Paranoia to Over Sharing

[LYSE]

It's amazing what details people will give in an online quiz to find out what kind of potato they are.

 

[lowlight]

The abuse of private information was always going to be incremental, like all abuses of power are. Boiling a frog and all that. To put it into perspective, every phone call, picture, text message etc you’ve taken, sent, received, made in the past 20 years is stored on a data server in the Midwest. This isn’t a conspiracy, the government admitted to doing it in violation of Constitution and never stopped. Why? Good question, they say it’s for your own safety, but I’m willing to bet it isn’t for anything good. You don’t need to voluntarily give up any information, you just need to exist and not take extreme precautions and your entire identity is mapped out on a server somewhere.

 

[easyas123]

People who grew up in a dictatorship know that guarding one's privacy can literally mean the difference between life and death. I hope it never comes to that in the U.S., but world history teaches us that information is used in scary ways when evil leaders seize control.

I have older family members who lost most of their loved ones in dictatorship regimes and were cautious beyond belief once here as citizens. They wouldn't even apply for benefits they qualified for because it meant divulging details they weren't comfortable sharing.

I don't think anyone younger than the WW2 generation in the U.S. really understands the value of privacy. They haven't had to deal with the dire consequences of losing it, other than ID theft risk.

I think you are 100% spot on. I am personally acquainted with a older gentlemen and his family who emigrated here from Vietnam...he won't even buy a house in a neighborhood with a HOA he is so traumatized by being controlled in his younger days.
I'm approaching 50 years old, I've never had social media, it was a personal choice that has served me well. Admittedly at the time of my choice it was because I knew it would annoy me to no end being inundated with what folks made for dinner or the latest award little Johnny won for tying his shoe or whatever. But now I'm continually amazed about how much folks share and put out "there" and the arguments people get in.
We don't even put our names or photos on our Company website. I suppose I'd have to rethink that approach if our work was adverting driven, but it's not so we have been able to avoid it.
All that being said - I recognized social media wasn't for me, if others want to do it then well - that's not my business and not for me to say they should or shouldn't...I wish they would stop insisting I should or I need it or I will have to have it to communication with fill-in-the-blank. It's served me well to simply say to any entity that tries to send me to their social media pages for info "I'm sorry, I don't have social media, how else can I access this information?" And they tell me how else I can access the info outside of social media. Yep, even when my kids were in school even though I was previously told that was the only way to access the info.

 

[Mysterian]

It's stuff like this that makes me want to go back to the days of paranoia about the Internet. Ignoring the politics, this is pretty scary. Big brother ("Zuck") is watching.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-to-abortion-charges-in-nebraska?srnd=premium

No, there's been ongoing paranoia, you just may not have noticed until you experienced it yourself. The paranoia ranges from healthy scrutiny about typical online security to the tin hat theories that have been circulating for years. Philip K. Dick is probably the forefather of internet paranoia, and some of his material (like facial recognition, VR, or even the internet itself) has become reality. Ultimately you've got to keep a level head.

 

[RamblingMad]

No, there's been ongoing paranoia, you just may not have noticed until you experienced it yourself. The paranoia ranges from healthy scrutiny about typical online security to the tin hat theories that have been circulating for years. Philip K. Dick is probably the forefather of internet paranoia, and some of his material (like facial recognition, VR, or even the internet itself) has become reality. Ultimately you've got to keep a level head.

Depends on uncle Zuck. Before it was paranoia about government monitoring, which we pretty much know now is true. This is pretty much an ongoing topic at hacker conventions. Anyway, now, it's really about whatever the hell Zuck wants to do since he owns most of social media. Before you had it dispersed across multiple sites. Now, it's pretty consolidated into one entity. It's pretty scary, but no one seems to care anymore.

 

[JaxDad]

This. I recently signed up with a group that very much reflects my beliefs in general. However, after the fact I regretted it only because sadly I thought it could potentially be used against me at some point in the future. I requested they remove me. For the record, it was not extreme in any way, just represents a moderate view that does not seem to fit well right now.

I agree, and it seems to be getting progressively worse.

 

[Colleen27]

Depends on uncle Zuck. Before it was paranoia about government monitoring, which we pretty much know now is true. This is pretty much an ongoing topic at hacker conventions. Anyway, now, it's really about whatever the hell Zuck wants to do since he owns most of social media. Before you had it dispersed across multiple sites. Now, it's pretty consolidated into one entity. It's pretty scary, but no one seems to care anymore.

I think that's a factor too - we all know all of our information and communications are already in one set of hands we didn't place it in, and other than a moment of outrage there was no real backlash or demand for an end to that level of broad surveillance/data collection when it moved from the realm of conspiracy theory to news. So what difference does it make if others have access to the same information? I'm far less worried about Google listening in on my phone's mic to give me targeted ads for products I've talked about than I am about things like that prosecution mentioned above, so why would I worry about giving info to Zuck and Bezos that Uncle Sam already has tucked away somewhere in the name of keeping the country safe.

And while you've called out Zuck a couple of times, I do think Bezos is the bigger concern. Ring alone has massive potential for abuse and unlike FB, Insta or WhatsApp, it collects your data even if you choose not to be a customer. If you've stood on a doorstep of a home that has one, you're on videos that can be accessed not only by the device owner and anyone else they choose to share with but also by law enforcement, and they're working on building facial recognition and license plate scanning into the product. I could decide to live a life without social media, but I'm in Amazon's figurative sights just by visiting my MIL.