Aral Balkan
Today, you can choose not to drive a Tesla if you don’t want Elon Musk, Inc. knowing everywhere you go.
Tomorrow, you might have to limit where you live because you won’t live in a Google Home and reconsider having 20/20 vision again in exchange for the artificial lens company seeing everything you see.
Privacy is not something you can “vote with your wallet” on. We either protect it as a human right or we lose it altogether.
Aral Balkan
By the way, if you think the artificial lens bit is hyperbole, think again. Quite a few years ago now I was sitting at dinner with some CEO of some startup that had developed a free tool they said helped people with dyslexia read more easily.
So, as I do, I asked him my favourite question: “how will you make money with this?”
He looked at me like I was rather daft before answering, matter of factly, “well, we know what you’re reading.”
Say no more, my friend. Say no more.
Aral Balkan
@loy Exactly. The question to ask whenever someone pitches you a “smart” thing is: “Who’s getting smarter about whom?”
If it’s you (and just you) getting smarter about yourself, that’s perfectly fine.
If it’s some corporation getting smarter about you, then “smart” is just a euphemism for “surveilled.”
#smart #tech #privacy #surveillance #capitalism #BigTech #peopleFarming #SiliconValley
Loy
@aral It's such a fricking shame: I'd marvel at a AI home assistant type thing, ie. what Google Home and Amazon Echo claim to be. But I won't use them because they won't really work for me but for those companies.
Aral Balkan
@kittylyst And, to be fair, Apple are by no means perfect (and no trillion-dollar company is your friend) but they do design their tech differently so your health data stays on your own device. In the West, at least, they’ve made it their differentiating factor. (If you’re in China, though, that’s a different market and they have a different set of principles they apply there. Surprise, surprise.)
Ben Evans
@aral An older UK person I am close to needs to use a heart monitor. The doctors advised us that the best-available tech is the Apple watch and the ecosystem associated with it.
The alternative, non-BigTech solution was obviously inferior and had a horrible UX that even relatively tech-savvy seniors were clearly going to struggle with.
"Give up your data to BigTech or have worsened healthcare outcomes" is already here - even on what's left of the NHS.
Franko
@aral the scarry thing is that one might not be able to even afford a Tesla car, but the same person might be in dire need for an artificial lens, or being blind instead.
We ARE talking extremes here, but only twenty odd years ago, opening other people's mail was illegal in big part of the world, and now it's part of standard procedure in the same places. Tech only makes it easier.
Aral Balkan
@franko Exactly. The lie that became commonplace in the last decade or so was “if you don’t like it, just don’t use it.”
The underlying assumption being that these technologies are optional.
Once we recognise that no, these technologies are now essential to life in modern society, the only option we’re actually being presented with in the Silicon Valley model is whether we accept corporatocracy and the wholesale surrender of our human rights or whether we “choose” a hermitic existence.
Aral Balkan
@Erik Yep.
Erik Uden :verified:
Aral Balkan
@eirliani Thanks, Eirliani.
Here’s to changing things for the better together :)
Eirliani A Rahman
@aral Well said, Aral.
SuperDicq
@aral@mastodon.ar.al >Privacy is not something you can “vote with your wallet” on.
Yet you give only examples of things you vote with your wallet on done by commercial companies.
Wouldn't spying done by government agencies be a better example?
marcink
@aral Even today you can't choose not to be recorded by someone else's tesla, and it's a bit like Gmail: it doesn't matter whether you own one if enough people around you do.
Aral Balkan
@marcink Yep, it’s the technological equivalent of second-hand smoke.
Aral Balkan
@Mikal Indeed :) https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/109658436908460425
Mikal with a k
The original smart home concept was that you would own all your data and it would all stay local. The only way this is going to change is by strict, enforced regulation that flat out prohibits this kind of data collection. Or at minimum, allows an easy user opt out that does not compromise service or price at all. That's what we need to push for.
Aral Balkan
@indyr Indeed. And I was among those few. I resigned from the board of Code Club when they brought Google on. As did one of the co-founders. The other? They’re now an OBE. Which tells you everything you need to know, really.
IndyR
@aral Agreed, and yet few had reservations when companies like Google implemented school “solutions” which begin tracking activity from children as early as kindergarten. Trying to opt out is virtually impossible, and school boards typically do not understand or evaluate beyond face-value because of the perception of “free” services. We are certainly already there, but is the scope of this issue already past the point of creating severe consequences that are beyond reproach?
Aral Balkan
@Smokinjoe We don’t need a “digital bill of rights”, we need to apply the human rights we already have to the digital and networked world we live in. Beware of people peddling new sets of digital rights. They’re usually far less than what we already have in the analog world.
joe
@aral Have there been any significant progress on a "Digital Bill of Rights" ?
I'm just a single dumbass and I'd really like to read what something like this would look like as legislation
Aral Balkan
@faoluin Exactly.
Softwarewolf
@aral Today, I can choose not to buy a Tesla if I don't want to be tracked by the vehicle's manufacturer and subjected to subscription fees for features that are already built into the car.
Tomorrow, I don't have a choice because every manufacturer has implemented the same crap and there's no regulations against it.
Aral Balkan
@indyr 🤞
IndyR
@aral I commend you both for making the ethical choice, despite normalization of abandoning ethics for $$ in the industry. This does speak volumes. Especially considering there hasn’t been a significant shift in public behaviour in the wake of companies like Theranos. FOMO is the Stockholm Syndrome of tech, and with the economy dipping, the public needs to abandon the mentality that their personal data doesn’t have value. Hopefully posts like yours will be a wake up call.
Aral Balkan
@Smokinjoe Because we aren’t applying the human rights we already have. (I’m speaking from a European perspective here, where we actually have a human right to privacy. I’m assuming you’re in the US? In which case, yes, first of all you need to update the constitution to adopt privacy as a human right. You don‘t need new digital rights yet, you need to catch up to the human rights we have in some other parts of the world first.) :)
joe
@aral please explain why not
we've routinely updated the living document that is our constitution to help it be more practical for any given era
why is this one different?
Aral Balkan
@Smokinjoe PS. My earlier point is that “human rights as applied to a digital and networked existence” is very different from “digital rights.” The rights I’ve seen stated in nearly every “digital rights” initiative I’ve seen just happen to be lesser versions of the rights we already have for some reason.
Aral Balkan
@Smokinjoe I’d consider it regulation for protecting our human right to privacy.
joe
@aral Would you consider GDPR a set of digital rights?
Aral Balkan
@PeterJ If, based on your instance’s domain, you’re based in Australia, then you are, sadly, right. Very few human rights are enshrined in the Australian constitution to my (albeit limited) knowledge.
However, in the EU, privacy is a human right protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/european-convention-on-human-rights
Furthermore, people who have their privacy violated as a matter of course are the victims here. Instead of victim-blaming, we should be addressing the crime.
Don't worry, be hoppy!
@aral Privacy is neither easy or convenient to achieve. There is no right to privacy. If people want privacy they should learn how to use privacy tools and stay of band wagons.
Privacy is a choice. Too many choose convenience.
Aral Balkan
@arnandegans My point exactly… don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t take part in modern society, don’t live.
No, thanks. I’d rather we improved society somewhat.
Arnan de Gans
@aral so don't buy a car, any car, or lens thing...
DavΞ MacDonald (admin)
@aral @marcink @gpt how could decentralisation (including decentralised social media like Mastodon) help preserve privacy?
Aral Balkan
@miklo Indeed, enforcement is not guaranteed and requires constant vigilance. But there is a world of difference between having it and not having it. It does exist. There is case law. It does affect national legislation and laws like GDPR trace their existence back to its fundamental tenets. Lack of enforcement is an executive failure, not a legislative one. So we can – and should – talk about institutional corruption (lobbying, revolving doors, etc.) but let’s not conflate the two.
💙💛:~/eu/pl/priv$:idle:
@aral @PeterJ But you know very well that enforcing the #ECHR at the level of states and in the context of the digital world is not so easy - we can rarely invoke the convention directly in the courts , usually a violation of specific national laws has to be shown. And only at the end of the road are the European courts, where this convention is read directly.
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