[ImAnAmateur]

"It's already bad, I don't see why making it worse is a problem. It's just one more thing to worry about."

There's more at stake here than passwords. These repeated screenshots are essentially a slow, silent video of all computer activity. That has far more information than you may think it does. It compromises HTTPS content, it records data that otherwise would only be in RAM, ...I could go on.

[wilsonnb3]

Please do go on, I am curious - what exactly is the threat you are seeing here?

[ImAnAmateur]

Okay. Let's talk specifics.

I log in to an end-to-end encrypted chat with a family member. We talk about life and the subject drifts to plane tickets we already bought for next month and how the neighbor across the street isn't going to be home until the end of this month.

The thief who stole my laptop now has also stolen a recorded conversation along with my passwords. Now they know when two houses will be empty. This would not have happened without pictures of my screen being taken frequently.

[wilsonnb3]

Thanks for coming up with a specific scenario for me.

I do agree that the outcomes in this case might be worse than an alternate universe without the recall feature.

That said, if someone steals my laptop and can log in, I am already pretty fucked. There are so many other ways they could get this or other information, from email, calendars, etc.

[brookst]

So this thief has access to your filesystem, therefore your machine's passsword? You can't just pull out the hard drive and put it in another system, at least not with even just decent practices.

But the thief will also have your browser history, any saved passwords, and so on?

[shuntress]

Obviously Microsoft isn't going to sell their profile of you to petty thieves. But they probably will sell it to at-scale-grifters looking for marks or fascists looking for dissidents.

[nightowl_games]

Total, constant, omnipresent surveillance feeding an AI model of every single individual that is so powerful that it can persuade us deeply and without our knowledge.

Note: this is basically already happening.

It's just the sad tripling down on advertising technology being our most advanced technology.

[mrguyorama]

>advertising technology being our most advanced technology.

This is a huge distinction I want to point out: Nothing anyone has done in the past twenty years has been to make advertising more effective, though that is what is often claimed. The system however, only works towards making advertising more profitable to Google and Facebook. Everything else, including advertising effectiveness, has been slaughtered at the altar of "Gotta make line go up" inside Google and Facebook.

Both companies benefit greatly if the amount you spend on advertising goes up because it's not as effective as it used to be.

They also run most advertising as explicitly adversarial instant auctions, meaning the ad that runs before your Youtube video isn't the one most likely to get you what you want, or fix a problem you have, or even please your dopamine system, but rather the ad you see is primarily driven by who spends the most. This means that every midsized company that is so stupid as to misconfigure their advertising run will run a lot of ineffective ads, while the lean company doing innovative things locally who can only afford a "reasonable" ad spend will end up running far fewer ads.

The system empowers those with deep pockets and silences those without. Intentionally. This also makes it pretty easy to keep your new competition from getting any oxygen in a market.

I believe Google says that they include other things in the bidding process, including a specific claim that if you run a shitty ad that nobody every clicks on, it will be down-ranked in the ad auction, but they have billions and billions of reasons to not do that as effectively as they could. They are financially motivated to make advertising less effective and more expensive for consumers and producers alike.

[yoyohello13]

Everyone who has ever worked on ad-tech has made the world a worse place to live.

[nightowl_games]

The worst part is that this is our best and brightest, the ones who could have done so much more.

[wizzwizz4]

Project Wonderful was alright.

[CatWChainsaw]

They nonironically deserve to be lumped in with Nazis.

[bombcar]

Even without everything else, a big threat vector is people not knowing better who have it on, and then give access to their machine not realizing what they've done.

[cratermoon]

I don't suppose you know any survivors of domestic abuse. If you do, ask them.

[5e92cb50239222b]

Getting your doors kicked in because you posted "disinformation" on the internet, or said something "unpatriotic" to a rando on the street and got reported to the cops. You won't have time to lock your computer, or if you do, the password will be pulled out of you with pliers, along with a couple of teeth. It's a daily reality in some parts of the world, including my own country and another one where I have many friends.