Power Companies

I am not going to waste my energy trying to be clever about this, and I am sure that many people haven noticed the same things I have with recent tech company power plays.  Gmail has done several advances to have power over everyone’s communication lately, and I am sure others have noticed that sometimes you go to click on an email and all of a sudden the screen shifts down and you have clicked on an ad instead.  I also just now noticed that they are moving old emails up in the list to suggest that you reply.  Maybe that is helpful for people, but it seems a little confusing to me.  Spell check has also gotten more aggressive in recent months, making it hard to confirm your original word choice, and the other day I typed an email where google was literally putting a word in front of me each time I typed something, and “suggesting” actual email content.  It was very distracting and hard to think of what to say. Probably people can turn some of those features off, but it is still a weird controlling thing that reminds me of some of facebook’s tricks like that sometimes.  When I work on my website on Squarespace, I can’t easily log off and have to leave the site and come back to it to finally simply log out.  I believe that is so they can get another click to report for their stats.  There is something weird about this stuff, and controlling in an immature way, and there is also a dishonesty that to me is a terrible and dangerous thing on a scale that the tech resources have.  I am so thankful for all the ways I have benefited from all those awesome things like gmail and facebook, but I think that people should always remember the ways that millions of regular people have contributed and are part of that success. The way facebook always tries to roll out changes and stay ahead of any possible regulation could seem like a good way to function as an alternative source of power and leadership for our country and world, but I think that for everyone to decide that some of these guys are above legal oversight might not be the great system that people think it is. There are benefits to public authority and laws enforced by representatives of people with interests beyond just financial or being self-serving, and with the threat of low wages and trafficking that people face in our society, going ahead and just letting the tech people make their own decisions with no accountability is probably not the cool revolutionary idea that many people seem content to allow.