Subj : Re: BBS Population
To   : Ogg
From : boraxman
Date : Sun Oct 09 2022 02:07:34

 Og>  b> That is one thing I did find useful, I could look up, and
 Og>  b> get into touch with old school colleagues. [...] The idea
 Og>  b> that we have to give an American Silicon Valley behmoth our
 Og>  b> personal data so we can be sold ads, manipulated and
 Og>  b> tracked just to chat to people we went to school with is
 Og>  b> horrifying.  It's like selling your soul to the devil.
 Og> 
 Og> It is terrible how that info was processed. Cambridge-Analytica  
 Og> anyone?
 Og> 
 Og> 
 Og>  b> I don't think that BBS's could do that, unless you pooled
 Og>  b> user lists, but then, that is a privacy issue, and people
 Og>  b> like me and you use aliases anyway.
 Og> 
 Og> The fidonet sysop at net 460 has a lookup that works like  
 Og> FILEFIND. It can search for anything in an echomail message.
 Og> 
 Og> 
 Og>  b> It wouldn't work of course, because we developed a culture
 Og>  b> where people default to being passive consumers of product
 Og>  b> and services, instead of building their own world and
 Og>  b> helping themselves.  In which case, I'm happy to say that
 Og>  b> I'd rather then that Social Media didn't exist at all, and
 Og>  b> this would be better than what we have now.
 Og> 
 Og> In the end, it's probably wise to be NOT easily discoverable.   
 Og> Privacy is emerging as the single-most thing that we ought to  
 Og> have control of.
 Og> 

I agree, privacy and autonomy.  I think the latter may end up being the bigger issue in the near future.  We can control to a reasonable degree what information we submit, but how that is done, by what mechanisms, and how free we are is another matter.

Even if Facebook was pretty good in terms of privacy, there is still the issue of one single entity having so much POWER, being able to cancel you, so to speak, to have their policies override yours.

There is a danger that were given back privacy, but still lose autonomy.  We still can be cut off from others arbitrarily, or because we don't align with some foreign companies values.  I'm in Australia, and for me to be booted off Social Media, cutting me from communication with people who I went to school with here, because that company thought something I posted didn't match their foreign, values, kind of doesn't sit well with me.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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