"Under the headline ‘This Is Why You Should Care About Privacy,’ Shoshana Zuboff, author of Surveillance Capitalism, urged New York Times readers to be alarmed: ‘The last 20 years have seen, especially the last decade, the wholesale destruction of privacy.’
She warned that big tech’s vast knowledge of individuals, stemming from their massive accumulation of data, allows them to do more than just target advertising; they can create sophisticated targeting mechanisms. She provided several examples, including subliminal cues, psychological microtargeting, real-time rewards and punishments, algorithmic recommendation tools, and engineered social comparison dynamics.
All of these tactics are designed to capture users’ attention, maximize their time on platforms and keep them engaged in order to influence their decisions. Zuboff emphasized the dire consequences of such omniscient power, linking it to the spreading of disinformation on social media, unnecessary Covid deaths and the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021 by supporters of the Republican president Donald Trump. ‘These are all connected points in one process,’ Zuboff asserted, ‘and the process is called “how knowledge becomes power.”’
In a similar tone and with a similar message, in Privacy Is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data (2020), the philosophy and ethics scholar Carissa Véliz states: ‘They are watching us. They know I am writing these words. They know you are reading them. Governments and hundreds of corporations are spying on you and me, and everyone we know. Every minute of every day.’ Véliz highlights that these entities are not just passive observers: ‘They want to know who we are, what we think, where we hurt. They want to predict and influence our behaviour.’
All of which sounds like the hyperbolic claims advanced by the tech giants themselves, such as when Eric Schmidt, then Google CEO, said that Google ‘more or less’ knows what people are thinking: ‘With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.’
These warnings encapsulate the flavour of the contemporary discussion about privacy. Through accessing our data, corporations and governments can know what we are thinking and feeling, and even change our minds. Elections are fought and lost, democracies die, and so do people. There is a lot at stake. But many of the claims don’t stand up."
The larger point remains, though. AI and data center energy and water use is surging, and we are only at the beginning of this whole thing. For years, data centers energy use stayed below 1% and we were told not to worry. In countries like Ireland, data center energy use is now already over 20%
Bonus: He worked DIRECTLY for Hillary’s ‘16 campaign, removing inconvenient TRUTHS from Google search results and sidestepping fair election laws to #astroturf and cheat her into office.