
Center for New Economics Studies
Your Data Has a Social Life You Don't Know About
You tap "I Agree" without reading it, every single time. We all do. Champions of informed consent, honestly. But this episode is about what that one tap actually hands over; and it's more than you'd think. In this episode, Prof. Aneesha Dev sits down with Sahasra and they get into who's really deciding what you see, what you believe, and what you're allowed to say online. These are people and entities you definitely didn't vote for. Like the one guy who bought a website and somehow rewired the internet for 500 million people overnight. No big deal. We talk about why reporting harassment online feels like shouting into the void, while getting flagged yourself happens at the speed of light. We get into the billion-dollar data broker industry that knows an unsettling amount about you and has never once introduced itself. And we talk about the cookie banner that makes "accept all" one click and "manage preferences" a six-click maze. A design choice, definitely not an accident. We also unpack the Kunal Kamra case: what happens when the government gets to be both the referee and the player in deciding what counts as "fake news" about itself. No boring lecture energy. Just the stuff worth knowing before you tap "Agree" for the 400th time this month. New episode out now.




