Published on Medium on September 2023.
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Abstract
The notion that "data is the new oil" has gained significant traction since an influential article by The Economist in May 2017. This concept compares the dominance of tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft to the monopolies of the oil industry. Just as oil pipelines transfer raw material from extraction to refinement, data pipelines move user-generated data to tech corporations, where it is refined and reused for various purposes, including recommendations, advertising, and metrics. However, this industrial complex exploits consumers, environment, and workers, particularly in emerging countries where data annotation is often done at minimal wages. The accumulation of power by these companies raises concerns about privacy, ethics, and societal control, as seen in scandals like Cambridge Analytica. The energy-intensive nature of data centers further exacerbates environmental issues and limits the ability of emerging countries to build their own infrastructures. This exploitation mirrors the oil industry's disregard for environmental and local communities, highlighting the need for greater oversight and ethical considerations in the data-driven economy to prevent it from becoming as damaging as the fossil fuel industry.