Gersen: Pretty bad comparison, there is a world of difference (...)
It's supposed to make you THINK, not latch onto the obvious discrepancies.
FFS - why do you people always have such a hard time taking my analogies at anything other than face value ? I use them to convey information FASTER, otherwise I'd have to dig deep into the axiological issues, find the relevant branch, find arguments for and against and turn every thread into a *** lecture.
Instead I point a finger and people say "that's a nice finger but what does it have to do with anything".
Rule of thumb: if what I say doesn't make sense to you, you're probably interpreting it wrong.
Gersen: a private company who already has all of this information available in it's system, has nearly full control over it and not to mention a company whose job is to sell said information to announcers.
So WHAT ? What I was trying to say is that the information is out there, everywhere, always... and it doesn't *** matter. Why would you try to not make make it exist in the first place ? You're disseminating information by communicating with anyone about anything. That's what communication IS FOR. This can be rebroadcasted, captured, twisted, utilized - whatever. There's gossip, there are TV news, twitter accounts and IRC. People take pictures of themselves and each other to document, to remember, to save information. The exact opposite of privacy is transparency - being overt in your actions. Kant commented on legislation's equivalent of the categorical imperative, saying that you should only pass a law as long as you wouldn't mind honestly telling people what it is about...
What is this "private company" doing that's so worrying ? Do you trust your friends better ?
A company has neither a motive, malicious intents nor personal interest in your precious data. There's no point in digging through astronomical amounts of content unless you're specifically looking for something. What makes you so special that people would invest time and effort into finding things out about you ?
Guess what - the same thing that makes the Internet an unprecedented threat to "privacy" is the one we cherish the most about it - it connects, allows the information to flow. With the atomization, fragmentation, isolation - whatever you want to call it - that our beloved societies sunk deeper and deeper into from at least the XX. century... maximizing privacy is the last thing people need.
I WANT my custom ads. I WANT to see things relevant to me. I'm confused as hell when I hear of people who'd rather inconvenience themselves every step of the way than let their input be stored.
What we need is trust and honesty, not secrecy and paranoia.
tl;dr No one gives a *** about you, it's just an automated system processing things. Your washing machine doesn't sniff your underwear, Google doesn't read your emails.
Gersen: Yeah right, privacy is only a concern for those who have something to hide everybody knows that...
It's almost a definition, isn't it ? Privacy is about you not wanting others to find out about something. I'm not saying it only has to apply to evil acts, I'm not saying a world with no privacy at all would be nice... but as long as you're a good person, an invasion of privacy can be embarrassing, annoying or impolite but hardly anything beyond that.
