Do You Think Facebook Is Very Persuasive?

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A lot of people don't necessarily understand how these technological systems work, and so they can seem almost like magic. It's pretty clear from the history of the advertising industry that the one thing that the advertising industry is really, really good at is convincing people that they're very persuasive. At the same time, i think that we have a very foreclosed imagination right now about what we can expect of firms,. We're in the tail end of a forty year long experiment of not enforcing anti trust law. And without the possibility of talking about market concentration, we all believe the same wrong thing when we use the same search engine.

Paris Marx is joined by Cory Doctorow to discuss how the problems we associate with Big Tech aren’t the result of mind-control systems, but corporation consolidation. Cory argues we need to stop buying the overblown sales pitch, stop collecting so much data, and enforce antitrust legislation against the tech monopolies.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. His most recent non-fiction book, “How to Defeat Surveillance Capitalism,” is available for free at OneZero. You can also preorder his next fiction book, “Attack Surface,” on Kickstarter or anywhere else books are sold. Cory has a daily blog at Pluralistic.net and you can follow him on Twitter as @doctorow.

Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

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