From Google to Facebook, online privacy concerns aren’t going away?

[Why So Serious]

For the past two years, each company has experimented with different ways to divine more and more about how people live their lives on the Internet, without sparking a revolt.An informal and unscientific survey of Web users found a majority speaking out against the new business practices announced by Google and Facebook.

Do you guys think that - "It's dangerous for two companies to have so much personal data, regardless of whether the specific threats of that data consolidation are immediately clear," The company is under pressure to increase sales and profits to meet the lofty expectations of shareholders, and online advertising is the most logical place to do that. Facebook gleaned 89% of its estimated $4.3 billion in revenue last year, or about $3.8 billion. What are your thoughts on this matter, if any?

[Kim]

Companies like Facebook and Google currently have few alternatives that are just as good. Youtube is the largest video sharing website, for example, and any smaller website with the same features would still make it harder for people to find your video. The same goes for Facebook: if all your friends only have Facebook, you can't switch to a social network with a better privacy policy.

I think that there will eventually be more privacy on the Internet. Attention to privacy is growing, and alternatives, while small, are popping up. For example, the Calyx Institute ( https://duckduckgo.com/ do not track users' IP address or search history. These are not fully grown alternatives to what exists already, but as more people get concerned about privacy, their support base will grow. In addition, sufficient pressure can make existing companies like Google and Facebook alter their privacy policies, and voter initiatives can encourage politicians to enact stricter privacy laws for the Internet.

If you're interested in Internet privacy and your rights online, I suggest you check out the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to more privacy, transparency, and liberty on the Internet: https://www.eff.org/