Big Tech Companies treat humans like batteries. We are just there to power their profits

Apr 30, 2025

01:13:53

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EP 383 - Jonathan MacDonald is back on the show and keener than ever to get you interested in Ethical Tech.

We discuss why now, more than ever, people need to be given the tools, and moral frameworks to inform their interactions with increasingly opaque technology. How things like social media are seemingly set up to keep us amused, distracted and rob us of our critical thinking faculties and what that means for humanity in the long term.

Jonathan isn’t an anarchist in a tin foil hat (or a cryptoevangelist in a blonde wig come to that) but he is very compelling on why we need to question whether Big Tech algorithms and the people who control them actually have our best interests at heart.

He’s pretty convinced that they don’t, or at least don’t care about us beyond what we can do for them. Which is why he has set up SELF - a personal privacy filter - and also ETHICS TV to help people discuss, understand and control their own moral choices around tech.

We also chat about the Roman Empire and its attitude to analogous situations. We know plenty of you like to think about that kind of thing quite a lot.

*For Apple Podcast chapters, access them from the menu in the bottom right corner of your player*

Spotify Video Chapters:

00:00 BWB with Jonathan MacDonald

02:23 Meet Jonathan

03:18 The Mission: Alternative Future for Technology

04:44 Humans Are Batteries

05:05 The Reality of Free Services

05:58 The Normalisation of Surveillance

06:29 The Impact of Social Media on Society

07:33 The Coercion of Media and Politics

08:37 The Evolution of SELF: Personal Privacy Filter

09:50 The Demand for Privacy in AI Tools