Surveillance is cancerous. It keeps on growing, feeding on justification for every data point "just because", and then eventually it kills you.
FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
201–210 of 359 posts
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I'd bet over 99% of those people have never once considered that said camera could even be capable of saving any data without them operating it.
Very doubtful they've not considered it. When I go to coffee shops, I see maybe a quarter-to-half the laptops have a shade over the webcam. But when I see people using their phones, I've never once seen them use a shade, piece of tape, or post-it note. They use the front-facing camera of their phone so often that the temporary inconvenience of removing a shade outweighs the long-term inconvenience of malware snapping…
The cover over the webcam might not be for security per se. It could be they don't want anyone at work - or home? - to accidentally see where they are. If you cover the camera you don't have to worry any such accidents.
My gut says that for most people is the reason.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#203[flagged]
The government is large and consists of multiple organizations with different goals.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#204[flagged]
There is no single "the government".
Instead "The Government" is like a huge community. They are all supposed to adhere to the same code, but like any community there are those members that look for a way to bypass the law, without quite going over it.
That's what said purchases are. And even parts of the community in the same branch of a government department, may do what other parts are not even really aware of. Or agree with.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are useful questions but I don’t think they’re the only ones that matter. Here’s another one for consideration: What is the minimum level of privacy that a person should be entitled to, no matter their economic status? If we just let the free market decide these questions for us, the results won’t be great. There are a lot of things which shouldn’t be for sale.
> What is the minimum level of privacy that a person should be entitled to, no matter their economic status? This is an interesting question: maybe the truth is, very little. I don't think that user-identified app telemetry is below that minimum level of privacy. Knowing what I know about ad tracking in Facebook before Apple removed app identifiers, I don't think any of that was below the minimum level. This is a com…
I didn’t mean to evade your questions, but my opinion is as follows:
Yes I want YouTube to be free, but not if that requires intrusive surveillance.
People who pay for YouTube aren’t opted out of surveillance as far as I can tell. So I reject the premise of your question, that people are choosing free because they don’t value privacy. They haven’t been given the choice in most cases.
On a tangential note, you previously asked if ads should be more expensive. It’s possible that ads should be less expensive, since they may be less effective than ad spend would suggest: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-w...
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#206[flagged]
There is no single "the government". Instead "The Government" is like a huge community. They are all supposed to adhere to the same code, but like any community there are those members that look for a way to bypass the law, without quite going over it. That's what said purchases are. And even parts of the community in the same branch of a government department, may do what other parts are not even really aware of. Or…
Although you have a valid point, I object to your calling it a community because communities don't have constitutions and cannot throw people in jail if they break the community's rules. Also, a community has much less control over who becomes a member of the community than a government has over who it employs.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that my data can be stolen in the first place is already outrageous, because I neither consented to allowing these companies to have my data, nor benefit from them having my data. It's like if you go to an AirBNB and the owner sneaks in at night and takes photos of you sleeping naked and keeps those photos in a folder on his bookshelf. Would you be okay with that? If you're not directly harmed, what liabilit…
> before anyone asks, "personalized advertisements" is not a good reason The good reason is growth. Our AI sector is based on, in large part, the fruits of these data. Maybe it's all baloney, I don't know. But those are jobs, investment and taxes that e.g. Europe has skipped out on that America and China are capitalising on. My point, by the way, isn't pro surveillance. I enjoy my privacy. But blanket labelling perso…
So you're saying it's all vastly valuable and that's why it is right that it is taken without consent or compensation?
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution is much simpler. Put all of the consequences of being defrauded by a borrower onto the lender. If a lender wants to be repaid, then they need to show the borrower all the evidence they have for proof that the borrower entered into the contract. If all a lender has is the fact that a 9 digit number, date of birth, name, and address were entered online, then the borrower simply has to say “I did not enter…
"Put all of the consequences of being defrauded by a borrower onto the lender" - that seems a bit strange. Imagine saying "put all of the consequences of getting robbed onto the bank, not the robber"
Who bears the consequences of their home being robbed? Or mugged on the street? Or a contractor taking payment for services and then disappearing?
Why are we subsidizing lenders’ by putting this ridiculous burden on people who have nothing to do with the lender’s business?
The lender can pay to appropriately verify their borrower’s identity, or go to court and sue for damages like everyone else has to.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#209We really need e2ee social media that's designed to protect, not addict people.
“E2ee social media” isn’t a coherent concept. E2ee has to do with how information is transferred not what is transferred.
Sure it is: https://peergos.org/posts/decentralized-social-media
It is social media where only the end users' devices can decrypt the posts and comments. Then surveillance is not possible. Targeted ads are not possible.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
The intelligence agencies literally use ad data to do "targeted killing" what are you even talking about? Ex-NSA Chief: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata'...
Can you define a harm suffered by the people that the FTC represents? What about the EU beneficiaries of the GDPR? This is sincere, it is meant to advance to a real and interesting conversation.
I think privacy violations are a harm in themselves, but you seem to have already dismissed this issue, so I'll move on. How about behavioral manipulation via microtargeting, economic harm via price discrimination, reselling of the data via monetization to unscrupulous aggregators or third parties, general security reduction (data and metadata sets could be used for APT, etc), or the chilling effect of being tracked all the time in this way?