Mastodawn

CreamofCry 7h ago

official_verified

It saddens me that many people do not see far enough to understand well what we are losing while losing privacy rights and trivializing data protection. It is so much more than most think. This affects our intimacy, our safety, our social lives, our freedoms, and all our human rights.

It goes well beyond targeted advertising. Attacks on privacy lead to direct increases in authoritarianism and dictatorial governance.

We must care much more about it than we do now. It is critical to ourselves as individuals, but also to democracy and society as a whole.

#Privacy #Authoritarianism

@Em0nM4stodon I agree with you. Also in all honesty any of those tracking databases can be hacked by bad actors so it's better not to have them is what I say.

Journeys In Film 10h ago

@Em0nM4stodon If you or your followers know of any recent films that address privacy rights in a meaningful way, we would love to know about them.

*Can be documentary or narrative films, and can be in development / pre-release.

#Privacy #AskFedi #Movies

Joanie with the Good Hair 😷9h ago

@JourneysInFilm I recommend "The Lives of Others."

Journeys In Film 7h ago

@clickhere Thank you!

eestileib (she/hers)2h ago

@clickhere @JourneysInFilm @Em0nM4stodon

Oh hell yes. _The Lives of Others_ is fantastic.

Nate Bartram 6h ago

@JourneysInFilm @Em0nM4stodon https://thenewoil.org/en/links/#resources

Feel free to tag me if you make a list. I'm sure it's very incomplete and I'd love to find more.

The New Oil | Links

Data is the new oil

🤠 Sam Chavez (she/they/hey)10h ago

@Em0nM4stodon completely agree! I was talking to a friend about responding to people who say "well I have nothing to hide."

It's not about hiding something bad, it's about protecting our universal right to not have the government and for profit businesses have their hands in everything we do.

Bill Zaumen 10h ago

@rootschange @Em0nM4stodon I once describe how I use LUKS to keep an "in case the house burns down" backup that I carry around with me. Someone said, "you must really have something to hide". I replied (more or less) "Like a 400+ page book that I don't want others t to get before it is finished - otherwise they could copyright it instead of me."

theHastyOne 9h ago

@rootschange @Em0nM4stodon I tell people I don't want every action my children take, online or offline, to be used as leverage to steal the maximum amount from them at every possible transaction.

That does make people stop and think

@Em0nM4stodon
i find myself not talking about these things to less tech savy people sadly,i have the impression that if i do they'll think im too paranoid

EvoScale 9h ago

@Em0nM4stodon Unfortunately, we're in a time frame where most fundamental needs, like clean air, water, enough food and affordable shelter, are at a similar pace of collapse.

Mass extinctions are built on these rare overlaps in collapsing ecosystems. Tech bros are successfully cornering the market on sustainability.

Stacey Cornelius 🇨🇦9h ago

@Em0nM4stodon FWIW I have a headache from banging my head against that particular wall.

Joanie with the Good Hair 😷9h ago

@Em0nM4stodon Thank you for saying this, and so succinctly.

Sobrevivente da misantropia 9h ago

Porque o capitalismo forjou uma sociedade em que as pessoas são individualistas. E a maioria de nós já aceitou o fato de que não temos privacidade real, que nossas senhas estão nas mãos de bandidos, que de vez em quando estranhos vão fazer compras usando nossos cartões, que talvez tenhamos fotos íntimas (reais ou montadas) em fóruns obscuros. O que falta é pensar de forma coletiva, sobre o poder que essas empresas têm sobre um povo inteiro, o que é muito diferente da soma de várias dessas consequências individuais.

ZenHeathen 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈9h ago

@Em0nM4stodon It also very directly affects our ability as citizens to right the course of the ship of our nation if it goes too far astray. Just try organizing a protest movement against a government which has started down the path to true dictatorship, if they can trace everything you do online and pin it to your exact name and location.

Ghostral 9h ago

@Em0nM4stodon Exactly and especially llm consumer apps can me used to sway public opinion as well

Kevin Russell 9h ago

Please continue to share and deepen your thoughts here, and thank you.

Anthony Brian Mallgren 9h ago

@Em0nM4stodon I'm more like a data flasher. Open up the trenchcoat, out pops my life story. No one seems to appreciate it though. I keep thinking government will do something with it. I guess they only like criminal intelligence.

@Em0nM4stodon we gave up the rights to privacy already 20+ years ago at least when either actively embracing or pushed to use "free" websites, software & service from corporations mostly because they were not the opposition "team" xyz, knowing very well that there is no such thing as a "free lunch". That snowball has now turned into an avalanche and will continue down the mountain, digging some trenches might slow it down but it will continue until everything is destroyed.

colombiaorc 8h ago

@Em0nM4stodon they have forgotten how we got them in the first place!

Maggie Maybe 8h ago

@Em0nM4stodon what is the saying? “Watched people are different people”?

CassandraVert 7h ago

@Em0nM4stodon More people need to know how Chinese social control works.

@Em0nM4stodon 100% And it's so difficult to make any sort of argument with proponents of digital censorship because any resistance to the authoritarian bend is met with accusations that you oppose child safety online.

@iveyline 7h ago

@Em0nM4stodon Well said Em. We're like the frog in the pot slowly getting boiled by big IT and the agencies they work with.

TheGuy09 7h ago

@Em0nM4stodon As far as I'm concerned, we're already a surveillance state.

Poloniousmonk 6h ago

I just watched Black Mirror S3E01: Nosedive and it makes this point in a pretty dystopian way. Pretty good show, too.

Nicole Parsons 6h ago

Ask anyone who lived in a ubiquitous surveillance state built around narcing on neighbors, friends, & family. It was terrible.

In East Germany, the Stasi had an intergenerational impact that crashed their economy & dropped the birth rate precipitously.

Peter Thiel & Elon Musk both spent some of their childhood in apartheid-era South Africa; ubiquitous surveillance state that used state police murder to maintain white supremacy

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa

https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-worldview-of-the-afrikaner-diaspora-now-haunts-the-us/

How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa

Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler

The Guardian

Andrew Lokenauth 6h ago

The loss of privacy is slow until it is permanent.

By the time most people notice, the systems are already normal, legal, and hard to remove.

@FluentInFinance @Em0nM4stodon I don't know. It started out boiling frog, but then it switched to a blowtorch. Lately it has seriously accelerated. There's so much going on right now ranging from governments giving fake "AI" companies carte blanch to steal everyone's data to age gating to try to lock people out of having access to information that isn't controlled by media corporations and politicians. Don't even get me started on the stuff going on at the top like the info given to ICE.

canleaf08✅ 加拿大葉子 🏳️‍🌈⚧️🇪🇺🍁2h ago

@Em0nM4stodon liberal societies doing away privacy and wanting a passport scan for lookimg up the weather.

LukefromDC 1h ago

@canleaf @Em0nM4stodon You may be able to get the local weather over the local mesh network without a SIM card at all.

Theolodian 38m ago

@Em0nM4stodon ok, but I have few friends, I can’t be my whole self with anyone much less online, and Andy Burnham wasn’t on my ballot paper. So is there really that much more left to lose? 🤨