"Big Tech" is a distraction. They barely even "sell" data; rather, they use it to power platforms where advertisers can target users without learning who they are. At such a large scale there are obviously exceptions (see: Cambridge Analytica), but directly selling user data is generally not how they make their money.
The abuses of the companies you never hear about are orders of magnitude worse. They are plugged into every institution of society you interact with in your daily life, so you essentially can't opt out, and their primary business model is siphoning off sensitive de-anonymized personal data and selling it to anybody willing to pay. It ought to be criminal, and the fact that it isn't just goes to show how captured and neutered our government has become.
I assume our legislators' PR focus on "Big Tech" wrt. data privacy is by design. If the American people really understood the true shape of things, there'd be blood in the streets.
(I'm not saying "Big Tech" doesn't cause substantial harm, but in my view it's harm of a different sort.)
The abuses of the companies you never hear about are orders of magnitude worse. They are plugged into every institution of society you interact with in your daily life, so you essentially can't opt out, and their primary business model is siphoning off sensitive de-anonymized personal data and selling it to anybody willing to pay. It ought to be criminal, and the fact that it isn't just goes to show how captured and neutered our government has become.
I assume our legislators' PR focus on "Big Tech" wrt. data privacy is by design. If the American people really understood the true shape of things, there'd be blood in the streets.
(I'm not saying "Big Tech" doesn't cause substantial harm, but in my view it's harm of a different sort.)