I heard my partner’s dad working on some IKEA patio furniture or something in his backyard when he messed something up and yelled, “Nothing’s ever easy!” In the moment, it was hilarious. Then it was kind of sad. Then it was true. Many years later that shit still sticks with me. Nothing ever is fucking easy. And any time you feel like you’re getting a bit too sure of yourself or when you need to keep in mind everything you’ve gotten through so far, it’s good to remind yourself of that.
You're not a bank, the details don't matter. Don't even bother with getting anything in writing from someone who is over leveraged, because you're already never getting that money back in any court regardless since the other creditors come first.
Stay away. There is a 0% chance this will end up working out positively. If he brings it up again after you refuse, set hard boundaries that you don’t want to talk about it and you won’t entertain any further financial offers or advice. If that risks damaging your friendship then it’s a “friendship” that needs damaging.
Sorry to hear your friend’s gotten sucked into some investment cult.
There’s so many problems, so much uncertainty about the future, it can sometimes feel overwhelming and you just shut down. If you have a counter full of dishes, even if you wash one dish you’ve technically made the situation better. Marginally sure, but still in the right direction. And if that’s where you can focus your attention it might provide some momentum to finish all of them. But if not, that’s fine too, you still made the situation a little better and sometimes that’s the best we can hope for.
My worst imagination is labelling you and selling your label to the companies they supply to, and how wrongly those companies can use that data, example: google search “prostate cancer” or searching for symptons associated with prostate cancer - label telling probable prostate cancer developing with this user - insurance companies denying insurance to you or making it too expensive. Now extrapolate this to what your searches probably tell about you or your state, and multiply by the websites you visit, the time you spend reading article/tweet/forum/post about a certain subject, where and how you comment those articles, etc, and being labeled according to their perceived likes/hates/problems about yourself.
This. I remember that one video by LTT where he tried searching for a flight and he got a way higher price on the standard browser compared to the one with no personal accounts/cookies.
If I use search engines, be it to find opinions on a topic or as you said an insurance, I want those sorted by factors like the date it’s been created and maybe the reputability of the source. Not what the algorithm thinks I want to see or I should see in “its” opinion.
That doesn’t happen. These companies don’t sell user data and never have, they make money by being the only ones with your data through targeted advertisements. It’s not in their interest to sell it.
My worst imagination is a nefarious entity using our data to determine if we are a threat or try and categorize people for some kind of psyop manipulation.
Something like Captain America Winter Soldier but more realistic. Even things like Cambridge Analytica show it is not that far fetched.
While social media companies and amazon may not have the desire to do those things, they sure make it easier for others by greedily collecting the data.
If you comply with their interests, nothing. Once you do anything that even looks like being against their interests, they use this data. There are programs of called DARPA LifeLog which literally logs everything. They even create DeepFakes based on the data they collect, ofc, not officially.
Yes, never give any data more than you need to give and move towards free and minimal software.
It’s not so much about you as an individual, it’s about catalogueing and manipulating trends in our societies that can be used to make profit, for example Meta spends a lot of money and time manipulating election outcomes in favour candidates that will keep their taxes low through manipulating their content algorythm in favour of their desired candidates.
Personally I feel more easy minded because I know that whatever I do online leaves as little trace as usual. If I go out by myself say for a drive and I get back home I expect no one to ever know that I went away and where unless I decide to say so. Same goes for online activity. I would expect nothing to be tied to me and whatever I do to go unnoticed unless for some reason I agree with sharing such data. It’s often said though that with privacy comes less convenience and that is true: not having app features ready before you even ask or easily paying or doing other things online so I see how wanting convenience over privacy can be preferable. For me though, the point I made in the beginning is stronger and motivates me.
Also on a side note I watched a video from Louis Rossman where he talked about some kind of police radio going stolen and the authorities went ask google for people in that area that searched that specific model online to help track that person down so… yeah, I’m already not a fan of leaving traces I don’t want to leave. Let alone those that might make the authorities mistake me for a criminal.
Personally I’m trying to be as offline and anonimous as possible. I’m moving away from cloud storage and if a service can be used with a client without an account where I can locally save and back up things I like then I’m using that. The biggest challenge right now is youtube as a platform with that huge of a content and a decent algorithm for suggestions is yet to be created.
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