[__MatrixMan__]

I agree that it's currently paranoid to hide your activities so that the algorithm profiling companies see you as several different people, or see the activities of millions as if they're just one... Automated misdirection on the part of the users is, so far, minimal.

But the point of such a company is to sell data on individuals, and a problematic use case for such data is to kill the ones who say things that you don't like. As that becomes cheaper and easier to do I think we'll find that it's not so paranoid to hide.

[alganet]

Maybe the endgame is honesty. Not pretending you're several people, or other convoluted ways of misdirection and disguise.

Just honestly acknowledge that profiling exists, and explicitly work against it.

That should be enough to make any algorithm company that notices something is wrong to trip on its own wires, thinking some more elaborate form of hackery/covertion is being employed.

The likelyhood of some company noticing a single user is quite low though, but if you are able to hook even a single person inside that company using nothing but honesty and no tricks, that is the best trick of all.

[__MatrixMan__]

My proposal wasn't that individuals should juggle accounts and cookies in a machine-vs-human game of cat and mouse, but rather that we should rewrite the protocols we use to play that game for us. I don't think there's anything dishonest about that--it's just that making computers lie to each other is the honest work of protecting well-meaning humans from malicious humans.

Do you have a different sort of explicitly working against profiling that you had in mind?

[alganet]

Just being honest, mostly.

I'll say things I know will get me downvoted.

I'll criticize things that could benefit me if I think they're manipulative.

I won't do alt accounts even if everyone does it.

I think most surveillance and advertisement relies on social dynamics. I attempt to play the algorithms but not the people. Sometimes it will get misunderstood, and that's fine.

[__MatrixMan__]

Ah, well I hope that sharing your honest opinion about it turns out to be an effective strategy. But I'm afraid we'll regret not interfering more directly than that.

[alganet]

I think surveillance is very, very advanced. But the active meddling thing is old tricks.

One should consider this combination. You can't lie to some systems, the better strategy is to be honest. You can lie to some systems, but these won't be load bearing, so why do it?

I will also observe back. The active meddling thing, when observed in action, is a source of information. It could be lying to me too, predicting that observability is inevitable and camouflaging it. Of course, I could be predicting that as well (and so on).

Notice how many interesting scenarios exist even if honesty is considered as a viable strategy in a total surveillance hypothetical situation?

[__MatrixMan__]

> The active meddling thing, when observed in action, is a source of information.

Not if it's done right. If one person views a page the old-fashioned way, caches the DOM, and circulates it peer-to-peer, then whoever is weaponizing that content only has one browser fingerprint to work with, despite there being potentially thousands of users that they wish they could profile.

That's far less information to work with than the thousands of individual requests they would otherwise have to scrutinize.

The honest/dishonest distinction only comes down to whether you're going to try to protect the volunteer who grabbed the page to begin with, or whether you're going to expose them to retribution.

As for the systems you can't lie to, those you can replace with more trustworthy alternatives. This is a lot of work but it's better than suggesting that your peers be honest in ways that will harm them.

So to answer your question, no. None of the scenarios where you let your adversary know that you're working against them, and also let them know how to find and harm you, are interesting strategies for combatting surveillance.

Surveillance exists in support of targeted coercion. We should not make a target of the more honest among us. We need to protect those people most of all.