Big tech is shaping public discourse. Big tech is censoring public squares. Big tech is forcing us to continue buying new devices. Big tech is killing open standards and platforms. Big tech is hurting democracy. Big tech is enabling monitoring. Big tech is using societal scale antipatterns to generate more profits than most countries. Big tech is engaging in anti-worker practices ...
Having worked at AI (a long time ago), I can assure you this isn't some mastermind plot to sneak a couple of cookies onto the computers of the one or two people who click through to settings.
That shouldn't be taking away from the messaging and certainly not a reason to lose credibility with something orthogonal.
I just wondering, would you mind to share from which part of the world you are for some context?
The article is quite sparse with sources/specifics, so let me back up this claim :
While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on... (It was surprisingly difficult finding any reporting on what should be a major story.)
There are none of those from China, Russia, China, Iran.
I presume technology companies from those countries are used in support to authoritarian governments, but that sounds like a separate issue of how "big tech" as we understand it operate.
I take issue because they bring up big tech influence into geographies outside “the western world” but big tech has little penetration there and they should pint that out.
Perhaps TikTok is the closest thing to that outside of that group.
There are some exceptions, but the overall trend is clear.
DaveZale•3mo ago