[tryonenow]

>“Well, that didn’t come to pass in 1984, but if we’re not careful that could come to pass in 2024.”

I refuse to participate in social media because the tech is already here, and at this rate it's only a matter of time before our government or big tech itself nefariously taps into the the massive data ocean that is being collected. It only takes a handful of seemingly innocuous data points to uniquely identify a person, and from location data alone one may infer a host of private identity markers - race, religion, political affiliation, sexual preference...especially with a bit of machine learning magic.

Combining this with the political polarization we are increasingly witnessing in the US pushes us onto the precipice of a techno-authoritarian, dystopian nightmare. Imagine how much worse the Soviet Union would have been if the government had access to the breadth and depth of personal information that is merely an access key away from our own government right now. After Snowden we know that even the NSA is vacuuming up enough a massive store of potentially dangerous data.

I don't know that there's any practical solution, as I doubt the average person will care enough until it's too late. Our current economy is built on data collection. Mitigation of this threat would effectively require reengineering of society.