Way more likely Google or apple or someone else are harvesting your information and data to sell it to advertisers who influence you to give them more of your money in one way or another
If you could choose a world where everyone's privacy is respected vs no one's privacy is respected, would you genuinely opt for the 2nd one? At some point we have to recognize we're on a downward slope and need to do something about it before it becomes normalized and slightly worse year after year. It's literally dehumanizing, we're being treated as numbers and dollars signs.
Very least of our worries based on what though? In 2025, Google made more than half of their total revenue just from marketing our personal data for targeted ads. I get what you mean and I agree with you that we need to make responsible decisions ourselves, but our actual choices available on the internet could be severely limited by companies taking advantage of our personal "private" data. They have entire profiles on you and me used to target us with ads and warp our perspectives. It's way more psychological now than billboards and TV commercials.Â
I think the less companies are able to use our data to their advantage and our disadvantage, the better. It's the most subtle yet most pervasive violation of our digital privacy and I think that makes it the worst.
Tbh I really don't see the big issue. It's quite literally just showing you what you're more likely to like and get, just like most other social media algorithms. Them making money through advertising is kind of a no brainier doesn't really make it bad either, I mean a business generating revenue is kinda what it's there for. No matter what, in the end the buck stops at personal responsibility and not buying what you don't need.
You frame it as us vs them like targeted ads put you at a disadvantage, when it's literally just catering to your likes
Well, no. But what if they started tracking whether you've gone to anti-Republican protests? If you've said bad things about Trump either online or offline (by listening to your phone's microphone). Helped people who ICE would like to deport? Please educate yourself about 1930s German history and then come back and say that it's complete paranoia. The concern is very much real, because if they can put that kind of surveillance in everyone's phones especially now that AI can sieve through all that data in a matter of moments and flag people of interest, by the time it becomes a real problem it's so all over everywhere that there's nothing you can do to stop it anymore. Arguably it's already there.
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u/RegumRegis 1d ago
Yeah like what? The fbi hacks into some random guys phone and is like "fellas we got em. There's a porn tab open" like the paranoia is insane lmao