• liv
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    3 months ago

    Pretty sure Philip K Dick predicted it in the 60s but I can’t remember which book or story. I sometimes worry that we make things because he predicted them, but I do like the homeopapes.

    Yeah I’m in a similar boat, I don’t watch broadcast tv or listen to the radio unless someone makes me, I have ad blockers and tracker blockers, my loyalty cards are all signed up to an alias and its alias phone.

    Now that we don’t have a cat to spoil, I don’t think I’m anyone’s preferred target market though, except maybe some low level grifters!

    I guess in the absence of data it will default to what advertising always defaults to, i.e penis enlargement.

    • DaveMA
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      3 months ago

      I’m sure homeopapes are something we have. Perhaps you could call a social media feed something like that, though that’s more read what we tell you. Reddit/Lemmy? Where you subscribe to communities based on interest and get a feed of items of interest to you?

      Or maybe RSS feeds are more in line with the idea? One way or another, I’ve sure homeopapes pretty much exist.

      and its alias phone

      Ooh what do you mean by this? I use randomised email aliases for pretty much anything I sign up for, but I haven’t found a way to avoid giving my real phone number when it’s mandatory.

      I guess in the absence of data it will default to what advertising always defaults to, i.e penis enlargement.

      Hopefully we will soon have glasses you can buy that use AI to block out adds within our vision, using generative AI to fill in the gaps like a real time photoshop.

      • liv
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        3 months ago

        Homeopapes are definitely a thing. News agreggators, RSS feeds and customizable news like Reuters, and things like pocket being able to send to ereaders.

        Alias phone is not some exciting tech unfortunately. I just have another phone that has a number and email account of its own that get used for signups. It’s on casual prepay and is associated with its own human name and online accounts. It’s kind of like I have an invisible flatmate who likes things like fuel cards and free streaming services.

        Hopefully we will soon have glasses you can buy that use AI to block out adds within our vision

        If we get that I want the They Live plugin!!

        • DaveMA
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          3 months ago

          Alias phone is not some exciting tech unfortunately. I just have another phone that has a number and email account of its own that get used for signups.

          Ah bummer. I use a separate randomized email address when I sign up for things, all forwarded to my main email that stays hidden. But then I go and buy some coffee online, and check my Facebook settings and see the coffee place told Facebook I bouught coffee. How does it know? I have all the blockers in the world, Facebook shouldn’t have known I was there. Then I look at the Facebook record and see that it says they send Facebook the data through Facebook Business tools.

          But how do they match it up? My best guess is phone number. I would prefer that I could use random phone numbers for each service that forward texts to my real number, like I have for email.

          If we get that I want the They Live plugin!!

          Haha oh man, might be better not knowing.

          • liv
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            3 months ago

            Yikes, that’s creepy about facebook. I’m not on there much but I remember google once wanted to include something I’d booked in my google calendar (whatever the hell that is) so I never booked through that system again. I hate to think what fb is doing that I can’t see, apparently it even has profiles on people who don’t have accounts with it.

            I wish it were easier to avoid this stuff.

            • DaveMA
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              3 months ago

              It’s scary how easy it is to track people. They definitely have profiles on people who don’t have accounts. In fact, with the data that whichever coffee place uploaded that let them identify me, facebook has an option that lets you unlink the data. Not delete it. They keep the data and anonymise it so they no longer fall under privacy rules.

              • liv
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                2 months ago

                What worries me most about non transparency of data is their politics and what is happening to people in conflict zones.

                • DaveMA
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                  2 months ago

                  I don’t follow Facebook news. What is happening to people in conflict zones?

                  • liv
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                    2 months ago

                    Meta has been heavily implicated in a couple of genocides - the A Death Sentence For My Father report gets its title from a heartbreaking example where this doctor who didn’t even have a Facebook account was killed because of it.

                    But that was passive i.e Meta deliberately ignoring reports and refusing to take genocidal content down. More recently Meta has more actively chosen to “take sides” re the widespread censorship of Palestinian human rights posts.

                    I worry that this attitude combined with its surveillance powers is probably having a catastrophic effect. It would not surprise me at all to learn Meta is data sharing with war AI (which is already being alleged re Whatsapp).