Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very, very stupid
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The literature on harms to kids from online platforms is complex and nuanced, rife with people citing small, ambiguous studies as iron-clad evidence that kids are being destroyed by the internet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ype6c6DdHQY
It's a weird coalition of anti-Big Tech campaigners (who are rightly angry at the platforms' callous disregard for user welfare) and Heritage Foundation-backed culture warriors (who think that if their kids aren't exposed to LGBTQ content they won't come out as queer). While there's plenty these groups disagree about, they share one consensus: there should be a "minimum age" for certain kinds of internet use.
The problem is, there's no such thing as "age verification" for the internet. What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance, so invasive and pervasive that it makes the ad-tech industry's commercial surveillance look like some kind of cypherpunk darknet pirate utopia:
"Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. This nightmare is the surveillance advertising industry's fondest dream, a world where it's literally illegal to avoid their tracking, all in the name of saving kids…from them!
So it's not just a weird alliance of anti-Big Tech crusaders and the conspiratorial right that's pushing for age verification – they are unwitting allies of the very tech industry they think they're fighting. Those tech industry insiders are fully aware that an "age verification" mandate is really a way for the government to teach every child how to use a VPN. They're also fully aware that the next move is to ban VPNs:
Tech bosses are the ones sitting on our shoulders saying, "Go ahead, swallow that fly – it'll be fine. And if you do have to swallow a spider afterward, well, that'll surely be the end of it":
Behind them is a long line of caliper-wielding grifters who claim they can use your phone's camera to distinguish a child who is 17 years, 364 days old from an adult who's just turned 18:
It's beyond farce. After all, whatever harms you believe the internet is inflicting on kids – and there's absolutely some kids who are being harmed by their internet use – those harms all start with surveillance. Your kids can't be targeted by algorithms without the surveillance data that's being used to target them. They can't be funneled into pro-anorexia content or extreme misogyny forums without that funnel being primed by commercial spying.
Why do tech companies spy on your kids? The same reason your dog licks its balls: because they can, and no one stops them:
America hasn't updated its consumer privacy laws since 1988 (when Congress banned the disclosure of your VHS rentals). The EU has the GDPR, but it also has Ireland, the country where all GDPR cases against Big Tech go to die, because any tax haven inevitably becomes a crime haven:
Other countries have privacy laws to varying degrees, but are grossly outmatched by US tech giants, who have fused with the Trump regime, to the extent that Trump will impose penalties on your country if you attempt to regulate his tech companies – he'll even have your top officials cut off from the internet in retaliation:
Any attempt to save kids from online harms should start with saving kids from online surveillance, but that's the opposite of what we're doing today. After decades of failing to pass and enforce privacy controls for the internet, those same governments are breaking all land-speed records to pass "age verification" laws that make privacy illegal:
The fact that these bills have the firm backing of the tech industry's most controlling, most spying companies tells you everything you need to know about them:
Kids are being harmed by online spying, and so are the rest of us. Whether you think that the algorithm made Grampy go Qanon or you're suspicious that online surveillance data was used to deny you a loan, a job, or a lease, you should want privacy:
You can't protect kids from online surveillance by spying on them. You just can't. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to get you to swallow a fly so they can sell you a spider, a bird, a cat, and an ICE chud in a gaiter, Oakleys and plate carrier (beneath which lurks a stick-and-poke Totenkopf tattoo).
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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The rise of IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystems is fundamentally changing the way communication networks store and transfer data across consumer and industry platforms. With billions of internet-enabled devices transmitting valuable information in real-time, privacy has become a key characteristic that every telecommunication provider needs to provide customers while simultaneously enabling scale and innovation.
For more info https://bi-journal.com/privacy-first-approaches-in-iot-driven-telecom-ecosystems/
IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystems continue to affect sectors such as transportation, manufacturing, smart cities, retail, and healthcare. Connected sensors, cloud applications and mobile devices create an endless flow of data that allows organizations to make processes more efficient and create better consumer experiences. However, this extensive connectivity also presents risks of cyber-attacks, malicious actors, and improper data usage.
Most telecommunication companies are already leaning towards more privacy conscious frameworks, with user privacy at the center of the network design. Instead of adding privacy as a after-thought, many are redesigning their systems, with better privacy protocols in place. The fact that most consumers are beginning to hold organizations responsible for protecting their data the same way that they value reliable connectivity, ensures that the telecom companies will make it one of their top priorities.
Recently Business Insight Journal talked about the heavy investment that telcos are putting into encryption systems, decentralized user identification methods and secure edge computing, in order to minimize the exposure risk for each connected device. Edge computing will not only reduce risk, but will also speed up operations as processing occurs closer to the devices, minimizing response time without sending over all the information.
Another major force that is influencing the change within the IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystem is the extensive growth of connected industrial equipment. Energy grids, smart buildings and smart factories are highly dependent on rapid data transfer and real-time information that can help prevent service outages. In these types of applications, a single vulnerability in one of the connected systems could affect the integrity of all connected devices. Therefore, authentication and continuous monitoring are vital, in order to combat unknown activity.
Artificial intelligence is another very valuable tool being implemented by the telcos for security purposes. AI is capable of instantly analyzing traffic, identify unusual patterns and reacting quickly, in order to reduce the possibility of a security breach while optimizing network performance. Even with AI, there is still the risk of an unethical breach. The key is to keep AI applications in line with user expectations and standards of privacy.
With the continued acceleration of IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystems due to 5G networks, there is a larger increase in the volume of connected devices that demand simultaneous access, posing both opportunities and risks. To combat this, telcos are coming up with unique segmentation approaches, with different levels of security that keep potentially sensitive information separate from the rest of the network.
Users are becoming more aware of how their data is being collected, stored and processed. Following many security incidents and breaches, digital privacy concerns have escalated considerably. Consumers are starting to demand simplified privacy settings, clear consent options and greater control over their information. For telecommunication providers, the risk is losing customers to those that place privacy above other metrics.
As the Business Insight Journal article highlights, companies that are adopting the use of IoT technologies, are now prioritizing to partner with telecommunication providers who take privacy seriously. These organizations realize that the user loyalty is a direct result of the credibility and reputation of the companies involved. Organizations that ensure their communication infrastructure is secure are likely to see an advantage over their competitors, as they create greater user confidence when adopting new connectivity applications.
Government agencies are also setting up the groundwork that leads to privacy centered telecom innovation. The protection of data is now an established part of business, and most regulations require immediate reporting of any potential data breaches. While compliance with such regulations is crucial for operating within the IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystem, the constant change and advancements in technology ensure that telcos must adapt rapidly.
Edge computing is the next step in evolving the security measures and effectiveness of IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystems. By bringing the computing function closer to the devices, telecom providers limit the amount of exposure in transferring data over a vast network. This type of technology can be vital for areas such as remote healthcare, autonomous vehicles and smart industry machinery.
Transparency is becoming a hallmark of effective privacy protocols within the telecom industry. Telecommunication companies are focusing more on establishing clear communication with users, providing better tools such as dashboards and customizable settings for informed decisions.
Innovation within IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystems is not expected to slow down, with emerging technologies such as blockchain, quantum encryption and more advanced biometric authentication applications already being explored. The telecom sector is developing methods to utilize these applications without diminishing the quality of service or the extensibility of the networks.
Many industry analysts believe that future advancements within the security framework for the telco sector will be heavily influenced by collaboration between network providers, security experts, developers and policy makers to set common standards. Platform such as Inner Circle : https://bi-journal.com/the-inner-circle/ explores how industry leaders are navigating the ever changing technology landscape.
The future of IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystems is hinged on how well organizations are able to meet the demands of privacy concerns while managing to achieve massive scale in connected devices. The success of the modern telco will depend heavily on its ability to implement privacy focused frameworks, allowing for lasting consumer confidence and immunity from an ever-increasing array of cyber threats.
In summary, privacy-first strategies are rapidly becoming crucial within the IoT Driven Telecom Ecosystem. Telecommunication companies are adopting strong data protection, enhanced compliance standards and direct communication with users in order to safeguard sensitive information. As businesses and consumers rely more heavily on connectivity, the need for secure and privacy-conscious telecom solutions will continue to grow.
This news was inspired by Business Insight Journal https://bi-journal.com/
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Full article: https://bestsoln.com/web/zoho-ulaa-review-can-indias-privacy-first-browser-really-replace-chrome
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Google Marketing Live 2025: Anticipating the Next Evolution of Ads
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Signal Health Group: Personalized Care with Privacy You Can Trust
In this episode, we explore how Signal Health Group delivers personalized, compassionate healthcare right in the comfort of patients’ homes, with a clear focus on protecting their privacy. From supporting seniors and veterans to providing hospice care, their team creates individualized care plans that honor each person’s unique needs while safeguarding sensitive information. Tune in to learn how Signal Health Group is changing the face of home healthcare by blending trusted care with the highest standards of confidentiality.
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in AUSTIN on Mar 10. I'm also appearing at SXSW and at many events around town, for Creative Commons, Fediverse House, and EFF-Austin. More tour dates here.
Big Tech's astonishing scale is matched only by its farcical valuations – price-to-earnings ratios that consistently dwarf the capitalization of traditional hard-goods businesses. For example, Amazon's profit-to-earnings ratio is 37.65; Target's is only 13.34. That means that investors value every dollar Amazon brings in at three times the value they place on a dollar spent at Target.
The fact that Big Tech stocks trade at such a premium isn't merely of interest to tech investors, or even to the personal wealth managers who handle the assets of tech executives whose personal portfolios are full of their employers' stock options.
The high valuations of tech stocks don't just reflect an advantage over bricks and mortar firms – they are the advantage. If you're Target and you're hoping to hire someone who's just interviewed at Amazon, you have to beat Amazon's total compensation offer. But when Amazon makes that offer, they can pay some – maybe even most – of the offer in stock, rather than in cash.
This is a huge advantage! After all, to get dollars, both Amazon and Target have to convince you to spend money in their stores (or, in Amazon's case, with its cloud, or as a Prime sub, etc etc). Both Amazon and Target get their dollars from entities outside of the firm's four walls, and the dollars only come in when they convince someone else to do business with them.
But stock comes from inside the firm. Amazon makes new Amazon shares by typing zeroes into a spreadsheet. They don't have to convince you to buy anything in order to issue that new stock. That is their call, and their call alone.
Amazon can buy lots of things with stock – not just the labor of in-demand technical workers who command six-figure salaries. They can even buy whole companies using stock. So if Amazon and Target are bidding against one another for an anticompetitive acquisition of a key supplier or competitor, Amazon can beat Target's bid without having to spend the dollars its shareholders would like them to divert to dividends, stock buybacks, etc.
In other words, a company with a fantastic profit/earning ratio has its own money-printer that produces currency that can be used to buy labor and even acquire companies.
But why do investors value tech stocks so highly? In part, it's just circular reasoning: a company with a high stock price can beat its competitors because it has a high stock price, so I should buy its stock, which will drive up its stock price even further.
But there's more to this than self-fulfilling prophecy. The high price of tech stocks reflects the market's belief that these companies will continue to grow. If you think a company will be ten times bigger in two years, and it's only priced at three times as much as mature rivals that have stopped growing altogether, then that 300% stock premium is a bargain, because the company will have 1,000% growth in just a couple years. Tech companies have proven themselves, time and again, to be capable of posting incredible growth – think of how quickly Google went from a niche competitor to established search engines to the dominant player, with a 90% market share.
That kind of growth is enough to make anyone giddy, but it eventually runs up against the law of large numbers: doubling a small number is easy, doubling a large number is much, much harder. A search engine that's used by 90% of the world can't double its users – there just aren't enough people to sign up. They'd need to breed several billion new humans, raise them to maturity, and then convince them to be Google users.
And here's the thing: the flipside of the huge profits that can be reaped by investors who buy stocks at a premium in anticipation of growth is the certainty that you will be wiped out if you're still holding the stock when the growth halts. When Amazon stops growing, its PE ratio should fall to something like Target's, which means that its stock should decline by two thirds on that day.
Which is why Big Tech investors tend to be twitchy, hair-trigger types, easily stampeded into mass selloffs. That's what happened in 2022, when Facebook admitted to investors that it had grown more slowly than it had projected, and investors staged the largest stock selloff in history (to that point – hi, Nvidia!), wiping a quarter-trillion dollars off Meta's valuation in a day:
As Stein's Law has it: "anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Growth stocks have to stop growing, eventually, and when they do, you'd better beat everyone else to the fire exit, or you're going to get crushed in the stampede.
Which is why tech companies are so obsessed with both actual growth, and stories about growth. Facebook spent tens of billions on bribes to telcos around the world, demanding that they charge extra to access non-Facebook websites and apps, in a bid to sign up "the next billion users":
That wasn't just about some ideological commitment to growth – it was about the real, material advantages that a growing company has, namely, that it can substitute the stock it creates for free by typing zeroes into a spreadsheet for money that it can only get by convincing you to give your money to it.
"Facebook Zero" (as this bribery program was called) was about actual growth: finding people who weren't Facebook users and turning them into Facebook users, preferably forever (thanks to Facebook's suite of lock-in tactics that make it a digital roach motel that users check into but don't check out of):
But plenty of the things that Big Tech gets up to are about the narrative of growth. That's why Big Tech has pumped every tech bubble of this stupid decade: metaverse, cryptocurrency, AI. These technologies have each been at the forefront of Big Tech marketing and investor communications, but not solely because they represented a market opportunity. Rather, they represented a more-or-less plausible explanation for how these companies that were on the wrong side of the law of large numbers could continue to double in size, without breeding billions of new customers to sign up for their services.
The tell – as always – comes in the way that these companies refute their critics. When critics point out that Facebook spent $1.2 billion on a metaverse product that only has 32 users:
Or that hardly anyone uses AI, and what uses it does have are often low-value:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/
The "narrative entrepreneurs" behind the claims of infinite growth from these technologies all have the same response: "That's what they said about the web, and yet it grew really fast! People who lacked the vision to understand the web's potential missed out. Buy [crypto|metaverse|AI] or have fun being poor!"
It's true – there were a lot of people who were blithely dismissive of the web, and they were wrong. But the fact that the web's skeptics were wrong doesn't mean that skepticism itself is foolish. People were also skeptical of Qibi, Beanie Babies, and the Segway – all of which were predicted to continue to increase in value forever and become permanently installed as significant facts in the economy. The fact that lots of people think something is stupid is not a reliable indicator that it is actually great.
So it's not just that capitalism adopts "the ideology of a tumor" in insisting that infinite growth is possible. The value in corporate claims to eternal growth is not aesthetic, it is material. If the market believes a company will grow, then that company gets to print its own money, which lets it outcompete mature rivals, which lets it grow some more.
But! When the company runs out of growth potential, the process runs in reverse. Not only do executives – whose portfolios are stuffed full of their own company's shares – stand to lose most of their net worth overnight, but once a company's stock starts to decline, it can expect to see an exodus of the key personnel who are compensated in now-worthless stock. That means that once a company hits a bad bump in the road that sets it off course, it needs to worry about losing all the skilled employees who can get it back on the road.
So growth is important, not for its own sake, but for how it affects the cost basis of companies, and thus determines their competitive outlook. But not all growth is created equal.
Remember when Facebook pissed away billions in a bid to capture "the next billion users"? Those users – people from poor countries in the global south – were not as valuable to Facebook as its US customers. The news that sparked a $250 billion, one-day selloff of Facebook shares wasn't merely about anemic growth – it was specifically about anemic growth in the USA.
American customers are worth more than other users to Big Tech – that's true even of users from other populous countries, and of users from other wealthy countries. Norway is rich as hell, but each Norwegian Facebook user is worth pennies on the kroner compared to American users. And there are brazilians of people in South America, but they're worth even less per capita than Norwegians are. Even the whole EU, with its 500m+ relatively wealthy consumers, is only worth a fraction of the US market.
Why is the American market so prized by Big Tech? Because it the only country in the world at the center of a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles. America is the only country in the world that is:
a) populous;
b) wealthy; and
c) totally lacking in legal privacy protections.
The US Congress last updated American consumer privacy law in 1988, when the Video Privacy Protection Act was passed to protect Americans from the high-tech threat of…video store clerks leaking your rental history to the newspapers. Despite the bewildering, obvious, serious privacy risks that have emerged since Die Hard was in theaters, Congress has done nothing to extend Americans' consumer privacy rights.
There are other rich countries where privacy law sucks, but they are small countries with few people. There are extremely populous poor countries with shitty privacy laws, but they're poor. Tech has to steal the private data of dozens of those people to make as much money as they can get from selling the data of just one American. And there are other rich, populous countries – like Germany, say – but those countries actually defend the privacy of the people who live there, and so the revenue tech gets from each of those users is even lower than the RPU for the undefended poor people of the global south.
America is exceptional in that it represents the one place where there are lots of wealthy people who are totally defenseless. We're an all-you-can-eat buffet for the privacy-annihilating voyeurs of Silicon Valley.
These are the two dirty secrets of Big Tech's economics. These companies are reliant on the fragile narrative of infinite growth, and that narrative isn't merely about global growth, but it is particularly and especially about growth in the USA.
Tech's power comes from an implausible story of discovering an endless stream of Americans to sign up and screw over. That story is extremely load-bearing – so much so that by the instant at which the first crack appears, collapse is only moments away. And boy, are there cracks:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/power-cut/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
