This reminds me of the Slashdot days where commenters would have a hard time distinguishing between the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Government (TM). They were roughly convinced that the 3 just formed this nebulous malicious entity.

I’ve worked for the govt and no they aren’t a nebulous blob of power with tech.

What they are though is an entity that has a set of directives supported by access to the data tech provided in conjunction with either not understanding tech or really getting it.

The tech company approach of staying willfully ignorant or positions like ITT with “we just build it!” has caused a lot of damage in the hands of the govt users it’s delivered to.

I don’t think it’s possible to in good faith ignore this dynamic or pretend it doesn’t exist and tech products’ role in it. This is actually the first time I’ve run into it like this where both the dynamic and the impact is just totally denied.

> I’ve worked for the govt and no they aren’t a nebulous blob of power with tech.

Yes and I've worked for tech companies that use tracking in their products, though not (my products) for ads, so I know what a tech company can and cannot do.

> The tech company approach of staying willfully ignorant or positions like ITT with “we just build it!” has caused a lot of damage in the hands of the govt users it’s delivered to.

This isn't what anyone in this thread is saying at all, this is a strawman. There are material concerns about collecting too much data. Everything from leaked credentials allowing attackers to access personal data to accidents in targeting systems allowing individual level targeting.

But unless you have proof that there are internal systems in tech companies that build up surveillance platforms and that the government is given access to these surveillance platforms, both of which need proof, then this nebulous concern of "all data gathering is EVIL" is just FUD. The fact of the matter is, individual surveillance isn't useful for most tech companies. Cohort or product level information is required to make decisions. Moreover, storing surveillance data is extremely expensive. The amount of drive space and the systems necessary to facilitate this kind of per-human level surveillance requires large engineering teams and systems. Have you ever created a data warehouse? Imagine that but for this supposed surveillance machine.

> I don’t think it’s possible to in good faith ignore this dynamic or pretend it doesn’t exist and tech products’ role in it. This is actually the first time I’ve run into it like this where both the dynamic and the impact is just totally denied.

Yes everyone on HN and Twitter are convinced that data gathered by tech companies is all evil and that evil billionaires are twirling their mustaches as they enslave entire nations. This is clear. And there are clear risks to data gathering, cogent concerns about social media addiction, and definite monopoly concerns over the networks and moats that social media creates. But to have a coherent conversation on this, we need to move away from "all data gathering is EVIL" to understanding what kinds of data gathering is necessary and useful, and offering individuals rights over their data. TikTok was able to create its own network from scratch which is at least a small counterpoint to the idea that the incumbents are impossible to unseat due to their network advantages.

GDPR is a great step in the right direction and I'm hopeful for even more potent legislation to come out. But the sort of fearmongering that happens in these online spaces over data gathering makes it impossible to have a reasoned conversation.

And if you think tech companies are terrible entities abusing your data, then what are the telecoms doing? Telecoms in every country control the flow of information in every direction. The metadata available at a telecom down to an individual subscriber far dwarfs what is available at most tech companies. Moreover the PRISM scandal actually happened because of telecom companies. So why the ire at tech companies?

You should read up on cybernetics for what I mean regarding mass collection of data leading to undemocratic outcomes, my guess is you haven’t ran into it. But, large area of research.

For the obtuse, NSA's primary sources are big-tech, among others. There's an information-superhighway from one to the other. But you must have known that already, right?

Information is power. Lot of examples from history, say WWII, holocaust and Japanese internment from IBM census data. Stasi, Red scare, blacklisting, Alan Turing coming and going.

More recently, IRS targeting the tea-party, facial recognition, DEA parallel construction, data brokers, data breaches, Chinese persecution, social credit.

Yes, Snowden outlined in his writing what was specifically immoral and undemocratic, such as x-key-score sourced largely from google and friends. Educate yourself.