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I’m sure you appreciate that the reality is a bit more complex than that, for lots of reasons. For example, Facebook also abuses the privacy of people who aren

I’m sure you appreciate that the reality is a bit more complex than that, for lots of reasons. For example, Facebook also abuses the privacy of people who aren’t customers (or more accurately, users). Or maybe cutting yourself off from Facebook would mean cutting yourself off from family or friends. Maybe WhatsApp is essential for your work, or for a community organisation you are part of. Or if you have a pension fund, it almost certainly invests in Meta. There are lots of conflicting priorities and issues that can come up when trying to think about the costs of being a users of a particular platform. In reality it’s totally fine to think that a service you use is doing something wrong, to complain about them doing it, and to want them to stop. Some might choose to leave the service; others might want to spread awareness about the issue, or call for regulation. And others might shrug their shoulders and accept it anyway. I’m not sure why you seem so convinced that the only two valid positions are “silently embrace anything they do” and “cut yourself off entirely”.

type0 4y ago
> only two valid positions are “silently embrace anything they do” and “cut yourself off entirely”. How about bots, can you use your account sometimes and other times give it to your bot essentially simulating activity and throwing gravel into machinery or will they shut you down?
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  there was a browser extension that showed up on HN some years back that intentionally sends misleading spam to tracking endpoints as you browse
  - type0 4y ago
    adnauseam
- autoexec 4y ago
  I see this idea thrown around a lot. Random browsing, random posts/comments, etc. I'm not convinced that anyone collecting your data cares about how accurate it is, and it's clear that the people using that data against you don't care all that much either. Maybe if you could find a way to fill their logs with the kinds of data that actually matter (fake your precise GPS location, fake contacts/friends/relatives with detailed fake histories and fake contacts of their own, fake credit card statements showing fake purchase history, etc) it might be more worthwhile, but you'd still be taking a chance because ultimately your life is going to be changed because of what ends up in the logs being collected. You could get turned down for a job because your fake bot was a little too interested in drug/alcohol related websites, or maybe you'll be charged more or denied healthcare coverage because your bot made it appear that you were living an unhealthy lifestyle. The fake location data you sent might get you arrested by police if you were one of only a few people logged within a 2 mile radius of a crime. You can't break down the system by messing with the specifics in your dossier. The system will process your data (the real and the false) just fine and keep right on running. Real or fake, that data will follow you for the rest of your life and it will be all be used against you any time someone thinks it might benefit them to do so.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    the point is not individual solutions for these world-scale problems. the point is collective action (or steps toward collective action), to change the "meta". to make tracking more expensive and meaningless at scale, etc. we can sit around for apple to subvert it (as ppl often celebrate here), except that they're doing the subverting itself subversively: they're pleasing the masses with privacy improvements (chiefly as a competitive edge - it's profitable for their model), while leaving critical options opt-in so that the result is most people stay uneducated and leave enough tracking on to reap partners and the economy huge returns over the last 15 years off ad tracking that end of the day happened on apple's platforms. these kind of solutions make us feel like the capitalists are caring for us in their competition and pacify us, particularly the ones savvy enough to be happy about these privacy options and otherwise savvy enough to have organized people against it if they hadn't felt it was solved for them.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      > to change the "meta". to make tracking more expensive and meaningless at scale, etc. The point is that the cost of tracking stays unchanged no matter what the data you feed it says. It's also just as meaningful in that it will still be collected, sold, used against you and will still have very real impacts on your life. The contents of your data will not and does not impact the machine or its functioning at all. All that matters is that there is data to collect and to leverage against you. You're right we can't trust companies to save us here. The only solution to this is strong regulation with oversight and teeth. Until we get that, we can only do what little we can to limit the amount of data we give up and increase awareness of what's happening and how it harms us all.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        it's a good option, there are more radical options and it seems a bit capitalist realist to promote regulation as the only option available
        autoexec 4y ago
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Fuzzing works very poorly. It's expensive, it's rarely performed correctly, the actual signal still exists within the noise and can generally be determined. I'm not saying "don't try", but really, don't bet your life (or anyone else's) on it.

type0 4y ago

> only two valid positions are “silently embrace anything they do” and “cut yourself off entirely”. How about bots, can you use your account sometimes and other times give it to your bot essentially simulating activity and throwing gravel into machinery or will they shut you down?

wahnfrieden 4y ago
there was a browser extension that showed up on HN some years back that intentionally sends misleading spam to tracking endpoints as you browse
- type0 4y ago
  adnauseam
autoexec 4y ago
I see this idea thrown around a lot. Random browsing, random posts/comments, etc. I'm not convinced that anyone collecting your data cares about how accurate it is, and it's clear that the people using that data against you don't care all that much either. Maybe if you could find a way to fill their logs with the kinds of data that actually matter (fake your precise GPS location, fake contacts/friends/relatives with detailed fake histories and fake contacts of their own, fake credit card statements showing fake purchase history, etc) it might be more worthwhile, but you'd still be taking a chance because ultimately your life is going to be changed because of what ends up in the logs being collected. You could get turned down for a job because your fake bot was a little too interested in drug/alcohol related websites, or maybe you'll be charged more or denied healthcare coverage because your bot made it appear that you were living an unhealthy lifestyle. The fake location data you sent might get you arrested by police if you were one of only a few people logged within a 2 mile radius of a crime. You can't break down the system by messing with the specifics in your dossier. The system will process your data (the real and the false) just fine and keep right on running. Real or fake, that data will follow you for the rest of your life and it will be all be used against you any time someone thinks it might benefit them to do so.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  the point is not individual solutions for these world-scale problems. the point is collective action (or steps toward collective action), to change the "meta". to make tracking more expensive and meaningless at scale, etc. we can sit around for apple to subvert it (as ppl often celebrate here), except that they're doing the subverting itself subversively: they're pleasing the masses with privacy improvements (chiefly as a competitive edge - it's profitable for their model), while leaving critical options opt-in so that the result is most people stay uneducated and leave enough tracking on to reap partners and the economy huge returns over the last 15 years off ad tracking that end of the day happened on apple's platforms. these kind of solutions make us feel like the capitalists are caring for us in their competition and pacify us, particularly the ones savvy enough to be happy about these privacy options and otherwise savvy enough to have organized people against it if they hadn't felt it was solved for them.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > to change the "meta". to make tracking more expensive and meaningless at scale, etc. The point is that the cost of tracking stays unchanged no matter what the data you feed it says. It's also just as meaningful in that it will still be collected, sold, used against you and will still have very real impacts on your life. The contents of your data will not and does not impact the machine or its functioning at all. All that matters is that there is data to collect and to leverage against you. You're right we can't trust companies to save us here. The only solution to this is strong regulation with oversight and teeth. Until we get that, we can only do what little we can to limit the amount of data we give up and increase awareness of what's happening and how it harms us all.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      it's a good option, there are more radical options and it seems a bit capitalist realist to promote regulation as the only option available
      - autoexec 4y ago
dredmorbius 4y ago
Fuzzing works very poorly. It's expensive, it's rarely performed correctly, the actual signal still exists within the noise and can generally be determined. I'm not saying "don't try", but really, don't bet your life (or anyone else's) on it.