DailyPost 549
ALGORITHMS OF DECEIT
Deceit Extraordinaire play was being enacted the world over to a gullible and blind audience. The IT majors had a field day creating algorithms of deceit and making billions flow out of it. That world class brains creating products potent enough to change the world for all times, would practice deceit as tool of windfall gains, still seems to be totally unpalatable. ”The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work.” This is what the head of Facebook Corporate Communications had to say in 2009.
What a fall it has been? Google’s detailed collection of data is legendary. Some details have been appearing in media of every kind. Let’s accept it, without getting into nitty gritty of every data & legal nuance, the norm is maximum possible business development and crash commercial gains. Now Google puts some details of their data handling mechanism in the public domain. What to make out of it nobody knows. The unimaginable storage of data & creation of a technical capability to harness this data comes with a price. The return on investment has to make sense, without which the business story does not start.
That every company, service, utility & app is collecting data much beyond they actually require, with a vested interest to use it for commercial exploitation is a reality. It’s high time, any rational mind would take it as realty. In Data & the Goliath, Bruce Schneier has raised concern over corporate surveillance being invasive. But has finally come to light is way beyond more intense, much make commercial and utterly demeaning – Cambridge Analytica.
At the center of deceit is the user, consumer, customer, subscriber & finally the citizen who has to bear the brunt of corporate & government’s surveillance, for a not fault of his. Snowden was the first whistleblower opening the lid. It is convenient to be a bystander and so they are.
DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION IN DECEIT IS THE GAME CHANGER.
Sanjay Sahay