Comment on Data privacy: how to counter the "I have nothing to hide" argument?
rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year agoI think we’re talking about an abstract concept here. The example with the sex questions is more of a metaphor/image to make you remember there is stuff out there, we’d like to keep private. It’s not necessarily your main concern regarding google. Those are different things but way less graphic and more difficult to explain, so i went with this example.
only matter if you are running for office or something
You’re close to the category of people i described last. You don’t care for freedom. You don’t care your attention is guided by other people. Information that is shown to you is gated by algorithms. And their power to manipulate you comes from the knowledge they have about you.
no-one cares about their specific data
Au contraire. Companies pay big money for data. The more specific, the more valuable. The biggest companies of today, like amazon, google, twitter, meta… Their business model is to collect data about you, sell advertisements, maybe even sell the data they’ve collected about you. And all of that is worth billions and billions of dollars. Why do you think they let you use TikTok or YouTube or something for free and the comany still makes millions?
SCB@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I care a lot about freedom and my personal privacy. The data collected by apps doesn’t invade my privacy, and cannot reliably be used to harm me in any way, so I don’t care.
Do you care that you’re on video at the bank? Same thing.
rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Sorry, i’m really at a loss here. I don’t understand. App data is used to make you transparent. To learn something about you to sell advertisements and show them to exactly those people who are the most likely to be influenced by it. This is how targeted advertisement works.
You’re right. You’re not ‘harmed’ in a traditional meaning of the word. You’re just being manipulated. And so are millions of other people on the internet.
SCB@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It isn’t used to make anything of me at all. You don’t seem to understand how this data is collected, aggregated and sold.
Literally no one has a profile on me specifically. Relevant bits of data are captured and filtered and packaged and sold without any human interaction.
There is no database entry for you as a person.
rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
How do you think TikTok recommends videos you like? How do you think YouTube shows you videos about astronomy or diy-stuff or whatever you like and omit the videos about kajaking? How do you think amazon recommends you similar items or shows you what you bought in the last 6 months?
They all have a specific profile for you as a preson. It doesn’t really matter if they don’t file it with your real name as a key. It may be called a number or just contain your email address. Nonetheless it get’s loaded and used when you open your browser, when you log in to those services. And don’t tell me you have 20 google accounts, clear your cookies and have all the browser extensions installed to evade all of that.
ironhydroxide@partizle.com 1 year ago
“the data collected by apps… Cannot reliably be used to harm me”
So you’re saying that someone can’t use your location, recordings of your audible surroundings, recordings of your devices camera view, and whom you may be interacting with cannot be used to harm you?
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SCB@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Correct.