> Have we reached peak data privacy paranoia? Harmless lil projects that harken back to the good ol' days of the internet are somehow actually devious PII honeypots?
Safe assumptions with most any "tech" industry company or individual now are that they will behave completely like sociopaths when it comes to personal data.
It's so baked into "tech" culture now, even people who may be ethically inclined don't recognize it as a problem.
So I object to blaming the victim, or gaslighting, suggesting that people who are aware of this crisis of widespread antisocial behavior are being paranoid.
I’m old enough to remember the white pages, where essentially everyone’s name, phone number, and address were published and distributed.
But it’s hard to have a conversation about appropriate calibration of what is private, and what are reasonable expectations, when extremists from both pro-privacy and scorched-earth commerce are so strident.
It was a lot harder to SWAT people when the White Pages existed. American society was much higher-trust then; people didn't show up to pizza parlors with assault rifles because of something they read online.
You'll have to forgive those of us who simply want to remain safe.
Mafia Enforcer: "It's hard to have a conversation about what's an appropriate level of protection racket, when you're always screaming about your kneecaps being smashed. I'm reaching out to you to talk, but I just can't take you seriously when you're behaving like this."
Safe assumptions with most any "tech" industry company or individual now are that they will behave completely like sociopaths when it comes to personal data.
It's so baked into "tech" culture now, even people who may be ethically inclined don't recognize it as a problem.
So I object to blaming the victim, or gaslighting, suggesting that people who are aware of this crisis of widespread antisocial behavior are being paranoid.