Why Privacy Still Matters in the Digital Age - blog post by me
People are becoming more and more apathetic to how their data is being collected and used, and I find that disturbing. With every addition to the tracking and sale of their data they act like it doesn’t matter; “what would they use my data for?” What they would use your data for Link to heading Cont...
Thanks and agreed. An extra point (possibly more harrowing) is misrepresentation: just because there's tons of data on you doesn't mean that it paints an accurate - or even correct - picture of you. Instead, it paints a picture of what was collected, from where, and some of the error rates of the data collection method(s).
I've seen and experienced first-hand the inability to make sense of data to accurately represent a situation/person for various reasons, not all of which are tied to not having enough data. Except instead of waiting to examine unsubstantiated assumptions, they assumed their presumptions were valid and proceeded to run head-first into action.
"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything" - that is disturbing. "On paper", someone could reference some data from here and there, omit some, include some that they think/presume related to you even if tangentially, presume even tangential data is relevant in some way, summarize it, and hand it over like "see our analysis confirms/denies what you want us to confirm/deny". See also this post analyzing the mishandling of generated LLM content.
Privacy isn't about protecting (or "hiding") what you don't want others to know. I've learned that it's also about protecting your identity from misrepresentation.
In my campaign I used to have a cursed scroll of reading. Which provided such provoking and interesting content based on one’s feelings and desires, it trapped the person into reading it for a very very long time unless saving throw.
I can imagine how much more effective it would be if one could reply to that reading, and enter another level of entrapment.
And here we have cursed scrolls in real life. Me 30 years ago would never have guessed .
Unrelated, but this is where I stop doomscrolling for the day. So long until tomorrow, unless I make my daily saving roll