307
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
307 points (93.5% liked)
Showerthoughts
29490 readers
438 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Posts must be original/unique
- Be good to others - no bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I found it healthy to find humour in companies collecting boatloads of telemetry data to sell to brokers who then manage to make the data worse while they curate it, then sell it to advertisers who manage to fail to properly utilize the data they pay boatloads to access, and you end up with "targeted" ads that are no better targeted than advertisements placed on broadcast television. It's a cycle of money that somehow creates wealth and cash flow out of nothing and provides no value in the end. Its the bullshittiest of bullshit jobs. And by simply blocking and avoiding ads you make that money cycle even more pointless!
Sure, I can see the humor in it also from that perspective. I just don't think it will stop at ads. In China, they have a citizen score system based on data collection like this. And if you drop too low, you won't get loans, or jobs.
More recent reporting indicates this is not true. It appears the earlier reporting indicating this was based on a mix of bad translation and poorly identified conjecture. But mass data collection certainly enables no shortage or scary totalitarian surveillance.
Really I just wanted to share a perspective that can help handle the mental load of knowing how bad things are with mass data collection