one of the people i respect the most about the internet is going dark as soon as possible

one of the people i have the most respect for in the tech world (let’s call her alex) is planning on going dark as soon as possible. this terrifies me.

alex has watched the internet evolve pretty much from day one and she has gone from staunch advocate for it to wanting as little to do with is as soon as is feasible. this is difficult because she works as a technology head at her day job, but as soon as she can retire, she said she’s going off the grid.

her reasons are pretty solid:

1. nothing is neutral.
2. with the amount of data that private corporations now have on individuals, it’s almost trivial for someone to hack a system and learn everything about who you are.
3. america’s response to the snowden situation is insane. at a national scale, we publicly saw that the government is regularly committing unconstitutional acts… and almost nothing has changed. the snooping that the government does has basically been socially greenlighted (under president obama, this seemed like not a big deal… under president trump, this is fucking terrifying).
4. google, a private company, is constantly and continuously collecting data on us in order to garner massive profits and sell our information to marketers and advertisers. people talk about the fear of artificial intelligence like it’s going to appear in a humanoid form (a la ex machina). if google knows basically everything about you (they have almost all of your emails even if you don’t use gmail yourself and many of your documents), targets you with ads, and then is able to learn whether or not you respond to those ads to do the targeting better, google itself is a learning machine that sooner or later will be ai (or something).

yikes.

scary resources:

• ACLU Says the Feds Have Asked Apple and Google to Unlock Devices Many Times
  
  
• Google Deceptively Tracks Students’ Internet Browsing, EFF Says in FTC Complaint
  
  relevant line: “While Google does not use student data for targeted advertising within a subset of Google sites, EFF found that Google’s “Sync” feature for the Chrome browser is enabled by default on Chromebooks sold to schools. This allows Google to track, store on its servers, and data mine for non-advertising purposes, records of every Internet site students visit, every search term they use, the results they click on, videos they look for and watch on YouTube, and their saved passwords. Google doesn’t first obtain permission from students or their parents and since some schools require students to use Chromebooks, many parents are unable to prevent Google’s data collection.”
  
  
• Not OK, Google: Chromium voice extension pulled after spying concerns

writing: 15:03
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 9:01