Well well…
I have a #TruthSocial account that I only use to develop and test an app. That account is 100% dormant and yet, all of a sudden, it is following 98 accounts.
So here's a social media platform that bypasses users' control to force content on them. Somehow, one is not surprised.
@jon Aggressive sunsetting is annoying, but has been tolerated for a long time. Linux is great, but there's no new uptick in the understanding of that. The real driving forces are two other, newer developments:
(1) #Microsoft is using #AI #spyware to snoop on EVERYTHING that appears onscreen, thus turning a PC monitor into a #telescreen right out of Orwell's 1984. Microsoft's promises to back down on this Orwellian move are being dismissed (rightly) as lies — either flat-out lies about what they're doing in the present, or mere temporary retreats, with every intention of reimposing the spyware as soon as they think no one's paying attention anymore. (This was my own reason for expelling Microsoft from my desktop in favor of Linux.)
(2) Microsoft is an American company. Now that the #USA is a #xenophobic #fascist #dictatorship, numerous entire nations are realizing (again, rightly) that they would be fools to continue relying on any American corporate or governmental entity for anything whatsoever — especially something as critical and pervasive as desktop computing. So they begin addressing the problem, first of all, by giving Microsoft the boot.
#Orwell already knew in 1984: We willingly buy the ‘telescreens’ that are used against us.
1984’s “telescreens” may not have been pocket-sized or connected to social networks. But they tell us a lot about the risks of life in 2018.
By Henry Cowles, July 2018
"#Snowden was right. Re-reading 1984 in 2018, one is struck by the 'TVs that watch us,' which Orwell called telescreens. The #telescreen is one of the first objects we encounter: 'The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.' It is omnipresent, in every private room and public space, right up until the end of the book, when it is 'still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter' even after Smith has resigned himself to its rule.
"What’s most striking about the telescreen’s ubiquity is how right and how wrong Orwell was about our technological present. Screens are not just a part of life today: they are our lives. We interact digitally so often and in such depth that it’s hard for many of us to imagine (or remember) what life used to be like. And now, all that interaction is recorded. Snowden was not the first to point out how far smartphones and social media are from what Orwell imagined. He couldn’t have known how eager we’d be to shrink down our telescreens and carry them with us everywhere we go, or how readily we’d sign over the data we produce to companies that fuel our need to connect. We are at once surrounded by telescreens and so far past them that Orwell couldn’t have seen our world coming.
"Or could he? Orwell gives us a couple of clues about where telescreens came from, clues that point toward a surprising origin for the totalitarian state that 1984 describes. Taking them seriously means looking toward the corporate world rather than to our current governments as the likely source of freedom’s demise. If Orwell was right, #consumer choice–indeed, the ideology of choice itself–might be how the erosion of choice really starts.
"The first clue comes in the form of a technological absence. For the first time, Winston finds himself in a room without a telescreen:
'There’s no telescreen!' he could not help murmuring.
'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never had one of those things. Too expensive. And I never seemed to feel the need of it, somehow.'
"Though we learn to take the old man’s statements with a grain of salt, it seems that–at some point, for some people–the owning of a telescreen was a matter of choice.
"The second hint is dropped in a book within the book: a banned history of the rise of 'the Party' authored by one of its early architects who has since become 'the Enemy of the People.' The book credits technology with the destruction of privacy, and here we catch a glimpse of the world in which we live: 'With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end.'
"What does the murky history of the telescreen tell us about the way we live now? The hints about an old man’s reluctance and television’s power suggest that totalitarian overreach might not start at the top–at least, not in the sense we often imagine. Unfettered access to our inner lives begins as a choice, a decision to sign up for a product because we 'feel the need of it.' When acting on our desires in the marketplace means signing over our data to corporate entities, the erosion of choice is revealed to be the consequence of choice—or at least, the consequence of celebrating choice."
#Orwell1984 #Smartphones #Telescreens #BigBrother #TechnologyAddiction
@dekkzz76 @whalecoiner That's also without mentioning the simple problem that third parties, whether feds or random crackers & skiddies, can very much disregard legal limits and use all the sensors for whatever they want including blackmail, identity theft & fraud.
Or just to add your TV to their #botnet, like #Mirai did with security cameras.
@izaya
Yes, precisely.
It was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Minus the display and a other basic components, we wonder whether television circuitry will be 3D printable in the near future. That's might encourage us to use a #television again, haha.
#1984 #telescreen #microphone
I would like to use a voice interface to control my home, access the Internet, etc. But not if it means recording everything in my kitchen and sending the audio to Amazon/Google/Microsoft for analysis.
Is the world going crazy, or is it just me?
Three years ago, we said the Echo was “the most innovative device Amazon’s made in years.” That’s still true. But you shouldn’t buy one. You shouldn’t buy one for your family. You definitely should not buy one for your friends. In fact, ignore any praise we’ve ever heaped onto smart speakers and voice-controlled assistants. They’re bad!
#telescreen:
RT @lalternactiviste: Parution de la 5ème édition du Guide d’autodéfense numérique - La Rotative
Ce Guide présente l’« absence d’intimité » du monde numérique et propose des méthodes pour ajuster ses pratiques quotidiennes en conséquence.
http://larotative.info/parution-de-la-5eme-edition-du-2396.html
#LaRotative #Tours #MédiasLibres #Mutu #AutodéfenseNumérique
Florent Moncomble
Douglas Edwards 
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LisPi
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M. Grégoire
Sassinak!