Title: Demon-Haunted World
Context: Just because you pay money for something, don’t expect it to have your best interest at heart.
Synopsis: On the digital commons, we are constantly besieged by bad actors, trying to steal from us, lie to us, manipulate us, harm us, use us for their own benefit and profit. And those are just the companies we willingly buy stuff from. We expect hackers to try to screw us, but we don’t usually think of businesses as using software and technology as means to treat us with such callous disrespect. There is — or perhaps more accurately; used to be — mutual agreement between seller and buyer within the confines of above-board capitalistic transactions. This economic construct was due in no small part because malfeasance was relatively easy to detect and came with legal, and fiduciary repercussions for either party who might choose to abrogate this social contract. Unfortunately, both modern technology and corporate legislative capture give businesses not just the tools, but also the standing to go in another direction. Now we mightn’t only need watch our backs to protect against digital banditry, we should start watching our fronts as well.
Best Bit: “All these forms of cheating treat the owner of the device as an enemy of the company that made or sold it, to be thwarted, tricked, or forced into conducting their affairs in the best interest of the company’s shareholders.”
via locusmag.com
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