This post is in response to the question,"Are people aware of Big Tech monitoring them, or do they simply not care?", posed by @atamme
I believe that in the case of peoples privacy being invaded by big tech surveillance, most people are at the stage where they do not care. However, I believe that it goes deeper than “just not caring”, with most people being nose blind to what is actually going on and how it affects them. Another reason I see people “not caring” is because they cannot see the big picture results in how the monitoring affects them.
Part of me agrees with the statement that some people do not care. After listing to both the talks here at OSU, I still use Google for my searches because it is easy and convenient. Many other people are in the same boat as I am, and do not want to go through the “pain” of switching to a different search engine. However, one of the main reasons I see for why people “do not care” is because they cannot see the macro picture. They do not see Google physically collecting the data from their searches, their GPS, their audio searches, and their emails and selling it to the companies with the highest bids. I feel like if they saw it first hand, they would move away from Google and outcries from the nation would fall down on the mega-corporation.
Overall, I know that if the people using technologies such as Google knew the big picture of how they were collecting all the data possible and selling it to private companies, they would seem to care a bit more. Until then, people young and old will continue to use the Google search engine, Google maps, Google chrome, and the hundreds of other services Google offers for free to monitor and harvest your valuable data.
