Discussion
A bunch of years ago, when I was working in startups, my team built a back end dashboard to see what users/customers were doing...
We weren't trying to run ads, sell information to data brokers, etc. we just wanted to see what was working/not working – at the time, no one said "this is surveillance" but that's what it was, even though it wasn't what we started with.
🧵
I was also fortunate around that time to stumble across the work of Zeynep Tufekci, who writes about tech + social habits + privacy, as well as Olia Lialina, who is an artist, media critic, and technologist.
What I got out of it, among other things, was that when companies watch/study their customers, there are always big ethical questions.
Not "can we do that" but "should we do that" ...and there is no skipping those Qs without serious consequences.
So when people ask the very real and important question "what guardrails do we, people/society, need in order to protect ourselves against the misuse/abuse of sensitive personal information?"
...the answer can't come from a bunch of people in "move fast, break things" mode in a tech company. Not unless you want to end up with an executive using a livestream of kids gymnastics for a sales demo, as we recently learned Flock Safety did.
Side note: my view is that Flock is one of the most unsafe companies in existence right now, and regardless of how you feel about the underlying tech, I recommend getting them out of your city/town.
There are a lot of smart people that have worked on data privacy, both developers/coders and tech thinkers.
We know what's needed, including guardrails like:
Sanitizing/separating data – some things just shouldn't be combined or ever provided for commercial purposes, like someone's monthly period cycle or individual mental health records
Outlawing data brokers – as long as there's a lawless business model that relies on combining & exploiting data, there will be hacks, leaks, and abuse
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
