Senator Al Franken actually said something intellegent recently - from Wired:
AL FRANKEN JUST GAVE THE SPEECH BIG TECH HAS BEEN DREADING
Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) delivered some of the sharpest criticism yet about the dangers of tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon during a speech on Wednesday, encouraging regulators, as well as lawmakers in both parties, to better police the market power of dominant online platforms.
“Everyone is rightfully focused on Russian manipulation of social media, but as lawmakers it is incumbent on us to ask the broader questions: How did big tech come to control so many aspects of our lives?” Franken asked in a speech to a Washington think tank. A handful of companies decide what Americans “see, read, and buy,” dominating access to information and facilitating the spread of disinformation, he added.
A bit more:
Franken argued that the same control over consumers that facilitated the spread of Russian propaganda on social media also helps Facebook and Google siphon advertising revenue from other publishers and helps Amazon dictate terms to content creators and smaller sellers. Tech giants are incentivized to disregard consumer privacy, Franken noted. “Accumulating massive troves of information isn’t just a side project for them. It’s their whole business model,” he said. “We are not their customers, we are their product.”
So true - emphasis mine. With my new phone (which I dearly love by the way!) I am constantly getting advertising and "helpful notices" from any and all places I visit on the web. I will google something about a TV show on my laptop and all of a sudden, my cell phone is sending me the latest gossip about actors staring in that show. I have to drill down through many many layers to throttle this feed down to a dull roar. There is no OFF switch to be found...
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