Knowledge is as essential as air and water, whomever controls that knowledge holds unimaginable powers. If misused, reality itself can be bent, altered or in some cases, rewritten.
Google currently holds that ultimate power. Like it or not, they control what we know and see, who we should listen to and who should be muted.
Google’s employees or algorithms posses the frightening power to shame or exclude any one person, any company or any group based on Google’s own moral set of values. These ethical prepositions of these programmers are being embedded into the infrastructure of the net.
Our personal data is at their fingertips to be used as they see fit. Google knows where I live, where I go, where I shop, which music I listen to and what my favourite food is. What does Google do with all this collected data?
Not surprisingly, France is now suing Google for $56 million for breaching European Union online privacy rules. A drop in the bucket for the largest and richest company in Silicon Valley.
Reputations can be ruined, businesses can crash and burn and elections can be swayed.
Do they care? Only if it serves their interests.
Because online censorship is entirely unregulated at the moment, we have little or no recourse when any of us have been harmed.
What’s the solution? Who knows.
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