#data capitalism

[a-kind-of-medicine]

every time u steal from a large corporation a small business gets its wings

#shoplifting #shoplifting memes #dark academia #dark academia memes #evil memes #dark humor #capitalism #capitalism memes #walmart memes #surveillance state #data capitalism #lgbtq memes #lgbt memes #wlw memes #lesbian memes #trans memes #transgender memes #fyp #196 #/r/196 #shitpost

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

#the truman show #sbs rambles #I keep thinking about how children on popular youtube channels should probably have laws to protect them #social workers assigned to them maybe #I dunno #they did not sign up to have their lives sold for profit #but here we are #tho #I guess none of us signed up for it #and our data is harvested more than ever #god #high-tech capitalism sucks turns out #OH WAIT because tumblr is bad at getting context sometimes #let me specify: #I am not saying that the movie The Truman Show is bad or that it normalizes this #like all good sci-fi (because it is kind of sci-fi) it's there to warn us of what the future could hold #and it did that in a very good way - it's a beautiful movie #I could see someone with a bad faith take assuming I meant that it was part of the problem #it absolutely wasn't. it didn't normalize this; we did #youtube did and social media #it's us that's the problem #or more specifically: big corporations and a lack of regulation #that's the origin of most modern problems

[politijohn]

More data here

Eat the damn rich

#eat the rich #capitalism #news #data #government #the left #tax the rich #billionaires should not exist #progressive #wealth tax #wealth inequality

[odinsblog]

“Smart Cars” + Capitalism = a very dystopian future

Ford’s patent ranges from having a “self driving” car return itself to the dealership if you miss a payment, to having the car abruptly disable itself, to “minor inconveniences” like having the air conditioner or heater stop working until you voluntarily return the car.

Don’t think for one second that all carmakers aren’t thinking about doing the same things. Especially Tesla Motors.

Carmakers are already trying to monetize even the most basic features, like charging monthly fees for the ability to use your car’s seat warmers.

Anyway, nobody does more to radicalize people against capitalism more than greedy capitalists.

#fsd #self driving cars #smart cars #ford #volkswagen #capitalism #corporate greed #greed #tesla #ford motor co #spyware #geolocation data #geolocation tracking

[catgirl-kaiju]

it's so funny to think abt how the dystopian levels of surveillance and data collection we are subjected to every day without consent, and sometimes without awareness being done primarily for the purpose of advertising goods and services to people. targeted ads that so often get blocked and ignored because everyone hates ads.

just... the hilarity of a vast network of machines dedicated to spying on everyone in the world, straight out of the mind of a deranged conspiracy theorist, which exists to let you know that shoes are 10% off at wal-mart, and which doesn't actually make you want to shop at wal-mart

#comedy #humor #data brokers #surveillance capitalism #anti-capitalist #anti consumerism #politics #social commentary #scout's brain

[datamined]

Because it's relevant to the blog: TLDR; The United States' Justice Department have Google in an Antitrust lawsuit over it's ability as a monopoly to corrupt search engine results and more people need to understand what's going on and why this is important. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198558372/doj-google-monopoly-antitrust-trial-search-engine At work one of my bosses threw a fit (justifably) because Google is doing a lot shittier things with advertising and their algorithm than you think. I feel like most people know at this point that Google search results are essentially bunk- the top searches is influenced by how much a company directly works with and pays google. People bid to make their names or businesses at the top of the search results. But it goes a little deeper in that. Recently, I learned that top bidders do not actually get the top result. Why? Because Google wants to make it look less bad when Amazon always gets the top result for virtually anything you're looking for. Top bidders get second top search, the NEXT top bidders actually get the top spot. I could be wrong, but this is essentially my understanding of it at our office in super simple terms. But the biggest issue right now is that Google actually quietly (but significantly) raised their prices for bidding and nobody has any fucking say in it. This makes large corporations (such as Amazon) more likely to be only ones that can manage to take up these top spots, and smaller companies continue to get shafted because they simply cannot compete and Google is essentially stiffing the competition, so to speak, harder than ever before. BUT ON TOP OF THAT, my boss also found that Google is actively making it harder to find information about this and the incoming huge fucking lawsuits thrown at them. They're trying to make it difficult for their users (and basically, the entire world considering so many devices automatically use google search, as Google has deals with Apple and Samsung) to find out anything about their corporate greed and corruption. When searching for the same thing in a different Search Engine like Bing, the lawsuits are the first things to come up. It's huge fucking news but few people know about it or are talking about it. The results of this lawsuit are going to permanently and drastically change the internet and how people find their information.

#google #lawsuit #us politics #monopoly #capitalism #internet #information #advertising #data diary

[ivygorgon]

WHO KNOCKED OVER MY Capitol insurrection arrests per million people by state *Grabs Montana* YOU

💘 Q'u lach' shughu deshni da. 🏹 "What I say is true" in Dena'ina Qenaga

#wyoming #just south of 'em; it's the complete #opposite #Spouse says it is the #lesbian #state #(Why are women from this country so hot?) #says all the men who “ruined them” moved to #montana #ivy speaks #uhaul capital #western #us politics #who knocked over my onions #YOU #meme #political meme #political memes #us capitol #insurrection #arrested #data #datablr #data is beautiful #politics #jan 6 #trumplicans #intersectional social justice #intersectional feminism #trans rights

[netscapenavigator-official]

The fact that Apple reportedly sells Apple TVs for $100+ and they’re STILL at a loss should tell you just how shady the smart TV market is. When you buy a Roku or a Smart TV, you’re buying a screen grabber. I’m not kidding. Most modern Smart TVs have a screen monitoring program built in to content match whatever you’re watching or playing (yes, even on external HDMI inputs) and sell that data to advertisers. The reason flat screen TVs have gotten so cheap isn’t because of production costs falling, but rather these companies selling the hardware to you at a loss, and then secretly selling your information and viewing habits to make up the difference. I’m not exaggerating. They’re are guides online on how to disable this screen grabbing software on a per TV-manufacturer basis. I highly recommend you look them up, or simply never connect your TV to the internet in the first place and deny it access to do so.

#6/16/23 #rambles #tv #tvs #smart tv #technology #privacy #online privacy #shady business #apple #apple tv #data mining #capitalism #anti capitalism #fuck capitalism #data #your data #online security #security #dystopia

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

#us politics #republicans #conservatives #gop #congressional salaries #minimum wage #wages #raise the minimum wage #wage gap #intergenerational wealth #tax rate #hourly wages #capital gains #capital gains tax #income #productivity vs. pay #productivity #economic policy institute #Piketty/Saez data #NBER #Federal Reserve Distributional Accounts #graphs #statistics

[pb-dot]

Some Thoughts on the Reddit Blackout

Like many new arrivals on Tumblr these days, I used to be a Redditor until recent developments encouraged me to take my business elsewhere, and I have been following the development of the story as thoroughly as I can without actually giving Reddit any more traffic. With the most recent development of the Reddit admin corps taking on a suite of strategies lifted straight from the depression-era railroad baron playbook, I figured the time has come to talk a little about the wider implications of this whole story.

The Tech sector is, to the best of my understanding, in a vulnerable place right now. After the Web 2.0 gold rush and years of consolidation and growth from the biggest actors, your Alphabets, Twitters, Metas, and so on, many of the larger sites and services are reaching the largest size they can expect to grow to. How, for instance, could Facebook or Twitter grow much more now that everyone and their mother is on Facebook and Twitter? Prior to the Musk buyout, Twitter seemingly settled on upping engagement, making sure people were on Twitter longer and invested more energy and emotion in the platform, usually by making damn sure the discourse zapping through that hellhole was as polarizing and hostile as possible. Meta, meanwhile, has been making bank on user data as advertisers, AI folks, and any number of other actors salivate over getting their hands on the self-updating contact and interest registry that is Facebook.

With the rise of what we apparently have decided to call AI, data is now more valuable than ever. I consider this to be yet another Tech Hype Bubble on the level of NFTs or Metaverses, but, like with the two above, I can imagine it's hard to explain that when you are a Tech CEO and your shareholders ask you "Hey, how do you plan on earning us money off of this AI/NFT/Metaverse thing?" This is not to say CEO Steve Huffman isn't handling this whole thing with the grace of a three-legged hippo, but merely to suggest that his less-than-laudable decisions and actions in this mess don't arise from his character alone but also is a result of wider systemic issues.

One of these issues is the complicated role user data plays in modern websites and -services. Since its inception as a publicly accessible space, the question of how to monetize the Internet has been a tricky one for site and service owners. Selling ad space on your website or service has long been the go-to, but this in itself presents its own issues, having to curate content that is considered ad-friendly, malicious or careless actors making using said service or website less attractive for customers, and finally how to convince your advertisers that they get what they pay for in the first place, ie. "how do I know people even look at our ads?" All of this is before you even stop to consider how ads massively favor large, established actors.

It's no small wonder, then, that several startups in the era of internet mass adoption chose to forgo ads, or at least massively deprioritize them and/or relaunch them as "promoted posts," in an attempt to escape the stigma around ads. Meta/Facebook is probably the biggest fish in this particular pond, but we also see other services such as Twitter and Reddit follow the same pattern.

What makes this work is that the data these platforms collect from their users isn't all that valuable on a person-to-person basis, knowing that so-and-so is 32 years old, lives in a traditionally conservative part of the city, goes to Starbucks a lot, and listens to Radiohead isn't particularly useful information for anyone but a dedicated but lazy stalker; When viewed as an aggregate, however, large collections of data on a large population becomes quite valuable. This is especially true if you're working with, say, targeted ads or political campaigns. Look no further than the Cambridge Analytica data scandal for an example.

Now, all this is to illustrate the strange position the user occupies in Web 2.0. We tend to think of ourselves as the customer of Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, and so on, but it isn't the case. After all, we don't pay for these services, and if we do it's to buy freedom from ads or other minor service modifications. It is more correct to say that we make up the product itself. This is true in two respects, first, an active social community is vital for social media to not be entirely pointless, and second, we generate the data that the platform holder seeks to monetize. This hybrid product/participant role doesn't map cleanly to traditional understandings of "worker," but I argue it is a closer fit than "customer."

All of this is to say that it is immensely gratifying to see the Reddit Blackout taking the shape of a strike rather than the more typical boycott model we've seen in the internet-based protests of yesteryear. Much of this, I think, we can thank the participating Reddit moderators. While the regular platform user can be *argued* to be a worker, the moderator inarguably is one, and the fact that they aren't paid for their efforts is more a credit to the prosocial nature of humans than to the corporate acumen of the platform holders. Either way, moderating a subreddit is work, if the subreddit is large, it's quite a lot of work, and moderators keeping malicious actors, scammers, and hatemongers out of everyone's hair is a must for any decently sized social space to not be an objectively terrible experience. So, if you were to, for example, withhold your labor (moderating for free) which you as a worker can do, it would be plain irresponsible to leave the place open for said bad apples to ruin everyone's bunches, thus the shutdowns.

I don't think it's a controversial take to claim that the Reddit admins also view this more as a strike than a boycott, given their use of scabs, intimidation, and other strikebreaking tactics in an attempt to break the thing up. This is nothing new, and the fact that Reddit admins are willing to stoop to these scumbag tactics tells us that their bluster about the shutdown not affecting their bottom line is nothing more than shareholder-placating hot air.

As this entire screed has perhaps demonstrated, I believe the Reddit Blackout is important. My stay at Tumblr so far has been excellent and will probably continue past this strike no matter what outcome it has, but for others in my situation, or perhaps entirely alien to the Reddit biome, I ask you to consider: If we do not stop this level of consumer and user-unfriendly bullshit Reddit have been pulling on the API change, where will it pop up next? Who's to say the next bright idea in corpo-hell isn't "Hey boss, how about we charge these nerd losers a dollar per reblog? And maybe a fiver for a Golden Reblog (TM)?"

This is perhaps getting into grandstanding, but I believe we are way past due for a renegotiation of what it means to be a platform holder and -user on this hot mess of an internet. If we as users do not take an active, strong stance on the matter, the Steve Huffmans, Elon Musks, and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world will decide without us. One does not have to be a fortune teller to see that the digital world this would create would not have our best interests in mind any more than the current one does.

So, in closing, I wish to extend my wholehearted support to the participating Moderators of Reddit and everyone who has decided to take their business elsewhere for the duration of the shutdown. Even without getting into the nitty-gritty of the API situation, this is a fight worth having, and may we through it make a world that's just a little bit less shitty.

Become Ungovernable

Become Unprofitable

Stay that way.

#reddit blackout #reddit #long reads #Oops my hands slipped across my keyboard a bunch #Tech #Peebs thinks #capitalism #fuck capitalism #big data #information technology

[belligerentbagel]

even Atlas has only two hands

vent art

#this one's for all the teachers out there #horror cw #hands cw #draws #after 2.5 years of caution and masking everywhere; i tested positive for covid on wednesday morning (first day of fall semester) 😔 #at earliest; i can be back in the classroom on monday #wednesday itself was an absolutely horrible 24 hours (but admittedly the anatomist side of me has been going 'ah! physiological data!') #but thursday and friday were a grim indicator of how much capitalism has rotted my brain #because after getting through 24 hours of a MASSIVE illness with undetermined long-term effects; i felt compelled to return to the #6-hr-sleep 18-hr-waking cycle that i was accustomed to; out of GUILT for falling behind in work #(note: i was NOWHERE near 100% back on thursday. i could have charitably been put at 50% - still headaches & fatigue & productive coughs) #a friend had to very sternly tell me 'you cannot solve structural problems through constant 80-hour-week heroic measures' #'you especially cannot do this when you are recovering from a debilitating illness which has the potential to remain a - #- serious lingering problem if you overwork yourself' #like. gods. yeah. it's not my fault that my classrooms are stuffed to the student maximum that our union has valiantly maintained #it's not my fault that the district only gave us one pre-semester prep day; meaning that my room & plans were left unfinished before day one #and - even bigger; it's not my fault that public health in the US is careening into 'can we pretend hard enough like nothing's happening' #my students will have a milquetoast start this fall semester. that is fine. #their teacher might not be able to stand and talk for longer than ten minutes at a time #i will do what i can. i still care about them. i am reading their introduction emails and smiling a bunch. #but i refuse to allow myself to be consumed in order to keep this fire lit.

[t00thpasteface]

(data voice) I Was Informed Of A Human Figure Of Speech Which States That Felines Are An Android's Best Friend.

#another forgotten old doodle #capitalizing every word is the best way to transliterate his speech pattern (affectionate) my beloved autism icon #art #sketch #star trek #star trek tng #data soong #spot star trek #cat

[intersectionalpraxis]

I deactivated my account late last night after seeing this, and they emailed me back saying one of my reviews didn't meet their guidelines. I won't be re-activating to 'appeal their decision' by changing it because I haven't used this site in forever. But my 'review' when I used to work for a problematic wellness retail chain was mostly about rampant micro-management, a lack of proper pay raises -especially since there was zero commissions for the amount of work you do in-store, to not being compensated properly for work outside of your duties (and the blurring of those responsibilities because I would often do things a store manager would do or an assistant even when I stepped down -like training). I wrote it very professionally, without profanity, so it makes me wonder what the hell I said that was so inappropriate.... interesting Glassdoor.

#feminist #social justice #glassdoor #online privacy #data privacy #internet privacy #anonymity #anti captialism #capitalism is evil #job reviews #current events #current news

[odinsblog]

Automakers are collecting driving data from customers and quietly providing it to insurance companies, and the practice has resulted in some unassuming drivers seeing their coverage increased or even terminated due to the practice, a new report reveals.

The New York Times reported this week that car manufacturers like General Motors and Ford are tracking drivers’ behavior through internet-connected vehicles, and sharing it with data brokers such as LexisNexis and Verisk, which create “consumer disclosure reports” on individuals that insurance companies can access.

The consumer reports do not show where a driver has traveled, but they do provide information on length of trips and driving behavior, such as “hard braking,” “hard accelerating” and speeding. Insurance companies can use those reports to assess the risk of a current or potential customer, and adjust rates or refuse coverage based on the findings.

The Times highlighted the case of Kenn Dahl, the driver of a leased Chevrolet Bolt, who learned he and his wife's driving habits were being tracked when an insurance agent told him in 2022 that his LexisNexis report was a factor behind his insurance premium jumping 21%.

“It felt like a betrayal,” Dahl told the newspaper. “They’re taking information that I didn’t realize was going to be shared and screwing with our insurance.”

(continue reading) related ←

#politics #lexisnexis #data mining #smart cars #car insurance #privacy rights #kenn dahl #spyware #capitalism #privacy #consumer disclosure reports

[decolonize-the-left]

Y'all ever look at this?

I was doing some research about healthcare and stumbled into this lobbying tracker and I am...pissed off???

Free rage machine over at opensecrets

#politics #Lobbying #us politics #us government #congress #senate #oil #gas #clean energy #climate change #data protection #capitalism #healthcare #health insurance #oil company #gas company

[politijohn]

Greatest country on Earth!

#capitalism #health #public health #health care #data #graphs #progressive