In some of the music communities I’m in the content creators are already telling their userbase to go follow them on threads. They’re all talking about some kind of beef between Elon and Mark and the possibility of a boxing match… Mark was right to call the people he’s leaching off of fucking idiots.
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I care. I’m just increasingly convinced it’s too fucking late.
Tbh it’s not black and white. I’m sure a big corporation can extract a ton of information on us but there’s still a pretty big gap between having our real names and photos plastered everywhere on social media, or them just knowing where I live and that I spend a lot on steam games. Don’t take the small victories for granted.
It is. They know everything about you. Even every store you have shopped at knows a lot about you. It really doesn’t take much interaction for a company to get a lot of info. It’s relatively easy to get an email and from there, if they wanted, they can get the rest of your profile from a 3rd party who has your data all matched up already. They can also build your profile pretty easily themselves as well.
How can regular people buy this data?
Say I wanted to find out what my profile looks like?
Yes. I would like this info as well if anyone has it .
If you’re in the US, you can demand a company release the information they have on you, to you, for inspection. It’s more data than you’d think. A LOT more.
I imagine “you” can’t
you’d likely have to work for some marketing agency and can probably only buy user data in bulk amounts (based on region, or some other desired demographic) with a recurring business plan of course
it wouldn’t be financially beneficial for these companies to sell an individual thumbprint
That makes sense.
So who wants to set up an marketing agency with me?
That makes sense.
So who wants to set up an marketing agency with me?
Say I wanted to find out what my profile looks like?
Live in the EU.
I do. Now what?
You have the right to request access to inspect the personal information a company stores on you. At least, in the US. And I believe the UK and EU as well but I can’t speak as much to those.
If you want to be truly terrified (or enlightened, however you prefer to think of it), pick any big company that you’ve used and request all the data they have stored on you. The amount of data they’ll have is STAGGERING. Certainly hundreds of pages, possibly thousands. It’s insane.
It’s never too late. Sure, they already have a lot of data on you but you can keep them from getting more.
Definitely. I’m was trying to state that basic info about you is readily available to companies regardless of how you choose to interact with them.
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Im in basically the same position since realistically the change needs to be at an institutional level. I can’t really change anything by myself without excluding myself from most modern services.
We need laws and regulations. But like you I fear it’s too late.
It might not be. Plenty of US states are coming online with privacy rights. If you live in CA, CO, CT or VA you can submit requests to opt out of information sales and for sites to erase your data.
Me. I care I just…fuck. That ship has sailed. I don’t go out of my way to download the big offenders like Tik Tok but…still. Everyone is tracking me. Everyone is selling my information. God knows how many different companies have massive files on me.
Same here, but that doesn’t stop me from trying where I have the time and energy. One of those ways is voting. So far the government has let these companies wipe their shit onto every corner of the internet, and the 5-10% of us switching apps or emails or… Whatever, aren’t going to change that. It’s not a short-term solution, but I’m starting to think it’s really the only way.
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What about a watching self promotional videos that promote ads on an advertising company? Is that okay?
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Even if you get them to care once you show them all they need to do to have a shred of privacy they shrug say something along the lines of “well I don’t have anything to hide anyways” and go back to their merry way. The path of least resistance will always win sadly
Literally saw a comment like that yesterday. Drives me up the wall. I’m in the process of accepting that the average Joe/Jane just doesn’t care about anything but their little bubble. I used to spend so much emotional energy on trying to convince people to stand up for something greater or to at least think more than 2 meters ahead, but now I’m just done. I’ll watch out for myself and the people close to me, everyone else can just evaporate for all I care.
Congratulations, you now have your own little bubble.
Lol true but teaching people better ways is like swimming against the tie. Heck is even hard with people close to me !
I literally just had a friend tell me he joined Threads and how neat it was, etc etc and when I explained why I wouldn’t be joining him, he basically just gave me the old “Well I already know they have all my information so it doesn’t matter”
…like wtf? So you just…give up having any privacy whatsoever? I just couldn’t respond to him after that, I don’t really know how to respond to that. There’s a disease spreading in the world unfortunately and it isn’t just COVID. It’s one called Apathy and too many people are coming down with it.
Honestly he has a point. I was born right before Y2K. My entire life has been online. I’m sure with enough digging this account can be linked back to my IRL identity. They already have any and every bit of information about me, what’s a little more?
People don’t care and are never going to care. They can track us by anything already and don’t need you to give them any info. The algorithms that they use can identify you if you sign up or not.
It’s not apathy per se, it’s more resigned acceptance. There is no privacy anymore, even if you do everything in your power not to be tracked. Unless you live completely off the grid, cash transactions in places without security cameras only and no bank account/online accounts you’re going to be tracked by big tech.
The Average person, in my experience, doesnt give a shit about their privacy…because they are stuck on the notion of “what do I have to hide? I didnt do anything wrong!” with a heaping helping of not wanting to give up convenience on top of it.
And all attempts to explain them that you dont have to have anything to hide for your privacy to be important and be protected fall on deaf ears and accusations that you, the one trying to protect them must be some kind of bad/evil/criminal person to be that concerned with privacy.
These people tend to be absolute delights to deal with when their shit gets stolen, and they expect everyone else to fix it for them.
Well okay, with my piracy habit perhaps I do have something to hide😂
But I also think most people don’t realise they do have stuff to hide.
Everything should be private by default. All this shit about nothing to hide is the opposite of that - trying to justify why something should be private. The question is rather why it should be public.
There companies profit enormously on our data and we get exactly nothing in return except the ability to use their service, under the conditions that they put in place. We have zero power to change anything at all about what they provide for us.
A user in that context is similar to a loser. Someone who has no ability to control what happens.
I mean if you want to start paying a fee to use social media… that’s just the choice they make
I keep seeing people saying “I have nothing to hide” is a bad argument. But no one ever explains why it is. So for the people who say they don’t care about the privacy, what would you say to them about why they should care?
Because everyone has stuff to hide. You dont have to have criminal activity, ongoing or in your past, to want to keep your privacy and keep things hidden. I always counter with “Okay, then lets paint your social security number on the side of your car if you have nothing to hide”, and they always stammer and stutter about how thats different and that would cause them no end of headache if someone got it and stole their identity.
And yes, thats the point. You have stuff you want to protect and keep others from knowing. Not just for identity theft reasons, but for social reasons as well… You probably don’t want your spouse to know how much you hate their sibling for no reason, or want your boss to hear what you say about them at home, You dont want people at the bagel shop to know your bank account number and password, Or any of a thousand other things that you do every day, that you dont want other people to know about.
Personally, I’ve always thought “They could sell your data to insurance companies who might jack up your prices or claim something is a pre-existing condition” to be the most p we persuasive to people like my parents.
tbf if you’re not american it’s better
But Facebook/Twitter/etc isn’t telling out boss what we say about them at home. Or our SSN to every car we pass. Or how much we hate it family-in-law.
Unless you give them realistic reasons, they will always counter with “That’s different” because it is.
Who knows what will be worth hiding in the future. Something that is nothing to hide today might get you in serious trouble in the future.
Some really good arguments. But here’s one from the Cyber Security side. We all know about the CIA, but do you know about the other CIA?
- Confidentiality – Information that you store or transfer is only readable to those you designate.
- Integrity – Information you store or transfer is only alterable by those you designate.
- Availability – Information you store or transfer is available to those you designate when they need access to the data.
Confidentiality is the heart and soul of a functioning life. You do have stuff to hide, even if you say you don’t. Do you want a rando to know your passwords? Do you want your wife to find out about your birthday gift to her before the big day? Do you want your nosy neighbour to start gossiping to the entire neighbourhood about what you and your wife did on her big day? Do you want that big secret plan that will make you the next Mark Zuckerberg be found out by the real Zuckerberg and now he’s rich and you’re not? All of these are things that aren’t illegal, yet are still private information that someone like you might want to make confidential.
And this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. Sure, you might argue, you shouldn’t be posting your plans for the Zuck-killer on Facebook, but your actual words are not the only thing Facebook stores and analyses. They know a lot about you. What you liked. What you commented on. What you searched for. What you looked at. They know things about you that you never ever said. For instance, even if you never said “I’m a Democrat” in so many words, or even if you don’t share overtly political posts, they still know your ideologies and are willing to sell this information to everyone and sundry. Facebook is even building profiles on people who never created accounts on Facebook. Imagine being Republican and working for a Democrat boss. You’ve worked hard to keep politics out of the workplace, because while there may be anti-discrimination laws if you’re a woman or a minority, having an unpopular political opinion is not protected in as many places, so you could easily lose your job if Facebook discloses to your boss that you’ve not got the right political views.
If Confidentiality really was not an issue and everyone could live open lives without consequence, we’d be talking about the IAs of security, not the CIAs. That we are talking CIAs shows that yes, there actually IS a need for secrecy, and we actually DO have things to hide, even if we don’t moonlight as murderers, cat-burglars, or strippers.
PS: I don’t believe you have never had it explained to you why 'I have nothing to hide" is a bad argument.
PPS: Very strong sea lioning vibes here.
PPPS: Seems like this nonsense started cropping up on Reddit when it became clear the protests were having an effect. And now it’s here. So much dishonest debate tactics being thrown around the whole “we want an alternative to the creepily intrusive policies of main-stream social media” debate. I wonder why? </sarcasm>
OK, ngl that
{democrat|republican}rendering as democrat is pretty cool.
I’m just curious if you’re a tech worker? (or a teenager interested in tech)
I ask because I feel like people who work in tech are basically exposed to the dangers of web privacy all the time. I remember having to implement a facebook pixel on a website, and realizing the network of surveillance that facebook have spread across the web at that time. So I have pretty decent privacy behaviors, still far from great but maybe slightly above average.
But when I go to the doctor and I mention how often I eat fast food and drink alcohol, or when I go to the dentist and admit I don’t floss everyday - I’m sure those people are thinking ‘most people seriously don’t care about their health’. They might stop short of ‘fucking idiot’, hopefully.
I stopped using Facebook 10 years ago, but I’m loathed to actually delete my account because every once in a while, a long lost friend or relative contacts me there. It would be a shame to lose touch with people. Ultimately I care about that more than privacy. It’s the same with Whatsapp. I’ve made a concerted effort to convince my immediate family to try XMPP, Delta Chat and Signal, but they just won’t install another app unless everyone they know is using it. I find it a bit frustrating, but that’s reality. So I have to keep using Whatsapp.
We can always keep a never in 10 years updated profile active for family and stuff. The biggest danger is for active users after all: they’re the most vulnerable to targeted media manipulation.
By being present in their lives (while giving up as few data as possible to big corporations) they can have by their side someone with good advices on privacy, manufactured consent, rights violations and adjacent topics. Alienating ourselves from them isn’t really beneficial in the long run.
I use WhatsApp as well for the people I keep in touch with, and have an active Instagram account where I use only the chat feature. It’s enough to keep up with the people in my life.
For whoever is even more privacy concerned, it’s possible to run those apps in sandboxed mode through some apps.
I use WhatsApp as well for the people I keep in touch with
And everyone in your address book not using WhatsApp should come by once in a while and slap you for selling their numbers for your convenience… You are right… keeping a basically inactive Facebook profile is harmless in comparison.
They all are already on WhatsApp though. All my phone contacts are WhatsApp contacts already (and have been before I added them).
If I need to interact with anyone who desires ultmost privacy I’m not idiot enough to ask for their phone number, and they’d be really out of their mind to share if that’s the case.
But sure, I guess a cousin or smth might want to slap me in the face for “selling” data they already sold themselves years prior.
I live in Germany and everyone here uses WhatsApp. If you decide to uninstall it, you’re cut off from 95% of your friends, family and your coworkers.
It’s not an option to not use it, sadly. From what I understand, it’s like iMessage in the USA. Extreme monopoly and very hard to break out of it.
I live in Germany
Same here… and most of my contact list (and I) dropped WhatsApp when Meta bought them or a year later when the eavesdropping and phoning home to Meta was publically discussed in the media. The remaining minority is able to use another alternative on top of WhatsApp (that’s one of the reason I like to remond them that they provide Meta with data from the people opting out…). That was also nearly a decade ago (2014/2015), so pretending that you need to use WhatsApp in 2023 is indeed a choice.
pretending that you need to use WhatsApp in 2023 is indeed a choice
It’s not as easy as you make it sound. Between 2015 and 2022, Whatsapp’s marketshare has increased a lot in Germany. So it might’ve been comparatively easy to drop it 8 years ago. It’s not anymore.
Maybe I’d be able to convince a lot of my friends to install another app just for me. But it would be hard to do and involve a lot of arguing on my end. I’m not a missionary and I choose to spend my lifetime for other, more important things.
Or maybe you would realize that a lot of people think the same but are also convinced to be alone and unable to change anything… Just like it happened for me back then the moment the first few made the effort to change. We will never know.
They probably don’t know what actually involves giving away their data and what actually concretely means. I’m a tech guy, developer, here in the Fediverse and neither I do know actually what it means. It’s the lack of information the problem. I could imagine it though, but it’s not the same thing. I could imagine that with my data big corps become more powerful, creating more addicting ads, contents and algorithms that eventually will fuck up the world even more. And that’s a nightmare, I know. Metaphorically it’s like intensive farming. “I eat meat because I love it and I can’t give up on it” and as soon as no one sees what actually happens to the animals inside those farmings, no one cares.
They are my mother, father, and everyone else. Life’s hard, and too many things compete for our attention.
You’re right. Indiscriminate data collection is like the meat industry. Some people may find abhorrent how animals are treated, even how destructive the whole thing can be. But ultimately, out of sight is out of mind, right?
Like you said, the same with privacy. Apps are shiny, addictive, and seem to be given away for free. Then life happens, the mind becomes busy with what holds its attention.
We’re doomed because the game being played is simply too complex for anyone make sense of it. Any competing insight is immediately drowned under the massive torrent of data we’re all subjected to.
One problem is that it’s very hard to quantify how much our privacy, our data, is worth. There’s money to be made with it, but we, average people, have no idea how any of that works. This leads to general indifference.
Another problem I see is that most people don’t correlate their continuously worse online experience with being spied. Every facebook change led to lots complaints, but people didn’t quit, they just ate shit until they stopped complaining. Same with Twitter, Insta, Google, Youtube. Since the enshittification happens gradually, they fail to correlate one thing with another.
I really think this thread is a great example of why the average person doesn’t care that much.
The whole thread is full of comments like “the issues caused by giving away all your data are too abstract, too far away, or too difficult to understand”. This is true by the way, I completely agree.
But I haven’t seen a single comment trying to explain those possible issues in an easily understandable way. The average person (or, at least me) reading threads like this won’t learn anything new. Give me a practical issue that I might face, and if I agree that it’s an issue, I’ll focus more on avoiding that issue.
In other words, an example:
- Let’s say I’m a person using lemmy/mastodon, only using privacy-focused search engines etc.
- If I would now change to using facebook/threads, started using Chrome as my browser, etc the usual mainstream tracking stuff - what problems can this cause for me in the future?
PS. I do agree with the notion of “minimize the data you give away”, which is one reason I’m here, but I really don’t have an answer for these questions. I’m like “I understand the point of privacy, but can’t explain the reasons”.
People do, but ease of use will trump it every time.
It’s a bit of a shock that simply picking an instance and signing up like any regular site is such a hurdle to so many people.
I think in Mastodon’s case it was less that you had to pick an instance, rather they were all instances from companies/people that they didn’t know. How many email providers does the average person know? The “my Mastodon admin can read all my posts” discussion also fits into this (they were fine with Twitter doing it). Threads will behave just like any other service in the Fediverse at the end, with all that “complexity”, but people will say Threads is easier, just because of the recognition factor and that they already have an Instagram account.
That last bit is part of it. One Instagram account means full access, full interaction. If you don’t have one there’s no approval process, either.
Plus it looks more fleshed out. Let’s face it, a clean and at least vaguely clear UI is far more trustworthy for 99% of people than a possibly sketchy one that seems to almost overcommunicate as far as they’re concerned.
Oh, and speaking of UI, the only app I have for Lemmy on iOS is through Testflight. Most people don’t have, want, or even need a desktop so if there’s no phone app then literally nothing else matters and that’s fair.
Technology is hard
That was not the case with lemmy. Most of the instances I tried required manual approval for signups. It took me going through like 4 different instances to find one that didn’t.
To be fair, most people reccomend lemmy.world now, and that doesn’t need manual approval. But there’s another problem, they can’t interact with Beehaw.
“Simply” picking an instance is not actually that simple. Most people just want to go to the site and sign up. Even with email, they know what Gmail and Outlook are. But on Lemmy, there’s no indication of what you’re supposed to pick. Even if you try to go with what seems like the “default” instance, lemmy.ml, you’re met with an announcement saying not to do thaf cause it’s overloaded.
People don’t want to have to make decisions, especially when they don’t have any information to go off of.
That’s the key, you have to figure out what instance is best for you. With a million choices you get choice paralysis mixed with FOMO and they just don’t bother.
IMO that’s probably the biggest problem with anything decentralized like this. The average person doesn’t care about the benefits and the above is by far a big barrier to entry.
The biggest advantage of a decentralized system is that none of the people who are unwilling to invest even the briefest amount of time into understanding something will end up using it.
Most of us don’t care what the average person has to say on social media, as demonstrated by what they average person has said on social media over the past 15 years.
If you don’t appeal to the masses then lemmy will stay small, and pushes like threads will wipe it out in no time.
IMO that’s also mastodons biggest problem. They’re essentially trying to stay small an unsuccessful.
Lemmy and Mastadon aren’t at all private, by any measure. Not sure what exactly you mean now.
They’re also not mega corps tracking and selling your every move. It’s quite a bit different. What’s public here is what I explicitly make public, there’s no unwanted encroachment or permissions.
So it’s about profiting off the lack of privacy. Not the lack of privacy itself. Now I get it.
Yes, but also how they are doing it. And to who they are selling the data. Etc. Etc.
Best thing Lemmy signups could do is ask “What’s your primary interest?” And randomly select an instance that has that category.
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That’s a bit hyperbolic. You only do that if you join a heavily political instance or subscribe to tons of political communities. Most of the boards aren’t like that.
I guess lack of choice makes choosing easy—you only have one option and that’s it, take it or leave it. Having to choose between vastly different options is also easy. But if you have a hundred similar, yet slightly different options to choose from, making the decision becomes psychologically hard, even if it doesn’t make a difference for your UX which option you choose.
And buzz. Don’t forget buzz.
I’ll go a step more general. People can’t be inconvenienced. Climate change,politics,etc…
If it slightly inconveniences people you’ll need a good leader to push it
All many people care about is bread and circuses. Unless their sustenance and distractions are taken away they are complacent.
Veganism is the perfect example
Nah, many of us non-vegans don’t see animals as having a right to life. I know I don’t.
People join massive protest all around the world for these things. They are willing to spend a day walking around and yelling even if it is an inconvenience.
It is lack of organizing and having a trust that if we just vote for right politician it will be solved. For decades of elections, nothing changed.
We need to organize ourselves as the people, like they do in some countries. Stop the traffic, organize in shifts to stay on road blocking all gas powered trucks. You need to stop businesses from operating normally to give the system some reason to change, instead of just ignoring us and promising us that next election it will be better.
Same for soical media, do the internet equivalent of blockades, DDOS them like anonymous did. They can’t arrest us all. And organize to block police cars when they try to make an example of the few.
Zuck is proof that sociopaths and narcissists run the world. This is obvious theater at this point.
Privacy 🔏 What are you trying to hide something /s every Karen ever
You are the kind of person that openly insults people and then gets mad when people insult you huh?
Congratulations! You have been my first downvote on Lemmy! You said a dumb thing.
Your mom would have had a happy life if she swallowed, instead she’s stuck with a 10k calorie a day NEET who white knights for Zuckerberg. Either that or you’re Zuckerberg, not sure what’s worse
Confirmed. You are that type of person.
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So the only two options you see are to insult someone by calling them a sociopath/narcissist or you are a sympathizer… very myopic.
I guess your guys are all highly trained psychiatric professionals. It must be me that’s wrong…
Carry on insulting people that have built more then you ever will I guess. Zuckerberg sucks but not as much as your guys.
It’s like music streaming. The streaming quality is worse and wireless earbuds don’t sound great, but the convenience of it all made that industry huge.
Convenience over quality.
Ultimately, even for me as someone who cares about it, it’s just become one of those things that I don’t prioritize. Life is hard and at some point I’d rather get something cool done with gmail reading all my private conversations than struggle with my own email server.
Not saying it’s a great choice but ultimately life is short and we need to focus on doing what feels right. People have to pick their battles and that’s life.
That’s kind of a fatalistic view on life.
You could have just used Protonmail or something.
Most of these battles are very interconnected. Destroying one part of this horrible system will leave a flank open for the rest to fall.
They need to spy on us, so they can stop any real fight, riot against other issues that are plaguing us, like inflation, climate change and etc.
Ultimately, it’s because the concerns of privacy are simply too far removed from people, or they trust certain entities more than others.
For example, if your next door neighbour knows all your browsing history, people would be bothered, but people are not bothered if Google knows as it feels they would have no direct effect on their life, whereas your next door neighbour might.
This can be easily seen in the whole discussion regarding privacy on Mastodon.
A lot of people refuse to use Mastodon over Twitter, because “Mastodon admins can see my DMs”, even though Twitter absolutely could as well (Twitter apparently has encrypted DMs since May 2023 though). The reason for this is they see a Mastodon admin as someone who could potentially have an effect on their digital life, whereas they trust Twitter not to do anything with the data since they’re a big corporation who has nothing to do with their personal life.
Unless it is an effect they can directly observe (or imagine to occur), people simply don’t care. This applies to almost all discussions around the big picture, such as things like climate change or unions, or whatever.
Whether we like it or not, people absolutely trust corporations.
First of all most people, not just the average person, simply do not grasp what privacy is exactly - especially in the US, where the view on privacy is skewed by its obsolete constitution.
I mean, just the fact that anyone would think if you personally don’t mind sharing personal affairs or being public, then privacy isn’t much of a concern proves the lack of understanding of that principle. It’s like saying, I’m not religious so neither the lack of freedom of religion or the separation of church and state would have any impact on me.
The most important function of the human right to privacy is not the thwarting of interference with one’s property or dignity, it’s the maintenance of the control and power an individual has over their own self - and by extension that of a people.
A simple example: If I give you my phone number, I give away some control over myself because you now have to power to use that property however it fits you. That may mean to just keep in touch with me, to save the number in your contact list that is accessible to ChatGPT, Tiktok or some malware on your phone, or share it with someone who wants to dig up some dirt on me.
The key point is not whether any of the possibilities affect or matter to you but whether you would have any say in how that information is obtained, handled, kept, etc. The effect of the resulting consequences may appear only gradually and sometimes take years but those in control ultimately shape politics, the economy, culture, society. This is also one of the reasons why the US is run by so many monopolies and oligopolies in their respective market segments.
Excellent post!
.de and undertones of capitalism critique? hello mein freund
That wasn’t the intention, however. I was referring to matters of power as seen from the perspective of human rights - without any heed to the structure of any nation’s economy.
