The tech panopticon we’re building to watch a raccoon dancing to a ‘Pedro Pedro Pedro’

Shut up and take my money. Also, my data. I will consent and I will also pay. We are not alone, but, (un)fortunately, it’s not the curious intelligent beings from other planets we invite to watch us.

[By the way, if you want a captivating read about the visitors from outer space, grab a copy of Imminent by Luis Elizondo.]

Cybernews’ own ethical hacker team has looked into the brand new Google Pixel 9 Pro XL phone. And guess what, while you might have paid a thousand bucks or more for it, you may not actually be the true owner of the shiny smartphone.

This isn’t really that big of a revelation – big tech companies, Google in particular, have built their empires on user data. Why take only user money when they can also use their data to further oil their gargantuan business machine?

Out of over $300 billion, Google gets nearly $240 billion from ads. The better-tailored ads you get, the more likely you are to buy something you don’t desperately need but have convinced yourself otherwise.

Did you know that the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL sends a data packet to Google every 15 minutes?

“Users may have paid for it, but the deep integration of surveillance systems in the ecosystem may leave users vulnerable to privacy violations,” Aras Nazarovas, the Cybernews researcher behind these findings, says.

With the Pixel 9 or any other smartphone, you’ll never be alone. They are state-of-the-art surveillance devices.

Of course, you can go all doomsday and buy a dumbphone if you’re spooked by this to the point where you can’t take it anymore. But, if you disable all the permissions that apps say they need to function, you’re better off with a vintage Nokia brick.

Especially when highly invasive AI-powered smartphones become mainstream. The future of media and the online experience is hyper-personalized, I hear. But for you to have that very individual experience online, AI devs will need to know you better than you know yourself.

The future is surely exciting, too. But before you sell (but also pay for it yourself) your soul to big tech, think about the trade-off. How does spending a thousand bucks every few years and giving away tons of data actually benefit you?

Yes, Google uses tons of data to grow its business. That doesn’t mean it’s not safe, of course. We’re better off trusting our data with Google than some cheaper alternative manufactured in unfriendly nations.

The bigger problem here is the consolidation of that data, which is a consolidation of power that the US is now desperately trying to strip from Google.

Muskow – that’s what the first city built on Mars could be called. With a hint to Moscow's regime, space enthusiasts Weinersmiths envisioned a town where all your life and well-being, including housing, utilities, jobs, schools, and pretty much everything else, would depend on one company. Most likely, owned by Musk, hence, Muskow.

But aren’t we sort of building that dystopic future here on Earth?

Isn’t Google too-big-to-fail type of company where we can’t risk its collapse because hundreds of millions of people in one way or another depend on it? The Department of Justice (DOJ) is on it, and there are more successful attempts to put the tech empire on its knees.

But cry me a river, really. It’s all first-world problems, complaining too much about our $1,000 smartphones. Unfortunately, there’s way less fumes out in the open about the nasty and dark side of the internet.

This week, we learned about a hacker who went to an ‘AI girlfriend’ website to jerk off, as he put it. But what got exposed were people’s very private data and even sexual fantasies. Some were inherently disgusting and involved things like an “incestuous infant orgy.”

Luckily, we have a whole battalion of good-faith hackers continuously fighting for a cleaner internet. Sometimes, it's a quixotic fight, and yet they don’t lay down their arms. We see this over and over again, especially with whitehat hackers fighting against child predators online. The fight is overwhelming, they say, and they ask for big tech to step up.

The more I’m into this rant, the more saturated it gets with whataboutism. Of course, I don’t think we all should suddenly engage in those depressing topics and try to solve climate change that big tech only makes worse from the comfort of our homes.

That’s why tech journalism, in most cases, is quite comfortable. When people are into a heated discussion of iPhone vs. Android, I assume they are doing pretty well. Or it is just another form of escapism at its finest – dive deep into Pedro the Racoon meme discourse when you yourself are into deep s**t. Not healthy, yet, so natural.

However, there’s a loud cry by the journalist pros to stop focusing on personalities (like Musk) and companies (like Google) and put more spotlight on the communities impacted by their decisions.

Here’s one. It turns out that OpenAI’s ChatGPT reflects values from English-speaking and Protestant European countries. Sam Altman, promising a fix for all of humanity, would probably call this a distraction.

Is that wild? Yes. Are you surprised? Probably not.