A Week in Privacy #22

This week's A Week in Privacy has a couple of personal stories of life in the digital age, with a hint of business news and, of course, some classical antagonists:

• The Big Five tech detox
• The internet hates secrets
• Russia is going offline
• Will Germany break Facebook?
• Why not pay for good data?

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The Big Five tech detox

How hard it is to wean yourself from the digital embrace of corporations like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft? Hellishly so, as one writer for Gizmodo found out in her experiment. The detox is all the harder because these five companies own the infrastructure for the global internet and are almost impossible to evade. Such concentration is stifling development and reducing variety. A five-star read.
The internet hates secrets

Try keeping things about yourself private in the online age. A mission impossible, as Wired's writer found out when he wanted to keep the birth of his child away from data sucking giants. As he put it: "Well, it goes without saying, the internet doesn't want you to have control." But short of becoming a technological pariah the choices are slim. A somewhat disheartening tale of modern existence.
Russia is going offline

As part of a military test Russian authorities plan to disconnect the country from the global network, reports ZDNet. The reason for the experiment is to gather insight and provide feedback and modifications to a proposed law that wants to ensure the independence of the Russian internet space (Runet) in the case of foreign aggression to disconnect the country from the rest of the internet. The unplugging should happen sometime before April.
Will Germany break Facebook?

Germany told Facebook that their core business model runs against the country's antitrust laws, reports Wired. In a nutshell, Germany's Federal Cartel Office, the country's antitrust regulator, ruled that Facebook isn't making clear the breadth and scope of tracking it does to its users. Therefore, users are exploited into consenting when they use this dominant platform and have no alternative to go to. Facebook intends to ardently fight against the decision.
Why not pay for good data

The AI revolution is progressing step by step. Yet companies are willing to spend exorbitant amounts on the tech and talent, but not on the quality data, writes Forbes. This can have dire consequences as data is the raw material that feeds AI-powered decision-making processes. If the initial input is bad, so will be the final output and the outputs are encompassing everything from shopping suggestions to judicial decisions.

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