3 ms·

As an information security person and someone that cares deeply about preserving my privacy and the privacy of my fellow citizens I see Facebook / Google / Amaz

As an information security person and someone that cares deeply about preserving my privacy and the privacy of my fellow citizens I see Facebook / Google / Amazon as sort of existential threats. For them to exist we can't maintain our privacy to a high degree. And as long as they maintain a network effect, even if you do delete your Facebook account, they will maintain a shadow profile of you. You will always be a node in their graph now. European privacy laws and the right to be absolutely forgotten are the answer. As a free human being I believe in the right to be completely outside of any corporations software system and record keeping. There is so much work to do on this front, look at what happened to Equifax. We don't really get a choice about some things (credit reporting), but for everything else, I am going to fight it. I am going to fight your shitty operating system updates that take away my privacy I am going to fight your massive personal information sucking network I am going to use alternative shopping services, no matter how easy you make it for me to click once and have stuff I really like appear in a great user experience. I am going to fight these things because privacy matters and in the long run without privacy as consumers and human beings with inalienable rights we will give away something essential in there. It isn't hipsterism. It isn't being a luddite. It mass-scale experiment about how much these organizations can concentrate before people really understand.

larkery 9y ago
It is being a luddite - in a good way! Don't knock the luddites, they had analogous concerns. They didn't hate machines or novelty per se, they hated the specifics of how the machines were affecting their quality of life. Same with facebook - networked communications might be OK (remains to be seen if you ask me), but the socio-technical-political blob that is facebook's implementation of same has side effects that lots of us find horrible. Pedantry over.
newscracker 9y ago
> As an information security person and someone that cares deeply about preserving my privacy and the privacy of my fellow citizens I see Facebook / Google / Amazon as sort of existential threats. For them to exist we can't maintain our privacy to a high degree. Seriously, if I could upvote you several times, I would! You just said everything I believe in, including naming the corporations that worry me the most and make me feel hopeless sometimes. I try to educate people at every opportunity, fully knowing that it will take a long time for any effect to be visible. But I'm kinda used to that as an activist in other areas. I don't know if there will ever be a decentralized and privacy protecting social networking platform that will beat Facebook and the like (pun unintended) in network effect, but I'd be ecstatic to see such a day! On the same lines would be reducing data collection almost everywhere and ensuring that privacy comes first - by governments or private entities. I have very little hope on the latter because information security is truly an afterthought in our Internet connected world where anyone can spin up WordPress, add some random plugins and start a "gig economy" or whatever the fad of the day is. It's too easy to start something software based that is completely insecure!

larkery 9y ago

It is being a luddite - in a good way! Don't knock the luddites, they had analogous concerns. They didn't hate machines or novelty per se, they hated the specifics of how the machines were affecting their quality of life. Same with facebook - networked communications might be OK (remains to be seen if you ask me), but the socio-technical-political blob that is facebook's implementation of same has side effects that lots of us find horrible. Pedantry over.

newscracker 9y ago

> As an information security person and someone that cares deeply about preserving my privacy and the privacy of my fellow citizens I see Facebook / Google / Amazon as sort of existential threats. For them to exist we can't maintain our privacy to a high degree. Seriously, if I could upvote you several times, I would! You just said everything I believe in, including naming the corporations that worry me the most and make me feel hopeless sometimes. I try to educate people at every opportunity, fully knowing that it will take a long time for any effect to be visible. But I'm kinda used to that as an activist in other areas. I don't know if there will ever be a decentralized and privacy protecting social networking platform that will beat Facebook and the like (pun unintended) in network effect, but I'd be ecstatic to see such a day! On the same lines would be reducing data collection almost everywhere and ensuring that privacy comes first - by governments or private entities. I have very little hope on the latter because information security is truly an afterthought in our Internet connected world where anyone can spin up WordPress, add some random plugins and start a "gig economy" or whatever the fad of the day is. It's too easy to start something software based that is completely insecure!