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FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

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Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#351

Post by jamesmotherway »

wwmiller3 wrote: post #282
runjake wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but it took me 15 minutes start to finish to freeze my credit with the 3 bureaus using the following instructions. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-cre...

Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to mitigate identity theft. Someone leveraging the recent National Public Data breach opened a checking and savings account using my identity (no credit checks are performed in doing so) then committed wire fraud using accounts.

Banks use various other services such as Early Warning. Still, it's absurd the lengths we need to go to for any level of assurance against fraud.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#352

Post by FMecha »

93po wrote: post #179
DaleNeumann wrote: post #133

"According to one estimate, some Teens may see as many as 1,260 ads per day.200 Children and Teens may be lured through these ads into making purchases or handing over personal information and other data via dark patterns" There is a long trail of blood behind google and facebook, amazon... Etc...

Even with ad blockers, we still see tons of ads. Corporate news like CNN constantly has front page stories that are just paid promotion for some product or service wrapped in a thin veil of psuedo journalism. Product placement is everywhere too. Tons of reddit front page content is bot-upvoted content that is actually just a marketing campaign disguised as some TIL or meme or sappy story.

That does not even account for offline ads, such as billboards.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#353

Post by 6stringronin »

digging wrote: post #89
orthecreedence wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. It was a huge shame, but a cultural sign that the US is descending into a surveillance hell hole and people are ok with that . As someone who was (and still is) vehemently against PRISM and NSLs and all that, it was hard to come to terms with. I'm going to keep building things that circumvent the "empire" and hope people start caring eventually.

> and people are ok with that I've seen no evidence of this. People mostly either don't understand it for feel powerless against it.

Maybe you missed this article where a many of the replies say they are fine with facial scanning at airports. Digital rights removal is the slow boiling frog.

"Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41603698

The mentality of people in tech has drastically shifted into "o well... "

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#354

Post by Ajedi32 »

positus wrote: post #257
ragnese wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're all bad people, just some of us are more comfortable with our corruption being visible to others to a higher degree. If the GP's story is true (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), then there are clearly differences in the degree of "badness" between people. GP chose to resign from his job, while his manager chose to be negligent and dishonest. So, even if we're all bad people, there are less bad and m…

I understand your perspective, but I maintain that "good" (morally pure) isn't a category any of us belong to. We're all lying, hateful people to one extent or another, and lying hateful people aren't "good", even if we haven't lied or hated as much as other lying, hateful people. "Less evil" isn't synonymous with "good". The argument that profit motivation is the origin of shady business practices ignores the existe…

  as it is written:

    None is righteous, no, not one;
      no one understands;
      no one seeks for God.
 
    All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
      no one does good,
      not even one.
Romans 3:10-12

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#355

Post by positus »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #338
positus wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your perspective, but I maintain that "good" (morally pure) isn't a category any of us belong to. We're all lying, hateful people to one extent or another, and lying hateful people aren't "good", even if we haven't lied or hated as much as other lying, hateful people. "Less evil" isn't synonymous with "good". The argument that profit motivation is the origin of shady business practices ignores the existe…

Your attempt of making the situation seem to be asymmetric by arbitrarily defining "good" as absolute good, while "evil" as everything else - is unconvincing. (Why not the opposite - which would also be ridiculous ?)

It's like a glass of pure water. If there is anything else in the glass, it can no longer be called a glass of pure water. Likewise, the presence of evil of any quantity or quality in a person disqualifies them from being good. Apple trees do not yield blueberries, and good men do not do evil things. So if we discern in our thoughts, words, and actions the presence of evil, we can know with absolute certainty that we, too, are evil.

Or is it supposed that hating each other, lying to one another, stealing from one another, murdering one another, failing to fulfill contract, covenant, and commitment to one another are things that should be considered good?

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#356

Post by Clubber »

dialup_sounds wrote: post #317
Clubber wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure is unhelpful in contextualizing the information. Damn the gall, give it a rest. Again, methods and scope. Which one of those exposes PRISM, XKeyScore and the NSA infiltrating Google servers? Which one of those exposes the companies that willingly "integrated" with the NSA? Which of those exposes US government spying on allied governments, recording private conversatio…

Weird take. You have all these aspersions to cast on me and saying I'm trying to "sway public opinion by minimizing" when I'm literally telling one person to learn more about these subjects so they'll be less ignorant.

>These aren't new issues. The obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe we weren't communicating well, but I felt you were certainly minimizing it by claiming what Snowden revealed weren't "new issues," which they certainly were, and anyone who thinks different has an "obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure," which is an attempt to discredit. Was that your objective?

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#357

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

throwaway92024 wrote: post #326
positus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't society or profit motivation. It's people. Humanity itself is corrupt. There aren't "good people" and "bad people". There's only "bad people." We're all bad people, just some of us are more comfortable with our corruption being visible to others to a higher degree.

No. There are no good or bad people. But people do good or bad things, all the time.

This. Also, the world isn't black and white. Good and Evil are overly simplistic categories that aren't constructive. Just because one person does something wrong, it doesn't have to define them or negate the good they do in other areas.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#358

Post by aftbit »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #332
HansardExpert wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about your moral obligation?

People are so quick to judge without knowing the details, the situation is more complex than I'm willing to go into here, and I'm comfortable with my decision.

That's totally fair. After all, laws are about what people will force you to do using (the threat of) violence, while ethics and morals are about how you personally navigate the world, and a bit about how people will try to shame or socially compel you. If you are comfortable with your decision, that's all that really matters at the end of the day.

Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies

#359

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

night862 wrote: post #271
intended wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the treatment for depression. this argument reduces mental health to medication, which leaves aside everything from the history of mental health (asylums, witch burnings to today), leaps in medicine (from lobotomies, to SNRIs, bipolar meds and more), to simply better diagnoses. There are certainly tons of people here who have benefited from mental health professionals - overextending the flaws in psych si…

I disagree, in brief because the practical side of psychiatry is medication-dominated, mostly because medical research is difficult and expensive. There are some non-medication treatments for some psychiatric symptoms such as those caused by trauma (Prominently, EMDR) that some hail as actual cures, and even maybe depression (I am clearly not a doctor.) but in the case of depression I think you'll find its quite medi…

Most treatments we have for anything largely boil down to pharmaceuticals, not just in psychiatry, so I don't really understand what is different here from other medical fields (I personally think there should be more prevention in general). At least, a lot of mental health research and treatments comes from psychologists who don't work using with prescriptions. It's definitely not a flawless field, but I don't think it's that different than any other when it comes to lobbying and regulations being driven by politics over science.
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