You can have extreme privacy or you can join the 21st century.
You just summed up the precise problem far more succinctly than I could have. The loss of privacy is now taken with such fatalism, inevitability, that it is now being equated (almost accurately) with the march of time. "Lose your privacy and join the 21st century, or be stuck in the past!"There has never been an inherent right to disseminate pornography of any kind, and although we can tolerate much pornography such as we allow does not include child porn (which is a play-by-play of rape). At the same time we have a great liberalization of laws relating to erotic materials other than 'revenge porn' whose release violates any pretense of consent of a participant. The same technology that allows the freer dissemination of pornography also makes it easier for law enforcement to squelch child porn and 'revenge porn'.
The fact that Google seeks profits does not, in my estimation, make them benevolent. It makes them the same as any other amoral, profit-seeking entity. The same objection (benevolent inspector), of course, can and usually is made about any loss of privacy. "Why, it's okay if the NSA violates the fourth amendment, they're just looking out for our interest. You don't trust the government? They would never take advantage..." and so on. No, I don't trust Google. An entire generation is now growing up with no conception of what privacy even means, as previous generations understood the term. And I see very little public debate about this issue.
For just as the industrial revolution opened up whole new levels of extreme inequality, in wealth and in power, so does the information revolution open up whole new levels of inequality, the inequality of information, which was not even conceivable 20 years ago. The power not only to invade the private communications of individuals but to monitor, track, study, analyze, model, predict, and ultimately manipulate entire populations and their social behaviors. And unlike the industrial revolution, where the wealth of the nouveau riche, or the power of Gatling-gun equipped European empires was on public display for all to see, this revolution has largely been occurring invisibly.
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A giant corporation. media or not, has the right and duty to protect its income stream on behalf of its shareholders and the simultaneous right to protect the obvious interests of its customers. If Google must collaborate with the US government to squelch child porn or revenge porn -- so be it. If Google wishes to decide to be a family-friendly company and close itself to porn -- then such is its prerogative. Media companies also have the right to define themselves as 'family-friendly' or as 'fun' restrained only by legal constraints.
