He’s one of the world’s most successful investors, and yesterday used his time on the stand to put down online conglomerates Google and Facebook.

Here in the office, long has the subject of “everything comes to an end” been the topic of short bursts of discussion, as Facebook continues to admit it’s a threat to the well-being of citizens the world over.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, George Soros explained how Facebook and Google have become “obstacles to innovation”, and are a “menace” to society whose “days are numbered,” reports The Guardian:

Rough – oh, but there’s more:

“Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment,” said the Hungarian-American businessman.

“This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.”

In addition to skewing democracy, social media companies “deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes” and “deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide”. The latter, he said, “can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents”.

“The power to shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies. It takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called ‘the freedom of mind’. There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it. This may have far-reaching political consequences.”

Safe to say he didn’t hold back:

And he wasn’t done:

Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines.

“This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined,” he said.

The companies, which he described as “ever more powerful monopolies” are unlikely to change their behaviour without regulation.

“The internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions. That turns them into a menace and it falls to the regulatory authorities to protect society against them,” he said.

During the same speech, Soros also criticised Donald Trump’s leadership, saying he had put the US on course for a nuclear war with North Korea.

Not a good look for the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[source:theguardian]