The free internet makes us the product — we need to stop it
Summary
The practice of collecting personal data and then selling it to advertisers and analytics firms is not going to end because that’s been their business model from the outset.As long as we’re enjoying the fruits of a free internet that’s fundamentally being paid for by advertising, products like Facebook, Twitter, and other “free” sites are going to continue to do things that don’t always align with our interests.The new GDPR online privacy laws in Europe are an attempt to address this disconnect and claw back ownership of people’s personal information.Retail outlets, phone companies, and governments are already gathering people’s “dark data” — our “gait signatures” captured by motion sensors, our shopping patterns filmed by CCTVs, or our locations tracked by our cars.We can use them to instrument new types of systems to predict behavior and make our lives better, or they can be used to exploit and target us in ways that do us no good whatsoever.