I'm not really concerned. My personal opinion on the matter is that yes, we need to be aware and cautious of what data is available on us. I just don't think that we have the kind of control you imagine exists for us.
What do you use to find your way around? Because I use GoogleMaps. Yes, that requires that, at very least, my cellphone's position is tracked with reference to the cell towers it's using, and for complicated things, you need your data to be on and your location information available.
What's the alternative? I'm not carrying around a Pearly's that I have to replace every year or two. And what are they going to be able to do with my location information? Target me with ever-more enticing ads while I use the internet? Do you have any idea how much time is saved on a daily basis by knowing where traffic is densest along my route and avoiding it?
Also, we really aren't doing much about governments and corporations spying on us, anyways. They have our credit card information, they know where we make our calls, where we buy our gas, where we go shopping. There's CCTV basically anywhere there's something worth enough to justify the cost of surveillance. Couple that with modern face recognition technology, over which we have no control, and the jig is up.
Face it. Pandora's Box has been opened. The Rubicon has been crossed.
Milk, spilled, all over the floor.
Which is not to say that conscientious action shouldn't be taken. But for me, it has nothing to do with surveillance issues. The most they can do is tempt me with awesome deals that I have to say no to. And if they're doing their jobs, the ads that will come up will be those for, I don't know, Pantry Paratus, or Permies-affiliated sites and producers.
No, the way I cut tech giants in meaningful ways is, as Paul says, voting with my dollar. I eschew the mass-market for the local option. Where we can source locally made
soap, that's what we do. We buy our produce in season when we can, and when we can't, we try to rely as much as possible on dried pantry goods. Each of these is not only a papercut to one or all of these giants, but a
boost for local endeavours and economy.
Because the real harm that these tech giants are doing is economic. The surveillance thing is a smokescreen, because it's a scary-sounding thing that these entities can be seen to address for their customers, who can then go on using their
online stores as before,
knowing that they held the big tech corporations to account, and that everything is rosy now.
Except that all the mom and pop shops in your small towns, and your not small towns, and your cities, have been taking the real hits since the giants took over. We're not talking just tech giants; in this context, they're included, but are hardly the whole picture. No, we're talking the Costcos, the Walmarts, even the Indigo/Chapters of the world. They're vampires sucking the hearts of small communities dry.
Avoiding control is an illusion. They already have it. Where do most people in the untied states get their groceries? I know that here where I live, Loblaws is one of the three-ish grocery companies, each of whom have something like two or three subsidiaries. We all eat, and unless we're going to CSAs and getting our meat from local butchers, the money we need to spend on food goes to them by default. They're making profits even in this time of pandemic, even during the first shutdown, and refusing to voluntarily raise the pay of their so-called "frontline heroes," who I believe deserve not just the appellation, but at least the two-dollar-an-hour raise over minimum that was mandated during the first shutdown, and rescinded as soon as Galen Weston and his buddies could justify it.
And he had the gall to say that yes, he agreed that frontline workers merited the extra pay he and his corporate compatriots were removing, but that it
should be mandated by government, and in our case, a government whose brain has been replaced with the words
Open For Business.
Do you want something meaningful to do that will hurt the big 5, and others, and help mom-and-pop shops everywhere? Stop giving the big 5, and any multinational corporations you can identify, your money. Find local alternatives, and change how you buy to stop feeding these monsters. We can kill them all with the Death of a Thousand Cuts.
Any other measure might be valid, but I would consider it of limited impact in terms of scope, even if you stopped using electricity entirely. Eschewing multinationals in favour of local and domestic interests, finding good, solid models for normal people to do that and benefit by it personally, and then telling others how they can make their own lives better and bring back local small business and small communities is a tine in the woodchipper that will turn all these bloated interests into mulch to regrow our local economic ecosystems.
-CK
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