4 ms·

They can change your perception of anything, leading you to buying stupid shit you don't need, or to voting for somebody that doesn't protect your interests. A

They can change your perception of anything, leading you to buying stupid shit you don't need, or to voting for somebody that doesn't protect your interests. And any piece of knowledge is dangerous in the right context. This is usually felt more strongly by minorities. You're actually privileged if you're a straight, white, middle class male, but even so you can end up being harassed and hurt for who you are. Have you ever cheated on your wife? Have you ever spoken against powerful men? Do you walk funny? I was born in 1982, so I caught a couple of years of communist in Romania. And let me tell you, the atmosphere, the paranoia, the secret service of a police state managing to change the fabric of society by using a huge network of informants and fear was far, far more interesting than the 1984 novel. And if you think it can't happen to you, then think again, because at least your parents were alive when such things happened for real.

estel 10y ago
These all feel like hypothetical examples of potential problems to me. Yes, I have a heap of privilege, and I can understand why people might be concerned about these things, but deep down I don't believe (still!) that Adwords is something that puts these minorities at risk.
- tajen 10y ago
  > but deep down I don't believe that AdWords is something that puts these minorities at risk Case in point example! On Twitter Ads, I select the gender "male" for my projects. It's because my software sells twice better to males, but if everyone notices the same, it'll also mean women aren't properly informed of software options on the market. Having the gender on the ad platform provokes a discrimination by minorities.
cortesoft 10y ago
A network of informants that feed information to a police state that harasses you based on that information is objectively horrible. I think the connection of that police state to Google tracking your search and browsing history is a bit tenuous, however. Sure, if that police state existed and I lived in it, then Google's trove of information would certainly be useful to it. If I begin to believe the state that I live in is becoming that police state, I will certainly curtail my Google searching. Of course, you might say, "But wait! You might not live in a police state now, but if your current state changes to become one, they might use your historical search history from before the rise of the police state to persecute you!" Yes, this is true. However, they could also use my many public things I have said against me. I have said and written many things that a police state might find dangerous, and persecute me for. I can't possibly live my life trying to avoid creating any record of my life that a possible future police state could use against me. That would be impractical and possibly unfeasible. If I live my life like that, I would be living as if I already lived in a police state by my own choice. That seems counter productive.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  > If I live my life like that, I would be living as if I already lived in a police state by my own choice. That seems counter productive. No, that is how you prevent a police state. I mean, obviously you don't actually live as if you already lived in a police state, but you take some of the same precautions, which all boil down to keeping power distributed. That's the whole point of democracy, really: We make our political system deliberately inefficient by making sure that the amount of power that's concentrated in any single person's hands is limited, and the only reason we do that is to limit the damage when the wrong person gets into a position of power. If there is one thing we absolutely should have learned from history by now, it is that concentrations of power are extremely dangerous. Also, much of this is not about individuals, and it's not black and white. Authoritarian regimes don't care about most individuals. This is about power structures in a society as a whole. A dictator wants to know the top 100000 or so individuals that could be dangerous to their power in order to be able to concentrate their efforts on keeping them under control. Even if your political disinterest is no risk at all to the dictator's power position, the fact that they can tell you apart from the dissident next door helps them staying in power. And all of that is gradual, it's all an economic question in the end: How much effort does it take to prevent everyone from successfully challenging the dictator's authority? Every additional person you need in your secret police in order to maintain your power makes things harder, everything that a computer can just tell you makes it easier. So, you have to think not from the standpoint of an individual and what someone could do to target you specifically (which usually is impractical to protect against, and is unnecessary in a stable social structure), but from the standpoint of someone trying to gain power over a large social structure (such as a dictator in a country--but really, it's not in any way tied even to political positions, it might just as well be the head of a company trying to establish themselves as a de-facto monopoly, say), and what makes it easier for them to gain and to maintain power, and what hinders them, on the scale of the society as a whole. And you have to realize that a lot of this is path-dependent: It's a lot harder to remove a dictator once they are in place than to prevent them. So, reactionary solutions don't really work. In simple terms: You can vote a dictator in, but you can not vote a dictator out.
brilliantcode 10y ago
Speaking of 1984....every few paragraphs I find myself pausing, because it feels a lot like our current world in some sense and what our future will inevitably become.

estel 10y ago

These all feel like hypothetical examples of potential problems to me. Yes, I have a heap of privilege, and I can understand why people might be concerned about these things, but deep down I don't believe (still!) that Adwords is something that puts these minorities at risk.

tajen 10y ago
> but deep down I don't believe that AdWords is something that puts these minorities at risk Case in point example! On Twitter Ads, I select the gender "male" for my projects. It's because my software sells twice better to males, but if everyone notices the same, it'll also mean women aren't properly informed of software options on the market. Having the gender on the ad platform provokes a discrimination by minorities.

cortesoft 10y ago

A network of informants that feed information to a police state that harasses you based on that information is objectively horrible. I think the connection of that police state to Google tracking your search and browsing history is a bit tenuous, however. Sure, if that police state existed and I lived in it, then Google's trove of information would certainly be useful to it. If I begin to believe the state that I live in is becoming that police state, I will certainly curtail my Google searching. Of course, you might say, "But wait! You might not live in a police state now, but if your current state changes to become one, they might use your historical search history from before the rise of the police state to persecute you!" Yes, this is true. However, they could also use my many public things I have said against me. I have said and written many things that a police state might find dangerous, and persecute me for. I can't possibly live my life trying to avoid creating any record of my life that a possible future police state could use against me. That would be impractical and possibly unfeasible. If I live my life like that, I would be living as if I already lived in a police state by my own choice. That seems counter productive.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
> If I live my life like that, I would be living as if I already lived in a police state by my own choice. That seems counter productive. No, that is how you prevent a police state. I mean, obviously you don't actually live as if you already lived in a police state, but you take some of the same precautions, which all boil down to keeping power distributed. That's the whole point of democracy, really: We make our political system deliberately inefficient by making sure that the amount of power that's concentrated in any single person's hands is limited, and the only reason we do that is to limit the damage when the wrong person gets into a position of power. If there is one thing we absolutely should have learned from history by now, it is that concentrations of power are extremely dangerous. Also, much of this is not about individuals, and it's not black and white. Authoritarian regimes don't care about most individuals. This is about power structures in a society as a whole. A dictator wants to know the top 100000 or so individuals that could be dangerous to their power in order to be able to concentrate their efforts on keeping them under control. Even if your political disinterest is no risk at all to the dictator's power position, the fact that they can tell you apart from the dissident next door helps them staying in power. And all of that is gradual, it's all an economic question in the end: How much effort does it take to prevent everyone from successfully challenging the dictator's authority? Every additional person you need in your secret police in order to maintain your power makes things harder, everything that a computer can just tell you makes it easier. So, you have to think not from the standpoint of an individual and what someone could do to target you specifically (which usually is impractical to protect against, and is unnecessary in a stable social structure), but from the standpoint of someone trying to gain power over a large social structure (such as a dictator in a country--but really, it's not in any way tied even to political positions, it might just as well be the head of a company trying to establish themselves as a de-facto monopoly, say), and what makes it easier for them to gain and to maintain power, and what hinders them, on the scale of the society as a whole. And you have to realize that a lot of this is path-dependent: It's a lot harder to remove a dictator once they are in place than to prevent them. So, reactionary solutions don't really work. In simple terms: You can vote a dictator in, but you can not vote a dictator out.

brilliantcode 10y ago

Speaking of 1984....every few paragraphs I find myself pausing, because it feels a lot like our current world in some sense and what our future will inevitably become.