Several alarming trends are currently influencing the digital space:
- Individuals are constantly surveilled, and their behaviour systematically modified by both commercial entities and governments.
- Modern communication infrastructure is owned by a handful of private corporations whose business model involves modifying the behaviour of the individuals attempting to communicate with one another
- Individual speech is restricted and censored
- Individuals must sacrifice their privacy in order to exercise their civil liberty
- Access to the Internet and to specific Services on the Internet, and the User Experience of these Services is not granted on an equal basis
- User Experiences are designed to be addictive
- There is no way to opt-out of certain digital technologies without incurring a significant penalty to one’s civil liberty
- Interactions between individuals and organizations are rigged in favor of organizations (one example of this are one-sided terms and conditions)
- Individuals inside organizations have no personal accountability for their actions, they hide behind the corporate veil
- Vendors of digital goods carry no “product liability” for their Services
- The move to subscription based cloud services blurs the line between ownership and a “license to use” the work products of an individual (ie. documents, images, etc. the individual creates) and allows organisations to make one-sided decisions to change the type of ownership retrospectively, often after the individual is invested in the platforme
- Many individuals lack an in-depth understanding of the above trends and are being exploited by those who do (children are particularly susceptible to this form of abuse)