Even schools aren't safe from surveillance. Your child might be being audio recorded in school bathrooms.
https://www.wired.com/story/school-bathroom-vape-detector-audio-bug/
Why does every algorithmic media feed seem like garbage? Because it IS garbage. It's not tailored to your preferences as the owners claim. It's tailored to theirs. Namely, profit and what leads to profit, keeping you addicted with outrage and the occasional dopamine hit. #SurveillanceCapitalism #Advertising #Tech #Dystopia
As #Invidious and piped.video are not to be used by third parties (for good and understandable reasons) and for those who can't or don't want to self-host, is there still a #privacy-preserving non-#CORS #YouTube proxy REST API out there somewhere?
@Heliograph Well, yeah, phone numbers are great for tracking consume behavior #surveillancecapitalism
Enabling the surveillance state can be fun!
HT mstdn @Mumonkan
"A cache of leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 sources from the company and Israeli military intelligence reveals how Azure has been used by military surveillance Unit 8200 to store an expansive archive of daily Palestinian communications."
‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians:
Update: This piece is getting some interesting pushback from parents who think I'm being alarmist about AI toys over on my other social platforms.
On the other side of that, I'm hearing so many people taking the usual "AI BAAAAD" stance, some of those people thinking I agree with them simply because I took a hardliner stance in this post.
For clarification: I'm not anti-AI. I use these tools daily for my research and writing as well as accessibility aids to offset some of the disadvantages I face due to my blindness. I study AI from the computer scientist perspective and am studying to be an elementary teacher precisely because I see AI's educational potential. I'm not even entirely against the idea of AI companionship, if it's framed right.
What actually bothers me is the business model. When Moxie robots suddenly "died" last year because the company went under, kids had to grieve their artificial friend. Parents got a scripted letter to explain why their $799 companion stopped talking which provided little comfort to kids who experienced digital abandonment. Trust me, the videos I've seen of kids crying because their beloved friend unexpectedly died over night is truly heartbreaking.
That's no glitch, that's what happens when you outsource childhood relationships to venture capital that only cares about investment returns.
The real question isn't whether AI toys are inherently bad. It's whether we're okay with corporations experimenting on our kids' emotional development while claiming it's "age-appropriate play."
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments.
https://open.substack.com/pub/kaylielfox/p/the-toys-are-listening?r=2pewuq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
#AIToys #ChildPrivacy #ChildDevelopment #DigitalRights #TechEthics #SurveillanceCapitalism #COPPA #DataPrivacy #ChildSafety #TechRegulation #DigitalLiteracy #ParentingInTheDigitalAge #EdTech #CorporateAccountability #TechCriticism #EthicalTech
A quote from 'Strangers and Intimates' by Tiffany Jenkins: https://bookwyrm.social/book/2002747/s/strangers-and-intimates
"Under the headline ‘This Is Why You Should Care About Privacy,’ Shoshana Zuboff, author of Surveillance Capitalism, urged New York Times readers to be alarmed: ‘The last 20 years have seen, especially the last decade, the wholesale destruction of privacy.’
She warned that big tech’s vast knowledge of individuals, stemming from their massive accumulation of data, allows them to do more than just target advertising; they can create sophisticated targeting mechanisms. She provided several examples, including subliminal cues, psychological microtargeting, real-time rewards and punishments, algorithmic recommendation tools, and engineered social comparison dynamics.
All of these tactics are designed to capture users’ attention, maximize their time on platforms and keep them engaged in order to influence their decisions. Zuboff emphasized the dire consequences of such omniscient power, linking it to the spreading of disinformation on social media, unnecessary Covid deaths and the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021 by supporters of the Republican president Donald Trump. ‘These are all connected points in one process,’ Zuboff asserted, ‘and the process is called “how knowledge becomes power.”’
In a similar tone and with a similar message, in Privacy Is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data (2020), the philosophy and ethics scholar Carissa Véliz states: ‘They are watching us. They know I am writing these words. They know you are reading them. Governments and hundreds of corporations are spying on you and me, and everyone we know. Every minute of every day.’ Véliz highlights that these entities are not just passive observers: ‘They want to know who we are, what we think, where we hurt. They want to predict and influence our behaviour.’
All of which sounds like the hyperbolic claims advanced by the tech giants themselves, such as when Eric Schmidt, then Google CEO, said that Google ‘more or less’ knows what people are thinking: ‘With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.’
These warnings encapsulate the flavour of the contemporary discussion about privacy. Through accessing our data, corporations and governments can know what we are thinking and feeling, and even change our minds. Elections are fought and lost, democracies die, and so do people. There is a lot at stake. But many of the claims don’t stand up."
#SurveillanceCapitalism #ShoshanaZuboff #TiffanyJenkins #privacy #advertising #surveillance #tech #google #EricSchmidt #privacy @bookstodon #books #reading
Is one big flaw in how we generally think about #SocialWeb and #Fediverse development in how we embrace this vibrant feeling and energy that existed at the time the early web was emerging? At that time time the expectation was that the #Web would liberate us.
A decade later we have #BigTech, the Corporate Web and #SurveillanceCapitalism, while #Technofeudalism and #Dystopia are knocking on the door.
Nowadays when we excitedly publish our innovations as we did then, is that still responsible?
But they don't even need age verification to surveil and profile kids from elementary schools!
#UKSchools at least have been truly captured by both BigTech-for-Ed and Ed-Tech:
https://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/volume-141-papers/stockman-2022
At this point I just hope some greyhat hacker comes into possession of a day-zero Linux kernel RCE exploit and nukes all #Palantir servers and anything Palantir itself communicates with (even if that is stuff like AWS). Anything that works with Palantir is tainted and has to be taken out.
Then perhaps take out as many data brokers as possible. One can only dream… 
#Surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #Dystopia
"(...) In 1982, eleven clandestine Radio Solidarity radio stations were shut down across Poland. The scientists who cooperated in the balloon project were risking serious jail time in addition to the loss of their career and livelihood.
Their act of defiance didn't bring down the state. It didn't do much more than give hope and brighten the day of a few hundred people. But it went straight back to that first idealistic promise of radio: that there existed magic, invisible rays that had the power to erase the distance between people, bypass all intermediaries, and penetrate even the thickest walls.
I tell this story to reassure you that just because everything is heavy and political right now, it doesn't mean we can't also fight these fights on our own terms, as nerds.
The Utopian qualities that made us love the web have not disappeared, even as it's become centralized and corporate, and we can find ways to defend and express them in our work.
The important thing is to recognize that there is a fight, and a need for individual acts of creative resilience.
We have to make sure that the powerful don't get comfortable using our tools. And we have to find ways to dismantle the surveillance economy before it becomes a political weapon turned against our democracy. (...)"
idlewords.com/talks/ancient_web.htm
#Radio #Web #Democracy #SurveillanceCapitalism
What is our dependence on Russian fossil oligarchs compared to our dependence on tech oligarchs from the Silicon Valley?
The real meaning of "USA Freedom Act" is the total freedom to control and to monetarize all data.
#democracy in danger
#surveillancecapitalism
I'm so glad somebody is finally writing about this.
#HikVision Thousands of controversial Chinese surveillance cameras installed in public places across Ireland
https://www.thejournal.ie/investigates-hikvision-surveillance-6755381-Jul2025/
via @TheJournal
"We are ONLY in it for the clicks" 
As an aside, if you haven’t already, check out the #BlackMirror episode “The Entire History of You” S01E03
Anyone wearing one of these things should be required to display a warning sign.
“Bee makes a $49.99 Fitbit-like device that listens in on your conversations while using AI to transcribe everything that you and the people around you say, allowing it to generate personalized summaries of your days, reminders, and suggestions from within the Bee app.”
#AI #Privacy #SurveillanceCapitalism
https://www.theverge.com/news/711621/amazon-bee-ai-wearable-acquisition
A life without Spotify is possible!
CET 
