I recalled a video I favorited on Youtube way back that I wanted to check, and was unpleasantly surprised to find the site had been destroyed by the entity that claimed it.
Youtube has been sucked into the Googleplex and you've all lost another layer of meta-independence if you want a degree of entertainment control back--you can't access your favorites from before without making a playlist, you can't make an effective playlist without a channel, and you can't have a "new" Youtube channel without also creating a Google+ account, and--at the end--you can't have a Google+ account with willingly submitting more of your information, being pulled further into the swelling mass that will culminate into the beast which we'll fight in wars of the future to retrieve who we are.
Now you mayn't favorite GoT clips of Aunt Lysa falling through the Moon Door like a bad 80's horror flick UNLESS you allow yourself to be pulled *just a little bit further* into the untold machinations of the 'Net machine.
--Okay, maybe that's a little extreme, but have you noticed the largely unfavorable changes that have constantly pushed you further and further down the rabbit whole of Net dependence? Add in the how "they" don't seem to care what the community thinks of the demands and changes (FB, iTunes, anything Google touches) made to their highly integrated product. They've moved in unfavorable ways, and really they're just getting started.
Usually I wouldn't be the one to say "Oh noez, the internet got dumberer" but the extent to which megacorps web-based servicers are considering themselves infallible as a necessity of daily life, and the slow yet continuous push they make to force users into going along with their wants (gathering info, linking to unrelated other services, compiling accounts, etc.) has gone from subtle to painfully obvious, and I'm becoming increasing aware of just how invasive a lot of this meta-data has become, and the dare-I-say sci-fi "dystopian" image they're beginning to paint.
Now, I knew that nothing on the web was private, and it was silly for people to ever assume so. I know that data is sold and the government monitors everything, and if you didn't think that before the NSA ousting than you were fooling yourselves with assumed good intentions of these auspicious free servicers.
What is pushing me back in my chair and pulling my hands away from the keyboard now is the extent to which the massive networks like Facebook and Google are eliciting your voluntarily surrender of personal information and acceptance of their methods. A lot of this is timing, having grown up in the generation the series of tubes known as the Internet came about. Anyone with common sense wariness would have hesitated five years ago to put their email into a site, and made dummy accounts just for that reason.
Now, under the guise of security and identity protection, your personal information is forfeit already but they keep asking for more. This permeates to the absurd extent that FB put buttons all over your profile for *your friends* to "ask" that you post more personal information--FB is having "your friends" farm information for them now.
As I mentioned before. A healthy amount of wariness from the generation that began the internet generally keeps you suspicious enough to question the need for this endless data collection.
What worries me most is the generation below us--they want to be entertained, they want to do everything on the net, and ***every big servicer is making it look like giving up personal information constantly (numbers, emails, check-ins) is not just okay, but it's "fun" and you SHOULD do it*** and a lot of folks do.
After Edward Snowden made the NSA basically have to admit to what most folks already assumed it was doing anyway, there was a lot of sabre rattling from older people, but the youngest generation is being sucked right up the information vacuum in exchange for access to HD viewing of music videos. When the younger people think this is normal, they'll question less and less what the entities above them ask of them. This is where we start to slip into the plot origin of most 1990s sci-fi (by the way, a lot of which has been scary accurate over time) and I'm not a conspiracy theorists or even a paranoid kind of guy, I'm just trying to pay attention to the intentions behind what is going on with this massive collection of interlinked individuals.
I'm not the first to notice, but this whole thing is getting suspiciously obvious.
Am I saying "QUIT EVERYTHING, GET OFF THE GRID, BUILD A CABIN IN THE UNCHARTED WOODS OF MONTANA"? No, though that does sound challenging and fun (who's with me?!) though what I will tell you is to watch yourself out there, and try to view the long game that big interest groups are playing with the way you interact in their world. Don't be paranoid, but do be wary of the how and why behind why these new forced necessities are gaining power.
But I'll have a big "I Told You So" ready for when barcode neck tattoos suddenly become a booming new fashion trend.
Now I'm going to wait for a man in a black suit wearing sunglasses during the day to emerge from behind me and ask me to "take a walk" to an undisclosed location. Maybe there'll be puppies!
