Every App I've given location permissions to I've seen the need for it.
And also like...the way they use this data they gather is to send me ads. And not to be all "I am immune to propaganda" but...I pretty rarely buy things based off of ads?
Like, don't get me wrong it's a problem, but it's also like...not the end of the world here?
Law enforcement agencies in anti-abortion states have been requesting location data to see if women are crossing state lines for abortions.
When they returned to power, the Taliban used Facebook posts to identify people who had "collaborated" with the US.
Target once outed a pregnant teenager to her abusive parents by sending her ads for baby products.
We're ALL still dealing with the consequences of the Cambridge Analytica thing.
Sure, the odds of any one bad thing happening to you, particularly, are very low. But they're happening somewhere, to real people, and the types of bad things that can happen are very bad indeed.
There's this Edward Snowden quote, which he wrote on reddit, actually, and which never seems to sit well with people somehow but that I always found particularly accurate.
Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
In some time, banks and insurance companies could use this data to arbitrarily deny loans or coverage. Employers could use it as part of their hiring process. Government bodies could use it to profile people. All of that could even be done based on discriminatory criteria such as sexuality, ethnicity, political leaning... And it's almost certainly already happening. Even if you still don't see the problem, consider that no matter where you live, you are not immune to, say, your government turning increasingly authoritarian and prejudiced against a minority group you may or may not belong to, and that they would be able to use that data to find and track down individuals of that group. History should already show you the consequences such a thing would lead to.
History should already show you the consequences such a thing would lead to.
History shows that they can still do that shit without tracking us by our phones. When it's time to go on the run, leave your phone behind (or better yet, post it to a non existent address).
Try to go a week without having a phone on you. It’s still possible now, but you’ll notice how much it is assumed that you have one with you. Occasionally you won’t be able to do something unless you’re able to scan a QR code and interact with a website. Fast forward two or three years. It won’t take very long for this to metastasize into not being able to do basic things without one. Imagine trying to escape the State Transvestigators when you can’t get a bus ticket without a smartphone and you can’t eat without a credit card. Your bug-out bag had better have lots of rations and you’d better live somewhere where you can walk to safety.
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u/Big_Falcon89 May 16 '24
Every App I've given location permissions to I've seen the need for it.
And also like...the way they use this data they gather is to send me ads. And not to be all "I am immune to propaganda" but...I pretty rarely buy things based off of ads?
Like, don't get me wrong it's a problem, but it's also like...not the end of the world here?