Facebook and Google forcing countries to trust them
Please have a look at this scary title, just appeared on the Web:
If you really believe that it says “Facebook is sharing its data with Google as the search giant reviews potential Russian meddling in the 2016 election”… please read again.
What is really written in the title of that piece is:
“Verification that democracy works as advertised is now officially delegated to corporations that nobody elected, but may basically declare whatever THEY want about the data THEY hold. Governments, Open Government, Open Data… don’t really matter anymore”.
This should really worry you. Even if Facebook were not as easy as it is to “be weaponized to spread misinformation and fraudulent content”. And even if voting weren’t already so ridiculously hard in the USA, or so snobbed in many “first world” countries.
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
To this end, I have already shared more than a million words on this blog, without any paywall or user tracking, and am sharing the next million through a newsletter, also without any paywall.
The more direct support I get, the more I can continue to inform for free parents, teachers, decision makers, and everybody else who should know more stuff like this. You can support me with paid subscriptions to my newsletter, donations via PayPal (mfioretti@nexaima.net) or LiberaPay, or in any of the other ways listed here.THANKS for your support!