20
Which means the powers-that-be have been using it for years already. Remember when people called us paranoid for believing in Echelon in the '80s?
Also known as profiling.
Spez will fuck with Reddit's userbase and make the platform absolute bullshit to use, yet 90% of redditors will still keep sucking his dick over and over again.
"LeMmY iS tOo HaRd To UsE!! wTf Is An InStAnCe???"
If my dumb ass figured it out, anyone should be able to switch.
That's a useless summary that describes 99% of reddit and lemmy users
So Reddit is the scumbag steve.
Thought/ Pre Crime.
Crime by statistical association
This is a great example of how profiles on all of us are going to be made by governments and corporations unless we take privacy seriously.
*Have been made long ago and are being constantly updated.
Snowden already warned us about this over a DECADE ago. Their scopes and powers will have increased exponentially. And that was under 'trustworthy' administration. I guarantee there's a type of system in place that flags people before they do anything, just on pattern recognition alone. Of course, they can't use that system as a legal basis for anything, so they don't and use parallel constructions instead.
Anyone who thinks "this is coming" hasn't been paying attention. We're already there and beyond.
I find the funniest shit ever is how Snowden uncovered the biggest shit show and nothing happened. Probably the starting event for me losing all hope in this pathetic species I now call Homo Merda.
I wonder if being made aware of the extensive NSA spying actually had a suppressing effect on taking action itself. It was kinda scary. Overwhelming. "Best not to think about it" kind of stuff.
I already assumed that all project 2025 purges to date have been done with input from statistical modeling, in a way that removes far more "liberals" who might refuse orders, and retains as many MAGA/fascist bootlickers as possible.
If youre even near someone with a photo on fb and they got you in it, you already have a record and a ghost fb profile waiting for you.
Corporations have been already making profiles of various types for a while now in the form of adtech, social media, data brokers, people search websites, credit scores, devices and services that harvest sensitive and intimate data (e.g. mobile phone apps, watching habits from smart TVs, driving data from cars).
Our society has been set up for mass surveillance in a thousand different ways as a form of social control and dominance by those who wield power.
It's time people realize that privacy is a right instead of normalizing abuses of consent.
We (smart people) knew this was the end result of ai and why the far right and ccorporations love it. But holy fucking shit this is dangerous and people should be terrified of this. Stop using these platforms (I know it doesn't matter the platform, we're all fucked, but still)
I think it goes beyond that, stop living an online life is a better advice. Use the internet to get info, not to submit info.
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My concern is that Reddit can sell their profiling algorithm to other companies, who then can federate with Lemmy, mastodon, etc. to build profiles against users.
It's getting to the point where I may need to go back to cycling usernames every few years.
That's probably a massive GDPR violation. Automated processing of extra sensitive data like political beliefs and religion is not outright forbidden but it's subject to extra protections.
Sadly you consented to all of it
GDPR article 9 (1) says you can't play algorithmic guess with people's religion or political opinions unless you gave express permission to the service provider to do it (i.e. it's not covered in the general GDPR boilerplate)
Have there been any enforcement actions against big companies yet?
Meta got a fine of over a billion euros. Google got a bunch of smaller fines, but it's probably way above everyone else in terms of fines. Microsoft got half a billion. Even Apple got an 8 million euro fine, but that was more a tap in the wrist to make them think twice about some data collection.
And besides this, large companies are constantly in contact with the authorities and in smaller violations the general policy is to give a warning and let companies stop the illegal data processing voluntarily.
this is absolutely fucking terrifying
Good thing we're not on reddit
How exactly is it a good thing in this particular case? All this information is only more accessible on Lemmy.
It’s easier to use a pseudonym on Lemmy.
Lemmy instances aren't summarizing their users. You can do it on ChatGPT, but Lemmy isn't doing it.
But what's the good thing? Yeah Lemmy might not be doing it but I can do it, and Elon can, and Zuck, and Putin and your grandmom. Whatever you post on Lemmy is as public as it can get.
The good thing is that we aren't sucking reddit's teat. If you are so worried, then why are you here? Why do you keep posting comments?
I’m just trying to pick your brain and figure out what exactly is good about Lemmy in this case, but you seem reluctant to give me a cohesive answer.
No wonder I got banned.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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