activities. We handed over the inward power along with outward completely and these technologies started controlling them.
Who wins and who loose?
As these companies hold enormous power through micromanaging our data and sentiments, that poses threats to when and how this power is abused, misguided, or biased under political influence and the path forward is quite dark. In my other note to some post, I mentioned that on one side these threats will continue to grow but on the other side, the users will be more aware and start controlling their data for their own purpose only. I am very confident that the time is not far when we will soon be seeing options in all digital platforms to completely deactivate personalized feeds features with a low level and mid-level where the users will be controlling the level of data these digital platforms can track or record.