Early Facebook and Google Employees Form a Center for Humane Technology

the problem, i think, is very real.. many people in this thread seem not to be affected, and that is good. but people are getting addicted in droves.. and they need the help!

sure, it is fighting bad tech with more tech - but that will be _good_ tech, hopefully.. besides that more regulation is needed - as others have rightfully stated. but this is not an either/or choice.. both are needed and tech is not going to be ditched any time soon.. on the contrary i would think :)

if not, are you living off-grid? (which is also interesting, but a different topic altogether)

Reminds me of a game by Microsoft. I really like Wordament. What I like about it, is that if you select the same language, you get the same puzzle. So you can play against a friend who's sitting in the same room! Who'd have thought I'd love a game by Microsoft (for Android!). Only annoying this is the ads; I wish I could buy a premium version.

"Shit's Easy Syndrome," from a great Steve Yegge post: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...

Unfortunately I'm more cynical than Mr. Schneier. His three reasons are true, but irrelevant, because the companies don't even have to care how valuable the data is right now. It's already free and clear, outside of maybe COPPA. It's the territory of privacy that they have stored for anything they can think of in the future, while right now it's fine to be used as an excuse to sell mundane ads based on it. I feel the regulation he desires is unlikely to happen because now the big data companies have more money than God, as well as much more focused interests than "a group of Facebook users," and can use that money to lobby. All the while us mooks are left to set up GoFundMes and hashtags 8 years before someone, somewhere gets standing in court. If they get past arbitration, that is.[1]

There is effectively no consequence to any use or misuse of data on the ownership side and I don't see that changing, not the least because data is the very lifeblood of the businesses that have been formed around it, it is the family jewels, and it will be protected from outside forces of all kinds. A data SarbOx isn't going to be more effective than the ineffective original because nobody's really going to tell them what they can do with their data. They have conquered frontiers of privacy, and we're already on the way to a new regime oriented around them. Can they be beat back? Who knows.

This is why setting up what sounds essentially like an informational campaign that tells you that all this is happening is a bit of the old horse and barn door, and I'm pessimistic that they would ever run anything that might threaten the financial prospects of these companies. Perhaps it could even be seen as a submarine campaign to ease the transition into a new concept of privacy, anchoring the other side of the debate (wittingly or unwittingly, it doesn't matter).

We can be smarter, sure, anything's possible, but it's not that simple. A lot of smarter people also work for these companies (and in government) and are fine with the way things are.

Now I feel like reading up on the taming of the American West, there might be some relevance here. Putting that on my list, and as far as solutions go I think that's the best I can do right now.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaz2hxZLycY