Steve Wozniak Decries Tracking's Effect on Privacy, Calls Out 'Hypocrisy' of Only Banning TikTok (cnn.com) 137
In an interview Saturday, CNN first asked Steve Wozniak about Apple's "walled garden" approach — and whether there's any disconnect between Apple's stated interest in user security and privacy, and its own self-interest?
Wozniak responded, "I think there are things you can say on all sides of it. "I'm kind of glad for the protection that I have for my privacy and for you know not getting hacked as much. Apple does a better job than the others.
And tracking you — tracking you is questionable, but my gosh, look at what we're accusing TikTok of, and then go look at Facebook and Google... That's how they make their business! I mean, Facebook was a great idea. But then they make all their money just by tracking you and advertising.
And Apple doesn't really do that as much. I consider Apple the good guy.
So then CNN directly asked Wozniak's opinion about the proposed ban on TikTok in the U.S. "Well, one, I don't understand it. I don't see why. I mean, I get a lot of entertainment out of TikTok — and I avoid the social web. But I love to watch TikTok, even if it's just for rescuing dog videos and stuff.
And so I'm thinking, well, what are we saying? We're saying 'Oh, you might be tracked by the Chinese'. Well, they learned it from us.
I mean, look, if you have a principle — a person should not be tracked without them knowing it? It's kind of a privacy principle — I was a founder of the EFF. And if you have that principle, you apply it the same to every company, or every country. You don't say, 'Here's one case where we're going to outlaw an app, but we're not going to do it in these other cases.'
So I don't like the hypocrisy. And that's always obviously common from a political realm.
Wozniak responded, "I think there are things you can say on all sides of it. "I'm kind of glad for the protection that I have for my privacy and for you know not getting hacked as much. Apple does a better job than the others.
And tracking you — tracking you is questionable, but my gosh, look at what we're accusing TikTok of, and then go look at Facebook and Google... That's how they make their business! I mean, Facebook was a great idea. But then they make all their money just by tracking you and advertising.
And Apple doesn't really do that as much. I consider Apple the good guy.
So then CNN directly asked Wozniak's opinion about the proposed ban on TikTok in the U.S. "Well, one, I don't understand it. I don't see why. I mean, I get a lot of entertainment out of TikTok — and I avoid the social web. But I love to watch TikTok, even if it's just for rescuing dog videos and stuff.
And so I'm thinking, well, what are we saying? We're saying 'Oh, you might be tracked by the Chinese'. Well, they learned it from us.
I mean, look, if you have a principle — a person should not be tracked without them knowing it? It's kind of a privacy principle — I was a founder of the EFF. And if you have that principle, you apply it the same to every company, or every country. You don't say, 'Here's one case where we're going to outlaw an app, but we're not going to do it in these other cases.'
So I don't like the hypocrisy. And that's always obviously common from a political realm.
It's not hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
The dividing line is national, not technological.
Re:It's not hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
The dividing line is national, not technological.
True but IMHO, unimportant. Do you not think Google, Meta, and friends track non-US citizens? Do you not think that information is made available to US and other governments? Do you not think Google, Meta, and friends operate data centers outside the US?
From a personal privacy perspective, I don't see why I should be more concerned about ByteDance reporting to the CCP versus Google reporting to the US DOJ. Honestly, I'm far more concerned about tracking by the US government because they have a lot more opportunity to affect me.
If we want to force a sale of TikTok to US owners, how about we first set up clear firewalls that the new owners won't be reporting usage, profile, and content data to the US government first. If we don't it's "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
Re:It's not hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Meta/etc. track, but they don't use the information to give data mining superiority to the CCP. It is a sensible policy to avoid nation-scale data going to foreign intelligence services. As a citizen you might also want to limit the amount of information that Meta/etc. gives to your own government as well but that's a different issue.
Also (as stated by others below), another major issue is the amount of mind control that the suggestion algorithm enables. Again, it is sensible to avoid giving this amount power to a foreign government, and one known to be pervasively evil.
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another major issue is the amount of mind control that the suggestion algorithm enables.
Which is a disingenuous way of saying you believe the American public to be a bunch of easily impressionable mindless sheep who need protection from dangerous ideas, for their own good. Pick up a history book, we already know precisely where that particular slippery slope leads.
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Pick up a psychology book. Nobody is that smart. You don't need to be "easily impressionable." There are known techniques to cause mayhem. Don't think yourself immune because you're a tough guy or smarter than that.
It isn't "dangerous ideas," it's willful mob manipulation to modify behavior. You don't want to be in the middle of that. History won't help you, this technology didn't exist back then.
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That doesn't mean you're wrong. But neither are they.
The traditional American take on the matter would indeed be that the citizen is the only one who can be trusted to decide whether they ingest the influence of this "algorithm" (see: speech)
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Leave your national pride aside; propaganda works. Recent years have shown that voter's choices can be influenced by what they see on social media, even though it's not entirely clear yet, at least publicly available data, to what extent it worked.
It's not an amount of power we should leave available to any government, because we know they are tempted to abuse, and though national governments have at least some formal limits and some level of accountability, foreign governments have none, to what respects i
Re: It's not hypocrisy (Score:2)
This is exactly why I say countries than can ban "hate speech" do not have free speech.
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Meta/etc. track, but they don't use the information to give data mining superiority to the CCP.
They give the info to the highest bidder. Do you feel safer?
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Facebook was caught giving data to Vote Leave (part of the UK's disastrous brexit campaign, supported by Russia). I seem to recall some questions about political use in the US too.
Which is worse, giving data to the CCP or your own government? The latter has much more impact on your life. What would the CCP even do with it? As Russia demonstrated, you don't need data to influence other countries, just an army of people making fake social media profiles and memes.
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I do. Which I think is in the interests of the US, which is why the US isn't interested in complaining much about it.
Re:It's not hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I'm far more concerned about tracking by the US government because they have a lot more opportunity to affect me.
What you really have to worry about are insurance companies finding out that your risk profile is less than ideal and raising your rates. That actually will hit you right in the pocketbook. LexisNexis already is damn close to being the US's equivalent of China's social credit score.
The privacy issue with TikTok is entirely a farce, US tech companies are just jealous that you might not always be running their telemetry-sucking apps on your phone 24/7 in the presence of a popular foreign competitor in the social media sphere.
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How is that even legal? In Europe the only time they could use that data to adjust your premium is if you find out you lied to them e.g. about not smoking.
Here they aren't even allowed to consider your gender when setting the premium, because it was found to be discriminating against men.
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Whataboutism isn't an excuse for taking step in the right direction. It's the argument made to uphold the status quo. Anyone expecting totality, i.e. a perfect solution, from any effort made on that front is often going to find themselves standing still while continuing to suffer the consequences of doing so.
True but I'm making a slightly different point. I'm more apprehensive of what the US government and US companies can do with all the data they collect than I am of what the Chinese government can do. If Congress wanted to solve an important problem, I'd much rather they addressed that first. Once we have our own house in order, then we'll have the moral standing to demand ByteDance divest TikTok. To address the issues in the reverse order reeks of hypocrisy and distraction.
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True but IMHO, unimportant. Do you not think Google, Meta, and friends track non-US citizens? Do you not think that information is made available to US and other governments? Do you not think Google, Meta, and friends operate data centers outside the US?
Google generally does not sell the data it holds on individuals. Buying data from 3-party brokers is how the government gets around the pesky 4th amendment, but, for the US, I don't think this generally works with Google. Perhaps there is some other workaround utilizing the "5-eyes" and different laws in other countries that the US government uses to get around the lack of data directly from Google.
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Up the page is https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]. America is well known for its secret courts, its attacks on individual freedom in America and especially in other countries. They are also likely to elect someone who makes no secret of his plans for dictatorship with a good chunk of the population cheering the idea.
America also has extradition treaties with much of the world and doesn't hesitate to abuse those treaties. I'm much more likely to be flagged and prosecuted by the American government then the Ch
Re:It's not hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
Large corporations aren't *national*, and calling them "multi-national" doesn't really capture their nature which isn't isn't subordinate to any nation, much less multiple ones. They stand outside the framework of nations, acting as power and interest centers entirely in their own right.
The only way to get a large corporation to respect the interests of a nation-state is for that nation-state to compel that by force -- through laws, regulations, and in authoritarian states extrajudicial punishments. The only reason for Americans to be *particularly* concerned about TikTok is that it particularly convenient for the Chinese government to enforce its will on them. In fact if you look at ByteDance's response -- offering to move information centers outside of China, you will see an example of a corporation not identifiying with its host country's interests and trying to circumvent state control.
Now vis-a-vis China, the Xi regime is attempting to exert more control over businesses operating in their countries *which is deterimental to the interests of multi-national corporations operating there*. And in any case foreign social media sites aren't allowed to operate in the country. So we don't have to worry about, say, Meta getting too cozy with Xi; The Xi regime is Meta's *enemy*. But you can bet Meta would sell you to the Chinese government if the regime were more friendly, and even to respond positively to friendly overtures.
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Large corporations aren't *national*, and calling them "multi-national" doesn't really capture their nature which isn't isn't subordinate to any nation, much less multiple ones. They stand outside the framework of nations, acting as power and interest centers entirely in their own right.
That might be what they can get away with in the USA but we all know that America and its citizens are nothing more than Corporate America's bitch nowadays. Remind me again how well things are going for Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft in the EU?
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Eventually America is likely to go to economic war with the EU over that, could be as soon as after the next election.
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Of course there, the transnats could rival the force power of a State as well.... shit.
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The dividing line is ideological. They hate TikTok because it is a very left leaning place and the algorithm promotes socialist ideas, while minimizing conservative ones. On TikTok, landlords are the baddies, and capitalism is the system that keeps everyone down.
Those who are conspiratorially minded think this is because TikTok is CCP propaganda, but actually the CCP would hate a lot of the stuff on there too because it's very much against the establishment and sacrificing for the benefit of society.
Even th
Re:It's not hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
>Even the Democrats are well to the right
To the rest of the Western world... the Democrats ARE a right-wing party. They're just not extreme right-wing. The US doesn't have a viable left, the Overton window is way out of whack for a modern developed Western democracy.
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The US doesn't have a viable left, the Overton window is way out of whack for a modern developed Western democracy.
On top of that, we have highly influential people like Musk who insist the window has moved too far to the left because his personal views on social issues are out-of-touch with the times. I'm sure anti-abolitionists felt exactly the same way after slavery was abolished.
Re: It's not hypocrisy (Score:2)
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I'd call it weak, actually. You can ban more than just saying fire in a theatre without being a police state. Fox News uses this weakness in American law to radicalize the right with agitprop.
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The US has the strongest free speech law among most countries. It used to be a progressive (left) value.
Remind me again what the fine was the FCC doled out for nipplegate? And remind me again what OFCOMs fine was for the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony broadcasting the entirety of Monty Python's "Always look on the bright side of life" with the infamous line "Life's a piece of shit" to the entire world and before the watershed here in the UK without any warnings, any bleeping out etc.
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Flashing your tits on prime time is not speech. It's a purient cash grab for attention.
Free speech never ever meant you could say literally anything. There have always been limits.
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I'm not sure that even this claim is true. Most free speech in the US hinges on the first amendment, and the first amendment only limits government censorship (with many exceptions). I'm no expert on international law, but it seems as though there's a lot of room for improvement there.
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> the Democrats ARE a right-wing party. They're just not extreme right-wing.
Whatever you're smoking it must be fantastic. Democrats aren't left leaning? They're so far left they've lost the plot at this point.
I'll have to assume this is a sarcastic post.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fu... [twimg.com]
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> the Democrats ARE a right-wing party. They're just not extreme right-wing.
Whatever you're smoking it must be fantastic. Democrats aren't left leaning? They're so far left they've lost the plot at this point.
I'll have to assume this is a sarcastic post.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fu... [twimg.com]
So you've been told, yes. The question is: have you been told this because it's true, or because it's an effective way to manipulate you?
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Re:It's not hypocrisy (Score:5, Informative)
American exceptionalism means Americans often can't even begin to comprehend they might not be the best in any way. In my experience, even when faced with evidence it is the case, the response is usually a long the lines of how special the US is means what is working elsewhere wouldn't apply in the US.
Plenty of other countries don't require people to rely on charity campaigns to cover medical needs just for not being rich, for instance. Plenty of other countries don't have the American gun problem.
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PPH has correctly replied to your post that Americans do not just engage in special pleading, denial is also a favourite.
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But our local for-profit medical facilities are making piles of money serving, among others, the wealthy Canadians who don't want to wait in line behind some smelly bum.
Mostly Canadians go there so they don't have to wait in line for elective surgeries like hip and knee replacements, which that bum is not going to get in the US in any case.
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In the US a hip or knee replacement is not elective.
Our concept of elective surgery is plastic surgery. I find it shocking you consider the ability to walk an elective procedure.
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It's all relative, knee can wait while someones, even a poor person's, life is saved.
My sister, someone who worked minimum wage jobs all her life, got a triple bypass within hours of needing it. Now she has another disease which requires a full blood transfusion every couple of weeks, costs her a couple of dollars for parking. Her husband waited 6 months to get his elbow fixed.
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Our concept of elective surgery is plastic surgery. I find it shocking you consider the ability to walk an elective procedure.
Elective is typically defined as something that is not going to kill you by waiting, which is also why the poor folks there are never going to get it. For that matter they are unlikely to get surgery for things that will kill them either. If that bum has a heart attack, your system will try to resuscitate them, but if they need bypass surgery they will be SOL.
Bragging about rich people getting rapid treatment for a bum knee while poor people just die of worse things does not convince me of the superior
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The bigger fuckery in the system for them, is the means testing for Medicaid holds water about as well as the Titanic. There are many holes that people fall through. When I was a child, I was lucky not to be in one of its infamous "coverage gaps".
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Your "concept" of elective surgery is your own ignorance. Do us a favor, and spare us it.
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They hate TikTok because it is a very left leaning place.
Reddit is too. It happens anytime the userbase trends young, because they missed out on all the free land and gold rushes of the past and have nothing to look forward to but grinding away at college so they can spend the rest of their lives as wage slaves to corporate America, so they can make rent and their car payment, so they can commute to work in bumper-to-bumper traffic with the rest of the rats. What's not to love? /s
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What you really mean is that they have no stake in the current system.
The government's challenge is to get that to them.
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What's was the cash grab and free land I got for being GenX?
All I got was working my way through school to graduate into a deep recession and working my ass off at shitty jobs until I finally made enough to get out of the race.
Was there a fee land cash grab line I forgot to stand in?
No. Young people are left because they are always left. And then they get their first job and first pay check and call home to ask if all these taxes and other stuff taken out of their check is right and half of them turn cons
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And then they get their first job and first pay check and call home to ask if all these taxes and other stuff taken out of their check is right and half of them turn conservative.
First job, or first real job where the salary isn't a complete suck-fest? When you're a teenager and get a job flipping burgers, you're more likely to think the whole damn capitalist system is unfair and exploitive, unless it was hammered into you by your parents that being a conservative is the only right way to be.
By the time you're older though, if you're part of the survivorship bias, your political views might start trending towards the right. Because hey, the system works, and while those people in
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Most kids don't make enough money to pay taxes. Sure there is UI and old age security payments, which are relatively small and those UI payments come in handy when the economy crashes again and they're laid off. Most kids are also intelligent enough to know things like roads cost money.
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Most kids are also intelligent enough to know things like roads cost money.
I don't know.
My nieces and nephews concern me, there.
it's also not a ban (Score:2)
it's a forced sale
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No it isn't. The Chinese government has stated it refuses to allow it. So, therefore, it'll have to be a seizure or block. Either/or.
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Which I think indicates the problem. The Chinese government will not allow ByteDance to do something? That means ByteDance is, by logical extension, the Chinese government, and not an independent company as they claim.
But honestly, citation needed on the actual ability to "refuse to allow it," because I'm not sure the Chinese government has the power you claim. They say all sorts of things and take all sorts of stances that they cannot enforce or enact. I don't doubt that they said it, I doubt that it isn't
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Which I think indicates the problem. The Chinese government will not allow ByteDance to do something? That means ByteDance is, by logical extension, the Chinese government, and not an independent company as they claim.
By that logic, is US Steel part of the US government? Snark aside, governments disallow corporate sales and merges all the time for all sorts of good and not-so-good reasons. One of the common reasons is to block foreign ownership.
Honestly though, China's position seems quite predictable. How would we feel if the EU said Amazon had to sell AWS to a European buyer or be blocked from Europe? America would tell them to pound sand. "You can't abuse our companies like that. Only we can abuse our companies like t
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I also think they calculate that doing either of the above would damage the USG more than a straight sale would. They are playing the same game the Russians do - maximum chaos in the US, pitting one group against another. The Soviets had a long history of just that kind of behavior.
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Which they learned from watching the west, England and western Europe in particular but also America. Pitting one group against another probably goes back to the beginning of grain farming when nation states first appeared.
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Which I think indicates the problem. The Chinese government will not allow ByteDance to do something? That means ByteDance is, by logical extension, the Chinese government, and not an independent company as they claim.
Do you say Google is also the US government? They are forbidden to sell apps to China. nVidia is also the US government? They are forbidden to sell chips to China. ASML in Netherlands is also the US government? They are forbidden to sell equipment to China.
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It would be interesting to see a seizure... Imagine China retaliating with a seizure of Apple production.
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It would be very counterproductive to globalist intentions, but they may be desperate enough to do something that is so...not in their interest. Imagine the lack of trust in foreign investment that such seizures would inculcate. I can see a world moving quickly to old fashioned autarky as a result of such things, with the resultant reduction in trade and therefore in economic output.
Interesting times.
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https://i.postimg.cc/rs2vZr0y/... [postimg.cc]
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It's hypocrisy. If the US said "we believe it is important for a government to track the populace, and to track foreigners as much as possible, but we also believe it's important not to allow foreign governments to do the same to us" then there's no hypocrisy. Instead, the US makes it an ethical and ideological competition between "the CCP" and "the leader of the free world."
"OMG the Communist Chinese Communist Party is tracking you!11! plays well with Americans." "We do the same thing the CCP does, but it
So yes and no (Score:3)
That said the push to ban tik Tok (or rather the force the Chinese government to divest from it) is coming from a handful of billionaires who are upset because during the last election there was a lot of youth political organizing on the platform and it drove a lot of youth voter turnout.
Wha
He is right about tracking (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the US already is a (still somewhat restrained) surveillance state and a (still somewhat weak) police state. It is clearly sliding into totalitarianism and, eventually, full fascism or more likely a religious variant thereof.
Too many people aggressively pretend that is not the case (with one strategy being finger-pointing at China), because otherwise they might have to do something about it. And that is _exactly_ how the assholes win and then proceed to destroy everything that is good and decent.
Re:He is right about tracking (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:He is right about tracking (Score:5, Insightful)
You can still occasionally defend yourself against it, even when not rich, and sometimes the rich and powerful can still be subject to censure by the legal system. You can also still associate in private and criticize the government or its agents without getting locked up. Look at other examples and you find that goes away with stronger forms. Not that it will take really long for the US to get there as well.
Yes, things are pretty bad. But they can get a _lot_ worse and it looks like they will.
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The best supporting point for your assertion is that we can still talk about this openly without the secret police busting down the door.
Ask Russians of the Tsarist or Stalinist eras what would have happened.
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Indeed. An astute observation.
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Ask Russians of the Tsarist or Stalinist eras what would have happened.
Ahem. Perhaps one doesn't have to look that far in the past?
Re:He is right about tracking (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think personal freedoms in the US are much different than Russia at this point.
I know it's edgy and cool to say that but I don't think that's literally true. For all the fire and fury, neither President Trump or Biden actually locked up and murdered their political opponents. People don't disappear. Companies aren't seized and given to cronies of the current President. All of these have happened in Russia. The justice system, for all it's flaws, has open and defined processes. We still two political parties which vigorously compete for political power and keep each other in check. The Bill of Rights, while quite tattered, is still standing.
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If you shit on the President in the US, you won't be thrown out a window.
If you organize a political resistance against them, you won't be sent to die in a Siberian prison.
I can get on board with the concern of a slow trend toward authoritarianism, but come the fuck on. Don't compare us to a neo-stalinist regime if you intend to maintain even the thinnest veneer of seriousness.
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The only evidence you have that things are better here is that the leadership says so, while people get deplatformed, debanked and arrested for wrongthink openly while the whole population is surveilled by the state.
You can remain as deluded as you wish, but I am not.
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You just compared:
If you organize a political resistance against them, you won't be sent to die in a Siberian prison.
to:
while people get deplatformed, debanked and arrested for wrongthink openly
The fact that you think those are analogous means you are no longer capable of forming rational thoughts, because simply speaking- they are not.
That's not addressing the fact that it's also factually incorrect.
Nobody in the US is deplatformed, debanked, or arrested by the government for wrongthink.
Deplatforming, like debank
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You can also still associate in private and criticize the government or its agents without getting locked up.
Sure, you don't get locked up yet; however, you are excluded from certain jobs and you will never have a good life if you are on one of their lists. Insurance is higher. Legal challenged to your business mount.
I dunno man, it might be nicer just to throw the people in jail. But then being nicer was never a consideration.
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People held at Homan Square ...
Someone remind me the US news isn't racist, that US police aren't racist. (How many times have police driven into a white neighbourhood and murdered a 6 year-old?)
Someone tell me "Little brother" (Doctorow) is just a story.
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When a white cop kills a black man is that racism? Every time?
When a black cop kills a black man is that racism? Every time?
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I think you should rather ask, when a cop kills an unarmed black man, because he was afraid of the scary man, is that racism?
Don't conflate your racisms- confusing concept- I know.
Systems can be racist in effect. Having armed men with a fear of people of a certain skin tone will result in a higher probability of mistakes being made in policing. With our policing, "i was afraid" is justification to murder someone. Fixing that isn't a bad thing.
Look at it this way, my happy little racist (n
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Religious? Seriously? Religion has been dying and declining for generations.
Whatever the coming totalitarian state is based on it won't be religion.
God isn't dead but he's dying rapidly.
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You seem to have overlooked the evangelicals. Apparently that are now an astonishing 25% (!) of the US population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism_in_the_United_States)
So, yes, _seriously_. And most of the rest of the population seems to be asleep regarding this threat. Could still be non-religious totalitarianisms, for example brought in by a (closet) atheist like Trump.
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The only President who has ever uttered the words, "I would be a dictator- for day" is also the dumb motherfucker who hugged a bible for votes.
I think you're as blind as you are fucking stupid.
He's 100% correct (Score:4, Funny)
Also, TikTok is the best way for China to underestimate us. I mean if they want to strategize a war based on our bottom 20% .. lol.
Have you guys have seen that movie where a dude takes off his tracking bracelet and attaches it to a stray cat? That's TikTok.
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Given that one of the bottom 20% (with regard to mental capabilities) has a good chance to be elected US president again, I do not think China is underestimating anything.
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Underestimating your opponent is a great way to be defeated by him. Trump may be a narcissist, but stupid he is not.
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What if we could shine UV light up people's culos?
He is very practiced and well versed in certain manipulations and con schemes, but smart he is not. In fact, everyone around him in his government called him a moron.
What you can't wrap your head around is a stupid person can be good at things. Just very few.
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So the people in government who said he is stupid are correct.
And the other people in government who defend him and stick to him like glue therefore must be stupid?
And we know they are stupid because other people in government say so.
Do I have that right?
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He's fucking doctoral thesis material on just how stupid you can fucking be, as long as you present a candle of hope for a repressed feeling in a sizeable chunk of the population.
The people who elected Trump would elect a fucking gnat, as long as it made its job pwning the libs, and "Making America Great Again"
On a scarier note, they'd elect a Zombie Hitler for the same, as long as he promised not to murder any Jews this time.
Insider attacks (Score:5, Insightful)
This means that if TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc. what to screw with us, all they have to do is embed network scanning and attack software in their applications and use it to find insecure devices on networks - think notoriously insecure IoT devices like thermostats and "smart" lightbulbs, think media players and streaming devices, think home automation controllers. In business and industrial environments, think printers and SCADA
If you believe that TikTok is a proxy for the Chinese government, and if you are worried with China being a significant security risk for the US, banning TikTok makes a lot of sense. Likewise if you believe that Meta is a proxy for the US government and you are worried about the US being a security risk to you, it would make sense to ban Facebook. China and several other countries ban Facebook...
The question becomes if the increased level of security or risk mitigation created by an app ban is more or less valuable than the cost of the the political backlash generated by the users of the application.
Re: (Score:2)
Or it would make sense to have the willpower to stay away from all such social media. I do. But i'm a representative of a tiny sliver of the population.
Obvious? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Nation states are not people. They do not operate under the same principles as human being. They are sociopath legal entities with a single goal: survival through expansion of power, which usually means reducing the powers of competitive nation states.
Why is this behavior shocking or surprising from any country? It is their purpose. Honor, truth, justice and all the rest of that are for men.
Re: Obvious? (Score:2)
I care about tracking (Score:5, Insightful)
I care about tracking. Tracking serves as the basis of everything else. And, obviously, the tracking data is kept forever.
If somebody wants to organize the next genocide, tracking data comes in handy. That person was spottend on a number of websites that are not anti-gay and was even geolocated close to a known hangout of these deviants 20 years ago! Lets lock them up in one of the nice new camps we have now. Better safe than sorry, right? And that person over there was not spotted on any good christian websites in the last 10 years and not geolocated inside any churches recently. May be a potential atheist _terrorist_! Lets arrest them now and if they accidentally get killed during the arrest, all the better! May even be a bonus in it for the nice God-fearing police officers!
Obviously, some dramatization was applied, but this is essentially how it works. Tracking data means nobody can hide anymore and the evil work of the totalitarian assholes gets so much easier.
Re: (Score:3)
Once the sort of politicians who want to implement those "round up the gays and atheists" are in positions of power, privacy laws are the first thing to go. The defense against this sort of thing is the old Four boxes of liberty adage. It also doesn't get said often enough since typically we're not the sort of folks to mention guns at every opportunity, but the 2A applies to all Americans. You don't have to be a right-winger to value having the means to defend yourself.
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Sure. But all that data collected _before_ is the problem. When the insane primitives seize power, everybody knows one now has to be careful. But before?
Re: (Score:3)
That person was spottend on a number of websites that are not anti-gay and was even geolocated close to a known hangout of these deviants 20 years ago!
Or so someone says. If my government or some independent group is allowed to act on such information, we have lost the battle. Because the information doesn't even have to be provable or true to get you killed.
Tracking data means nobody can hide anymore
You can't hide if the neighborhood busy-body just happens to see you walk out of the adult video store by chance. Behave as though everything you do could be seen but you are not ashamed of being seen doing it.
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Yes. But it looks like things will get to that state and then data collected _bevore_ is a massive threat. Also, while that accusation of being a pervert (gay, atheist, liberal, supporter of the other side, etc.) does not have to be true, actual data allows you to come for the more credible targets first and then deal with the less credible ones later.
Re: (Score:3)
Apple only does some bad stuff!
WTF, over?!?
You spout Hater Tripe at Steve Wozniak?!?
One of the Founders of the EFF?!?
FUCK! RIGHT! OFF!
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Woz speaks in the lingo of a past age. Measured responses, means what he says. It'll only make sense to the younger set after some recovery.
Re: (Score:2)
Woz speaks in the lingo of a past age. Measured responses, means what he says. It'll only make sense to the younger set after some recovery.
Yeah, unfortunately, I've gotta try to live in Idiocracyland until "The Great Cleanse".
And that, my Friend, is anything but a joke!
Re: (Score:2)
Shut up apple shill
Die! Mothefucker!!!
Die!!! Die!!! Die!!!
Too bad Slashdot won't let me Yell at you Proper-Like.
Re: (Score:2)
Seek help
Die Motherfucker!!!
Die!!! Die!!! Die!!!