Weekly Economics Podcast: Why should we care what big tech does with our data?

From the A‑level algorithm scandal, to parents taking on YouTube, to making Facebook and Google pay for news, people are fighting back against the way big tech companies and governments use our data.

So what are companies like Google and Facebook actually doing with our personal data? Is the pandemic being used to surrender our data to private companies? And what role can big tech workers and users play in fighting back?

In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Duncan McCann, senior researcher at NEF, Carissa Veliz, associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University and Cori Crider, lawyer, investigator and co-founder of Foxglove.

• You can read more about Carissa’s work, including a survey she did with Siân Brooke on privacy-related negative experiences, on her website 
• Read the article in Glamour Magazine on the risks of ​‘sharenting’ 
• For more on some of the issues discussed, listen back to this episode of the podcast from 2019 with Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression 
• Duncan’s work on data and privacy can be found on the NEF website
• Watch James Bridle’s TED talk on the way YouTube is targeting children with its content here
• Read more about Duncan’s case against YouTube for the above
• You can preorder Carissa’s book Privacy is Power now
• Head to the Foxglove website to find out more about how Cori and others are standing up to big tech 

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