[governance] Facebook Does Mind Control

[michael gurstein]

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/tech/2014/06/30/facebook-under-fire-over--cre
epy--secret.html?cid=BP_RSS_TECHNOLOGY_1_Facebookunderfireovercreepysecret_3
00614

The issue here of course, is not one fairly limited social research project
but what this demonstrates concerning the potential deep and pervasive power
and influence of a/the major Internet corporations. Their wealth, global
reach, technical skill, effective monopoly position, extremely wide range of
areas of active use, and more or less complete lack of regulation/means to
ensure some conformance with the public good however it might be defined, is
something that has not been seen before although there are some comparisons
with the role of the (railway and energy) trusts in the pre-WWI period.

These companies have far outreached the capacity of any single government to
regulate their behaviour or their influence/power including over public
policy analysis, discussion and decision making.

This above has to be seen as apiece with the capacity of Google's control
over its search algorithm to control and manipulate the access to the range
of human knowledge, and what we know from Snowden concerning the capacity of
the NSA (and presumably other spy agencies) for pervasive surveillance,
particularized individual information to a very high degree of granularity
and ultimately the capacity to intervene into the range of software and
hardware instrumentality on which virtually all of the transactions and
interactions of daily life have come to find their platform. 

But now, with the veil having been lifted for a moment where can/do we go
with this knowledge?

M


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