The Internet, over time, has transformed from an invention of a scientific nature, into a platform for generating money, and it has done so spectacularly, as these companies, in a little more than 15 years, have realized the promises of the New Economy and have become the world’s leading financial enhancement companies.
The phenomenon continued with the speculative Artificial Intelligence Hype.
All this, of course, resulted in a strong conditioning of the network itself.
What happens on the net, what users do, the content that is posted, is being subjugated quite effectively and targeted to the creation of profit by these companies.
This profit-driven priority can obviously come at the expense not only of content quality, but also of respect for users’ rights.
Indeed, there is frequent talk of privacy and copyright violations and, in general, of control over the activity carried out online by users: the most important commodity sold online is precisely personal information, exploited commercially through profiling, a set of surveys aimed at collecting individuals’ data and aimed at setting up increasingly targeted marketing actions. By analyzing, for example, the searches made by those who surf the net, the prompts formulated, the pages viewed, the “likes” expressed in social media, the biographical data entered, as well as other information provided even unknowingly (for example, the locations visited using a browsing APP) global platforms build a very detailed profile of each user, often violating privacy as well. This profiling data is given to companies and advertising agencies,
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used for marketing initiatives, but also for personalization of content while browsing.
Behind the captivating gratuitousness of the content and services offered by the global platforms, there is actually a disarming truth: by enjoying these services for free we are actually transforming ourselves, with our tastes and behaviors, into the main product being sold online by the Global Internet Companies.
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