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Quote:

Originally Posted by Crowbob (Post 10327619)

And it doesn't matter if you are on-line or not. The subtle but massive influence exerted on the billions of people who are on-line will necessarily bring you along.

Resistence is futile, even if you do recognize what is happening. This has been developing for 20 years or so. People born in the late 80's, early nineties and later have no idea and even if they do, don't seem to care or have accepted their powerlessness over it.

George Orwell was so far off the mark in his book 1984. People are so willing to give everything up these days and so conditioned they don't need the thought police or big screens watching everything. We carry them with us willingly.

There's no where to hide. Privacy is like DNA: you don't have to give it up to lose control over it.

https://www.studyfinds.org/avoiding-social-media-privacy-still-risk/

Quote:

“There’s no place to hide in a social network,” warns Lewis Mitchell, co-author of a new study which found that even if you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, your behavior can still be predicted with the online behavior of people you know.

Many people haven’t signed up for Facebook or Twitter, or privacy fears pushed them to leave the social media platforms because they didn’t want their data tracked. But Mitchell and a team of scientists from the from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide in Australia liken privacy to secondhand smoke, suggesting it’s controlled by the people around you.

The researchers found by gathering 30 million public posts on Twitter from nearly 14,000 users that they could use information in tweets posted by eight or nine of a user’s contacts to predict that user’s own future tweets just as accurately as if they were viewing that user’s actual Twitter feed. In other words, the online behavior of those close to you on social media can be just as predictive of future behavior as your official, recorded social media activity.

The research also revealed that those who abandon their Twitter or Facebook profiles and those who never signed up for the social media platforms to begin with can still have their future behavior tracked and predicted with 95% accuracy using the online activity of their friends.

This means that advertisers and other forces can piece together a detailed profile about you, even if you’ve never signed on to Facebook before. Such information can be especially valuable to companies that manufacture products you might be interested in using, or, as we learned in the 2016 election season, to political candidates and campaigns.

“You alone don’t control your privacy on social media platforms,” says lead researcher and UVM professor Jim Bagrow in a media release. “Your friends have a say too.”

I read through the whole article - and while I haven't read Zuboff's book - I don't agree with the terminology she is trying to coin: "Surveillance Capitalism". I get that vilifying capitalism is all the rage today. However, these platforms and technologies are just another product or service in the capitalist economic system.

Are the implications valid? Yes. Are the threats to privacy true? Very much so. Does the utilization of these platforms need to be reigned in? Absolutely.

But here's how I look at it. These big data players are doing everything in their power to capture useful data (what is useful? Another topic) so that they can sell a profile to companies that want to sell me a service or product. It's their desire to capture as much information about me to market me. It's my desire to prevent as much information from being captured as possible.

Where things get really scary, is when countries want to use this to behaviorally target individuals for XYZ reasons; Or like China, use it as a "social credit scoring" system.

And while I do like the title, wasn't the Butlerian Jihad in Hebert's Dune universe more relevant to the rise of machines and rebelling against their human masters? We have some time before that happens. Unless you are implying that we (the product/source of the data harvesting) are robots, who are rebelling against the data acquisition masters?

Assembling information to market a product is one thing. Assembling information to manipulate your behavior is quite another.

Information is power. 'I used to be mine. Now I am theirs.' isn't just a catchy phrase.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frog76S (Post 10327202)

The college system is broken. Yearly college tuition increases have exceeded inflation for years. College’s don’t have to compete with one another based on tuition costs since the government provides student loans and subsidizes the college’s with our tax dollars. It’s a vicious cycle that we parents need to break. College’s increase tuition to pay for tenured professors who can’t be fired, who work less, earn more, indoctrinate students with liberal view point and teach that free markets are evil.

I see too many coworkers complain about their own college student loan debt and not having money to set a side for their children’s education nor contributing more than 5% to their own 401k’s. They support Bernie Sanders and the idea that college should be free. These same folks have new car payments, buy lunches and or Starbuck’s daily, support their college’s AD thru football season tickets and have $150 monthly cable bills. It’s too easy to fall back and rely upon government than to take personal and familial responsibility. We need to break the government dependence cycle and teach fiscal responsibility, planning and sacrifice. Drive old cars without a payment, cut the cable cord, take lunch to work, eliminate credit card debt. Read the Millionaire Next Door or Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It’s not about how much you make as it is about what you do with it. Pay you and your family first rather than the new car or furniture dealer. Set aside college tuition money when your child is born via 529 plan. When start a job, immediately enroll in 401K. Sounds simple and common sensical, but it’s the exception, not the norm. At 8% yearly return your money will triple every 24 years. Nope, not a financial planner, just want to control my families destiny.

Imagine how college’s would change if every state stopped sending your tax dollars to the state universities and they had to compete like every other business?

This is a most excellent post....but yer math sucks :)

rule of 72: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/what-is-the-rule-72/

We are in crazy times where it is easier than ever to be influenced by information of dubious quality. However, it has also never been easier to gain access to useful information, to investigate skepticism you may have, acquire skills, etc. Hell you can take MIT and Harvard curriculum for free.

There is a ying to this yang.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wdfifteen (Post 10327322)

You hit all the right wing talking points. Sounds like you’ve been indoctrinated well. What college did you go to? Most of them teach that the plural does not need an apostrophe.

Textbook example of what our education system is teaching today. Don’t debate the content or offer another POV, demean the messenger.

The more mature marketing groups within companies have technology available to them that is astounding. AI and call tracking alone is eye opening. You want to speak with someone about a service or to schedule an appointment-you google the nearest location and get the phone number-IBM's Watson listens to the call and from the number you dialed (which rotates and is different from different computers) know whether you booked an appointment, bought a service or went away unsatisfied-from your IP address they now target you with incentives and track the sites you visited before or after your search. surveillance capitalism might not be exactly the right term, but it is close. I don't see how this genie goes back into the bottle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by white85carrera (Post 10329169)

I don't see how this genie goes back into the bottle.

Become a Luddite. Smash the machines!

Quote:

Originally Posted by legion (Post 10329191)

Become a Luddite. Smash the machines!

Unless you are French, in which case you cast your sabots into the machinery...

I agree about there being no way out.

Adapt or die!

Society will eventually collapse, and with it, the surveillance will die.

For now, know it exists and avoid it. When you can't avoid it, feed it garbage. GIGO.

Quote:

Originally Posted by flipper35 (Post 10327708)

Orwell was brilliant in many ways (corruption of the language, for example), but Huxley's vision is probably closer to what's happening. A comparison:

https://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell/

Oh, and I graduated "college" with zero debt and a guaranteed job :cool: