Google, Twitter , Blizzard, and Meta are anti consumer and out for your data.

All of my opinions are italicized and sources are in blue.

Google may be misleading their advertisers

Since Google is an advertising company, misleading your advertisers is a fast way to make a lot of wealthy companies mad and want to sue you. A report by Adalytics finds that “advertisers including Fortune 500 brands, the US federal government, and many small businesses may have been misled for years about Google’s proprietary TrueView skippable in-stream video ads. This misalignment may have cost media buyers up to billions of digital ad dollars, which were ultimately spent on small, muted, out-stream, auto-playing or interstitial video ad units running on independent websites and mobile apps”. The way TrueView ads work is instead of paying for impressions, which is when someone just sees your ad, they only pay if that person watches the entire ad or at least 30 seconds of it. These ads must be played “before, during, or after other videos. After 5 seconds, the viewer has an option to skip the ad”. These ads “must be audible by default” and can not be displayed in the rail of the page.

To the average person, misplacing a video ad is not a big deal. But if you look from a company perspective, you are wasting billions of dollars on ads that no one would ever see.

Google will steal your data for their AI chatbot

Google updated its privacy policy over the weekend, explicitly saying the company reserves the right to scrape just about everything you post online to build its AI tools. If Google can read your words, assume they belong to the company now, and expect that they’re nesting somewhere in the bowels of a chatbot. “Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public,” the new Google policy says. “For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google’s AI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities.” Now that I have my own website, the thought that Google believes that they own my work and they have the right to steal it is preposterous. I do not use a single Google feature on my website and I don’t even use their search engine. How is it their right to use my work so they could make money.

Twitter institutes tweet-reading limits

Elon Musk stated on Twitter that “To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation” they would be limiting the amount of tweets you are allowed to read per day. New unverified accounts are limited to 300/day, Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day, and Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day. While 300 tweets a day may seem like a lot, a quick search would tell you that the average American checks their phone 352 times a day. This would mean if you just read one tweet in that time, you would be over the limit. Also, for anyone that just scrolls through the homepage, your time limit would be quickly consumed. That isn’t the worst part. Hours later, some journalists discover emergency service accounts are not exempted. This would mean that if you already went through your limit, it would be impossible to use Twitter to discover that there may be danger in your area. Twitter has been on a downward spiral ever since it was launched and it has accelerated after Elon Musk bought Twitter.

Blizzard does not deliver on Overwatch 2

Overwatch 2 may not be seeing any new story content post the initial batch of three levels coming this August, according to executive producer Jared Neuss who spoke about the topic on a recent livestream. In said stream, hosted by former pro player and current streamer Emongg, Neuss stated: “Don’t expect the next round in the next season or the season after that, or anything like that. But it is very much like trying to find that balance between getting it in front of players quickly, because we love that story stuff, and giving ourselves enough time to make changes or add features, or do whatever, to make them more compelling”. Overwatch 2 of course was the highly anticipated sequel to Blizzard’s killer new first person shooter Overwatch, and was sold to the masses as a major PvE update. Fast forward to 2023 and the initial planned single player content was scrapped, replaced with seasonal story missions that aim to inject a bit of that narrative luster into a game otherwise barren of PvE content.

Meta launches Twitter competitor, Threads

It seems that all it takes for one platform to grow these days is for its competing platforms to make terrible decisions. It only took three days for Threads to reach over 100 million users. Threads is essentially Twitter made by Facebook. That comes with its own caveats. Since Meta is a trillion dollar company that only makes money by selling your data, Threads also requires you to give them all of your data. On the left is the data Threads is using and on the right is Twitter. This is very similar to what Instagram and Facebook track as well.

Elon’s response to Threads launching is “Competition is fine, cheating is not”. Twitter claims in a letter that Meta hired Twitter staff in order to create Threads. Musk states “that these employees owe ongoing obligations to Twitter”. These employees owe nothing to Twitter. They were fired and publicly humiliated by Musk because they questioned his leadership. Meta denies this, saying “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing”. The only way for Twitter to be successful in court, it would have to prove that its own intellectual property, such as programming code, was taken. Twitter would also have to face a company that is much larger than it.

French bill letting police spy on citizens through their phone cameras and mics

There are two types of people, those who are outraged by the title and those who understand why this would make sense. I am not putting shame on either of these two categories. For the former, the government surveilling you through cameras and mics is very similar to “1984” by George Orwell. It is understandable why you would be outraged. For the latter, step back and look at the entire picture. In U.S law, the police would be allowed to search your house and tap your phone line only if they receive a warrant from a judge. They would have to have evidence that the person that they are spying on has committed a crime and searching their house would help prove their guiltiness. This French bill is very similar to this. You would have to get a warrant from a judge in order to track you and monitor you by the use of your phone’s camera/mic. They would have to have evidence that the person that they are spying on has committed a crime and monitoring their phone would help prove their guiltiness. This new French bill is the 21st century equivalent to tapping your phone. I am both outraged and understanding. I am an advocate for privacy on the Internet and I want to see justice. If this comes to the U.S and you do not agree with it, then use your rights and protest. Just make sure that you understand what you are fighting for.

But, there is one part that both sides can agree on. This bill excludes lawyers, judges, and of course, members of parliament. This bill would not apply to the people that created it. That is, of course, very authoritarian and if this is included in a future U.S bill, then protest until it is removed, no matter the side your on.