The real question is why we so happily give away personal, even sensitive information to companies that explicitly —perhaps not explicitly enough— say they expl

The real question is why we so happily give away personal, even sensitive information to companies that explicitly —perhaps not explicitly enough— say they exploit that data to monetise their service. When you demand zero-cost email, social networks, search engines, IP-telephony, etc, you have to expect that any —if not all— data you hand over is going to be used against you. That's most traditionally the Amazon/Ebay model, guiding you into buying something you don't need, or a SKU with a higher ticket price, but as we're seeing recently, there are also parties spending money to insidiously influence the sociopolitical news and opinion you get to see. Both Facebook, Google and Twitter all boast about their ability to target adverts and "promoted" posts. And it's not enough to pay for a search engine, or shunt over to a social network nobody uses. If you want free of this, you have to make painful choices, like getting you and yours off Facebook and Google and onto services either you control or you know aren't being mined and adjusted. Getting the hell away from Windows as it tiptoes around privacy-hell. Unfortunately, because people have neither the appetite or technical know-how to run or audit their own social networks, what seems more likely is we're just going to chase people off these "liberal" platforms onto ones with even stronger tints.