Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pixl97 885 days ago
You're looking at this backwards...

Imagine being in China where they tend to watch you and make profiles on you. Then suddenly the profile of who you are goes completely random. Is it possible this gets the attention of state-level actors where you had none before?
1 comments
baby_souffle 885 days ago
> You're looking at this backwards...

Exactly.

Any argument that boils down to "but the profile is basically useless" will always be inferior to "there is no profile"

link
creer 884 days ago
Poisoned data would be useful in the fight but yeah, "garbage data looks like someone else's" is certainly superior to "garbage data looks like it's yours".
link
pixl97 884 days ago
I guess in the long term it depends how good the profile builders get at anomaly detection, and at which scale we're talking about.

While many states in the US have laws against it now, for awhile there companies were basing if they would hire you based on your social media profile. Having no profile at all may exclude you from getting a job. Or, when I went to get credit for my the first time in my later 30's. I had always been a cash buyer before then, and proof of my existence beyond my ID was sparse, the guy on the other end of the line was like "Did you even exist before yesterday?"

link