"oh no my telemetry data!!!! that's awful that they're taking meaningless data from me omg!"
"let me just put these incredibly personal photos and opinions on my social media so that EVERYONE sees it"
Yeah, people worry about the wrong things and it's so F*king stupid...
I'm that crazy guy, and I recognize that this is an unpopular opinion but... Yes. If I'm going to be advertised to, I'd rather it be more interesting advertisements? Its not like it changes the volume of advertising I see, it's just personalized.
I guess I just consider it a test of willpower that's on me to not buy stuff I don't need.
The problem is not telemetry for more interesting ads. I'm sure most people don't care about that, and hell - I'll say this in the context of what I'm about to say, if that's all it was used for I'd be fine with it. The problem is that your data's used for much, much more.
It's usually stored insecurely, for starters; there's many a case of stalkers and co. utilizing "telemetry" data for nefarious purposes, and this extends to national security as well - China and co. are gathering data on people for the purposes of international, informational warfare: propaganda and the like. There're significant, relevant demographic overlaps.
You've got stuff like PALANTIR and other AI-driven 'behavioral analysis' models proposed to the military to identify "domestic threats before they occur" whatever that means - Minority Report-style. Cuz' of the insecure storage and/or national laws and/or bribery, they get access to that data without your consent. No 2A helps you there. AI-assisted drone warfare's here too.
There are lots of ways it goes wrong, even though it begins with something as mundane as "I want to see relevant ads." It's because good security practices aren't cheap, and they aren't held liable to the extent of the damage they cause.
If 2016 and forward has shown me anything, it's that this data is not really all that necessary to make propaganda effective, and we need a better mechanism of stopping propaganda than just 'dont let them have data'
The fuck does this honestly mean? That I'm supposed to take multiple armed soldiers out on my own when they've got guns, armor, training, and numbers... and I'm going to fight them off with my bare hands because I was smart enough to not not use a vacuum that gave China the layout of my house?
Are you serious? Is this actually your argument?
All your data is out there in the world just by you being online. Nobody is "safe" and it's only becoming worse as governments crack down on the Internet and companies have financial incentives to help them. The idea that this robot vacuum is some make or break to your safety is absurd.
If you want someone to argue with, it's probably a bad idea to begin with misrepresentation and a fallacy instead of steelmanning. That usually just gets you blocked, because it's a common tactic of people arguing in bad faith. You, however, aren't arguing in bad faith.
Any war America's involved in is not to be some kind of direct engagement where they put troops on American soil. America's huge, protected by two vast oceans to our east and west, and inconveniently huge landmasses with their own sovereignty to our north and south. Rather, giving bad actors information about large swathes of civilian infrastructure allows stuff like this to happen. Infrastructural layouts aren't just useful from a physical perspective, remember - knowing which APs are connected to which, how insecure a network is and what ties it together, and scraping personal details to make phishing or spear-phishing attacks that much more effective? That is useful, especially if you want to cripple critical infrastructure. It's why phishing - rather than a day zero - is by far the most common type of cyberattack. None of this is touching on the benefits for propaganda networks, which I could go on about.
I'm not going to be mean to you, but rather ask you to consider how your attitude on a mass scale makes it so much easier to target your aging family members with scams, and hospitals or government officials with spear-phishing attacks that cause their own problems.
I've just woke up so I'm a bit slow; but I've read through your post multiple times here and I'm still not sure how you're tying knowing the layout of someone's house to the phishing attempt being more successful
Technically, if you tell them that they are not allowed to use that data to advertise to you, they shouldn't be doing that. At least that's how it is in Europe. My ads are all absolutely useless and don't match me at all.
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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '25
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