After #ThisMachineKills had her on last week I chewed through Prof. Viljoen paper on "value of data".
I came away a bit disappointed on the main issue (I'll try a write up later) but this one resonated very much with me:
"[Data protection laws shortcoming is: It] is a legal regime tasked with protecting
individuals from surveillance in an economic system that rewards - indeed
depends on - the very same thing."
I found this to be especially on point when you look at how much energy is (rightfully) put into fighting #chatcontrol and how little is (shamefully) put into speaking out against data processing for private profit.
The quote from Prof. Viljoen had some strong Golumbia (🥲) vibes, who once wrote in his work about the right-wing foundation of bitcoin:
"privacy advocates focus so much of their energy on what governments are apparently doing and so little on what corporations are probably doing."
@malteengeler Or the tendency of a few to scream about censorship, when it's the government trying to do it (rightfully), but never questioning a (very large) company's half-baked algorithm or biases.
