Political Discussion


@Joe Mac what is going on over on your side of the pond, and why is it so hard to stop enforcement of violations made by cloned registrations?

I don’t really know and/or care. I live across a small sea on another island with a very backwards police force and we have no ANPR at all, I have about 4 discs in a holder on my windscreen 😂
 
John Oliver had a segment on Mark Robison before the main story last night.

Wow, what a wack job.

I learned a lot more about him, and none of it good. Like he he thinks the Civil Rights movement was bad and took away freedoms. Freedoms like "free markets".

Also, what an endorsement by Donald Trump :rolleyes:
"Free markets to own and rape other humans" would be my guess.
 
Just a reminder that even if Biden manages to win, it's going to be a shit show either way. And remember that the fascism doesn't end with Trump.
 
That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong.
Fear Mongering is 100% why they are passing this bill.

To me that is not a valid reason.

TikTok doesn't collect any data that Facebook or Twitter don't. The only difference is TikTok is owned by a Chinese company.

Currently, any data on US users remains on servers in the United States and is not sent home to China. The fear would be how easy it would be for China to get this data. But what are they actually getting? There is nothing of national security unless someone posts that content or uses it from a secret location. And in that case, it doesn't matter what "app" you are using, it's a national security issue.
 
Fear Mongering is 100% why they are passing this bill.

To me that is not a valid reason.

TikTok doesn't collect any data that Facebook or Twitter don't. The only difference is TikTok is owned by a Chinese company.

Currently, any data on US users remains on servers in the United States and is not sent home to China. The fear would be how easy it would be for China to get this data. But what are they actually getting? There is nothing of national security unless someone posts that content or uses it from a secret location. And in that case, it doesn't matter what "app" you are using, it's a national security issue.

There is a huge amount of personal data on social media. It may not be explicitly “national security” but to dismiss a company located in a hostile nation, in which you can’t operate without permitting massive government intervention, gathering masses of your citizen’s personal data is very shortsighted. With the data they harvest social media companies can pretty effectively track, and potential extort, anybody using their platform regularly.

That’s without even entertaining the ability of social media and its algorithms from distorting the democratic procedure. Have we learned nothing from Cambridge Analytica?
 
There is a huge amount of personal data on social media. It may not be explicitly “national security” but to dismiss a company located in a hostile nation, in which you can’t operate without permitting massive government intervention, gathering masses of your citizen’s personal data is very shortsighted. With the data they harvest social media companies can pretty effectively track, and potential extort, anybody using their platform regularly.

That’s without even entertaining the ability of social media and its algorithms from distorting the democratic procedure. Have we learned nothing from Cambridge Analytica?
Well this is all Al Gore’s fault!
 
Just a reminder that even if Biden manages to win, it's going to be a shit show either way. And remember that the fascism doesn't end with Trump.
Yeah, fascism's already here right now.
 
There is a huge amount of personal data on social media. It may not be explicitly “national security” but to dismiss a company located in a hostile nation, in which you can’t operate without permitting massive government intervention, gathering masses of your citizen’s personal data is very shortsighted. With the data they harvest social media companies can pretty effectively track, and potential extort, anybody using their platform regularly.

That’s without even entertaining the ability of social media and its algorithms from distorting the democratic procedure. Have we learned nothing from Cambridge Analytica?

I don't disagree there is a huge amount of personal data on social media, but I do think this is a different issue. I think privacy laws need to be put into place to protect said data and allow you to opt out. That largely does not exist for any platform. Opting out largely means not being able to use said platform.

This is where I love the Apple Ecosystem. With iOS I can opt out of allowing apps to trackme. I also use the Cloudflare VPN to anonymize my data both on iOS and my Mac.

Sadly, Facebook and what not are bringing on Antitrust cases against Apple over this in both the EU, UK and US. Not being able to collect revenue on data Apple is preventing them from obtaining they say should be illegal and is a form of "gatekeeping". And this is gaining traction in government's crackdown of big tech.

I don't like where the crackdowns are going. I would love to see crackdowns on protecting consumers data. Not crackdowns that protect corporations rights to obtain and sell our data.

If Apple can't be the gatekeeper of our personal data, then who can be? It certainly won't be Facebook and alike corporations. And I have zero trust in governments to act as that gatekeeper. They will always be years behind in updating laws to protect consumer privacy. And would they have consumer privacy interest first?

Also, you would be surprised by how many apps try to access your clipboard, screenshot your device or screen record your device in the background. Why do they need to do that?
 
I don't disagree there is a huge amount of personal data on social media, but I do think this is a different issue. I think privacy laws need to be put into place to protect said data and allow you to opt out. That largely does not exist for any platform. Opting out largely means not being able to use said platform.

This is where I love the Apple Ecosystem. With iOS I can opt out of allowing apps to trackme. I also use the Cloudflare VPN to anonymize my data both on iOS and my Mac.

Sadly, Facebook and what not are bringing on Antitrust cases against Apple over this in both the EU, UK and US. Not being able to collect revenue on data Apple is preventing them from obtaining they say should be illegal and is a form of "gatekeeping". And this is gaining traction in government's crackdown of big tech.

I don't like where the crackdowns are going. I would love to see crackdowns on protecting consumers data. Not crackdowns that protect corporations rights to obtain and sell our data.

If Apple can't be the gatekeeper of our personal data, then who can be? It certainly won't be Facebook and alike corporations. And I have zero trust in governments to act as that gatekeeper. They will always be years behind in updating laws to protect consumer privacy. And would they have consumer privacy interest first?

Also, you would be surprised by how many apps try to access your clipboard, screenshot your device or screen record your device in the background. Why do they need to do that?

Yes but this is effectively giving that information to the Chinese government. Selling is a totally different issue. They are not a friendly party, we have to limit their access to our citizen’s data as much as possible.
 
I don't disagree there is a huge amount of personal data on social media, but I do think this is a different issue. I think privacy laws need to be put into place to protect said data and allow you to opt out. That largely does not exist for any platform. Opting out largely means not being able to use said platform.

This is where I love the Apple Ecosystem. With iOS I can opt out of allowing apps to trackme. I also use the Cloudflare VPN to anonymize my data both on iOS and my Mac.

Sadly, Facebook and what not are bringing on Antitrust cases against Apple over this in both the EU, UK and US. Not being able to collect revenue on data Apple is preventing them from obtaining they say should be illegal and is a form of "gatekeeping". And this is gaining traction in government's crackdown of big tech.

I don't like where the crackdowns are going. I would love to see crackdowns on protecting consumers data. Not crackdowns that protect corporations rights to obtain and sell our data.

If Apple can't be the gatekeeper of our personal data, then who can be? It certainly won't be Facebook and alike corporations. And I have zero trust in governments to act as that gatekeeper. They will always be years behind in updating laws to protect consumer privacy. And would they have consumer privacy interest first?

Also, you would be surprised by how many apps try to access your clipboard, screenshot your device or screen record your device in the background. Why do they need to do that?
TikTok is harmful so pretty much any other social media platform. The difference is China can and will use the platform as a way to manipulate and harm the US. If banned, something will rise up to replace it. People will get over it pretty fast.
 
This is where I love the Apple Ecosystem. With iOS I can opt out of allowing apps to trackme. I also use the Cloudflare VPN to anonymize my data both on iOS and my Mac.

I have some thoughts and disagreements on your assessments in this post, but I'm still mulling it over before commenting further. But this specific thing is worth pointing out: I'm not sure how technically savvy or security conscious you personally are, but about this specific thing you should consider this more of a "best-effort" on apple's part rather than some protection that you have (because you're using apple products,) that is being adhered to in a real way.

I can get into the weeds on this but honestly it'll probably make most folks' eyes glaze over; but this page has some worthwhile points about apple's "ask app not to track" specifically:


More generally, even if apple were to block the app from tracking via your phone's internals (which apple can and do block these if you ask,) operational security around how you use your phone and any particular app means that you are still very, very much trackable (and tracked).
 
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