During the San Deigo Comic Con, Oliver Stone (the director of the upcoming film Snowden ) appeared with the stars of his film Zachary Quinto and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. When asked about the Pokémon Go phenomenon, the two actors gave respectfully neutral answers, but Stone had other ideas. His short speech, quoted in full by Fortune , spoke of how former Niantic owner Google “have invested a huge amount of money into, what surveillance is, data mining. They’re data mining every single person in this room for information as to what you’re buying, what you like, above all, your behavior”.
Well, get out your tin hats, everyone, we’re off to the land of conspiracy. As Stone goes on to say that “ Pokémon Go kicks into that. It’s everywhere. It’s what some people call surveillance capitalism – it’s the newest stage. It’s not for profit at the beginning, but it becomes for profit in the end. Because… it manipulates our behavior… You’ll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society, where they will know how you want to behave and they will make the mockup that matches how you behave, and lead you into another form of behavior. It’s what they call totalitarianism.”
What Stone is getting at here is the one flaw companies like Google and most social media sites possess: the inherent lack of protection against third party investment in personal information. As I explained in my Watch Dogs 2 dispatch, most social media sites have written in their terms and conditions that they may sell any information regarding you and your usage to third parties. For example, Google can sell information on your search terms to, say, a clothing company like H&M. In turn H&M can tailor their ads to show up on sites you frequent. This is pretty harmless, other than leading you to think about H&M clothing more often, it’s more like taking a census. You add your statistics, like what sites you visit and what you search for in Google, to the greater pool. The catch is that you might not entirely be giving your consent to this census. H&M doesn’t come knocking on your door to ask, they just take.
Most people are pretty okay with that. We’ve all been conditioned to take heavy and tailored advertising in stride – heck, it’s how we decorate our buses and trains. What most people don’t find so okay is when government bodies do the same thing. From politicians to the NSA, they use our private information to tailor their campaigns and even attempt to cut down on crime. This is all well and fine until you’re arrested for searching “how to kill Obama with a teacup” because you love The Chronicles of Riddick that much.
The latter is where Stone’s fear comes from. That apps like Pokémon Go will collect data on every player and sell it to a nefarious or ill-advised buyer. So basically, he’s not totally wrong, and there is a grain of truth to what he’s saying. Also, I imagine after directing and researching for a movie like Snowden , it’s easy to take up these kinds of conspiracy theories.
That said, Stone is blowing the issue a little out of proportion. As I said, most of us are pretty okay with tailored advertisements based on our internet usage. It’s the norm and honestly, I would say that worrying about who is watching you on the internet is less important than quite a few other issues in our world. Until something drastic happens, like thousands of people being arrested for searching the word “terror,” we can worry a little less about “surveillance capitalism,” as Stone says.
So go out and feel free to turn on your GPS, leave cookies everywhere, and give your apps a few permissions! Pokémon Go is still an awesome game that has brought so many people together and helped them physically and mentally. You can’t place a value on that and again, these conspiracy theories are the least of our worries.