Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources newsletter is a must-read for me, and I thought his interview with Steve Bannon was especially interesting today.

Bannon suggested that personal data be put in a “public trust” that allows use and opt-in/opt-out. Bannon compared Big Tech to the trusts broken up by Teddy Roosevelt, and went on to lambast the executives out west.

>> Bannon attacked the executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google. “These are run by sociopaths,” he said. “These people are complete narcissists. These people ought to be controlled, they ought to be regulated.” At one point during the phone call, Bannon said, “These people are evil. There is no doubt about that.”

Excerpt from today’s Reliable Sources newsletter

Bannon predicted that big tech will be “a burning issue” and “one of the biggest domestic issues” by 2020. He closed by noting that the, “#MeToo movement has brought the issue of consent front and center” and “this is going to bring the issue of digital consent front and center.”

I’ve made a similar argument in my post Water, sand, and societal change, where I focused on how the privacy issue was suspect to overflow public discourse in the near future.

Relating the privacy/tech issue to #MeToo seems a little undesirable to me, but I honestly don’t feel qualified enough on either movement to say whether there is an overlap in the concept of “consent”. I have a feeling Freedom will be the true common denominator, yet the articulation escapes me right now.

By the way, I really appreciate Stelter sharing micro-stories like this without forcing them into the CNN article layout, which would undoubtedly cram unrelated video in front of this juicy tidbit. Subscribe to the Reliable Sources newsletter here.