TSHP-Ep05 Getting Back Control

Ep5 Getting Back Control

I'm gonna be totally honest with you. I didnt really think the course of this podcast through before starting it. I got excited when I found out about Yunohost and went totally ADD thinking that people have to know about this distro!
I just hit record and started talking without thinking. I didnt put any kind of structure into it or really any kind of planning. Looking back over the last 4 episodes and the 2 videos I can see that I made some assumptions during those episodes/videos that you would know what I was talking about. So the next several episodes will be way less technical and less fan boy-ism about Yunohost. Not that it doesnt need it but more as to why you need it.

Getting back control

Why you need to take back control

I appoligize in advance but we need to get philiophical for a minute.

Lets face it. There is basically 5 companies that control the internet for everybody. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. There is no doubt that they have made it there sole purpose to control (and influence) every aspect of our online and offline lives. Not that they inherently evil and I'm not saying they are satanic and want to be oppressive dictators. But they are interested in one thing. Money and the mass accumulation of it. They have succeeded in convincing the entire world that by slowly giving up its rights to privacy in exchange for some free stuff that they can harness those privacy rights and monetize it for themselves.
I have to admit I realized this back years ago when I switched from MySpace to Facebook. I actually read the EULA. The thing that caught my eye was about the images. Whatever you put on there they could use for advertising and you didnt get any right to the money they made of your image. Why would a company not want to share that revenue with the user whose likeness they just used? Because they wouldnt have become a multi billion dollar company making only a few people rich beond their wildest dreams. This is the reason why I have never submitted any of my podcasts to iheartradio. They specifically said the same thing in their EULA. Not that any of my podcasts could ever gain enough traction that they would use it to advertise the podcast portion of their app. But just note that both Spotify and iheartradio have surpassed the king itunes(Apple Podcasts) in being numeral uno in podcast discovery.

But I, as with millions of other people, didnt really care. It was a FREE social network that millions flocked to. Now its a place where millions of people all over the world spend the biggest parts of their day. They get their news, talk with friends that they've never met (lets be honest, if you've never met them face to face are they really a friend?)and entertainment. I know that my own wife and kids keep it open in a seperate tab all day long whether at work or school. Twitter and Youtube is the same way. I have to admit that personally I've never fully understood social networks. To me it seems like its only purpose is to give the average person, who isnt really all that interesting, a way to be relevant to somebody somewhere. I mean I understand why it works. It makes everyone feel like they are important in some way. But its sad that we, as a society have to resort to Facebook or Twitter in order to find someone a couple of thousand miles away to fill a void that should've been filled by someone in our backyard. I also understand the importance of sites to share ideas and tech to everyone. But for a company to capitlize on a human trait, that being the need of communication, and more specifically the emotional aspect of it, is just out right wrong and, in my opinion, despicible.

Now lets add on top of this the fact that these companies are run by humans. They have personal thoughts and opinions too. They are after all humans too. So what if they dont agree with you on a philsophical level? Or even a political level? Thats another thing thats got me pissed off. Politics. Why the hell is everything so damn political? What happened to people being able to just thin what they want to think? I mean I understand that everyone has an opinion but opinions are not facts. Whatever, thats a different topic for a different day.
I digres, So these people who run these companies decide that they dont like a certain aspect of the politcal spectrum or want to "protect" the general public from some pornographic content. But there definition of what is porn may be different than its users. So some artistic photograoher gets there account shadow banned and nobody can see there pictures. What if they were using the account as a part of there business? That has just impacted there business model and has basically destroyed there ability to conduct business. The same for the political aspect. What if a talk show host or podcaster gets shadow banned or just out right deleted because the company doesnt personally agree with them. I know what you are thinking, Alex Jones and all these right wing hate mongers should be censored. And I'm right there with you on most of it. But stop and think for a minute. What happens when the other side happens to gain control? What if what you believed in suddenly became the latest "evil" of the world. Free speech should be for everybody in the world. We are all humans and it is inherent that we all think differently. Since the dawn of man and the accumulation of knowledge humans have found ways to control and enslave others. It has only gotten more prevelant and easier. How do we stop it? I dont know. I'm not sure we can truly stop all of it but we can try to be a better society. With more ethical companies and allowing people to control their own personal data.

But there is only one of the links below that talks about the one thing that nobody else seems to have really mentioned. You and I are paying money for them to soak up all of our personal data. Think about that. You are a paying 3rd party (the isp) money every month to willfully give your data to these huge corporations to make money off of. What the fuck kind of shit is that?
What kind of society have we become that we actually pay for someone to collect your data in exchange to use their so called "free" service? This is just insanity at its highest level. We are people, not products!
This is why you need to take back control of your data. It is you and you are an individual. You are a human. Not a product! I really dont want to relate it to slavery but its the closest analogy I can think of. Humans are not a product that can be sold and this includes your data. Because it is a part of you.
So I think you probably understand where I'm coming from. Philosophy part over and done. My head hurts.

Summary

Now that I've pointed out that we are all under mass surveilance and being turned into a product we need to make the change to stop them from monetizing ourselves.

Updates

You can now find this podcast on 7 different platforms. As of this episode and some of the following ones I wouldn't be surprised or really all that upset if Apple Podcasts never accepts it. But non the less it is on Anchor.fm, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, PocketCasts and RadioPublic.

The next episode we will dive a bit deeper into what we need to replace to get rid of these corporations from our lives.