Owning Data Means Owning the Future
Facebook owns your data. We should be very, very concerned.
Facebook Owns Your Data
Mark Zuckerberg recently declared the Facebook platform will be re-designed in order to make privacy a primary and fundamental concern. While Facebook’s past indiscretions caused Zuckerberg’s public epiphany, Facebook’s lawyers have declared that users have no right to privacy.
Facebook’s dominance is dependent upon its current ownership of users’ data. This has resulted in a strong imbalance in control over privacy in favour of Facebook rather than its users. How do we take back control of our data, and ultimately, our privacy?
You are not the Product, Rather, You are the Abandoned Carcass
It is a well-worn cliché, but quite appropriately applied to Facebook: “If you are not paying for it, then you are the product.” But Shoshana Zuboff, a professor at professor at Harvard Business School, goes further in her recent book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: “You are not the product. You are the abandoned carcass.”
Zuboff states that in an age where almost all user actions — clicks, likes, dislikes, friends, affiliations — are captured as data, our current form of information capitalism “produces rewards and…
