In China, you can’t exist without a smartphone, because for all existential things you have to do (paying bills, buying tickets etc.) , you are forced to use the almighty wechat app. Smartphones are a tool to manipulate and to spy on the population. It is a tool utilized by the ruling class, to control the masses. I hate the future and I hate “progress”.
The government spying on us, I think gives people the impression that doing nothing wrong means you’re in the clear. The part that is concerning is people who aren’t the government spying on us, what are the consequences for mishandling or misusing our most private info? What decisions will be made about us based on some algorithm that may or may not be fair. Not disagreeing with you just piggybacking on your comment for those that think they’re doing nothing wrong so they have nothing to worry about.
I disagree. The government that’s spying on us (at least in America) killed Fred Hampton and pressured MLK to kill himself. It’s the government that gets the wrong house when doing a no knock raid far more frequently than is reasonably acceptable. It’s the government that was kept in check by an implied right to privacy that no longer exists and now could run the risk of anal sex between consenting adults becoming illegal. This is the government that may charge you with a crime for menstruating wrong. And the corporations are selling your data to it. If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you better hope your data looks like you aren’t too.
That’s only a small part of what the data collection is for.
It is more interesting to consider what happens when people that know what you think start trying to influence how you think.