that’s fair.

content id is a wild one that I only discovered a year ago: I had always used my own Chromecast when traveling, and I plugged it into a Roku TV which kept saying “did you know you could watch [content that I was currently watching] on Roku” which really freaked me out, so I looked into it. honestly not sure why they tipped their hand like that: I found the setting and turned it off. otherwise I would’ve been none the wiser.

creepy af though. the amount of tracking you implicitly accept by using random devices out in the world is staggering. even if you read every privacy policy and opt out of everything (I do) you have no chance.

I’ve worked with marketers for years. many of them have a blind spot for what they create: they can realize something is irritating, or invasive, but not when it’s their marketing, which is obviously superior and what people want to see. it’s some sort of artist+marketer brainrot.

sorry to generalize, I’ve just seen it a lot over the years.

I imagine this is something like it: we’ll reach them with the perfect message, it’ll be exactly what they want! won’t that be delightful?

…completely ignoring how horrifying it is.

this was such a weird claim, and I never really understood how it could be true specifically for phones, where they aren’t in control of system software. there’s like a gradient of possibility here:

• Android phones from major manufacturers, and Apple phones: doubt it. those things are too heavily scrutinized, someone would’ve found it, and the companies that make them don’t have the impetus.
• official “smart” voice devices from Amazon, Google, et al: doubt it, same reasoning as above
• Android phones from small players, heavily subsidized models, etc.: sure, could be
• smart TVs from major manufacturers: probably not? medium “maybe”? I bought one of these with a hardware mic switch so I guess that shows my paranoia
• other smart TVs: I dunno, feels highly likely

so: I’m careful about what I use so my risk felt pretty low, but I also feel like if this were true security researchers would’ve discovered it. let alone the fact that what they describe is bandwidth and battery intensive (off-device or on-device respectively, I don’t remember what they claimed as I read the 404 media report some weeks back) but it still makes me wonder: what led them to make these claims then? fascinating, pretty scary.

agree with all these points. another thing I think about a lot is: I have the benefit of having grown up with the Internet but before social media, and so all of my embarrassing teen content is long gone. can’t imagine having that follow you around for the rest of forever, tied to your real name, looked at by potential employers and being asked to defend it for the rest of your life.

Yep, there is already a great example of what would happen, and it pretty much proved what many of us believed: governments and employers used it as a surveillance tool, and it’s not a replacement for a real content moderation strategy. People are just as happy to be cruel to each other and spread disinformation even if their real name is attached to it.