Jonathan Taplin, former music and film professional, tells first-hand what the new rentier economy of Internet aggregators like Google and Facebook has done to the creative arts, journalism, and democracy.
We’ve long known Facebook is selling our data to advertisers in a vague sense; now we can see what they’re hoarding and who’s buying.
Nine years ago, three artists created a controversial site to make a statement about Facebook’s practices. The company sued and accused them of scraping data. Oh, the irony.