Tech billionaires making friends with Big Brother
There
are no atheists in foxholes, and no tech regulators in a coronavirus lockdown.
What was once thunderously described as “surveillance capitalism” is now a
pandemic necessity. Twitch is where our children go to school; Twitter where
epidemiological models are debated; and WhatsApp where we have drinks with
friends. Some 40 per cent of the world’s population is living under lockdown,
according to AFP, creating exactly the kind of bored and isolated citizens
whose
fingers
linger over their Facebook app button, as my colleague Alex Webb notes. Our
personal information is hoovered up as before, but data privacy is now gone
from our hierarchy of needs.
Likewise,
the market power that made Big Tech look so dangerous makes it look vital and
dependable now. Amazon.com Inc., which has always wanted to be the Everything
Store, is now the Only Store in cities like Paris or San Francisco, where it’s
an essential lifeline for a myriad of household goods (with some restrictions)
that can’t always be found in the grocery stores or drugstores that are still
operating. The iniquities of the gig economy are still as outrageous as ever —
as complaints by Amazon’s workers show — but there’s no mistaking the message
sent by the company’s pledge to hire 100,000 more people: A firm once under
fire for killing the economy now is the economy.
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