__________________
In loyalty to their kind
They cannot tolerate our minds
In loyalty to our kind
We cannot tolerate their obstruction - Airplane, Jefferson
You know how you get a rush of adverts for a thing after you've browsed for it? The "no, Google, I bought a toilet seat, I didn't develop a passion for collecting them" syndrome.
What about getting a rush of ads for thing somebody else has browsed for?
Little Miss JoeP needs a place to live when she starts her new job in Other Town. And lo ... I started getting ads from Zoopla (annoying but useful lettings and estate agent site). Not generic ads either, but specific ads for studio flats in Other Town. Including the very one that she has since rented.
She's also buying a second hand car. So I'm getting ads for car comparison sites. I haven't done any searches for cars or flats/houses for 2 years.
Clearly Google's ad backend (I presume this is Google driven as I'm seeing them in things like Android games) has worked out that we have some kind of connection. Probably thinks we are married.
Privacy? Nope. Anonymity? Nope. Share your browsing habits with probable family members in a creepy way? Sure.
An open database in China contains the personal information of more than 1.8 million women, including their phone numbers, addresses, and something called “BreedReady” status
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The youngest girl in this database is 15y old. The youngest woman with BreedReady:"1" status is 18y. The average age is a bit above 32y, and the most aged woman with a BR:1 is 39 and with a BR:0 is 95y. All are single [89%], divorced [10%] or widow[1%].
...
The database, whose server is in China, included fields labeled in English for sex, age, education, marital status, as well as a column titled “BreedReady”, which could be a poor translation of Chinese terms to describe whether a woman has children or is of child-bearing age
...
The data breach is alarming in the context of official concerns over China’s falling birthrates. Women rights advocates and critics of China’s use of strict family planning rules worry about how far the government will go to encourage more women to have children.
It is not clear whether the database is related to a dating app, a government registry, or another organisation or company.
The database, whose server is in China, included fields labeled in English for sex, age, education, marital status, as well as a column titled “BreedReady”, which could be a poor translation of Chinese terms to describe whether a woman has children or is of child-bearing age
I'm not here to tell China how to do their database schema, but if there's already a column for sex and one for age, a third column that is just a function of the other 2 would be redundant. So I'm educated guessing that it means something more specific than "woman of child-bearing age". They've probably searched for baby stuff on Target.
Yeah, that sounds (and no doubt is) terrible, but it's not like the US is any better. There are plenty of databases here with information like that and worse, just maybe not worded quite so awkwardly in English, for obvious reasons.
I'm no fan of the Chinese surveillance state by any means, but Americans don't have anything to be smug about on that count.
One of the many issues with journalism these days. Was that interesting news on how creepy CEOs see the first use of new tech as making it easier to pay them, yes. Would I subscribe to the WSJ for it? Hahaha
In distopian america a homeless person sleeps outside the window of an empty apartment while an AI switches on and off the air and lights to give the appearance more people live there. While next door a man remembers to be cheery when paying rent to avoid being deemed a high risk and kicked out by the system.
"We can predict if residents are happy based on their digital interactions with the service, which gives us more information about whether they will renew their leases," says Zego CEO Adam Blake.
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Simplifying the ability to grant access to contractors, change door locks and cut back on heating or air conditioning in vacant units helps reduce costs, says Nick Stefanov, director of IT at BSR, an owner of apartment complexes in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.
I can see no way in which any of this could be abused.
Another day another hack, this time border patrol and customs. https://gizmodo.com/hackers-stole-u-...ave-1835385461
At this point it’s just funny. None of our data is secure and it wont be until there are multi million dollar fines and jail time. Yay isnt capitalism grand. At this point it’s pretty reasonable to assume any sensitive data is either already out there or will be once the next hacker is available.
This is also what the internet is becoming: a dark forest.
In response to the ads, the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors, we’re retreating to our dark forests of the internet, and away from the mainstream.
This very piece is an example of this. This theory was first shared on a private channel sent to 500 people who I know or who have explicitly chosen to receive it. This is the online environment in which I feel most secure. Where I can be my most “real self.”
And I thought: like . (Not that I am anything like my real self here. That would be crazy.)
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These are all spaces where depressurized conversation is possible because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified environments. The cultures of those spaces have more in common with the physical world than the internet.
Is this true? Are more and more people moving to closed-group spaces on the web?
And will the predators prowl the closed spaces as well?
In the last couple years a number of people I read and followed have moved over to Mastodon instances or Discord servers where you need to 'know a guy' to get in. On the social media channel of choice I use I generally only message to a tight group.
Most of the predators there are exes and other random douchebags rather than foreign governments, political trolls, and corporate entities.
__________________
Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
Becoming?
This presumes the internet wasn’t a type of dark forest before and after seeing what capitalism did to our forest have scampered back into the woods.
Afterall as a forum FF is the odd one out in allowing basically anyone to join and bullshit. The vast majority of pre-facebook forums were read only, register to comment and gain access to hidden forums while being watched by moderators and interacting with the same people over and over.
Recently I experienced exactly why the public square model of facebook is horrible. There’s no real repercussions and thus people act out like children. A public post was made about the US concentration camps and some asshole dude came on to troll and derail any real discussion, was quite successful and then when bored turned off notifications to leave. Being a shithead and getting away scot free to do it again on the same platform is what erodes any real conversation. I can bet that dude doesn’t always act like a tool in places he cares about, and when he does he slowly gets booted from each community until he finds a pit of tools and rolls around in the mud with them. Facebook hasn’t just brought the cesspits into the same system as everyone else, it randomly connects them with people they have never seen and will never see again, to shit all over and then run off.
The article seems to have some hardcore nostalgia for the early web that glosses over the fact that trolls, ads and gamified internet existed back then, but doesn’t seem to point to the true monster in the room, a unifying system built with only capitalistic goals in mind that sees people as products to be abused for money. Even the most asshole defending or freethought supporting forums did so out of love for the subject or the idea or even love for the trolling, but the topic was the point. Facebook and other corporation run communities don’t give a shit about the community or trading ideas, or linking friends or whatever else facebook is, it only cares about converting users into cash. Any lip service about communities or anti-harassment is just facebook dangling the light in front of its jaws because it heard saying these things keeps its prey docile.
Twitter for example made it’s first profitable quarter since its creation thanks to Trump, the Alt-right and russian/american bot networks. Twitters not going to give up profit just for morals or the sake of society.
The real difference between the old and new internet, the new internet users are prey for corporations who have learned how to keep them in their back pond and tell them they’re seeing the ocean.
At risk of repeating myself, holy shit yeah motherfucking insert-additional-profanity-here
__________________
In loyalty to their kind
They cannot tolerate our minds
In loyalty to our kind
We cannot tolerate their obstruction - Airplane, Jefferson
Re: Privacy, Anonymity, and Compartmentalization
...........
didn't want to go there anyway
. (Not that I am anything like my real self here. That would be crazy.)
Linear Mode
