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Are Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft 'Digital Warlords'? (locusmag.com) 66

Posted by EditorDavid from the bad-manors dept.
EFF special consultant/blogger/science fiction writer Cory Doctorow warns in Locus magazine about the dangers of what Bruce Schneier calls "feudal security": Here in the 21st century, we are beset by all manner of digital bandits, from identity thieves, to stalkers, to corporate and government spies, to harassers... To be safe, then, you have to ally yourself with a warlord. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and a few others have built massive fortresses bristling with defenses, whose parapets are stalked by the most ferocious cybermercenaries money can buy, and they will defend you from every attacker — except for their employers. If the warlord turns on you, you're defenseless.

We see this dynamic playing out with all of our modern warlords. Google is tweaking Chrome, its dominant browser, to block commercial surveillance, but not Google's own commercial surveillance. Google will do its level best to block scumbag marketers from tracking you on the web, but if a marketer pays Google, and convinces Google's gatekeepers that it is not a scumbag, Google will allow them to spy on you. If you don't mind being spied on by Google, and if you trust Google to decide who's a scumbag and who isn't, this is great. But if you and Google disagree on what constitutes scumbaggery, you will lose, thanks, in part, to other changes to Chrome that make it much harder to block the ads that Chrome lets through.

Over in Facebook land, this dynamic is a little easier to see. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook tightened up who could buy Facebook's surveillance data about you and what they could do with it. Then, in the runup to the 2020 US elections, Facebook went further, instituting policies intended to prevent paid political disinformation campaigns at a critical juncture. But Facebook isn't doing a very good job of defending its users from the bandits. It's a bad (or possibly inattentive, or indifferent, or overstretched) warlord, though...

Back to Apple. In 2017, Apple removed all effective privacy tools from the Chinese version of the iPhone/iPad App Store, at the behest of the Chinese government. The Chinese government wanted to spy on Apple customers in China, and so it ordered Apple to facilitate this surveillance... If Apple chose not to comply with the Chinese order, it would either have to risk fines against its Chinese subsidiary and possible criminal proceedings against its Chinese staff, or pull out of China and risk having its digital services blocked by China's Great Firewall, and its Chinese manufacturing subcontractors could be ordered to sever their relations with Apple. In other words, the cost of noncompliance with the order is high, so high that Apple decided that putting its customers at risk was an acceptable alternative.

Therein lies the problem with trusting warlords to keep you safe: they have priorities that aren't your priorities, and when there's a life-or-death crisis that requires them to choose between your survival and their own, they will throw you to the bandits...
"The fact that Apple devices are designed to prevent users from overriding the company's veto over their computing makes it inevitable that some government will demand that this veto be exercised in their favor..." Doctorow concludes. "As with feudal aristocrats, the state is happy to lend these warlords their legitimacy, in exchange for the power to militarize the aristocrat's holdings... "

His proposed solution? What if Google didn't collect or retain so much user data in the first place -- or gave its users the power to turn off data-collection and data-retention altogether? And "What if Apple — by design — made is possible for users to override its killswitches?"
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Are Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft 'Digital Warlords'? More

Are Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft 'Digital Warlords'?

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  • Yes, but it's the natural conclusion to the theory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Sunday January 10, 2021 @07:07AM (#60919936)

    The entire theory behind corporations' role in society is broken. Corporations are not people, they are bundles of assets with liability limits for their owners. They are legal fictions meant to give form to particular human activity.

    I would propose something more radical as a fix: how about we abolish the very notion that corporations have constitutional rights and make them full vassals of the state. If Twitter doesn't like what someone is say? Who cares. Twitter is a person. If Jack Dorsey wants to treat it like it's his own blog, he can run a service as a sole proprietor. If the puppet masters want full human control over the property, let them engage directly with everyone else.

    And don't give me that crap about how you believe this is tyranny in the making. I know virtually none of you support the right of private companies to turn off electricity, water and sewer services for people they don't like. You've accepted the principle, you just don't like to apply it consistently.

    • Re:Yes, but it's the natural conclusion to the the (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lessSockMorePuppet ( 6778792 ) on Sunday January 10, 2021 @07:55AM (#60920072) Homepage

      Joint-stock corporations were historically chartered by states for limited times and purposes and then dissolved. The modern perpetual corporation with ever-expanding influence and domain is a monster.

    • "I would propose something more radical as a fix: how about we abolish the very notion that corporations have constitutional rights and make them full vassals of the state. If Twitter doesn't like what someone is say? Who cares. Twitter is a person. If Jack Dorsey wants to treat it like it's his own blog, he can run a service as a sole proprietor. If the puppet masters want full human control over the property, let them engage directly with everyone else."

      The Supreme Court has decided that companies can ref

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by socode ( 703891 )
        Not true. See the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        You realize that's not what either the bakery or the Supreme Court did, right? The bakery offered to sell any pre-baked cake, simply not to create a custom cake. And the Supreme Court didn't say the bakery had the right to refuse to create a custom cake, but only that the state of Colorado unconstitutionally discriminated against religion in that case.

    • "Coprorations are people" is just meant to say "They are the real citizens, who actually get to vote, and actually get treated like 'one of our people'.".
      While you get that 'not one of us' 3/5to-of-a-human livestock treatment.

      You need to buy the new edition of the newspeak dictionary!

  • because it means changing their business model, their business model wont change because people don't like changing what is "apparently" working good. I've deleted my twitter account, this is the last account I have in the digital world to voice anything. Pray I don't alter the deal....

  • I can just see libertarians having a duck fit about the alternative of state funded digital marshals.

    Seriously what are the alternatives, privately funded marshals? No thank you.

    As a technocrat, a 30 year veteran of software development I struggle to keep my knowledge up to date.

    • Well let them have a fit. It's not like that's any change from how they act now to get their egoistic will above all other people.

      Why exactly are you listening to 'functioning' psychopaths anyway? Therapist? Devil's advocate? Puppet?

  • Google, Apple and Facebook are not your local lord that you turn to for protection against highwaymen. They are the biggest digital bandits of all.

    If not, why would everybody try to protect themselves against their relentless onslaught on privacy using Noscript, uBlock and all manners of browser condoms?

    • Re:It's nothing like Doctorow's feudal metaphor (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Sunday January 10, 2021 @08:45AM (#60920182)

      Google, Apple and Facebook are not your local lord that you turn to for protection against highwaymen. They are the biggest digital bandits of all.

      If not, why would everybody try to protect themselves against their relentless onslaught on privacy using Noscript, uBlock and all manners of browser condoms?

      How do you think Feudalism worked? You think that the Kings had their great palaces based on the hard work they put in each day? The palace of Versailles was funded by King Louis' poetry sales? The tower of London was funded using money from Henry's patent on a new flour mill? This is exactly how a warlord or feudal lord makes their money. The are the biggest bandit, but because the alternative is having to pay to many smaller bandits, most of which want more than money and your fealty, the alternative is worse.

  • This article is convoluting many things. Comparing apples to oranges to bananas. In Apple's case they are using an example of what it takes to do business in a communist country, compared to Google and Facebook, who directly breach user privacy for their own gains worldwide.

    Which is better? For Apple to have no stake in the Chinese marketplace whatsoever, and the vacuum left by Apple filled by Chinese devices with even worse security and privacy issues? Or for Apple to at least keep their foot in the door,

    • so [apple] can push back against China's government in the little battles they can win...

      Yeh, sure. That's what they're doing. They are the lords of light battling the agents of darkness for the good of mankind.

    • In Apple's case they are using an example of what it takes to do business in a communist country, ....

      "communist" is the wrong label here "totalitarian [dictionary.com]" is what you should have used. Yes: China is also communist (at least supposedly so) but the important characteristic here is that it is one that does not tolerate those who speak out against the government's view of the world and especially the government's view of itself.

  • If you consider you don't actually *have* to use any of the crap these "warlords" put out. I don't use any of their stuff, other than a smartphone. It would suck to lose the functionality I have now, but if it went away I'd get over it.

    Sure, I'm "tracked" on the web. And the USG tracks my phone calls illegally, or tracks my cell phone as they fly over the city, or scans my license plate as I drive around town.

    Do I like it? No... But I'm also not going to do anything about it, because it's most likely never

    • Newsflash: children across the world are on the verge of realising that all the free things aren't actually free. Parents remain unmoved and caution children not to take candy from strangers.

  • "Accept evil, almost, *but not quite* entirely as your overlords."?
    Are you kidding me? What kind of weak spineless blob mentality is that?

    My solution is, to run my own single-board computer, with blackjack and hookers. Got my own IP, domain, TLS CA, VPN, DNS, e-mail, spam filter, instant messenger server, 'cloud', PIM services, file storage, app, web site and "cybermercenaries" (seriously, did you *just* read a William Gibson novel or did you fall out of the 80s?).

  • ... offering services that should actually be publicly funded public services using open standards. Until that is the case, we'll always have the Cyberpunk that's going on right now and probably getting stronger.

  • "What if Google didn't collect or retain so much user data in the first place"

    And if my aunt had a package she'd be my uncle.

  • Warlords care about geography, they 'love' a specific part of it and they do all sorts of atrocities to 'keep' it.

    These guys here don't give a shit about war and prestige, they just want the money, you'll be able to bet your life on that fact every single day and you'll never be disappointed.

  • Yes.

  • They can sabotage your entire connection. Can Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft do that?

    Everybody is wagging the dog. Content providers are insignificant ankle biters. The real threat is the ISP. When the government wants to censor something they order the ISP block it for them.

  • These are companies with a fascist attitude. They control what you buy, what you think, and how to vote. There is no better reason than what Apple and Google have done by blocking Parler to break up these companies! These companies are hypocrites. They want section 230 rights to not be held liable for what people post but then they themselves sensor and punish at will anything that goes against their ability to control the people.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Parler still works over the web. Last I checked, Apple and Google phones still have web browsers, and in fact still support all the things an app can do, including installing an icon on the device. They can do notifications (which is why you keep having to click "Block" on every freaking website now), get sensors and all that.

      Using the web browser seems like a perfectly legitimate way around Apple and Google, and why waste valuable developer resources on an app? Granted, the only thing a website cannot real

  • We all live and die by Internet.

    Think not? Try life without it. The only choice left is which fiefdom suits you.

  • His proposed solution? What if Google didn't collect or retain so much user data in the first place -- or gave its users the power to turn off data-collection and data-retention altogether? And "What if Apple — by design — made is [sic] possible for users to override its killswitches?"

    That's not a solution. That is a set of conditions that only address what they see as a problem without considering or conviently ignoring how things work. AKA: Mental Masturbation.

    I think this article actually

  • It seems like yes, they are. But I have also noticed a tendency that some of the huge companies start to buy others or unite with each other. I suppose it is not good for customers because when there are few companies the competition between them decreases, and the prices increase. For example, there are products of different brands here https://www.mrdepot.ca/product... [mrdepot.ca], but the prices are almost the same. Do you understand why?
  • Sometimes I have thoughts to block all the social media and log out from everywhere. But I still understand all my data is already available to anyone who wants to get it. So, there is nothing to lose. But, if we talk about real security, I understand its importance. I use a progressive home security system – https://ajax.systems/ [ajax.systems]. I think a lot of you have already heard about it. I am sure this brand will be very popular soon when people realize the level of importance of their private life. As for t

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