The modern world has given us more than we could ever ask for, but has taken away our personal freedoms, one way or another. Anyone who loves Google and has an account on it should know that this company is storing his or her personal information with his or her own consent. The search history, any shopping purchase etc. are stored on this site’s cloud. Is this a good or a bad thing? Stay tuned to find out!
Why are they doing this?
The answer is simple: for profit. That’s what surveillance capitalism is all about. They take away your privacy with your own consent and offer you something in return, which is less profitable for you, for example their “free of use” service. As a wise man once said, “nothing is for free in this world”, therefore, if you see that someone offers you something for free you should think about a plot twist coming up. Remember, if you are not seeing any product being sold to you, it’s clear that you are the product. In other words, everything that’s free has a high price you must and will pay for.
The bad
Google isn’t the only one doing this, even if they were the pioneer. Facebook, for example, is another good example for this scenario. The truth is that people don’t read the terms & conditions of using sites, as their scenarios are “ok, they are storing some data about me, so what?”. Well, the problem here is that they create models based on your data so that you will get served more and more relevant ads and you will buy more and more. “We buy things we don’t need in order to impress people we don’t like” is becoming more and more accurate.
The question here is where will lead all this or how far we can go. With more data stored than ever, these companies know more about us than our best friends or even then ourselves. Furthermore, they are able to predict our shopping behaviour or even the social relations. Using Artificial Intelligence, they can predict what is going to happen next in our lives and our response to that. For example, if we are going through a serious break-up, the Facebook algorithm knows it and shows us either people or mental health solutions. If we click and read a post regarding a subject, it will feed us with more ads regarding that particular topic. It is indeed a feed-feed. We are fed with Ads, while we feed the machine with more information about us.
We don’t have a private life anymore, and that’s an important aspect. The so called privacy doesn’t exist anymore, at least for the ones who are on these platforms. However, there’s a creepy thing called a “shadow profile”, through which profiles are created for the ones that don’t use the Internet but are acquaintances with the ones that do.
The good
The good side of this surveillance capitalism has been shown in 2020, when the COVID has spread everywhere. People from all over the world have been infected and many died. However, persons from the IT and AI sectors mobilised and created applications that could inform people about the spread of this virus in different zones. Moreover, the COVID vaccine was invented using AI.
It is clear that the advantages cannot be denied and everything has its own good and bad sides. The “necessary evil” is, nevertheless, turning into something amazing. The future of AI and surveillance capitalism depends on the people that have the power and everyone hopes they will use it for greater purposes. Otherwise, the world we’re living in will not exist anymore as we’ve imagined it and it could turn out into something extremely bad, instead of good. Just like Nick Bostrom predicted. Hopefully, his theory will always remain a theory and AI will not get human consciousness.
Therefore, is this whole progress necessary?
It’s true that being surveilled isn’t really an easy thing to digest. However, it’s a necessary evil we should live with. Terrorist attacks were detected with the use of AI and this is a great advantage. While we lost a part of our freedom by freely agreeing with this happening to us, the advantages outcome the disadvantages.
People may say that AI stole their jobs. But so did industrialization. It’s all about adapting to the new era. What about the ones that can’t adapt because they did the exact same thing their whole lives? Well, not so many jobs have been lost, in other words, robots haven’t “stolen” that many jobs, yet at least. So they can orient themselves towards other working places which may be a better fit for them.
When the world is more divided than ever, it’s impossible to know which is the good side. The Social Media and search engines have created this discrepancy between people’s visions. That’s because each of us have a different reality of what’s happening in the world, because of our news feeds and because of articles written online. For example, if we search for “Obama was a great president”, there will be tons of articles supporting that. On the contrary, if we search for “Obama was a bad president”, the same thing will happen. Then political news will appear in our feed. That’s what really happened and that’s why it’s so hard to break the spell we’ve fallen under.
Auxilio’s mission
In a world where your data is being stored in order to be used later “against” you, Auxilio wants to help you secure more safely from your devices. That’s why data privacy is such an important aspect to us. By securing our site, we create the perfect environment for your data privacy and protection, so that you will feel safe with us. Our secure servers don’t leave any room for data theft, no matter its type.
To sum up
Surveillance capitalism is the usage of an app’s users data in order to gain profit. This is such a big deal because there’s no privacy anymore and all this happens with our own consent. Even people who don’t use the Internet have “shadow profiles”, just because of their interaction with someone who does. How far will this all go? Nobody knows. Nevertheless, there are companies that refuse to share your data with anyone else and they do take this mission very seriously. Do you want to find more about our security systems and how you can protect your data while browsing? Sign up now!
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