Apple co-founder says we should ditch Facebook — permanently

Steve Wozniak doesn't know if his phone is listening, but he's minimizing risks.

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  • Steve Wozniak didn't hold back his feelings about the social media giant when stopped at an airport.
  • The Apple co-founder admitted that devices spying on his conversations is worrisome.
  • Wozniak deleted his Facebook account last year, recommending that "most people" should do the same.
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The race to predict our behavior: Tristan Harris testifies before Congress

The design ethicist did not hold back his concerns when talking to political leaders.

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  • Former Google design ethicist, Tristan Harris, recently spoke in front of Congress about the dangers of Big Tech.
  • Harris told senators that behavior prediction models are a troublesome part of design in the race for attention.
  • He warned that without ethical considerations, the dangers to our privacy will only get worse.
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Data spies: The dark and shady practices of Silicon Valley

This is how data harvesting really works. You're not going to like it.

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  • In this absorbing talk spanning the last 20 years of tech, Roger McNamee starts at the origins of the PayPal Mafia (which included entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman) and traces them to Silicon Valley's global domination.
  • Data is used by online vendors in all industries to make behavioral predictions for profit – often in unethical or cloaked ways.
  • Did we sign up for this? Roger McNamee calls for a halt to blind participation and asks for a national debate on whether commerce based on personal data (but not for personal benefit) should be legal.
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Who is getting rich off you? The insidious big data economy.

Where is your data now? Follow the money.

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  • Your day to day actions on the Internet give businesses personal data that turns you into an ad target – or the opposite.
  • Facebook, for example, allowed landlords to block demographic groups such as African Americans, LGBTQ, or disabled people from seeing housing ads – a violation of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
  • Data brokers have crossed a line, but the laws that should regulate them are outdated; just look at the billion-dollar data deal between 23andMe and Big Pharma. Is it ethical?
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Facebook and Google got rich. Users paid the price.

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  • Facebook and Google began as companies with supposedly noble purposes.
  • Creating a more connected world and indexing the world's information: what could be better than that?
  • But pressure to return value to shareholders came at the expense of their own users.
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