This post is in reflection on a presentation by Michael Matheson Miller titled Big Tech is Watching You. Michael Matheson Miller gave this speech so a group including the Free Enterprise Society at Oklahoma State University.
Michael Matheson Miller's presentation covered the topic of how big tech companies are using all their users' data and ways to combat this phenomenon. One of his bigger points that stood out to me was to pay for your email and other services. Miller uses this example as a way to combat big tech companies, such as using Gmail, using its users as the product. By creating a monetary exchange, there is more trust in the service you are using. Miller says you pay for gas, water, and electricity, so go ahead and pay for your email too.
This stood out to me because it is a very tangible, possible way to combat centralized services while staying safe on the internet. Many of the talks, videos, and presentations I have watched have told me that these big companies are providing their services for free because the users are the product and the data collection is what makes them money. Michael Matheson Miller is the first presenter I have seen explain how to combat this. I think the free use of certain software is actually a much bigger problem than it seems.
Many people use the internet to try and get things done for free. Streaming shows, movies, pirating sports, using editing software, and anything you can imagine can pretty much be done for free with the help of the internet. People have forgotten that everything has a cost and that you pay for it in some way or another. The internet in its current state has removed the tangible marketplace that people have used until the 1990s. We forget that we have to pay for things because these companies have made them available for free, using us in turn to collect data.
Paying for services like email also makes them much safer to use. The trust in the provider is restored because you now know that they want you to keep buying their service, so they have no reason to screw you over by selling your data. An issue is that an email address is like getting a wristband to go into a music festival. It is the first thing people get when they want to use the internet. Converting to a different email address is complicated because almost every site has you create an account, which is free with an email address, and most people have one email address for many accounts. This requires a person to track down every site they've made an account on and switch their email or make a new account, a near-impossible task.
So while I love the idea of decentralizing the internet and restoring the trust in the marketplace, it is not without its issues.
