The Fantasy of Opting Out
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The Fantasy of Opting Out
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Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#2>Those who know about us have power over us. Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon.
Interesting, we could use tools like deepfake to fake images & videos of ourselves in order to increase the level of obfuscation.
Perhaps we can even analyze our writing styles and then use GPT-2 to produce writing that matches our styles, and flood the web with that.
Anonymity through noise.
Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#3I actually sort of thought this was the common POV for anyone within tech. Controlling google searches for your name, putting fake content on social media, etc. are obviously only way to create enough noise to direct algorithms to outcomes you’d prefer no?
Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#4[deleted]
Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#5I cannot help but wonder if the use of such tools as the ones listed in the article are not just "privacy theater", in the same sense that we have come to realize that much of what happens in the name of security is just "security theater". Ironically, of course, is that much of what happens in the name of security is exactly what takes away our privacy in the first place.
What is needed is for people to tangibly suffer from lack of privacy. It is obvious to people how they suffer from lack of security.
Germans remember what a lack of privacy can do (Stasi in East Germany), and as a consequence, they are much more privacy-minded than in many other places.
What will be the wake up call for other nations?
Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#6Definitely check out the browser extension TrackMeNot, mentioned in the article: it runs searches in the background to obfuscate what internet behavior is actually yours.
Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#7It's the year 2027. You get a notification from the H8Watch™ by the ADL app, default installed on every phone, and can't be deleted without jailbreaking. You open the notification, and it shows a video of you from 2 weeks ago, from a camera embedded in the table of the fast food restaurant from where you were eating lunch with your friend. Your voice has been reconstructed through lipreading software and played back to you. "You're such a feandra, I paid last time!" you said to your friend playfully, using the new insult people just started using to refer to someone thrifty.
After the video and reconstructed voice plays back to you twice, it changes to a message. "Minor class-based insult detected." The nonsense word "feandra" had been added to the H8Watch™ database 2 hours ago, and your offense had come up as part of their program to catch racists and classists retroactively. This prevents the use of new words or euphamisms that may otherwise be used to bypass H8Watch™ detection.
Moments later, you get more notifications. Twitter: account suspended for 1 day, your bank: $25 has been deducted from your account for terms of service violation, Facebook: 2 offenses so far this month, 1 more and all three videos will be posted to your Facebook feed.
You quickly swipe away the rest of the notifications, you'll deal with them later, and text the friend you were going to meet for dinner. "Hey John, I can't make it tonight. Cash is a little tight after another violation, and I can't risk a public conversation this week."
Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#8It's the year 2027. You get a notification from the H8Watch™ by the ADL app, default installed on every phone, and can't be deleted without jailbreaking. You open the notification, and it shows a video of you from 2 weeks ago, from a camera embedded in the table of the fast food restaurant from where you were eating lunch with your friend. Your voice has been reconstructed through lipreading software and played back…
It's remarkable how someone living in 2019 still finds grounds to complain about stiffing political correctness.
Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#9I cannot help but wonder if the use of such tools as the ones listed in the article are not just "privacy theater", in the same sense that we have come to realize that much of what happens in the name of security is just "security theater". Ironically, of course, is that much of what happens in the name of security is exactly what takes away our privacy in the first place. What is needed is for people to tangibly suf…
Ther is a wakeup call already but it needs to come from us (tech workers). We do understand what is going on, we do use use adblockers, application firewalls, obfuscate our online fingerprints, use multiple accounts etc.
On the other side we also produce tools for mass survailance, ads networks, tracking, implement telemetry, adding ads providers frameworks to our applications.
In same breath we are protesting against selling technology to military, ICE, disallow their children playing online games where gambling is the revenue (opening boxes and similar), gitlab enforced telemetry,...
I see a huge discrepancy between what we want for ourself (privacy), what we preach and on the other side, what we do and we fuel the survailance society.
The solution is to stop on our side and dont do to the others what we dont want to be done to us. (... and even if there is always going to be someone "selling drugs to kids", most of people dont do it).
Re: The Fantasy of Opting Out
#10It's the year 2027. You get a notification from the H8Watch™ by the ADL app, default installed on every phone, and can't be deleted without jailbreaking. You open the notification, and it shows a video of you from 2 weeks ago, from a camera embedded in the table of the fast food restaurant from where you were eating lunch with your friend. Your voice has been reconstructed through lipreading software and played back…
It's remarkable how someone living in 2019 still finds grounds to complain about stiffing political correctness.
If you think this story is limited to, or even about, political correctness, you are mistaken. It could be your insurance rates going up for jaywalking, even with no cars around. It could be your credit score dropping if you have too many drinks at a bar. It's about your personal activities all being tracked, measured, and in the end, controlled by corporations.