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If you don't mind me asking what is so important about privacy?

What harm does public data have to you? Couldn't one just ignore the ads? You can't see anyone watching you, is public data good for public records? (I'm just curious). I know this sounds weird but is public data good for historical preservation and knowledge increasing the importance of the individual? And does public data lead to better products?

119 comments
  • Well...

    1. Target once used small amounts of shopping data to accurately predict women were pregnant before they themselves knew.
    2. A Nebraska PD got data from Facebook to prove a woman had an abortion recently and prosecuted her.
    3. you don't know what will become illegal

    So, even small amounts of data can predict lots of things about your life. The government has a track record of using that data to prosecute you. And you cannot trust the Government will always align with your morals (assuming it even does right now).

    And that doesn't even consider other entities & organizations in the world.

    What if an insurance company wants uses public data about you to deny you coverage? What if someone is searching for people in the area with ideal houses to rob and you're on vacation? What if they use a deepfake of a loved one to scam you? Steal your identity and ruin your credit? What if they make and sell deepfake porn made of you or a loved one? What if they create meticulously engineered political psyop campaigns hand-tailored to exploit your psychology? What if this list of "what ifs" could go on nearly forever, and some "what ifs" aren't even things we're capable of knowing about?

    Because that last one is absolutely true, all the rest of those are true for someone, and at least one of them is probably true for you already.

    Ok, but what if you don't care?...well someone else in your life does. And even if they have impeccable data privacy habits, if enough of their friends and family don't, then they're just a single missing puzzle piece, and everyone can still see their shape.

    Not to mention, you contribute to a pool of data that's used to perform these kinds of analyses on society at large, meaning you contribute in some part to each and every instance of malicious data use towards anyone, anywhere.

    Is that a good enough reason to care?

    • I would add to your list, what if the company with that job offer you applied to asks for your consent to do a background check on you (they do) and then they pay other company that specializes in tracking all your information (these companies exist)?.

  • puts on tinfoil hat

    You know how women (and some doctors) had problems in the US because the states were getting information on whether they had, were thinking of having, or were having conversations about having an abortion?

    You know how there was a possibility (or maybe that really happened, I don't remember) that the state governments could be aquiring information from women's period tracking apps and acquiring their behavioral patterns to find out if they were planning on having an abortion?

    Well, I'm not a woman, but I am disabled. After I got fired from my job because I couldn't perform anymore thanks to my disability, (there was no discrimination, I literally could not do my job because of my disability) I applied for disability payment.

    I was rejected.

    After that, I tried to look for other jobs, but for some strange reason, I couldn't find a job ANYWHERE in the US. They never called back after telling me they would do a background check on me. I applied for about 70+ companies, I got background checks on 20+.

    That didn't happen before I applied for the disability payments, and as an immigrant that was below the poverty line I wasn't someone that could put up a fight... Against whom? The companies? The government? I didn't even know if the fact that I applied for the disability payments was the problem.

    At the end, I was able to find a job in a call center working from home. But it took me 8 months for that.

    takes off tinfoil hat

    It's a double edged sword, youcan make better products and a better experience for some things, but some people/companies think of other people, especially minorities, disabled, and probably women, as liabilities, and they don't really want that.

    This is why I rather have privacy, the ads are just annoying asf, but the things I said are just 2 examples of why privacy is important.

    Hopefully I make sense, and sorry for any grammatical mistakes, English is not my first language.

  • When other people are at your house, why do you close the door to the bathroom when you are pooping?

    "You can’t see anyone watching you" Why not just close your eyes, you won't see your house guests watching you poop.

  • For me personally, its for a variety of reasons

    1: Targeted ads and algorithms and such are typically used to manipulate you to feel a certain way or hold opinions you may otherwise not have. This has been demonstrated and shown to happen several times, such as with Cambridge Analytica, and its pretty concerning. I want to see things for myself and form my own opinions, not just being manipulated to believe what some big tech company or advertisers or the like want me to think.

    2: Just think about all the data a lot of these companies can and are collecting on you. For instance, if you're on a regular fully Googled Android phone, Google pretty much has access to your physical location at all times. What possible need is there for this? Why does Google always need to know where I am? Just looking at it simply, its none of their business, and no justifiable reason for them to know it. There's no possible benefit or good thing that could come out of Google knowing my wheareabouts 24/7. If there's no reason for them to know the info, why give them it on a silver platter?

    3: The data being collected is also usually handled very poorly as seen through constant data breaches of sensitive information and the like, and can also be easily abused in general. I myself have been personally targetted and stalked, and the stalker got mine and my family's information from data broker websites. Its pretty scary the amount of information these companies collect and share and make freely available about you, and it can be easily used against you.

    4: Another example of the data being collected being misused is for example what's happening in China, with the social credit system. The social credit system basically determines what you can do and everything about your life, such as job opportunities and employment, access to finance and banks, ability to travel, and a lot more, based off a variety of factors, from things like what you post or do online, to even who you're friends with, and more. While you may argue that this is just China and there's nothing to worry about, similar systems to this are already being worked on and tried by US employers and companies, and there's nothing stopping things comparable to the social credit system from happening or being put in place in the West or elsewhere in this current surveillence capitalism world we live in. Something like this happening should absolutely concern you.

    5: People have straight up had their lives ruined as a result of this mass data collection and privacy invasiveness. For instance, I remember hearing a story of a man who shared his Google account with his uncle. His uncle murdered someone, with his Googled Android phone in his possession, and Google provided the location data and such to the police, and instead the nephew was accused of the crime, and basically had his entire life ruined because of it, over something he didn't even do. Just look at what's going on now with abortion in some states in the US for another example. Its pretty scary to think about things like this happening, as it really could happen to anyone.

    At the end of the day, these companies like Facebook and Google aren't your friends. Trust is earned, and I don't think any of these big tech companies earn it based off their actions and track record. What I do and how I live my life is none of their business or concern, and that's how I feel about it, and wish more people would see it the same way, or at least put some thought into it instead of blindly accepting mass surveillance and data collection.

    (Hopefully this all makes sense and wasn't too rambly, pretty tired rn lol)

  • I'm in no means an expert here, but over the last 10 years or so, I've been trying to learn as much as I can. I am still in the boat of trying to find meaningful, impactful ways of explaining to people around me, why they should care about privacy.

    Here's what I would challenge anyone who takes the time to read this to do. Choose a random user in this thread. Any one of them. Go to their profile page, and see what you can learn about that person based on comment/post history.

    Did you get an idea of where in the world they live? The problems they're facing? The things they like? Now. Think like you were someone trying to harm/exploit them. Think of some products you could put in front of them that they could not live without.

    Now we take that information, and start to put it together, we think, okay how do we manipulate this person into purchasing this thing.

    Maybe we target a fake news article, stating "(target user's generation) choosing between paying rent and purchasing (target product)"

    Now that person starts to think "whoa, in not the only one that's struggling with this decision, and others are choosing the purchase"

    Now, maybe we target an influencer video to them, about how much better their lives are with that product.

    Pretty soon, we put together a picture of how quickly and easily we could create an algorithm to manipulate someone into buying something that they would not have made the informed decision to buy. Now they value the product even if they can't afford it...

    I'm literally realizing this as I'm typing it... And it kind of terrifies me.

    All of this is completely ignoring the concern of government entities, with I'll intention, using the information against you...

  • Imagine an insurance company using data about you that it purchased from FB or Twitter to give you different insurance rates.

    Or your social posts or posts tagged of you affecting your credit score or job application or even your rent application.

    There are so many scenarios where having your privacy respected would protect you from unnecessary and unfair judgement.

  • There's plenty of reasons not to try and keep things private! It is a lot easier for comments on Lemmy, for example, to be public, rather than trying to make the discussion threads private among some set of authorized participants.

    And if I am rating movies on Netflix, I really do want them to take my ratings and put them in a big machine learning pile to try and find me better movies. That's the point of rating the things.

    But there's a big difference between me actually sharing information with people so they can do good, and people trying to collect information about me without my permission so that they can make money, or, worse, try to manipulate me later.

    And even if the data is not in itself all that worthy of secrecy, and I might be willing to share it, someone else deciding for me that they get to follow me around and see what I am up to or what I like, without actually asking or without genuinely expecting that I might say no, is... not how consent works.

    Also, some of the point of this is that one cannot in fact genuinely ignore advertisements. At the very least they constitute a cognitive load, where it is harder to do or see things because the advertisements are in the way. They can also hammer brand names and desired associations into people's heads, to ensure that most people know that e.g. X Brand Soda is the "luxury" soda. And of course in aggregate they cause people to buy things. Each person might choose to buy the thing of their own apparently free will, but running the ad will cause more people to make that decision than would otherwise.

    Where they are most dangerous is when advertisements try and create problems, rather than just offering products. A sign that says "We sell Coke" is fine. Three commercials a day asking if you are guilty of "old-shoeing", the social faux pas of having old shoes, look at this man being laughed at for it, etc. are dangerous, even if they never try to sell a product.

    These kinds of marketing campaigns are that much more effective if they can be targeted at the people who are the easiest to convince that made up problems are real. And while one's general personality is not exactly a secret, we also don't want scammers like this going around making lists of the particularly gullible.

  • Privacy is important everywhere, people most often answer this question regarding digital privacy, but think about in your everyday life. For example, I just bought a house. Buying a house is public record here in the states. The moment you buy a house companies will grab that data and then start trying to sell you services. They will use the name of the bank that you took out a loan with, they know your loan number, loan type, loan amount, full name and address. They will do everything to misrepresent who they are as if they come from the bank that holds your loan to sign you up for some service you most likely don't want or don't need. Older people fall for it all the time. Digitally it just gets worse.

  • One problem is that you don't know who's actually hoarding your data and for what purpose.

  • Imagine that someone has made a false accusation about you and it becomes part of your online profile.

    Within less than a day, maybe even before you aware of the claim, every major online database has marked you as being something that you are not.

    Who do you call to correct it?

    Will a correction fix it?

    Will the false information even get deleted?

    When you don't control the data, you are always vulnerable.

  • The shift from "You have nothing to hide if you aren't doing anything illegal" to "It is illegal to criticize us. We will keep an eye on you to make sure you don't." can happen a lot faster than people want to realize.

  • Because I find it unsettling on a personal level when my wife and I, in the privacy of our home away from the world have a conversation where we make a joke about buying a banjo, and then every day for the next three weeks everywhere I go is flooded with targeted banjo ads. Verbal conversations, away from everything but our phones and computers.

    Because I find it unsettling when I go to a site I have never gone to before and it greets me with my name and already knows where I live with the shipping details even though I clicked "I do not consent" on every data pop-up that I've seen in the past five years.

    Because people are selling that data, my data, data about myself, and I get none of that profit and it was done without my consent or knowledge.

    Because a company having my information should be something I need to personally allow, not something I need to ask and beg them not to obtain.

    Because I can think of very few, if any, benevolent purposes of using that data, but there is a legion of malevolent reasons for it, and of the ones I have seen, all of them fall into this category.

    All this being said, I should not need to have a reason. The onus should not rest with the individual to prove that they deserve undisturbed privacy, it should rest with the institutions that want this information; that it is a requirement to obtain this information for valid reasons and not frivolous ones, or ones rooted in greed or ideology. Like a search warrant for example.

  • Oh, the contempt with which people speak about their loved ones on the internet? Privacy allows that. It's really fun to watch (and provoke). I'd lose a source of entertainment.

  • Information is power. Telecommunication have changed the landscape of business, warfare, and how we live. It allows us to make “better” decisions for what we set out to do. Whoever holds more information, and has the chops to analyze it, controls the board. The closer that information is to individual people, the sharper it is as a weapon.

    Having power too concentrated in one place or a few has led to disastrous consequences in human history. Privacy is simply a way to hold that power back, so that the most sensitive information are kept away from unknown hands.

    Privacy also allows us to be ourselves, in the sense that we have different fronts of ourselves. We have sides we don’t necessarily want to show to our parents, but we show it to our friends or spouse. Not everyone has the best of relationships with everyone around them, and so there are sides we don’t want everyone to know, lest they get used as a weapon against us, either for others to exploit, or hold us ransom. If you’d like an example, imagine having an overly possessive religious parent, and you’re an atheist, but you don’t want to confront your parent because you’d like to avoid trouble. When thought in that way, privacy is a right that humans should have, and it is each person’s right to release what information they have about themselves to whoever they wish.

  • Edit: if you think I'm a communist because of my name username look very closely at my profile picture and tell me you think I'm serious

    Did you know countries like Russia and China have better privacy protections for their citizens (at least when it comes to protections against their corporations, not their government of course), and just buy information on US citizens from US corporations for many of their human research needs?

    Look at Cambridge Analyticas involvement in swinging the 2016 US election if you want an example of how much damage information can do when used in psyops

    I always found the C6ISR acronym in warfare to be interesting. R is reconnaissance, S is surveillance, I is intelligence, and the 6 C's are Command and Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, and finally Combat

    You can predict when conflicts are about to rise with social media information. Frustration can be measured by looking at social circles. Consider Romeo and Juliet, they like each other, but everyone around them hates everyone else in the opposing party. Because Romeo and Juliet interact with each other positively, that means groups that don't like each other are going to interact and human nature wants to resolve this frustration. This type of graph theory is used in the middle east to predict conflicts.

    Do you remember the protest where BLM protesters were ran over by a truck? Russia organized the protest for both left and right wing parties. They got intelligence through surveillance. They got surveillance by just buying your info from American corps.

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