[pyrale]

There's a difference between placing a sports shoes ad in front of a gym, and getting to know the history and habits of every person that ever entered that gym, and showing each a different ad.

I mean, 30 years ago, we were horrified by the extent to which Stasi spied on their own people. Now, we'd call them amateurs.

[mattmcknight]

People were horrified because of what they did with the data. This is why it is different when there is a person listening, as their interests get involved. If it is just something telling me the shoes I looked at last week are on discount, instead of some random ad, who cares?

I used to get a long distance phone bill in the mail with the list of every number I called so I could verify the charges. Was it wrong for MCI to have this data?

[acdha]

MCI retaining your phone call records for billing purposes has a legitimate use: they need to be able to justify charging you.

Where it gets controversial is retention time and reuse: ten years from now, there’s no billing justification but you might not want President Donner to demand they turn over the list of everyone who called a political rival. Similarly, you might not care if they have that data but still object to them sharing it with marketing partners (they called LL Bean, you can advertise your outdoors wear to them!) or making it available to other companies who can use it to look up your interests when you are on the phone or applying to something. This can be deeply personal: your car insurance company would definitely pay to know who calls alcohol addiction treatment numbers, an employer of a certain vein might be interested in calls to adult services, etc. Once that data is out, there’s no way to un-breach it.

[pyrale]

Of course, Google would never give this data to a government that engages in targeted killing, Meta would never help out a junta repress their population, etc.

The extent of the data collected and systemic consolidation between different sources is the problem, because we've seen again and again any data collection is dangerous regardless of the original intent.