Big Tech & Privacy

Big Tech and Privacy
By Gabbi Cozzolino

The big tech companies have gotten away with invading privacy of many individuals. Tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Zoom can track your every search, and retain all of your data. They see where you are and what you’re doing.

I don’t think that there should be access to see all of these things because it’s a huge invasion of privacy. Although you can agree to have them see these things, I don’t think they need to be as invasive as showing ads for things that you’ve looked at or even thought about. Those ads pop up instantly after you’ve even searched what you’re looking for.

Regarding Zoom, I think that it’s weird that random people can see you in whatever setting you’re in, and that random people can just pop into your zoom link. It’s very invasive and uncomfortable. Especially when I first used Zoom, I felt uncomfortable and after researching more about Zoom and its invasiveness with privacy it makes me worried for our future within technology. These tech companies are seeing whatever we’re doing just by looking into our data and I don’t think it’s okay. It's a major invasion of privacy.

The article, “Zooming Past Equity in Higher Education: Technocratic Pedagogy Fails Social Justice Test” by Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff explains that users do pay for these “free” apps by having their data leaked to the companies. “They pay with their data. Users’ data can include their purchases, retina scans, DNA samples, online posts, clicks, relationships, searches, travel, consumption patterns, and much more.” This quote from Higdon and Huff explains how invasive these tech companies are with our data and this is how they make their money from it.

Online education is dangerous to personal privacy. We were all forced to do it once the pandemic happened because there weren’t many other options. Dangers posed by online education, Privacy in social media has become very important since tech companies have become more popular, people are starting to want to protect their privacy. Companies are publishing user generated data and exploiting the privacy of millions of people.

This is an issue for the privacy of many individuals and it’s not only happening with Zoom, Facebook and Twitter. Big tech is only going to worsen and so will the dangers that can come from a techno-utopian society.

My name is Gabbi Cozzolino and I’m a senior at Sonoma State University. I’m from Half Moon Bay, California. My feelings for this topic are strong because this issue needs to be discussed more and my findings from my research all add up and I have my own experiences with this issue myself.