I think you massively under-estimate the banality of authoritarianism.
If an authoritarian movement takes over the US government, at least a majority of the Johns Hopkins CS faculty will continue taking grants from the NSF/DoD. Many of those grants will be more-or-less aligned with the objectives of that authoritarian movement. Non-authoritarian students will grind away on those projects.
Something similar would happen at FAANGM. No iCloud backups? NBD; lean on those companies to collect whatever data the state wants. You don't need super competent loyal technologists, because FAANGM and their employees will most of the time just do what you tell them. You don't need existing troves of data, because you can start collecting at any point and still get a huge amount of utility.
Could the authoritarian world be marginally better if big tech makes an about-face and stops collecting data? Sure. Is that difference enough to make any sort of significant difference in the lived experience of people or the trajectory of the authoritarian regime? Probably not.
I don't think you're wrong, per se, about the risks. But I don't think you have a compelling solution. And, anyways, there are much stronger arguments for reigning in data collection at big tech than the risk of impending authoritarianism.
Right? This comment thread reads like this sort of thing hasn’t already happened here. But it has. The US may not be the most authoritarian regime, but I think that its recent actions scream authoritarianism louder than any words claiming that it’s not.
If an authoritarian movement takes over the US government, at least a majority of the Johns Hopkins CS faculty will continue taking grants from the NSF/DoD. Many of those grants will be more-or-less aligned with the objectives of that authoritarian movement. Non-authoritarian students will grind away on those projects.
Something similar would happen at FAANGM. No iCloud backups? NBD; lean on those companies to collect whatever data the state wants. You don't need super competent loyal technologists, because FAANGM and their employees will most of the time just do what you tell them. You don't need existing troves of data, because you can start collecting at any point and still get a huge amount of utility.
Could the authoritarian world be marginally better if big tech makes an about-face and stops collecting data? Sure. Is that difference enough to make any sort of significant difference in the lived experience of people or the trajectory of the authoritarian regime? Probably not.
I don't think you're wrong, per se, about the risks. But I don't think you have a compelling solution. And, anyways, there are much stronger arguments for reigning in data collection at big tech than the risk of impending authoritarianism.