My dad brought home a computer when I was 3 years old. He hoped that it would teach me things — and it did. I learned to spell in English by playing Reader Rabbit and the Fabulous Word Factory.

Thanks to free AOL 30-day trial CDs, the computer was a magic portal to a world beyond my suburban Southern California home. I designed websites on Geocities, wrote sprawling tomes of X-Files fan fiction, learned about feminism on ChickClick, and spent hours selecting song lyrics for my AIM profile. Fast-forward a decade: I cared so much about the internet, and its liberating technologies, that I became a media lawyer to defend it.

Things feel different now. Email went from social novelty to work necessity. Late night ICQ chats are now urgent Slacks. Packages arrive as quickly as I can one-click. The computer, and the networks that connect them, are no longer just a tool or a toy — they are the architecture of our reality.

And yet all of that convenience and connectivity comes with a hidden price. Someone — many someones — are collecting crumbs of our existence, commodifying systems that are both powerful and invisible. Supercomputers are now used to oppress ethnic minorities, automate racial bias in the criminal justice system, and muddy democratic processes through disinformation.

#privacy #nabiha-syed #personal-data #the-markup #investigation #hackernoon-top-story #journalism #security