Your smartphone is spying on you
Facebook is a massive surveillance-based enterprise… it knows a huge amount more about you than the most intrusive government in the history of the world
A 2019 Report Amnesty International where the above quotation occurs, warns that the business models of Facebook and Google actually threaten human rights.
The numbers are mind boggling. Google now controls 90% of search engine usage globally and its search engine Chrome is the world’s dominant browser. Its video platform YouTube is the second largest search engine and dominant video platform.
Meanwhile one third of all the humans on the globe uses a Facebook-owned service such as Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram every single day.
Facebook currently has 2.74 billion monthly active users and reaches 59% of the world’s social networking population. It is the world’s third-most visited website. 53% of US Facebook users trust the platform to protect their data and privacy, meaning 47% don’t.
Social media apps are “free” because the people who own them sell your time, attention and engagement to advertisers for vast sums, £3.59 billion in the UK alone in 2019.
While Facebook and Google have connected the world and provided crucial services to billions, their surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain. You can only enjoy your human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse.
This abuse includes an assault on your right to privacy and a serious risk to a range of other rights, from freedom of expression and opinion to freedom of thought and the right to non-discrimination.
The average internet user spent 2 hours and 24 minutes per day on social media in 2020.
This really matters because your attention is extremely valuable. As Maura Thomas put it: Your attention determines the experiences you have, and the experiences you have determine the life you live. Rather than allowing distractions to derail you, choose where you direct your attention at any given moment based on an understanding of your priorities and goals. To do this, you need to control external factors like technology (turn off that phone!).
To understand your priorities and goals better click here