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When did it become OK to treat each other like shit? Not violating someone's rights is a pretty low bar. I don't understand why people feel justified in turning

When did it become OK to treat each other like shit? Not violating someone's rights is a pretty low bar. I don't understand why people feel justified in turning the surveillance capabilities of the world's largest companies on their fellow humans.

shadowgovt 4y ago
The jury's out on whether that counts as "treating each other like shit." Most of human civilization has been a pattern of small communities where everyone knew everyone. The privacy granted implicitly by anonymity is relatively new (and, I'd argue, whether it's a net benefit for society is a largely open question... A lot of harm is done by people who quietly go off the rails because nobody knows who they are).
- dadoomer 4y ago
  > Most of human civilization has been a pattern of small communities where everyone knew everyone. The privacy granted implicitly by anonymity is relatively new I find that hard to believe. Teotihuacan (first example that came to mind) already had 100,000+ inhabitants around 1 to 500 CE, and according to Wikipedia it was only the sixth largest city. Regardless, I don't see why it's particularly important what cities were like during "most of human civilization" when discussing electronic suirveilance.
esprehn 4y ago
What part of this is surveillance though? Within a particular Google Photos account the faces of humans (and pets) are identified and then labeled by the account owner. Google doesn't match faces across accounts, doesn't use the data for ads, and is doing effectively what a human could do by scrolling through the photos and manually circling faces with a pen.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's ultimately irrelevant to the Texas code whether Google is correlating the data across sources, because what the Texas code banned was collecting the data in the first place, not the way it's collated and used. There's some sense to that approach; people don't want to trust that the only thing keeping Google from doing the cross-correlation is their own corporate ethics. I ultimately think trying to ban the intake in that way is bailing the Titanic, but I think I see where they're coming from.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    But the data is just photos. Is any photo hosting service illegal in Texas now? The biometric data is literally in any photograph of you. And the data is entirely isolated within a single account. I have tens of thousands of photos in my google account, and thousands with my wife. Right now, google can show me photos of me and my wife. Is the idea that I'm supposed to ask for some kind of consent from my wife before I'm allowed to ask google to show me photos of me and my wife, but I can go through my account and just select photos of me and my wife?

shadowgovt 4y ago

The jury's out on whether that counts as "treating each other like shit." Most of human civilization has been a pattern of small communities where everyone knew everyone. The privacy granted implicitly by anonymity is relatively new (and, I'd argue, whether it's a net benefit for society is a largely open question... A lot of harm is done by people who quietly go off the rails because nobody knows who they are).

dadoomer 4y ago
> Most of human civilization has been a pattern of small communities where everyone knew everyone. The privacy granted implicitly by anonymity is relatively new I find that hard to believe. Teotihuacan (first example that came to mind) already had 100,000+ inhabitants around 1 to 500 CE, and according to Wikipedia it was only the sixth largest city. Regardless, I don't see why it's particularly important what cities were like during "most of human civilization" when discussing electronic suirveilance.

esprehn 4y ago

What part of this is surveillance though? Within a particular Google Photos account the faces of humans (and pets) are identified and then labeled by the account owner. Google doesn't match faces across accounts, doesn't use the data for ads, and is doing effectively what a human could do by scrolling through the photos and manually circling faces with a pen.

shadowgovt 4y ago
It's ultimately irrelevant to the Texas code whether Google is correlating the data across sources, because what the Texas code banned was collecting the data in the first place, not the way it's collated and used. There's some sense to that approach; people don't want to trust that the only thing keeping Google from doing the cross-correlation is their own corporate ethics. I ultimately think trying to ban the intake in that way is bailing the Titanic, but I think I see where they're coming from.
- googlryas 4y ago
  But the data is just photos. Is any photo hosting service illegal in Texas now? The biometric data is literally in any photograph of you. And the data is entirely isolated within a single account. I have tens of thousands of photos in my google account, and thousands with my wife. Right now, google can show me photos of me and my wife. Is the idea that I'm supposed to ask for some kind of consent from my wife before I'm allowed to ask google to show me photos of me and my wife, but I can go through my account and just select photos of me and my wife?