• ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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    7 hours ago

    it IS a wonder. i’m actually pretty curious how they accomplished this.

    like i know how they harvest our data to figure us out, but i’m a computer guy. the psychology of brainwashing that sophisticated must be crazy.

    • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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      4 hours ago

      My hypothesis is that it’s a frog in a pot of water scenario. Western Union started the first charge account in 1914, so we’ve had a long time to get used to the water heating up. It probably did start with honest intentions to make things work a little smoother, but I remember the early days of digitizing records, and there was a LOT of loose data just there for the taking.

      I remember that I used to work at RadioShack in the late '00s, and I had to escalate up to district because we discovered a treasure trove of old paper store credit applications that had been cached somewhere in the backrooms, and my manager wanted to just throw them in the normal garbage and not risk the cost of the extra shredding coming out of her bonus.

      These things had SO MUCH INFO, handwritten out onto a paper form; name, birthday, SSN, mailing address, street address, then all that info of the spouse/cosigner that wanted to be on the account too. I could have made so much money on the black market, looking back.

    • NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net
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      5 hours ago

      Truly amazing how many breaches of privacy people are willing to put up with if the propaganda says that questioning the tracking means you’re hiding something and deserve to be tracked.

      • hector@lemmy.today
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        21 minutes ago

        Or to protect the children! Child abuse is the trojan horse, also age restrictions a trojan sheep they have several on offer, to surrender to Tech. Social scores by half baked ai deciding everything secretly, in a way no one can know and challenge. The entire west is trying to surrender their citizens to Tech giants last year for a cut of the info and personal exemptions for politicians and security services.

        Past generations would tar and feather these assholes something is wrong.