Tech giants: maximum damage with minimum effort
And, which is even more impressive, in good faith, so far.
About one month ago Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon representatives officially declared that their companies are not monopolies, because “they have plenty of competition and that consumers have other options for the services they offer”.
A New York Times reporter promptly reminded her own experience in 2019. She had tried to “Live Without the Tech Giants”, and failed.
Concretely, Hill had set up, with help from an expert, a system that prevented every internet server managed by those companies from exchanging data with all her devices.The hardest companies to live without were by far Amazon and Google, because:
Cutting off Amazon meant…
… Losing “access to any site hosted by Amazon Web Services”. Said that way, it means nothing to many people, but in practice much of the digital world became inaccessible, including Netflix
When she blocked Google, instead…
- the entire internet slowed down, because too many sites either load from Google some combination of fonts, ads or services (e.g. user tracking, or spam blocking), or entirely surrender to that harmful Google technology called AMP
- could not use Dropbox, as well as Yelp, Uber, Lyft or any other service that relies on Google Maps
- nor she could watch any video streamed by anybody (including major media companies) via YouTube, which belongs to Google
Executive summary
Eventually, Hill went back to use all those companies because “I didn’t really have any other choice”. What she found is how, and how much, the main service that Amazon and Google provide (and control!) in practice, even to their own competitors, is the Internet itself.
Think about that. The Internet itself. And they have managed to do it with services that radicalize people, create anxiety and addiction by instantness, robotify people and greatly increase pollution. Not to mention tax avoidance, of course.
Impressive, isn’t it? It’s hard to imagine ways to do more damage in perfect good faith, and with perfectly legal means.
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.
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