Fascinating documentary but I don't think it told us anything we didn't already know. It was just a bit of a shock to see it all laid out bare in that way.

It's quite astonishing what online companies are allowed to get away with when you think about it. Imagine if, everywhere you went, everything you did, every action that you made, every word that you said, there was a guy stood behind you continuously making notes on his clipboard. Imagine if he had so much data about you that he could reliably predict what your next action was going to be before you'd even thought about it yourself. You'd quite rightly be straight down the police station to file a complaint for stalking, yet this is exactly what the likes of Facebook and Google do on a constant basis, and for some reason, it's considered acceptable.

They get away with it because everyone has been conditioned, slowly, over time, to not care about their personal data. It's become a trade off where people's personal data is less important that the services their data provides. For example, people don't care that their phones track their every move because the trade off is that they can use Google Maps to find where something is. They don't care that the microphone in their pocket can listen to and record every single word they ever say because the trade off is that they can say 'Hey Google' to get information instead of having to type it in. They don't care that Facebook can track not only their every move around the internet, but that of their friends movements also, regardless if whether their friends have Facebook accounts of not, because the trade off is that they get to see how their ex-girlfriend is getting on without them.

If the internet was suddenly invented today and we were told that we could have all of this magic at our fingertips but the trade-off was that we would have to forgo every notion and expectation of privacy, and our entire lives, from where we go, when we go there, who we talk to, what we say, what we buy, what our sexual interests are, how we vote, who we're married to and what our children are called and everything else, would be recorded, analysed, sold and stored somewhere for an indeterminate amount of time and we would have no control over it whatsoever, I doubt as many people would sign up to it.

As I said, the most alarming aspect of all of this is that it's perfectly legal and has become seemingly acceptable behaviour.

There are steps you can take but I know that most people can't be bothered. But that's exactly what these companies bank on. Personally, I use Linux instead of Windows. I avoid Google services like the plague and when I do need to use them, I use them in their own sandboxed browser so they can't infect my normal browser, and I take other steps also which I won't bore everyone with here. But I'm amazed that the onus is on me to protect myself from these companies when there should be laws in place to do that for me (us all).

But yes, back on topic, fascinating documentary that I recommend everyone watches.

Yeah it was a good one, especially given the people involved and their background.

Nothing new in the documentary at all.