"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil;
it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself
the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of
unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish
anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need
not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts
are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the
stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily
irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called
for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with
reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature.
This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There
are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are
intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular
situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but
that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen
to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in
solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or
condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological
than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances
on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer
observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be
it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It
would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one
needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human
capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under
the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence,
and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the
emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us
to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is
dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken
possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having
thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same
time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for
it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can
overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine
internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then
we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why
in such circumstances our attempts to know what "the people’ really think are in vain and why,
under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and
acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom
declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is
the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to
consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on
whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner
independence and wisdom."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (1951)
It's pretty easy, actually. Like, I'll give you that nobody secures their privacy, but securing your privacy is not at all difficult to do. All the software to do so has already been made, you just have to personally implement it. I mean, that and not literally pay for the privilege of being spied on via an Alexa etc. Maybe if you have an iPhone its harder, I understand getting access to that BIOS is much harder.
That's how I know it's pretty easy- I can do it, and I can't even set up my home network right.
But also, there's like.... its like not knowing how to drive. Like, the world runs on this machine now, if you don't know how to use the machine, you're the exploited class. The opportunity to learn how the machine works is freely available- being a victim of it is the option you chose.
I mean, you can make it stop listening to you, stop sharing out your usage data. You obviously can't stop it telling the world where it is, cause- that's how phones work. And you can't make an untappable line, cause that's how electricity works.
If you're assuming that accessing the BIOS or even downloading software is an "easy fix," I'm afraid you're vastly overestimating how much the average person knows about their computer.
People have viscerally hated windows for almost 4 decades now, and Linux is still an insignificant blip on most ppls radars.
Convincing already-tech-inclined ppl to make the switch is basically impossible. Convincing the average home-owner to set up an entirely open-source home security system is fantasy land
Convincing the average home-owner to set up an entirely open-source home security system is fantasy land
You make it sound easy. This is me and I would be interested in doing something like this, but I'm very inexperienced with anything more technical than mapping a network drive
You can block windows usage data being sent just with powershell, at least in 10.
If you mean, like, secure from intrusion, thats a whole different ball game and not what I was talking about at all. I just mean secure from the ubiquitous data-mining of the present tech environment. Secure from a targeted effort is not something I am qualified to speak on.
Even if someone's not going to take the steps to prevent their smartphone from tracking them... Spending money to put an Amazon device that listens to you in your home is next level insanity. And it's worth it why? Because it can play music or answer a question or purchase something without you having to tap your phone a couple times?
You could rig up your computer to do the exact same thing, and your computer is probably too old to be tracking that stuff! It certainly won't be if you don't use Microsofts voice recognition software, but probably even if you do, its old software, it was before this phase.
State powers have tried to crack IPhones, and also compel Apple to crack them, and failed in both. The IPhone is a very very secure device. Of course it's a lot less secure if you put a bunch of third party apps on it and 24/7 cell service that tracks your location, same as any other phone.
Your financial data is all online. There is no privacy. Someone can pay a 3 dollar fee and easily get access to addresses and phone numbers, not to mention your family members.
Try using meta ai search mode to pull your information, it can compile all your facebook data and extract information like the names of your children or how old they are from previous birthday posts.
To a certain extent having an iPhone is better. This way mainly Apple knows what you’re doing and even they know less. This is not about Apple being a saint, but rather how people underestimate how much data Google collects from you. By far, very far… And since contrary to Apple, they sell your data, with an unmodified Android your data is all over the place with every single data broker. And don’t even get me started on Chinese phones…
And the problem is that most people are not willing to give up their comfort for privacy. Not everyone wants to install Graphene or eOS, most just want to buy a device that just works, but there are some things that are easily doable by everyone and I tend to urge people to do so. For example cleaning the trackers from YouTube links, or how if you don’t use it to navigate in your car, you lose surprisingly little functionality if you deny Google Maps your location.
It's shockingly easy if you aren't on most social media (and skip/cheat anything verified) and use a VPN or something similar.
All my allegedly targeted ads are for stuff like czech furniture sales. I have a bit of a public presence (work website), and still a parent was annoyed they couldn't find more of me on social media or through AI (we are keeping an eye on this, but apparently they thought I was an email chatbot and not an actual carer for their child, so they tried to "find" me).
The bulk of my online privacy was improved by quitting FB and Google. VPN seems to have done the rest.
Not saying as an "I am sooo special", but more as "most of our sacrificed privacy comes down to 2-5 big companies that we can absolutely sidestep".
It’s insane the lack of privacy the future generation is going to live with.
I have a family member who has one of those cameras that surveil their own kids. Once they put them to bed, if one of them get up or are playing around, they can use their phone to connect to the camera speaker, to tell them to get in bed, all without even having to go into their room or seeing them in person.
I mean, at a certain point, many people just don't care. Yeah, they know what music I listen to, what dumb questions I ask or what my routine is, but they'll just give me more targeted ads (and I'll just use an adblocker or ignore them as always) and that's it. No one cares about specifically my data and even if they did, they already know everything.
I'm not saying that corporate spying is a good thing of course, but the data they get isn't anything important and if they wanted they'd get it one way or another.
You unique for that one. I'd bet like 95% of people have their phones always within sound distance. Guess family size matters for that one a lot though. So 95% of people with close family
What's more mildly infuriating is people gaslighting about "necessary" and how ubiquitous it is. If you cannot or will not do anything about it in your life, that's on you. The rest of us who do something about it can and should.
If you use a wifi router, there is a useable map of your entire your home because of how radio waves work. It is so accurate that it can detect people through walls.
The device you're typing this on likely already listens to every single thing you say. The things you say become targeted ads the next minute. It also tracks you wherever you go.
Your comment and account in general are linked to your IP address, which law enforcement officials can use to find out who you are.
This is all too simplistically true, yes WiFi signals can be used to map rooms and homes and detect bodies, but to actually to this in your own home takes a whole lot of technical knowhow and then to do this in someone else’s home is a whole different level of expertise.
And I never understood the “your phone in always recording you” argument, how can this type of recording put no strain on the phones computation, battery or data usage, but recording using voice memo for an hour or scrolling Reddit for a long while drains a significant chunk.
Constant surveillance of every phone in the world is just too much data to handle for any nefarious corporate or governmental entity. It’s just not very efficient. It much easier and more efficient to track the actions you take while browsing the web and predicting patterns from that, that data can all fit in lightweight text format.
Simple occupied/vacant detection is much easier than tracking you as you move through the house. And useful, why not save energy by turning down/off the HVAC when you’re away?
If you have an iPhone, it is constantly listening for "Hey Siri". I literally records every single second of the day it's turned on, it just deletes the buffer after like 3 seconds though. But it is listening all of the time, otherwise that feature wouldn't be possible.
A dedicated circuit that listens to a specific keyword locally is very different from recording what you say and sending it for targeted advertising, which is the thing people commonly claim their phone is doing when it's just the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon.
Technically sure, but it only listens for the “Hey Siri” prompt, and have no processing capability to do anything else, after prompt is triggered it starts the more process heavy task of actually analyzing what you are saying.
It just doesn’t make sense that our phones are constantly listening and converting everything we do day to day into data. I mean you know yourself how inaccurate Siri is at understanding you, and that is at full processing power, how would a phone be able to convert that much auditory information into data without using heavy processing at the same time?
as an FYI you can turn that feature off. i always lock down my phone and prevent any apps from using my mic unless in specific circumstances and don't really get the creepy, hyperspecific ads i have seen my friends get
> and then to do this in someone else’s home is a whole different level of expertise.
no hate, but i would feel safe in assuming the several billion dollar companies can get some people with some expertise in
also, we've been optimizing phones since they were first thought of. hell, voyager 1 has no way to recharge and its been going for 50 years. the tech used every second of every day has had a lot of developments :b Siri requires your phone to record every single second its turned on.
Meta (and tons of others) have shown its profitable to use data from your phone, so im sure they wouldn't if the data usage would be an issue.
Devices listen to keywords, but they are not recording what you say and using it for advertising, until you say that keyword. You can talk about your favorite food till you’re blue in the face with your phone on the table, and none of that will ever be sent to any advertiser or company. It would take 5 seconds to figure out if a device is recording you and what data it’s sending out, this stuff would be spotted day 1 of release.
That’s ignoring how huge of a battery drain that would be on phones, and how much data would need to be sent over your customers network, or processed beforehand reducing the total amount of data and again destroying your battery and performance.
i have a qualm about the battery draining problem of recording audio. i had a pixel 2, then now playing feature ( always on display showing what song playing in background) was a super nice feature. it literally drained no significant battery when kept on.
And you really do believe that, if you were a hot enough target, whoever organization trying to do surveillance on you wouldn't have access to such skilled people?
LG tried to store voice recordings on a fucking TV and got busted with specific technical evidence. Phone apps and OSes are under a lot of scrutiny, constant background recording (outside of activation word detection when a voice assistant is enabled and set to always-on) would be discovered and published already.
Midcontinent, a Midwest US ISP, made me download an app that did all of that, and that was 4 years ago.
The smaller ISPs have to work with the 2-3 companies that run the US internet backbones, and there's a lot of data harvesting along the way.
Server racks can handle a lot more data than you would think. They have multiple CPUs, terabytes/petabytes of storage options, and a lot of RAM to help process that data.
do you not understand that scrolling reddit or recording using voice memo generally means your screen is on which is what drains the battery the most? a simple listening program isn't going to drain your battery like you think it will.
I recommend these devices to my elderly patients who live alone and forget to wear their life alert devices. If they fall in the bathroom and there's an Alexa nearby they can shout to it to call 911 or a family member.
Yeah. It's performative to not buy one thing because of your concerns about surveillance, then buy another thing that spies on you. That's just theater at that point.
It's an "option" until they start leaving it on by default, then they'll hide that setting deep in the router's configuration, and eventually it'll be standard and you can't use your WiFi without it.
Being forced to use Windows 11 at work finally got me to switch over. Should've done it a long time ago. It's actually easier to use than Windows, and the forums are actually helpful vs. Microsoft's poor excuse for support platforms. My PC runs so much smoother too!
The device you're typing this on likely already listens to every single thing you say. The things you say become targeted ads the next minute.
AFAIK nobody has ever been able to prove that phones are constantly transmitting audio data, or transcribing audio data to transmit that. Both would be pretty obvious for anyone experienced with technology, the first because it would take a lot of bandwidth, and the second because it would take a lot of processing power.
There are some organizations that regularly test this, and they would have an absolute field day exposing this.
For the ad thing, it's a lot more likely that the people with whom you talk about are already known to have those interests. Your phone knows from various stuff who you're talking with and updates your ad profiles to include their interests, too.
Furthermore if you talk to somebody about something new and that person then searches for that stuff online, the ad algorithms will add that to your profile.
And, of course, there's always frequency illusion, where you notice something more often after talking or learning about it from other sources.
I mean, this is intentional. IP addresses are addresses. They very much intentionally individually identify each computer, by location, that's how they're supposed to work. It's like they sent a letter- of course it would be traced back to the mailbox they sent it from, that's how the mail works. Same with the internet.
You can spoof your IP address, which is like mailing your letter to Ireland, having somebody in Ireland repackage it in a new envelope with their return address, and sending it on to your intended recipient, but you have to do that.
Computers are supposed to be identifiable and their locations are supposed to be known to the network- that's all essential for how the internet works. Otherwise, when you sent a request for a website to display on your computer, it might send that website to my computer, instead, if there were no addresses. The location part of the address is important for data load and bandwidth things I don't understand, but its also essential, it tells the computer how long to expect it to take to answer and how powerful a signal it needs to send and so on.
There are lots of ways your devices are spying on you, but computers having public IP addresses isn't for spying on you, its so computers can work.
Your IP address is public, but connecting it back to you can only be done by your ISP. If you want to link it specifically to a device, you would need even more data than that.
LEOs would likely use subpoenas to obtain the personally-identifiable information from your ISP when tracking your actions on the internet.
Not every single thing. You've chosen poorly. My decade old Linux desktop, my wired internet, and my landline with a telephone from 1989 are most assuredly not spying on me or mapping my house.
Yes, going online intentionally to places like this can open you up to law enforcement tracking you if you break the law. That existed in the 1980s with bulletin board systems.
There was an article recently about how the in home surveillance devices now pick up non verbal info too. Dog barking? You're coughing, sniffling, usong your blender, zipping your khakis, brushing your teeth? It listens, learns your patterns, and knows if your entire household has a cold, or it's just you
Your comment and account in general are linked to your IP address, which law enforcement officials can use to find out who you are.
I once ran a digital fingerprint check out of curiosity; IP address is the least of your worries. Things like personal unique hardware IDs at the component level are easily accessible to commercial hosting - I can only assume law enforcement can get much more info. Every time you connect to the internet, it modifies what you see based on software and hardware compatibility - Are you on MacOS or Linux or Windows? What browser version do you run, what font versions do you have installed and when you type - which font is your system default? What timezone are you in - how precise is your local clock in comparison to international standard - which can determine your physical location / distance due to latency.
The data points that create an identifying digital fingerprint are insanely vast and surprisingly easy to obtain and they are all...weird as hell! I don't think most people would think about it at all.
Camera covered and mic blocked. I have one set up for my mom to watch tv or listen to music when she’s in the kitchen. So even if it did somehow magically spy on anyone it’s not anywhere where it even could.
Yea it's crazy, I saw a YouTube video the other day where they were able to hack into an LG TV and even hear audio that was recorded while it was disconnected to wifi. When they reconnected to wifi they the recorded audio is saved for a period of time.
If you connect to a cellular tower or have GPS on then yes, you are defacto tracked.
As far as whether someone has your data depends upon the person, but it is quite difficult to truly disconnect and get the usefulness out of the device.
It's neither, it's just a chance for reddit to feel superior to other people. Gurantee that's the only reason they posted it, they don't care about anyone's privacy. Every single thread is like this, the only thing reddit is concerned about is "how can I make this content about how I'm better than other people?" If it has an Alexa it's about how they're better at privacy, if it's about someone ordering food from doordash it's about how stupid and wasteful they are for having food delivered, if it's someone dying in a car accident it's about how dumb they are for crashing and how much better of a driver I am etc. Self-agrandizing is litterally 99% of this website.
What a stupid take. It's almost as if we have created a dystopian society where you can't exist as a functioning adult without a fucking smart phone. Fortunately for the time being, I can still avoid putting fucking cameras and recording devices in my home.
You could probably get by on a flip phone unless you need the smartphone to pay for parking or you have to use a certain app for your job for some reason.
But the flip phone could also theoretically be recording you soooo
Yea but maybe instead of putting other people down for using tech you guys could actually focus your rage/ virtue-signaling at the companies abusing our privacy. Swear the only reason reddit freaks out about Alexas is because they like to feel superior to other people. Normally I hate the "well you have a smart phone?" Argument but it's actually kind of the perfect response to annoying people who police what tech other people use.
And switching everything off, saves a whole lot of battery.
Maps doesn't need to know where I am all of the time, neither does my calendar app. whatsapp doesn't need access to my microphone. Facebook has no business being an app on my phone at all, I use a browser to watch YT and adblock and privacy badger everything. Could they still aggregate all my data, possibly, but it's not because I say it's A-OKAY if they do.
Phones are expensive, they do not need to earn on tracking and ads as a supplement.
It isnt a binary thing. You can minimize their vectors for surveiling you. Yeah, i have a smart phone, but I also dont have the thing up my ass 24/7. I'll leave it at home if I'm going out for a few errands or whatever, it's not like I need to use it at the grocery store anyway. I have told friends/family to not expect instant 24/7 availability from me and to pretend I exist in the 90's, if it's important, leave a message after the beep.
Read this comment and knew you were going to have a bunch of smartphone whataboutism replies. As if that excuses having yet another device, from another company surveilling you too. One that's very obviously less necessary than a phone.
Yeah, because everyone lives just like you do... come on..
They make life easier for all kinds of shit. Especially people with lots of kids. Keeps lists together or events organized etc etc.
It's crazy to me that people are still willing to die on this hill. It makes me wonder how long the horse and buggy people held on making snide comments about the automobile..
The fight isnt with the convenience of tech. The fight and focus should be on regulating said tech and what companies can do with the data and where they can build. Stop making the user the enemy. Blame the companies exploiting them.
The fight and focus should be on regulating said tech and what companies can do with the data and where they can build. Stop making the user the enemy.
You mean the people that are literally giving power to the unregulated company??
Reporting back to the company that sell this stuff isn't "tech", you can like tech wile hating that shit reports back to the companies and their affiliates. It's a completely pointless addition to something that could work better without it doing that. You are correct, those companies need to be stopped.
They are effective in many ways, amazon has the best home automation ecosystem, they can do many things like show you who is at the front door, and if it can double as a clock why not? Now I don't need to update my clock time or keep a separate clock that needs to be cleaned and maintained.
Which app do you use for driving directions? Because without "corporate surveillance" tools you wouldn't ever know the best route, where traffic is located or how to divert around it.
It's mildly infuriating people literally pay money to put corporate surveillance tools inside their own homes.
In my home, I have...
Alexa
Siri
Google Now
Bixby
Cortana
all working. It's insanity when I mix them since I use them for different tasks. I don't pay for any of them though, well except for data harvesting...I guess.
For real, it really is creepy, too. A relative of mine has one and it will just be a clock until you get close to it, then it starts running ads for shit to shop for at Jeff's Warehouse.
I don't understand? If this device was literally to spy on us, then yeah. But we use our kitchen display for music, tv, manage to do lists, set reminders, add to the grocery list...
It's like having a planner you can use with your voice. That's why.
You couldn't think of an actual practical downside. Nobody sane cares if Amazon knows you hate Downy. "Uhh, my privacy" like anyone cares about your life except in the aggregate.
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u/_nevers_ 8h ago
It's mildly infuriating people literally pay money to put corporate surveillance tools inside their own homes.