#Facebook isn’t a charity. The poor will pay by surrendering their data | Technology | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/26/facebook-isnt-charity-poor-pay-by-surrending-their-data
When you hire somebody as your personal assistant, the transaction is relatively straightforward: you pay the person for the services tendered – often, in cash – and that’s the end of it. It’s tempting to say that the same logic is at work with virtual assistants: you surrender your data – the way you would surrender your cash – for Google to provide this otherwise free service.
But something doesn’t add up here: few of us expect our personal assistants to walk away with a copy of all our letters and files in order to make a buck off them. For our virtual assistants, on the other hand, this is the only reason they exist.
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Nothing of the kind happens to today’s rich when they hire a personal assistant. Here, the balance of power is clear: the master is dominating the servant – and not the other way around, as is the case with Google Now and the poor. In a way, it’s the poor who are the true “virtual assistants” to Google – in helping it to amass the data that the company later monetises.