BOVARD: Big Tech Is ‘Ruining’ Our Relationships

Rachel Bovard, Conservative Partnership Institute’s senior director of policy, said Big Tech has changed everything about us.

An interview with The Daily Signal, Bovard said Big Tech has fundamentally changed human nature as well know it and compared the process to a “frog that’s boiling slowly.”

“We don’t quite realize that it’s happening,” she said. “But our digital borders have been changing with relation to individual privacy, but also sort of how we interact with each other.”

Her main example was the volume of information that private companies receive from their customers.

“We’ve opened up this boundary-less environment into what private companies collect on us, how they then share that with the government, how, as a consumer, we are being manipulated on a psychological level that we’ve really never experienced before,” she added. “And all of this third-party data collection, and what is done with it, is completely lawless space. It has no regulatory aspect. And I think that’s where our public policy is really trying to catch up.” 

Indeed, Bovard argued that the most dangerous aspect of Big Tech’s collection of private data is the sale of it.

“That’s how Google makes 80% of its money, how Facebook makes the majority of its cash,” Bovard said. “Facebook is following you around the internet, collecting little bits about your shopping behavior, where you go, how long you’re on websites. They’re repackaging that in various ways and providing it to digital people who want to advertise to you.” 

“They can make very accurate profiles about your age, your gender, what type of life you live, how rich you are,” she added. “They can tell all these things from your data.” 

Bovard condemned Big Tech’s suppression of freedom speech in an article with the New York PostLast year. “Speech, as such, is no longer allowed on the [Big Tech] platforms. Just correct speech,” she said.

Bovard is on Media Research Center’s Free Speech America Board as a Board Advisor.

Conservatives under attack Contact your local representative and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s Use the contact formPlease help us make Big Tech more accountable.