Over-Dependence On US Services
With the recent events happening across the Atlantic, I’m reminded once again how dangerous it is to overly rely on the US (or any one country for that matter) as much as we do in our digital lives. So much has gone down in just the last 24h alone. How can we confidently assume “the system will take care of it?” Simple: We don’t because it won’t.
In some instances, I don’t have any other choice but to rely on services headquartered in the US. I try to keep everything as local (meaning both offline and/or from the EU) as possible, but since there are no real alternatives to, say, iPhones or Android phones, that collect no data or when they do, they treat it as confidential information that even they shouldn’t have access to, we are forced to use those products.
I hate to say this, but we are way past the point where we can have a say in shaping digitalization. That train has passed a long time ago. Quite frankly, I have nothing to share here but a dose of despair and I don’t even know where to go going forward with some of the services I use when the alternatives are not safer either.
Take music streaming – or really any streaming service – for example. Spotify is a European company, but I’m no patriot; I look for how much data it collects, and compared to Apple Music it’s a joke how much they gather. Most importantly, once data has been collected, no right to be forgotten can ensure its deletion. We can only ensure no more data is collected and that’s about it. So what American companies have on us, it’s theirs now.
My thoughts are all over the place. If this reads as incoherent rambling, it is because I am thinking incoherently right now. We are witnessing the messy collapse of the post-war era and I just want it to pass quickly.