4 ms·
> And today, I basically see the tech giants as colossal enemies. I think it's important to note that in-house voice recognition is simply the Nth iteration of
by tomg 10y ago
> And today, I basically see the tech giants as colossal enemies.
I think it's important to note that in-house voice recognition is simply the Nth iteration of a general trend away from privacy that has been going on for many many years.
Eg: Our emails are scraped, and use to target ads. I see ads for specific things that I've only mentioned as a 'reminder email' from myself, to myself. SMS can be read as well, at least on Android if the user allows it. And even if you are very careful to avoid this (using iMessage, hosting your own email, etc), the people you interact with may be sharing this info. People upload their contacts to random services, and if you avoid doing that yourself, your friends may not. These are just trivial examples in the wild now which don't include state-level surveillance (legally mandated ISP web history tracking, license plate tracking, etc).
I'm happy that having a microphone always listening in your home is bringing so many people around to this idea that maybe having companies know so much about you isn't an OK thing. But another part of me feels that short of strong privacy laws, the privacy ship sailed a long time ago.
- barrkel 10y agoLaws are usually written as a reaction to excess. But excess is measured as a distance between two points, and both are able to move: actions can be more extreme, and our judgements can be more or less harsh. I think things could change quite dramatically if there was a moral panic around it. A few more scandals - something personal that the voting public can really relate to, rather than something vague and distant and somewhat comforting to some people, like mass surveillance.