Big Tech has amassed historically unprecedented levels of wealth power by selling American’s personal information in return for “free” access to their respective sites. In short, instead of Americans paying for product, Americans are the product, to the point where they are being tracked and data-mined 24/7/365, at levels of intrusion that make George Orwell’s Big Brother seem benign by comparison.
In Australia, the government considered legislation that would require Facebook and Google to pay to link to Australian news stories. Facebook’s initial response? The company banned users from posting Australian news content. It insisted the proposal “fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content,” and that news sites already benefit from Facebook referrals.