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by charcircuit
1455 days ago
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No one is following you around. It's more like you keep sending letters to advertising companies. You are going to them, they aren't coming to you. If you go to Hacker News there is no way for them to follow you here. You aren't being sold to private cooperations. Facts about the universe which relate to you are being collected. If you learn George Washington was born in 1732 on Wikipedia do you think Wikipedia sold you George Washington? These are just facts that exist in the corpus of knowledge about the world and the people who live on it. |
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Is it okay that the DMV makes millions yearly bulk selling demographics, home addresses, and emails to political candidates and adtech companies?
Is it okay that the payment processing service used by your pharmacy and grocery store sells purchasing data to insurance companies? Surely they will never use this data to raise your rates, right?
Is okay for third parties like cell phone providers and credit card companies to collect information about who goes to the abortion clinic and sell that information to people that might wish to see them face murder charges in a death penalty state?
Will they do similar if gay marriage is targeted again?
Is it okay that Apple gave the CCP access to their Chinese servers allowing them to more easily track down and imprison/kill Uyghur muslims?
What about for journalists covering war crimes? Should they just accept that they will be tracked everywhere and killed for doing their job?
It takes someone incredibly privileged to be dismissive of the serious risks mass data collection represents to the vulnerable. Just remember the location, browsing, and purchasing data you give up casually today can be used to target you later when political landscapes change.
Those of us who are privileged have an absolute obligation to pursue and normalize data privacy for those whose lives depend on it.