"There are no programs that I can run on my computer...."
Major generation gap and sophistication gap here. This is why the issue of data ownership took so long to get traction. For most people, data is invisible and using it is magic. The only difference people noticed when they lost control of their data was that they could suddenly access it everywhere!
The difference between owning your data and not owning it is like the difference between living in a country with civil liberties and legal protections versus living in a country without civil liberties and effective legal protections. The difference is abstract and meaningless until it becomes a matter of life and death, when you end up in a situation that you only thought existed in paranoid fantasies.
The invisible change from owning your data to being owned by Facebook and Google happened to correspond to a very noticeable improvement in convenience for users. As in more dramatic examples from history, an authoritarian regime has delivered in a way that its predecessor could not, and as a result, people have embraced it. It doesn't mean that people accept its ideology. The way we think about Facebook, the way anybody thinks about Facebook who engages in these conversations about web industry economics, and therefore how Facebook thinks about itself, is much darker and more sinister than the aspect of Facebook that users embrace. Users embrace the effect that Facebook has had on their lives, which is overwhelmingly positive. The side we see is not something they embrace; it is something they have barely begun to consider. I have faith that they will react to it as we do.
We are not more sensitive to freedom than they are; we are merely face to face with the problem because we like to imagine ourselves in Facebook's shoes :-) We imagine what it's like to have that power; we are able to think in a predatory, profit-oriented mindset; we understand the temptation. We don't have to be evil to see the temptations that Facebook faces. And we understand that a person can withstand temptation, but a corporation cannot. A corporation cannot withstand the temptation to make money. Only as long as its profits exceed the wildest demands, anyway. When profits flag, a corporation will collapse to the moral lowest common denominator, because the people who resist immoral profits will be replaced.
Like I said, we don't have to worry that the average Facebook user is okay with the dire scenario of Facebook fully and amorally exploiting its power. It's completely imaginary at the moment. Those who worry about it worry alone, but only because we are uniquely positioned to imagine it. We can make other people understand. Right now Facebook's major sin has been to appropriate a dangerous and therefore immoral amount of power. They haven't abused it yet, not the way they could. I think with the right kind of education, users will revolt and demand rights and control before Facebook breaks down and really abuses the terrifying power it has amassed.
Major generation gap and sophistication gap here. This is why the issue of data ownership took so long to get traction. For most people, data is invisible and using it is magic. The only difference people noticed when they lost control of their data was that they could suddenly access it everywhere!
The difference between owning your data and not owning it is like the difference between living in a country with civil liberties and legal protections versus living in a country without civil liberties and effective legal protections. The difference is abstract and meaningless until it becomes a matter of life and death, when you end up in a situation that you only thought existed in paranoid fantasies.
The invisible change from owning your data to being owned by Facebook and Google happened to correspond to a very noticeable improvement in convenience for users. As in more dramatic examples from history, an authoritarian regime has delivered in a way that its predecessor could not, and as a result, people have embraced it. It doesn't mean that people accept its ideology. The way we think about Facebook, the way anybody thinks about Facebook who engages in these conversations about web industry economics, and therefore how Facebook thinks about itself, is much darker and more sinister than the aspect of Facebook that users embrace. Users embrace the effect that Facebook has had on their lives, which is overwhelmingly positive. The side we see is not something they embrace; it is something they have barely begun to consider. I have faith that they will react to it as we do.
We are not more sensitive to freedom than they are; we are merely face to face with the problem because we like to imagine ourselves in Facebook's shoes :-) We imagine what it's like to have that power; we are able to think in a predatory, profit-oriented mindset; we understand the temptation. We don't have to be evil to see the temptations that Facebook faces. And we understand that a person can withstand temptation, but a corporation cannot. A corporation cannot withstand the temptation to make money. Only as long as its profits exceed the wildest demands, anyway. When profits flag, a corporation will collapse to the moral lowest common denominator, because the people who resist immoral profits will be replaced.
Like I said, we don't have to worry that the average Facebook user is okay with the dire scenario of Facebook fully and amorally exploiting its power. It's completely imaginary at the moment. Those who worry about it worry alone, but only because we are uniquely positioned to imagine it. We can make other people understand. Right now Facebook's major sin has been to appropriate a dangerous and therefore immoral amount of power. They haven't abused it yet, not the way they could. I think with the right kind of education, users will revolt and demand rights and control before Facebook breaks down and really abuses the terrifying power it has amassed.
Am I too optimistic?