[booboofixer]

In the discussion of losing privacy we focus on the social freedoms lost as a result of loss of privacy. I agree with all of those arguments but missing from these discussions are the economic freedoms we might lose.

People like to portray their least favorite countries as being engaged in corporate espionage in other developed countries, but what stops your favorite big corp from stealing what you create? Going forward, the value of eyeballs on ads might not be much compared to the value of business ideas, strategies etc. a corporation can access by violating your privacy.

Think of it this way: If you are a business owner, how successful would your business be if every second of the day, your fierce competitors had access to all your phone calls, texts, google docs, spreadsheets etc.? What if your competitor is already established with much more resources to create and get to market before you can?

[kornhole]

Many people have been conditioned to think they are unimportant and these companies would not waste time looking at their stuff. They may not understand the power of AI which can constantly scan, remember, and process the information of many people to provide distilled information and opportunities to its master. We are also easily manipulated into spending, speaking, and voting which this knowledge and processing power greatly improves. If you do not think you are easily manipulated, you are probably the most easily manipulated.

[WarOnPrivacy]

Neither voters nor the press has a meaningful objection to lawmakers trading campaign cash & jobs for law & power. As long as that condition persists, I see no path away from what you describe.

[godelski]

> your fierce competitors had access to all your phone calls, texts, google docs, spreadsheets etc.?

I'll take this a step further into the Sci-Fi realm: what if your competitors could use all that data to model a simulation of your thoughts and generate your own ideas faster than you can?

There's a philosophical argument here as ownership of those produced thoughts are contestable. The data is from you, so do you have the rights? The machine that produced the thoughts was built by a different person and they fronted all the costs and other such things, just not the data. You can make strong arguments either way.

And to keep with the sci-fi dystopian theme, would that society stop communicating openly and watch their words carefully?

I'm dialing it up to 11, but in some respect this is possible today or in the near future. But for our scenario, let's keep it dialed to 11 and assume this is/can be perfected. (I'm not convinced this would be effective today fwiw, far too much noise)

[JohnFen]

> would that society stop communicating openly and watch their words carefully?

I think we already live in that society, to be honest.

[godelski]

I think this is starting, but I'm not sure it has been internalized. People still frequently quote Goebbels and saying "my data isn't useful." I think one key change that is happening now is that our data and decisions have really changed. For example, with the advent of LLMs I've thought of not just deleting accounts (despite being semi-anonymous) but purging them, so that my data cannot be used for future training. This is something that wasn't reasonably predictable 5-10 years ago, despite understanding the information was public and utilized for other means. Maybe we need to update how accounts are handled. On HN you can only delete your account. You can't purge and the reason was to ensure that there's a record of conversations for future readers. But the environment has changed and thus we need to weigh the threat model of privacy now vs the consistency argument.

Dang, if you're poking around, I really would be curious about your thoughts here. Are you thinking about allowing account purging due to this new environment change?

[JohnFen]

> I think this is starting, but I'm not sure it has been internalized.

Good point. But I see people doing a whole lot more self-censoring these days without even realizing they're doing it, too.

> with the advent of LLMs I've thought of not just deleting accounts (despite being semi-anonymous) but purging them, so that my data cannot be used for future training

I have removed my websites from the public web for exactly this reason, and I've heard from several others who have done the same. So, to some degree anyway, this is already happening at least at that level.

This sort of thing (self-censoring) worries me greatly, and I don't think there's anything I can do about it. The sense of powerlessness is very high sometimes.

[ianopolous]

I'm interested in the "removing your websites from the public web". Are you taking them down, putting them behind auth, or something else?

[godelski]

Ah yeah, in that context I'm agreement. Self-censoring is tricky because it can happen without people realizing it or viewing it as self-censorship. That's a good point.

[georgeplusplus]

I suggest you read some books on espionage. China is a fantastic example of what corporate espionage can do. If interested I recommend Silent Invasion.

There is tremendous knowledge to be gained also, to call the opposite of privacy social freedom, is disturbing to me. If you are more private in some aspects of your life does not mean you cannot be more social in others.

[dghlsakjg]

The only book I could find called Silent Invasion is about Trump and Covid, is that what you are recomending?

[TheCleric]

I believe they are referring to this book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Invasion_(book)

[RajT88]

Information already leaks like this between huge tech companies.

Chrome, Edge both by default send your URL's back home. This is just the official telemetry features you can turn off.

I try to avoid both Edge and Chrome. Brave seems better (of course we are taking them at their word).