Last night on “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” Martha and guest Geraldo Rivera discussed the “creepiness” of big tech’s data collection and the addiction it has caused within society. In the clip, Martha mentions her recent conversation with Senator Hawley on these issues:
Transcript:
MacCallum: Besides all the data harvesting, there’s the dangerous side of the addictive nature of all of this. And I was talking to Senator Josh Hawley the other day, who wrote a piece on this, and he said that it bothers him that some of the greatest minds in technology created, you know, got together, and this is what they did to us. They created social media in our era.
He said, you know, think about landing on the moon, think about the great innovations that American minds have brought to the world. And our moment created this beast that we have to deal with now.
Rivera: I have this image – you know I’m a father of five – I have this image of my kids like drowning in that thing. Their whole faces getting in. Or you know looking at a picture of a butterfly when there’s a real butterfly flying around, and they’re going to miss the reality of it.
I just think that they are profit-driven. They should be regulated like utilities are regulated. I’m a free enterpriser. But I just don’t trust when something gets this big – when it’s 2.4 billion people, and they own WhatsApp, and they own Instagram, and a half a dozen or a dozen other companies. They will know everything about you, every argument you ever had. I have this vision of them snooping on every room in my house. You know, they’re very creepy to me.
MacCallum: There’s a big trade-off. Whatever you’re getting out of it, you’re giving up a whole lot to get it.