'The looming power of these powerful digital dictators'
Seems to me, we're At-War-On-Three-Fronts:
#1. Tech Automation and job redundancy AKA 'AI killing jobs' by the dumb MSM, that can't tell the difference between self-aware Neural-Nets and Pattern-Matching-NN's. For sure, Bots scanning medical scans faster than doctors and self-drive cars & trucks are real. But that's all for now at least...
#2. Lack of tech choice... The average family has no choice but to buy a Windows-10-home Laptop / PC, as there just isn't an alternative. Dell offers Linux in some markets, but the rest of the big names offer no alternative affordable choices at all. That means forced slurp is inevitable for most busy / modest families... That will inevitably lead to M$ becoming a big-player in Ads + Slurp rivalling Google & Facebook. Why? Only 30% of consumers use Win10's Privacy Controls! Plus, Mobile and Android slurp is at epidemic proportions, and that's without any regard to how much malware makes it onto Google-Play! Then we have the onslaught of Smart-everything from Smart-TV to IoT phoning home.. It all means, there's no escape now!
#3. Constant slurping by Facebook / Google / Uber / Snap / LinkedIn, on 3rd party sites especially. Most users don't use Ad-blockers, especially on mobile. This is leading to the juiciest slurp of all... Overall, the 3 areas mentioned are converging already. Example: Google matches online search-n-slurp to real-world credit-card purchases & transactions. This says it all! And remember this is just the beginning folks... This isn't even the end-game! The irony is, the more time spent on Facebook, the more Ads that will pay for more research into AI, which will leave even more of out of work in the future!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
