[autoexec]

I think that "shifting baseline syndrome" is a major issue, but on the privacy side of things people don't seem to really understand where we're at currently, and they seem to be very good at lying to themselves about it.

You can find youtube videos of people outright screaming at photographers in public, insisting that no one has a right to take a picture of them without their permission while the entire time they're also standing under surveillance cameras.

When it's in their face they genuinely seem to care about privacy a lot, but they also know the phone in their pocket is so much more invasive in every way. They've been repeatedly told that they're tracked and recorded everywhere.They sign themselves up for it again and again. As long as they don't see it going on right in front of them in the most obvious way possible I guess they can lie to themselves in a way that they can't when they see a man with a camera, but even though on some level they already know that the street photographer is easily the last thing that should concern them, they still get upset to the point where they're screaming in public. I really don't understand it.

[jprete]

There's little that any individual can realistically do about smartphone spying. There are situations where it's borderline unworkable to not have a smartphone. The importance of the phone increased greatly over the same period during which companies increased tracking or at least acknowledged that they were doing it.

Leaving that aside, people probably react that way because the corporation just wants to gather advertising data from everyone, impersonally, while the photographer is taking a direct and specific interest.

[autoexec]

> Leaving that aside, people probably react that way because the corporation just wants to gather advertising data from everyone, impersonally,

There's nothing more personal than the collection, use, and sale of every intimate detail of your life. And corporations don't just want to gather advertising data. They want to collect as much data as they possibly can in order to use it in any and every way that might somehow benefit them and the vast majority of the time that means using it against you. It stopped being about advertising decades ago.

That data is now used to set the prices you pay, it determines what jobs you get, it influences where you are allowed to live. Companies have multiple versions of their policies and they use that data to decide which version they will apply to you, how you will be treated by them, even how long they leave you on hold when you call them. That data is used to extract as much money from you as possible. It's used to manipulate you and to lie to you more effectively. It is used against you in court rooms. It can get you questioned or arrested by police even if you've done nothing wrong. It gets bought by scammers, extremists, and activists looking for targets. Everyone who collects, sells, and buys your data is only looking to help themselves so that data only ever ends up hurting you.

More and more that data has very real world consequences on your daily offline life. You're just almost never aware of it. A company that charges you 10% more than the last person when you buy the same item isn't going to tell you that it was because of the data they have on you, you just see the higher price tag and assume it applies to everyone. The company that doesn't hire you because of something they found in the dossier they bought from a data broker isn't going to inform you that it was a social media post from 15 years ago that made them pass you over, or the fact that you buy too much alcohol, or that you have a history of depression, they'll just ghost you.

If the data companies collect only ever determined what ads you see nobody would care, but that data is increasingly impacting your life in all kinds of ways. It never goes away. You have no ability to correct errors in the record. You aren't allowed to know who has it or why. You can't control what anyone does with it.

The guy taking pictures and video on the street probably isn't looking to spend the rest of his life using that footage against you personally, but that's exactly what the companies collecting your data are going to do with it and if/when they die they'll sell that data to someone else before they go and that someone else will continue using it to try and take something from you.