The Daily: Why You Should Care About Privacy

May 21, 2021

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook.Eric Thayer for The New York Times

By Lauren Jackson

Hi everyone, we made it to Friday. It's been a busy, and heavy, newsweek on The Daily: We revisited the insurrection at the Capitol, analyzed an uneven post-pandemic economic recovery and called a young woman living through airstrikes in Gaza.

Today in the newsletter, we speak to two people who we thought could help us make sense of some of the stories you've heard on the show recently.

First, we look back at our recent coverage of Big Tech and ask one expert: What are the long-term implications of the feud between Apple and Facebook? Then, one of our producers who is focused on international news shares what else you need to know about the Israeli-Hamas conflict.

'Privacy as a luxury is a profoundly intolerable idea'

Over the last few months on the show, we've gone inside the mercurial world of Big Tech, covering how Robinhood facilitated the GameStop rebellion, the rise of NFTs, a push for unionization at Amazon, the first major ruling of Facebook's new oversight board and the escalation of tensions between Apple and Facebook.

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And in each episode, we've wondered: In the ever-evolving world of Silicon Valley, what changes will stick? How seismic are these stories, really?

So for today's newsletter, we called someone who spends all of her time asking that question — peering into the future as she analyzes how the tech titans are changing our world: Shoshana Zuboff, the author of "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism."

We spoke with Shoshana specifically about the significance of the feud between Apple and Facebook in regards to privacy protections long term, the topic of our May 11 show. In the process, we also asked her about the prospect of platform regulation and her vision for a less-extractive digital future. Our conversation has been condensed and lightly edited.

Apple has introduced a software update, called App Tracking Transparency, that limits an app's ability to extract personal data from iPhone users — a primary source of economic power for platform companies like Facebook that monetize the intimate details of our digital lives. How significant is App Tracking Transparency in limiting that power?

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It's significant. But what I think a lot of folks reading the headlines perhaps don't understand is that what this App Tracking Transparency notification does on your iPhone is it limits applications from tracking us across to other applications and across devices.

What this does not do is prevent these very same applications, including Facebook, which is the big whale in this discussion, from collecting data within their own application. This is a massive surveillance empire worth hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. But we call it an app.

And App Tracking Transparency has no bearing on Facebook's, or any other application's, ability to continue tracking you, collecting every aspect of your behavior, your activities, your thoughts and feelings.

So, yes, it does take a big bite out of some of the things that they currently do, especially as they reach for this rich diversity of data, which is so important to them. But does it limit their ability to illegitimately convert our lives into data, which they then declare as their private property? No.

Why does it matter that these big tech companies can mine personal data for profit?

As we allow these companies to amass this huge scale of human-generated data, we're changing the nature of our society.

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Because, first of all, we're allowing them to create these huge asymmetries of knowledge about people. Instead of this being a golden age of the democratization of knowledge, it's turned into something very different from what any of us expected. The last 20 years have seen, especially the last decade, the wholesale destruction of privacy.

And operationally, what happens is they get to a point where they know so much about us that they can fashion targeting mechanisms. We're not just talking about targeted ads. We're talking about subliminal cues, psychological microtargeting, real-time rewards and punishments, algorithmic recommendation tools and engineered social comparison dynamics.

We have seen the scourge of disinformation on social media, we now know from research, driving a huge number of unnecessary Covid deaths because of disinformation campaigns and also having a huge role in producing the seditious tragedy of Jan. 6. What is so important for folks to understand is that these are all connected points in one process. And the process is called how knowledge becomes power.

Apple's products are expensive. Is there a premium on privacy that only some can afford?

Android, of course, is by far the dominant smartphone in most countries. We see people who can't afford privacy. And the idea of privacy as a luxury is a profoundly intolerable idea.

Can you talk about how the pandemic has empowered these tech companies in their data collection?

What's happening in this remote education space now is truly frightening.

The huge irony here is that the outbreak of the pandemic was exactly the same time frame in which the New Mexico attorney general filed his class-action suit against Google Classroom, citing its illicit data extraction practices aimed at children.

Now you've got this whole sector called school safety technology. And then another sector called proctoring systems, which are these for-profit companies that attach to Google Classroom. When you dig into what these systems are doing, they're being paid by school systems, school districts for these services and, the so-called safety systems, they're tracking everything from notifications from social media, email files, chats, posts, messages, all documents, anything to do with the remote schooling activities. And then the proctoring systems, they're doing facial recognition, gaze and eye movements to track attention. They're producing what they call "suspicion scores." They're also taking microphones. They're taking cameras. They're insisting that cameras record your surroundings and broadcast that to the proctor.

And students and their families have no pushback because they're saying that students can't even access the data. They're not even doing a performative statement where they're agreeing to limit retention or third-party sharing. They can just do whatever they want.

Read the rest of our Q. and A. with Shoshana and listen to our Big Tech playlist on Spotify.

Going deeper on the Israel-Hamas conflict

A bomb falling on Gaza City on Monday.Hosam Salem for The New York Times

After 11 days of intense and deadly conflict between Israel and Hamas, a cease-fire has come into effect and the fighting has paused — at least for the moment.

On The Daily, we have covered the reasons for the surge in tensions, analyzed President Biden's delicate diplomatic response and heard from a resident in Gaza about what her life has been like.

"Life has always been hard and I don't know how this is going to end," Rahf Hallaq, the 21-year-old university student from the north west of Gaza City, told us. "But right now I have one concern. I want to survive it."

Along with Rachelle Bonja, a member of The Daily's international stories team, we thought we'd share some articles that have helped us understand the breadth of the conflict.

Cease-fires can be fragile and short-lived: As a cease-fire officially began between Israel and Hamas at 2 a.m. on Friday, diplomats and Middle East experts have cautioned that cease-fires are precarious agreements. While they can offer periods of calm to allow time for a longer-term deal and give civilians a chance to regroup, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office warned that "the reality on the ground will determine the continuation of the campaign."
Violence fueled on WhatsApp: Last week, a message appeared in a new WhatsApp group called "Death to the Arabs," urging Israelis to join a street brawl against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Since then, Jewish extremists have formed more than 100 new groups on WhatsApp. While messaging apps have been used before to inspire violence and spread hate speech, these groups go even further by documenting and executing violent acts.
What Israelis said about the violence: On the streets of Israel, before the cease-fire was announced, Times journalists took the temperature of residents. In Tel Aviv, residents said that they were trying to go about their daily lives but that there was an edginess in the air. The conflict was polarizing when it came to apportioning blame. Amir Efrimi, a designer, blamed Prime Minister Netanyahu for aggravating tensions in Jerusalem. "We have been in these situations before where horrible footage is screened on TV, but I have never gotten condemnations from regular people in other countries," Mr. Efrimi said.
"Social media is the mass protest": In the past, when the conflict between Israel and Hamas led to large-scale casualties, there would be mass protests on the streets of many Arab nations. This time, the protests have been smaller and more scattered, with solidarity with the Palestinians shifting online — and going global (protests have taken place in America and Europe).

On The Daily this week

Monday: Hundreds of people have been arrested and charged in connection with the Capitol riots. Bringing them to justice has presented some unusual challenges.

Tuesday: A recent jobs report suggested that the pandemic recovery has lost momentum. We look into why.

Wednesday: A conversation with Rahf Hallaq, a 21-year-old English language and literature student and resident of Gaza City.

Thursday: The long and complex relationship between President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel.

Friday: Two former soldiers on how the war in Afghanistan — America's longest conflict — has shaped their lives.