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Tech Giants, Once Seen as Saviors, Are Now Viewed as Threats

posted by martyb on Saturday October 14 2017, @12:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the follow-the-money dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

[...] tech companies are under fire for creating problems instead of solving them. At the top of the list is Russian interference in last year's presidential election. Social media might have originally promised liberation, but it proved an even more useful tool for stoking anger. The manipulation was so efficient and so lacking in transparency that the companies themselves barely noticed it was happening.

The election is far from the only area of concern. Tech companies have accrued a tremendous amount of power and influence. Amazon determines how people shop, Google how they acquire knowledge, Facebook how they communicate. All of them are making decisions about who gets a digital megaphone and who should be unplugged from the web.

Their amount of concentrated authority resembles the divine right of kings, and is sparking a backlash that is still gathering force.

Is it that the tech companies are creating problems for society as a whole, or merely disrupting the status quo for the old Powers-That-Be?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @01:31AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @01:31AM (#582473)

    You seem to be asserting that your thoughts form in a vacuum. Perhaps through sheer strength of will you ignore what people say to you and what the mass media tell you. If so, you're exceptional. Advertising is effective

    Is there problem with someone being influenced by someone else? If so, does that problem have any bearing on people not actually being able to do their "own thinking on the matter"? If so, what does that say about the US government-run school system, a system in which participation is effectively mandatory and whose funding is done at the point of the guns of US government agents? If so, which is more important to the average person living in the USA: the horrific mind-breaking US schools and related problems here inside the USA, or some foreign entity funding TV shows and buying Facebook ads?

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