The Surveillance Industry has always been evil. This was apparent to anybody who was actually paying attention that since the creation of "web 2.0" - centralize

The Surveillance Industry has always been evil. This was apparent to anybody who was actually paying attention that since the creation of "web 2.0" - centralized control of everyone's data and software would create an irresistible center of power that would lead nowhere good. Hence all the feel good marketing slogans like "Don't be evil" and whatnot - to goad individual developers to not think too hard about the direct implications of the technical architectures they were helping to build. And perhaps some of the initial founders even earnestly believed those slogans themselves, and were therefore actually benign or even benevolent. But such concentrated power inevitably attracts the type of people who are most certainly not. It remains to be seen how much the political pendulum might swing back, but given that Democrats have been acting as controlled opposition for as long as I can remember, I'm not really expecting any sort of brakes any time soon. And pop culture takes still don't seem concerned with individualistically addressing these issues. So our version of reality is basically set to be the evil corporate-overlord dystopia, and the loosely-connected band of individualist hackers who won't be televised. And Stallman has been thoroughly vindicated. It's time to get your ducks in a row.