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The surveilled society: Who is watching you and how
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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Aotearoa / New Zealand
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Homeopapes are definitely a thing. News agreggators, RSS feeds and customizable news like Reuters, and things like pocket being able to send to ereaders.
Alias phone is not some exciting tech unfortunately. I just have another phone that has a number and email account of its own that get used for signups. It's on casual prepay and is associated with its own human name and online accounts. It's kind of like I have an invisible flatmate who likes things like fuel cards and free streaming services.
If we get that I want the They Live plugin!!
Ah bummer. I use a separate randomized email address when I sign up for things, all forwarded to my main email that stays hidden. But then I go and buy some coffee online, and check my Facebook settings and see the coffee place told Facebook I bouught coffee. How does it know? I have all the blockers in the world, Facebook shouldn't have known I was there. Then I look at the Facebook record and see that it says they send Facebook the data through Facebook Business tools.
But how do they match it up? My best guess is phone number. I would prefer that I could use random phone numbers for each service that forward texts to my real number, like I have for email.
Haha oh man, might be better not knowing.
Yikes, that's creepy about facebook. I'm not on there much but I remember google once wanted to include something I'd booked in my google calendar (whatever the hell that is) so I never booked through that system again. I hate to think what fb is doing that I can't see, apparently it even has profiles on people who don't have accounts with it.
I wish it were easier to avoid this stuff.
It's scary how easy it is to track people. They definitely have profiles on people who don't have accounts. In fact, with the data that whichever coffee place uploaded that let them identify me, facebook has an option that lets you unlink the data. Not delete it. They keep the data and anonymise it so they no longer fall under privacy rules.
What worries me most about non transparency of data is their politics and what is happening to people in conflict zones.
I don't follow Facebook news. What is happening to people in conflict zones?
Meta has been heavily implicated in a couple of genocides - the A Death Sentence For My Father report gets its title from a heartbreaking example where this doctor who didn't even have a Facebook account was killed because of it.
But that was passive i.e Meta deliberately ignoring reports and refusing to take genocidal content down. More recently Meta has more actively chosen to "take sides" re the widespread censorship of Palestinian human rights posts.
I worry that this attitude combined with its surveillance powers is probably having a catastrophic effect. It would not surprise me at all to learn Meta is data sharing with war AI (which is already being alleged re Whatsapp).
That's terrible. We are in this age where technology is advancing faster than regulation, and I hope we sort it out over the next few decades as it will get exponentially worse the longer we make reactive rules.
I agree, but I really hope some of us are at least in a position to sort it out. There's this concept Surveillance Capitalism that points out how corporations have become more powerful because of it and their interactions with governments.
Even without that, in the US they have had legislative capture for decades (eg they are not allowed easy online taxes like we have because HR Block and TurboTax lobby against it) and NZ is beginning to show signs of it. Peter Thiel owns a surveillance company that develops war AI.
That said historically there are always swings in favour of human rights every now and again so here's hoping we as a species see sense.
The IRS recently released free filing so people don't have to go through a company! They aren't doing automatic assessments like us but are at least making progress on that front.
With the whole surveillance capitalism thing, there's a massive push among the kind of people who hang out on Lemmy to get away from big tech. Once the alternatives are polished enough I think we'll see migration of people to new platforms. Personally I have extended family who would be happy to get off Facebook but there is no alternative I can seriously suggest. A federated Facebook alternative Friendica exists, but there is no way it could be a replacement. You can't even post a video in a seamless way, your best option is to upload to YouTube which is way too many steps for the average person.
There are some alternative companies making great progress but there's a long way to go.
That's huge for them on the tax front!
I really love how our IRD now gets bank data.
I've found it impossible to even get my family off Whats App, let alone facebook. When I first opened my facebook account the only people I could add were my online American friends because no one here seemed to have heard of it. So I guess I was part of the problem. Am trying to spread awareness of the Fediverse so hopefully that will balance out my karma!
I think you're right, so many of us do aspire to get away from social media surveillance and we will eventually have an ecosystem. Thank you for your part in it!๐
I was mostly the same with Facebook. Everyone was on... I think Bebo. And I had some friends who had moved overseas invite me to Facebook. This was when it was students only, though I'm pretty sure it was only a matter of months after I joined before it was public for anyone to join.
My part in it is on one hand running an instance, and on the other hand never mentioning it to anyone IRL ๐
Not sure if I've previously mentioned it but I'm reading Mindf*ck at the moment (the book on social media and election manipulation, not the murder romance series). It's a book by the whistleblower of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And it's pretty messed up.